CVIII DANSE MACABRE PAR BAUDELAIRE

                                                                                   

CVII

DANSE MACABRE

 

A Ernest Christophe

 

Fière, autant qu’un vivant, de sa noble stature,

Avec son gros bouquet, son mouchoir et ses gants,

Elle a la nonchalance et la désinvolture

D’une coquette maigre aux airs extravagantes.

 

Vit-on jamais au bal une taille plus mince?

Sa robe exagérée, en sa royale ampleur,

S’écoroule abandonment sur un pied sec que pince

Une soulier pomponné, joli comme une fleur.

 

La ruche qui se joue au bord des clavicules,

Comme un ruisseau lascif qui se frotte au rocher,

Défend pudiquement des lazzi ridicules

Les funèbres appas qu’elle tient à cacher.

 

Ses yeux profonds sont fais de vide et de ténébres,

Et son cráne, de fleurs artistement coiffé,

Oscille mollement sur ses frélle vertèbres.

O charme d’un néant follement attifé!

 

 

Aucune t’appelleront une caricature,

Qui ne comprennent pas, amants ivres de chairs,

L’elégance sans nom de l’humaine armature.

Tu réponds, grand squelette, à mon goût le plus cher!

 

Viens- tu troubler, avec ta puissante grimace,

La fênetre de ta Vie ? ou quleque vieux désir,

Ésperonnant encore ta vivant carcasse,

Te pousse-t-il, crédule, au sabbat du Plaisir?

 

Au chant des violins, au flammes des bougies,

Espères-tu chaser ton cauchemar moqueur,

Et viens-tu demander au torrent des orgies

De rafraîcher l’enfer allumé dans ton cœur?

 

Inépuissable puits de sottise et de fautes !

De l’antique douleur éternel alambie !

A travers le treillis recourbé de tes côtes

Je vois, errant encore, l’insatiable aspic.

 

Pour dire vrai, je crains que ta coquetterie

Ne trouve pas un prix digne de ses efforts;

Qui, de ces cœurs mortels, entend la raillerie?

Les charmes de l’horreur n’eniverent que les forts !

 

 

 

 

Le gouffre de tes yeux, pleine d’horribles pensées,

Exhales le vertige, et les danseurs prudents

Ne contempleront pas sans d’amères nausées

Le sourire éternel de tes trente -deux dents.

 

Pourtant, qui n’a serré dans ses bras un squelette,

Et qui ne s’est nourri des choses du tombeau?

Qu’importe le parfum, l’habit ou la toilette?

Qui fait le dégoûté montre qu’il se croit beau.

 

 Bayadère sans nez, irresistible gouge,

Dis donc à ces danseurs qui font les offusqués :

“Fiers mignons, malgré l’art des poudres et du rouge,

Vous sentez tous la mort! O squelette musqués,

 

Antinoüs flétris, dandy à face glabre,

Cadavres vernissés, lovelaces chenus,

Le branle universal de la danse macabre

Vous entraîne en des lieux qui ne sont pas connus!

 

Des quais froids de la Seine aux bords brûlants du Ganges,

Le troupeau mortel saute et se pâme, sans voir

Dans un trou du plafond la trompette de l’Ange

Sinistrement béant ainsi qu’un tromblon noir.

 

 

En tout climat, sous ton soleil, la Mort t’admire

Et tes contorsions, risible Humanité,

Et souvent, comme toi, se parfumant de myrrhe,

Mêle son ironie à ton insanité!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CVII

 

DANSE MACABRE

 

Proud, as much as anyone living with their noble stature,

With a great bouquet, handkerchief and gloves,

She has the nonchalance and flippancy

As any slim coquette with extravagant airs.

 

Have a figure so slim ever been seen at a ball?

Her exaggerated dress, with its royal magnitude,

Unrolled abandonedly to her bare feet which were perfectly

Encased in Louboutins, the soles a trademark scarlet.

 

The busy hive which nestles on the edge of her collarbones,

Like a wanton brook lapping against the rocks,

Defends pudically against the ridiculous taunts,

The funerary charms which she feigns to hide.

 

Her profound eyes are made of void and darkness,

And her skull, with artistic hairstyling,

Oscillate gently upon her frail vertebrae.

O the charms of a void which attracts like a folly.

 

 

 

 

 

Nobody calls you a caricature,

Who does not understand, lovers drunk on each others flesh,

Elegance without equal in the human framework.

To my taste, You respond grand skeleton, without equal.  

 

Do you come to trouble, with your powerful grimace,

The window of your Life? or some old desire,

Hopes with your living carcass

To push it, hopeful , to the sabbath of Pleasure?

 

To the violin’s song, with candle flames,

Do you hope to chase the mocking nightmare,

Do you come to ask for the torrent of orgies

To refresh the Hell that is illuminated in your heart?

 

Inexhaustible well of stupidity and error !

From the ancient pain to the eternal stillness.

Around the trellises of your curved banks

I see, wandering still, the insatiable adder.

 

To tell you the truth, I fear that your coquettishness

Will not find a price worthy of your efforts;

Who among those mortal hearts hears the taunts?

The charms of horror alone attract the strong.

 

 

The void in your eyes, full of horrible thoughts,

Exhales vertigo, and the prudent dancers

Do not contemplate without a bitter nausea

Of your eternal smile with all thirty two teeth!  

 

Yet, who has never taken a skeleton in his arms,

And who doesn’t know how nourish things from the tomb?

Whatever the perfume, the dress or the garb?

He who shows disdain merely shows he thinks that he knows better.

 

Bayadere without a nose, irresistible gouge,

My God, look at those dancers who are playing the ‘Offended’:

“ Proud ballerinas, despite the art of lipstick and powder,

Do you not smell Death! O musky skeleton,

 

Withered Antinous, a hairless dandy,

Varnished cadavers, lovelace chenus ,

The great wank of the universal danse macabre

Trains you to enter into places which are less common to find.

 

The cold banks of the Seine beside the burning Ganges,

The whole mortal troupe jumps and glides without seeing

The trumpet of the Angel in the bottom of the gorge

Sinisterly benevolent as much as a black blunderbuss.  

 

 

 

In any climate, under your sun, Death admires you

And your contortions, risible humanity,

And remember, like you, perfuming itself in myrrh,

It enjoys mixing irony with insanity!”

 

 

CVI LE JEU/ THE GAME BY BAUDELAIRE

 

                                                                                CVI

LE JEU

 

 

Dans des fauteuils fanés des courtisanes vieilles,

Pâle, le sourcil peint, l’œil câlin et fatal,

Minaudant, et faisant de leurs maigres oreilles

Tomber un cliquetis de pierre et de métal;

 

Autour des verts tapis des visages sans lèvres,

Des lèvres sans couleur, des mâchoires sans dents,

Et des doigts convulsés d’une infernale fièvre,

Fouillant la poche vide ou le sein palpitant;

 

Sous de sales plafonds un rang de pales lustres

Et d’énormes quinquets projetant leurs lueurs

Sur des fronts ténébreux de poëtes illustres

Qui viennent gaspiller leurs sanglantes sueurs;

 

Voilà le noir tableau qu’en un rêve nocturne

Je vis se dérouler sous mon œil clairvoyant.

Moi-même, dans un coin de l’antre taciturne,

Je me vis accoudé, froid, muet, enviant,

 

 

  

 

Enviant de ces gens la passion tenace,

De ces vieilles putains la funèbre gaîté,

Et tous gaillardement trafiquant à ma face

L’un de son vieil honneur, l’autre de sa beauté !

 

Et mon cœur s’effraya d’envier maint pauvre homme

Courant avec ferveur à l’abîme béant,

Et qui, soûl de son sang, préférerait en somme

La douleur à la mort et l’enfer au néant !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CVI

THE GAME

 

 

 

In the faded armchairs of the old courtesans,

Pale, their brows painted, the eyes themselves caressing and fatal;

Coquettish, their ear- rings jingling

With the sound of stone on metal.

 

About the green rugs the lipless faces,

Lips colourless, gums toothless,

And the convulsive fingers of an infernal fever,

Searching inside empty pockets where the heart beats;

 

Under dirty ceilings a ring of pale lustres

And the enormous oil lamps projecting their halos

Above the dark foreheads of some illustrious poets

Who are gasping in bloody sweats;

 

Such is the dark tableau of a nocturnal dream

I see it playing out in my clairvoyant eye;

Myself, in a corner in a taciturn lair,

Where I see myself leaning, cold, mute, envious,

 

 

 

Envying these people their tenacious passion,

Of those old whores with the funerary gaiety,

And altogether taking the piss of me to my face

One with her old ideas of honour, another her beauty!

 

And my heart fearfully envying the hand of a poor man

Chasing feverishly the beatific abyss,

And which, drunk on his blood, prefers to everything,

                                              The pain of Death and l’enfer – to…. the void. 

Crepuscule by Charles Baudelaire ( 1821-1867)

 

                                                                                  

 

CV

 

LE CRÉPUSCULE DU SOIR

 

Voici le soir charmant, ami du criminal;

Il vient comme un complice, à pas de loup; le ciel

Se ferme lentement comme une grande alcôve,

Et l’homme impatient se change en bête fauve.

 

O soir, aimiable soir, désiré par celui

Dont les bras, sans mentir, peuvent dire : Aujourd’hui

Nous avons travaillé! – C’est le soir qui soulage

Les ésprits que dévore une douleur sauvage,

Le savant obstiné dont le front s’alourdit,

Et l’ouvrier courbé qui regagne son lit.

 

Cependent des démons malsain dans l’atmosphère

S’éveillent lourdement, comme des gens d’affaire,

Et cognent en volant les volets et l’auvent.

A travers les lueurs que tourmente le vent

La prostituition s’allume dans les rues;

Comme une fourmilière elle ouvre ces issues;

Partout elle se fraye un occulte chemin,

Ainsi que l’enemmi qui teint un coup de main;

Elle remue au sein de la cite de fange

Comme un ver qui dérobe à l’Homme ce qu’il mange.

 

On entend çà et là les cuisines siffler,

Les théâtres glapir, les orchestres ronfler;

Les tables d’hôte, don’t le jéu les délices,

S’emplissent de catins et d’escrocs, leurs complices,

Et les vouleurs, qui n’ont ni trêve ni merci,

Vont bientôt commencer leur travail, eux aussi,

Et forcer doucement les portes et les caisses

Pour vivre quelques jours et vêtir leurs maïtresses.

 

Recueille-toi, mon âme, en ce grave moment,

Et ferme ton oreille à ce rugissement.

C’est l’heure où les douleurs des maladies s’aigrissent !

La sombre Nuit les prend à la gorge; ils finissent

Leur destinée et vont vers le gouffre commun;

L’hôpital se remplit de leurs soupirs. – Plus d’un

Ne viendra plus chercher la soupe parfumée,

Au coin du feu, le soir, auprés d’une âme aimée.

 

Encore la plupart n’ont-ils jamais connu

La douceur du foyer et n’ont jamais vécu !

 

  

 

 

 

 

CV[i]

 

CREPUSCULE

 

 

Here is Night full of charms, a friend to the criminal;

Like a wolf, it comes like an accomplice; the sky

Closes slowly like a great alcove,

And the impatient man transforms into a fauve.

 

O night, amiable night, desired by those

Whose arms, without any lying, can say: Today

We have worked ! – it is the night which lifts

The spirits which devour the savage pain,

The obstinate savant with the loaded brain,

And the bent worker who regains his bed.

 

Meanwhile the morbid demons in the atmosphere

Awake heavily like business people

Knocking while throwing open the shutters to the awnings

Across the glimmers which torment the wind

And Prostitution lights up the streets;

Like an anthill which spills over;

Everywhere it makes a path to its occult origins,

Just like an enemy which offers you an extended hand;

Stirring at the heart of the city the mire,

Like a parasitic host stripping man before consuming him.

 

We hear this and the kitchens whistling,

The theatres yelping, the orchestras snoring;

The set meals, whose primary hook is to serve delicacies,

Are layered with whores and pimpery, their accomplices,

And thieves, who have neither pity nor lull,

Will also soon go to work, they also,

Are forced to open their doors and cash registers

So that they might live a few days more with their Mistresses.

 

 

Step back, my soul, in this grave moment,

And shut your ears to all this noise.

It is the hour of sorrows and escalating afflictions!

Sombre Night is taking them by the throats; they shall end

Their days in a common grave;

Hospitals will fill up with their cries. And what is more, more than one

Will not come to look for the perfumed soup,

In the hearth of the night, beside the soul of a loved one.

 

Again, the majority of them will never know

The warmth of a home, and so, nor will they have ever truly lived.

---

[i]

Joseph de Maistre ( 1753-1821) is one of the most important thinkers in Baudelaire’s universe, like Edmund Burke a founding father of Conservatism. In post revolutionary France, he was a reactionary force advocating a return to the monarchy and to the stratification of society giving back to the church its proper place. In contemporary France, I would signal out Emmanuel Todd, the author of La Défaite de l’Occident ( 2024), and who makes the connection between the fall of western civilisation with the loss of religious belief. Baudelaire said that de Maistre helped him to think, and I think nowhere is this fatalism more evident than in this poem. We are led to believe, in the majority of readings of Baudelaire, that he is the poet calling on debauchery and hedonistic excess, which is why he was championed in the sixties, but I think the more that one reads him throughout ones life, as is more than likely the case with all great writers, this is rather a one-sided view of a very multi-natured and complex poet, who, in this poem at least, is horrified by what he sees looking around him at the modern city sprawling out before him with all of its corrupting forces. In many ways, this poem, particularly, reminds me of the painters of northern Europe during the reformation with their very stern images of the apocalypse. T.S. Eliot too is all over this, with Laforgue clambering up beside him!  

Heaney & Baudelaire, a Majesterial Pairing

                                                                                

CIV

 

LE SQUELETTE LABOURER

 

I

 

 Dans les planches d’anatomie

Qui traînent sur ces quais poudreux

Oû maint livre cadavéreux

Dort comme une antique momie,

 

Dessins auxquels la gravité

Et le savoir d’un vieil artiste,

Bien que le sujet en soit triste,

Ont communiqué la Beauté,

 

On voit, ce qui rend plus complétes

Ces mystérieuses horreurs,

Bêchant comme de laboureurs,

Des Écorchés et des Squelettes.

 

 

 

 

 

II

 

De ce terrain que vous fouillez,

Manants résignés et funébres ,

De tout l’effort de vos vertèbres,

Ou de vos muscles dépoillés,

 

Dites, quelle moisson étrange,

Forçats arrachés au charnier,

Tirer-vous, et de quel fermier

Avez- vous à remplir la grange?

 

Voulez-vous ( d’un destin trop dur

Épouvantable et clair embléme !)

Montrer que dans la fosse même

Le sommeil promis n’est pas sûr;

 

Qu’envers nous le Néant est traïte;

Que tout, même le Mort, nous ment,

Et que sempiternellement,

Hélas! il nous faudra peut-être

 

 

 

 

 

Dans quelque pays inconnu

Écorcher la terre revêche

Et posser une lourde bêche

Sous notre pied sanglant et nu?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CIV

 

THE SKELETAL LABOURER

 

 

 

On the anatomical plates

Which pepper the bouquinistes

Where the textbook cadavers

Sleep like ancient mummies,   

 

Drawings which the gravity

And the knowledge of the artist,

Though the subject be grave,

Tend to communicate Beauty,  

 

We can see what makes them so complete

These mysterious horrors

Digging like labourers,

The flayed alive and the skeletal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

II

 

In this terrain where you excavate,

Spalpeens resigned and funerary,

With every effort of your vertebrae,

Or your remaining muscle,

 

Pray tell, from what strange bog,

Forceps ripped from the morgue,

Are you torn, for which farmer

Have you loaded the harvest?

 

Would you like to ( a destiny too rough

Appalling emblem that you signal!)

Expose the mass grave

Where the promised sleep is not at all assured;

 

And for us the abyss is treacherous;

Where everything, even Death, is a lie,

And perpetually,

Alas! we need to perhaps,

 

 

 

 

 

In some unknown country,

Flail alive the earth

And pass over it a great spade,

With a bloody naked foot?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bog Bodies

 

There is a room in the National Museum of Archaeology, on Kildare Street in Dublin, where there are

exhibits of bodies which have been preserved by the chemical properties in the waters of the bog and

which preserve almost perfectly the dismembered remains of former Irish princes who were

assassinated in the most Machiavellian way imaginable; inside this chamber of horrors we are, us

denizens of the 21^st century, given, thanks to the former State Pathologist, Marie Cassidy and the team

of archaeologists who worked with her – my understanding is that it is the first time that such a

project has been realised in the country. The reason why I am referencing this permanent exhibition in

relation to the poem Le Squelette Laboureur is because of the wonderful translation, or ‘impure

translation’, by Seamus Heaney and which was to appear in his, literally and metaphorically,

groundbreaking collection North ( 1975) and which I am going to give in its entirety here.

 

The Digging Skeleton

 

You find anatomical plates

Buried along these dusty quays

Among books yellowed like mummies

Slumbering in forgotten crates,

 

Drawings touched with an odd beauty

As if the illustrator had

Responded gravely to the sad

Mementoes of anatomy –

 

 

 

 

Mysterious candid studies

Of red slobland around the bones.

Like this one: flayed men and skeletons

Digging the earth like navvies.

 

These are the first three verses of the poem, and what I think is so commendable about Heaney’s

translation is that he manages to insert a rhyming pattern ( ABBA as opposed to ABAB, as in

Mahon’s version of Paysage ), this alternating rhyme is so much more natural as it is unforced, almost

conversational; Heaney learnt this from Yeats, and of course Kavanagh, the two old masters of 20^th

century Irish poetry. But this is but to talk of the form, as for the content, then we must refer back to

the room in the National Museum of Archaeology, as this is Heaney’s domain. The archaeological

referencing, the forensic detail to the choice of words. Notice the use of navvies as a term rather than

my own spalpeen, as I was aping Heaney to a large extent here, but Heaney’s choice was dependent

on the rhyme!

 

II

 

Sad gang of apparitions,

Your skinned muscles like plaited sedge

And your spines hooped toward a sunk edge

Of the spade, my patient ones,

 

Tell me, as you labour hard

To break my unrelenting soil,

What barns are there for you to fill?

What farmer dragged you from the boneyard?

 

 

Or, are you emblems of the truth,

Death’s lifers, hauled from the narrow cell

And stripped of night-shirt shrouds, to tell:

“This is the reward of faith

 

In rest eternal. Even death

Lies. The void deceives.

We do not fall like autumn leaves

To sleep in peace. Some traitor breath

 

Revives our clay, sends us abroad

And by the sweat of our stripped brows

We earn our deaths; our one repose

When the bleeding instep finds its spade.’[1]

 

 

There is just so much to commend here. To my mind it is the best translation I have read of a poem by

Baudelaire.  

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[1] Heaney, Seamus: North, Faber & Faber, London, 1992, pp.17-18.