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Monday, October 20, 2025

The Damned - after Baudelaire



                                                                          The Damned 

 

Delphine & Hippolyte

 

 

 Out of the pale clarity of the languishing lamps,

From the depth of the cushions impregnated with scents,

Hippolyte dreams of powerful caresses

 Raising the curtain on her young candour.

 

She searches, with a troubled eye lost in the tempest,

In her naivety with the sky at once distant,

Like a traveller turning their head

Towards the blue horizons exceeding the morning.

 

Through her absorbed eyes the languorous tears,

The desolate air, the stupor, the mournful volupté

Her vanquished arms outspread like two discharged guns,

Everything served, it would appear conforming to her fragile beauty.

 

Strong beauty than down on her knees before frail,

Superb, she inhales voluptuously

The wine of her triumph, and leans forward towards her,

As if to gather a gentle acknowledgement.

  

She searches in the eye of her pale victim

The mute canticle which pleasure sings,

And that infinite and sublime gratitude

Which dissimulates from the pupil like a great sigh.

 

“Hippolyte, dear heart, what say you of things?

Do you understand now that you should not offer

The sacred holocaust of your very first roses

To the violent winds that could decimate them?

 

My kisses are as light and as ephemeral

As those caresses that pass over the great transparent lakes,

And those of your lover plough up furrows

Like ploughshares ripping through the earth;

 

They pass over you like a heavy team

Of workhorses or oxen with pitiless hooves…

O Hippolyte, my sister! Turn your face to me,

Turn towards me, my sweet soul sister, my other half, my all!

 

Turn your eyes towards me full of azure and stars!

For one of those charming looks, divine balm,

Obscure pleasures can unfurl like so many sails

Lulling you into a dream without end!”

 

But Hippolyte, raising her young head responds:

“ I am not such an ingrate, and certainly do not repent,

But, Delphine, having said that, I suffer just as if I have

Eaten some terrible super and can’t sleep.

 

I feel some terrible dread bearing down upon me

And the dark ghost battalions fragment,

And wish to manoeuvre me into oscillating paths

Upon which a blood horizon secretly encroaches.

 

Have we both not committed some strange deed?

Explain to me, if you can, my trouble and fright ;

As I tremble with fear when you say to me: “ My Angel!”

And, yet, I feel my lips approaching yours.

 

Don’t look at me like that, I beseech you!

You whom I love like no one else, my elected sister,

Though you are nothing less than a beautiful trap

And the cause of my complete perdition.

 

Shaking her tragic mane, Delphine,

Stamping her feet like a tripod of iron,

With a fatal eye, responds with a despot’s voice :

“Before Love, who then dares to speak of Hell?

 

In the things of Love, who then would speak of Honesty!

Damned forever would the deluded dreamer be,

In their utter stupidity to be the first too

To fall into that sterile and unsolvable problem!

 

Those who would wish to unite such a mystic accord,

 Like the shade with the heat, the night with the day,

Will never heat their paralytic corpses

With the red sun that we call Love.


Go, if you want, and find some stupid fiancé:

Offer your virginal heart to his cruel embraces;

And, full of remorse and livid horror,

You’ll return to me with your stigmatised breasts…

 

We cannot here below be a slave to one sole Master!”

But the child, taken hold as if by some immense pain,

Suddenly cries out: “ I feel taking hold of my Being

A great abyss, and this abyss is my heart!

 

Like a volcano it consumes me, as profound as the void.

Nothing will satiate the whimpering monster,

Just like the thirst of the Eumenides cannot not be sated,

Yes, with torch in hand, your blood thus will burn.

 

Would that a great theatre curtain could separate the world,

And that our lassitude bring forth strength!

I want to annihilate myself in your profound gorge,

And find upon your breasts the appeasement of the tomb.”

 

Descend, descend, descend, lamentable victims,

Descend into the eternal pathway to Hell,

Plunge yourselves into the most profound gulfs where all crime,

Flagellated by a wind which does not come from the sky,

 

Buffets pel mell with the noise of a storm.

Crazed shadows, run, follow to the end all of your desires;

But never will you be able to appease your rage,

And the torment of the birth of all of your pleasures.

 

Never will there be a fresh light to illuminate your caves;

Not through the cracks the feverish misaims,

Filtering in through the licking flames by the light of the lanterns

To finally penetrate your body with their awful perfume.

 

The sterile asp of your mutual pleasures

Alters your thirst and preys upon your skin,

And the furious wind of your concupiscence

Makes your flesh rip like an old flag.

 

Far from the living, condemned and errant,

Through great deserts do you run like wolves;

Make your own destiny, disordered souls,

And try to escape the infinity that you bear within.





 

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