Continually.

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking . . . ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

Charles Baudelaire

Happy Birthday, Charles Baudelaire

The Poet is a kinsman of the clouds

Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day;

But on the ground, among the hooting crowds,

He cannot walk, his wings are in the way.

Charles Baudelaire, born on this day in 1821, from "The Albatross"

Borne.

THE ALBATROSS

Often, for pastime, mariners will ensnare

The albatross, that vast sea-bird who sweeps

On high companionable pinion where

Their vessel glides upon the bitter deeps.

Torn from his native space, this captive king

Flounders upon the deck in stricken pride,

And pitiably lets his great white wing

Drag like a heavy paddle at his side.

This rider of winds, how awkward he is, and weak!

How droll he seems, who lately was all grace!

A sailor pokes a pipestem into his beak;

Another, hobbling, mocks his trammeled pace.

The Poet is a kinsman of the clouds

Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day;

But on the ground, among the hooting crowds,

He cannot walk, his wings are in the way.

Charles Baudelaire

Happy Birthday, Bonnard

Bonnard, The Terrace, 1918

Pierre Bonnard was born on this day in 1867.

Charles Baudelaire had this to say about Bonnard's art...

He admires the eternal beauty and the astonishing harmony of life in the capital cities, a harmony so providentially maintained in the tumult of human liberty. He gazes at the landscapes of the great city, landscapes of stone, now swathed in the mist, now struck in full face by the sun.

What a compliment.

Inquiring.

EPIGRAPH for a BANNED BOOK

Gentle reader, being—as you are—

a cautious man of uncorrupted tastes,

lay aside this disobliging work,

as orgiastic as it is abject.

Unless you’ve graduated from the school

of Satan (devil of a pedagogue!)

the poems will be Greek to you, or else

you’ll set me down for one more raving fool.

If, however, your impassive eye

can plunge into the chasms on each page,

read on, my friend: you’ll learn to love me yet.

Inquiring spirit, fellow-sufferer

in search, even here, of your own Paradise,

pity me. . . If not, to Hell with you!

Charles Baudelaire

Kinsman.

Firchau, Head in the Clouds, April 8, 2024

The ALBATROSS

Often, when bored, the sailors of the crew

Trap albatross, the great birds of the seas,

Mild travelers escorting in the blue

Ships gliding on the ocean's mysteries.

And when the sailors have them on the planks,

Hurt and distraught, these kings of all outdoors

Piteously let trail along their flanks

Their great white wings, dragging like useless oars.

This voyager, how comical and weak!

Once handsome, how unseemly and inept!

One sailor pokes a pipe into its beak,

Another mocks the flier's hobbled step.

The Poet is a kinsman of the clouds

Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day;

But on the ground, among the hooting crowds,

He cannot walk, his wings are in the way.

Charles Baudelaire

Happy Birthday, Baudelaire

Life is a hospital where every patient is obsessed by the desire of changing beds. One would like to suffer opposite the stove, another is sure he would get well beside the window.

It always seems to me that I should be happy anywhere but where I am, and this question of moving is one that I am eternally discussing with my soul.

"Tell me, my soul, poor chilly soul, how would you like to live in Lisbon? It must be warm there, and you would be as blissful as a lizard in the sun. It is a city by the sea; they say that it is built of marble, and that its inhabitants have such a horror of the vegetable kingdom that they tear up all the trees. You see it is a country after my own heart; a country entirely made of mineral and light, and with liquid to reflect them."

My soul does not reply.

"Since you are so fond of being motionless and watching the pageantry of movement, would you like to live in the beatific land of Holland? Perhaps you could enjoy yourself in that country which you have so long admired in paintings on museum walls. What do you say to Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts, and ships that are moored on the doorsteps of houses?"

My soul remains silent.

"Perhaps you would like Batavia better? There, moreover, we should find the wit of Europe wedded to the beauty of the tropics."

Not a word. Can my soul be dead?

"Have you sunk into so deep a stupor that you are happy only in your unhappiness? If that is the case, let us fly to countries that are the counterfeits of Death. I know just the place for us, poor soul. We will pack up our trunks for Torneo. We will go still farther, to the farthest end of the Baltic Sea; still farther from life if possible; we will settle at the Pole. There the sun only obliquely grazes the earth, and the slow alternations of daylight and night abolish variety and increase that other half of nothingness, monotony. There we can take deep baths of darkness, while sometimes for our entertainment, the Aurora Borealis will shoot up its rose-red sheafs like the reflections of the fireworks of hell!"

At last my soul explodes! "Anywhere! Just so it is out of the world!"

Charles Budelaire, born on this day in 1821

Fight.

Harrison on survival techniques ...

The other day on a very warm border winter afternoon, I was sitting on the patio with my wife Linda, sharing a bottle of delightful Bouzeron. We were watching a rare pair of hepatic tanagers at the feeder. These birds evidently don’t get hepatitis. It was all very pleasant and I recalled again a passage from the journal of a Kentucky schizophrenic who had escaped from an asylum. He wrote, “Birds are holes in heaven through which a man may pass.” I had this little epiphany that wine could do the same thing if properly used. We all have learned, sometimes painfully, that more is not necessarily better than less. When Baudelaire wrote in his famed “Enivrez-Vous,” “Be always drunk on wine or poetry or virtue,” he likely didn’t mean commode-hugging drunk. Wine can offer oxygen to the spirit, I thought, getting off my deck chair and going into the kitchen to cook some elk steak and dietetic potatoes fried in duck fat, and not incidentally opening a bottle of Domaine Tempier Bandol because I had read a secret bible in France that said to drink red after dark to fight off the night in our souls.

Stately.

Harrison, Inn at Cos Cob, 1914

I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on,

The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,

The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,

And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see

The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass;

And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,

I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,

And build me stately palaces by candlelight.

Charles Baudelaire

Wither winter?

Happy Birthday, Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire was born on this day in 1823..

Be always drunken.

Nothing else matters:

that is the only question.

If you would not feel

the horrible burden of Time

weighing on your shoulders

and crushing you to the earth,

be drunken continually.

Drunken with what?

With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.

But be drunken.

And if sometimes,

on the stairs of a palace,

or on the green side of a ditch,

or in the dreary solitude of your own room,

you should awaken

and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you,

ask of the wind,

or of the wave,

or of the star,

or of the bird,

or of the clock,

of whatever flies,

or sighs,

or rocks,

or sings,

or speaks,

ask what hour it is;

and the wind,

wave,

star,

bird,

clock will answer you:

"It is the hour to be drunken!”

Charles Baudelaire

Revel.

CORRESPONDENCES

Nature's a fane where down each corridor

of living pillars, darkling whispers roll,

— a symbol-forest every pilgrim soul

must pierce, 'neath gazing eyes it knew before.

like echoes long that from afar rebound,

merged till one deep low shadowy note is born,

vast as the night or as the fires of morn,

sound calls to fragrance, colour calls to sound.

cool as an infant's brow some perfumes are,

softer than oboes, green as rainy leas;

others, corrupt, exultant, rich, unbar

wide infinities wherein we move at ease:

— musk, ambergris, frankincense, benjamin

chant all our soul or sense can revel in.

Charles Baudelaire

Revel.

CORRESPONDENCES

Nature's a fane where down each corridor

of living pillars, darkling whispers roll,

— a symbol-forest every pilgrim soul

must pierce, 'neath gazing eyes it knew before.

like echoes long that from afar rebound,

merged till one deep low shadowy note is born,

vast as the night or as the fires of morn,

sound calls to fragrance, colour calls to sound.

cool as an infant's brow some perfumes are,

softer than oboes, green as rainy leas;

others, corrupt, exultant, rich, unbar

wide infinities wherein we move at ease:

— musk, ambergris, frankincense, benjamin

chant all our soul or sense can revel in.

Charles Baudelaire

Palaces.

I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on,

The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,

The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,

And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see

The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass;

And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,

I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,

And build me stately palaces by candlelight.

Charles Baudelaire

Sum.

Klimt, Portait of a Lady (unfinished0, 1917

Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.

Charles Baudelaire

Choose.

Unknown, The Blue Eye of the Seated Scribe, Quartz Crystal with an Ebony Iris, circa 3800-1710 BC

There are moments of existence when time and space are more profound, and the awareness of existence is immensely heightened. We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose. 

Charles Baudelaire

Build.

I want to watch the blue mist of the night come on,
The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,
The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,
And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see
The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass;
And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
And build me stately palaces by candlelight.

Charles Baudelaire, from "Landscape"

Happy Birthday, Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire was born on this date in 1821.

Be always drunken.
Nothing else matters:
that is the only question.
If you would not feel
the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders
and crushing you to the earth,
be drunken continually.

Drunken with what?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken.

And if sometimes,
on the stairs of a palace,
or on the green side of a ditch,
or in the dreary solitude of your own room,
you should awaken
and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you,
ask of the wind,
or of the wave,
or of the star,
or of the bird,
or of the clock,
of whatever flies,
or sighs,
or rocks,
or sings,
or speaks,
ask what hour it is;
and the wind,
wave,
star,
bird,
clock will answer you:
"It is the hour to be drunken!” 

Charles Baudelaire

Unexpected.

Caravaggio, Judith and Holofernes (detail), 1599

Strangeness is the indispensable condiment of all beauty.That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity – that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are a essential part and characteristic of beauty. The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries with terror before being defeated.

Charles Baudelaire

Resounding.

Soon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows,

And all of summer's stunning afternoons will be gone.

I already hear the dead thuds of logs below

Falling on the cobblestones and the lawn.

All of winter will return to me:

derision, Hate, shuddering, horror, drudgery and vice,

And exiled, like the sun, to a polar prison,

My soul will harden into a block of red ice.

I shiver as I listen to each log crash and slam:

The echoes are as dull as executioners' drums.

My mind is like a tower that slowly succumbs

To the blows of a relentless battering ram.

It seems to me, swaying to these shocks, that someone

Is nailing down a coffin in a hurry somewhere.

For whom? -- It was summer yesterday; now it's autumn.

Echoes of departure keep resounding in the air.

Charles Baudelaire

Lost.

Fjæstad, Winter Night, 1914 

LANDSCAPE

I want to write a book of chaste and simple verse,
Sleep in an attic, like the old astrologers,
Up near the sky, and hear upon the morning air
The tolling of the bells. I want to sit and stare,
My chin in my two hands, out on the humming shops,
The weathervanes, the chimneys, and the steepletops
That rise like masts above the city, straight and tall,
And the mysterious big heavens over all.

I want to watch the blue mist of the night come on,
The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,
The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,
And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see
The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass;
And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
And build me stately palaces by candlelight.

And I shall dream of luxuries beyond surmise,
Gardens that are a stairway into azure skies,
Fountains that weep in alabaster, birds that sing
All day — of every childish and idyllic thing.
A revolution thundering in the street below
Will never lure me from my task, I shall be so
Lost in that quiet ecstasy, the keenest still,
Of calling back the springtime at my own free will,
Of feeling a sun rise within me, fierce and hot,
And make a whole bright landscape of my burning thought.

Charles Baudelaire