CORRESPONDENCES
Nature is a temple in which living pillars
Sometimes give voice to confused words;
Man passes there through forests of symbols
Which look at him with understanding eyes.
Like prolonged echoes mingling in the distance
In a deep and tenebrous unity,
Vast as the dark of night and as the light of day,
Perfumes, sounds, and colors correspond.
There are perfumes as cool as the flesh of children,
Sweet as oboes, green as meadows
— And others are corrupt, and rich, triumphant,
With power to expand into infinity,
Like amber and incense, musk, benzoin,
That sing the ecstasy of the soul and senses.
— Charles Baudelaire, 1857 (trans. William Aggeler, 1954)
HYMN TO BEAUTY
Do you come from Heaven or rise from the abyss,
Beauty? Your gaze, divine and infernal,
Pours out confusedly benevolence and crime,
And one may for that, compare you to wine.
You contain in your eyes the sunset and the dawn;
You scatter perfumes like a stormy night;
Your kisses are a philtre, your mouth an amphora,
Which make the hero weak and the child courageous.
Do you come from the stars or rise from the black pit?
Destiny, bewitched, follows your skirts like a dog;
You sow at random joy and disaster,
And you govern all things but answer for nothing.
You walk upon corpses which you mock, O Beauty!
Of your jewels Horror is not the least charming,
And Murder, among your dearest trinkets,
Dances amorously upon your proud belly.
The dazzled moth flies toward you, O candle!
Crepitates, flames and says: "Blessed be this flambeau!"
The panting lover bending o'er his fair one
Looks like a dying man caressing his own tomb,
Whether you come from heaven or from hell, who cares,
O Beauty! Huge, fearful, ingenuous monster!
If your regard, your smile, your foot, open for me
An Infinite I love but have not ever known?
From God or Satan, who cares? Angel or Siren,
Who cares, if you make, — fay with the velvet eyes,
Rhythm, perfume, glimmer; my one and only queen!
The world less hideous, the minutes less leaden?
— Charles Baudelaire, 1857; trans. William Aggeler, 1954
I ADORE YOU AS MUCH AS THE NOCTURNAL VAULT
I adore you as much as the nocturnal vault,
O vase of sadness, most taciturn one,
I love you all the more because you flee from me,
And because you appear, ornament of my nights,
More ironically to multiply the leagues
That separate my arms from the blue infinite.
I advance to attack, and I climb to assault,
Like a swarm of maggots after a cadaver,
And I cherish, implacable and cruel beast,
Even that coldness which makes you more beautiful.
— Charles Baudelaire, 1857; trans. William Aggeler, 1954
SPLEEN
When the low, heavy sky weighs like a lid
On the groaning spirit, victim of long ennui,
And from the all-encircling horizon
Spreads over us a day gloomier than the night;
When the earth is changed into a humid dungeon,
In which Hope like a bat
Goes beating the walls with her timid wings
And knocking her head against the rotten ceiling;
When the rain stretching out its endless train
Imitates the bars of a vast prison
And a silent horde of loathsome spiders
Comes to spin their webs in the depths of our brains,
All at once the bells leap with rage
And hurl a frightful roar at heaven,
Even as wandering spirits with no country
Burst into a stubborn, whimpering cry.
— And without drums or music, long hearses
Pass by slowly in my soul; Hope, vanquished,
Weeps, and atrocious, despotic Anguish
On my bowed skull plants her black flag.
— Charles Baudelaire, 1857; trans. William Aggeler, 1954
THE SUNSET OF ROMANTICISM
How beautiful the Sun is when newly risen
He hurls his morning greetings like an explosion!
— Fortunate the one who can lovingly salute
His setting, more glorious than a dream!
I remember!... I have seen all, flower, stream, furrow,
Swoon under his gaze like a palpitating heart...
— Let us run to the horizon, it's late,
Let us run fast, to catch at least a slanting ray!
But I pursue in vain the sinking god;
Irresistible Night, black, damp, deadly,
Full of shudders, establishes his reign;
The odor of the tomb swims in the shadows
And at the marsh's edge my timid foot
Treads upon slimy snails and unexpected toads.
— Charles Baudelaire, pub’d in Les Epaves, Scraps, 1866; trans. William Aggeler, 1954
THE TOMB OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
The buried shrine shows at its sewer-mouth’s
Sepulchral slobber of mud and rubies
Some abominable statue of Anubis,
The muzzle lit like a ferocious snout
Or as when a dubious wick twists in the new gas,
Wiping out, as we know, the insults suffered
Haggardly lighting an immortal pubis,
Whose flight roosts according to the lamp
What votive leaves, dried in cities without evening
Could bless, as she can, vainly sitting
Against the marble of Baudelaire
Shudderingly absent from the veil that clothes her
She, his Shade, a protective poisonous air
Always to be breathed, although we die of her.
-- Stephane Mallarme, 1893 (trans. unknown)
BEFORE PARTING
A month or twain to live on honeycomb
Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,
Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,
And that strong purple under juice and foam
Where the wine's heart has burst;
5
Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.
Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray
Even to change the bitterness of it,
The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet,
To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay
10
All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise
Over my face and eyes.
And yet who knows what end the scythèd wheat
Makes of its foolish poppies' mouths of red?
These were not sown, these are not harvested,
15
They grow a month and are cast under feet
And none has care thereof,
As none has care of a divided love.
…
-- Algernon Swinburne, 1866
COR CORDIUM
O heart of hearts, the chalice of love's fire,
Hid round with flowers and all the bounty of bloom;
O wonderful and perfect heart, for whom
The lyrist liberty made life a lyre;
O heavenly heart, at whose most dear desire
5
Dead love, living and singing, cleft his tomb,
And with him risen and regent in death's room
All day thy choral pulses rang full choir;
O heart whose beating blood was running song,
O sole thing sweeter than thine own songs were,
10
Help us for thy free love's sake to be free,
True for thy truth's sake, for thy strength's sake strong,
Till very liberty make clean and fair
The nursing earth as the sepulchral sea.
-- Algernon Swinburne, 1871
BODY'S BEAUTY
Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,
And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
And, subtly of herself contemplative,
Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,
Till heart and beauty and life are in its hold.
The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
And round his heart one strangling golden hair.
-- Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1868
ASTARTE SYRIACA
Mystery: lo! betwixt the sun and moon
Astarte of the Syrians: Venus Queen
Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen
Her twofold girdle clasps the infinite boon
Of bliss whereof the heaven and earth commune:
And from her neck's inclining flower-stem lean
Love-freighted lips and absolute eyes that wean
The pulse of hearts to the spheres' dominant tune.
Torch-bearing, her sweet ministers compel
All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea
The witnesses of Beauty's face to be:
That face, of Love's all-penetrative spell
Amulet, talisman, and oracle, —
Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery. | |
-- Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1877
Lesson 2: Symbolism and Decadence in France and Belgium
for Moreau, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Moreau - many more links from there including Wikiquote
for Puvis de Chavannes, see http://www.artmagick.com/pictures/artist.aspx?artist=pierre-puvis-de-chavannes
for Redon, see http://www.artchive.com/artchive/ftptoc/redon_ext.html
for Ensor, see http://moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2009/ensor/#/intro/
for Rops, see http://www.artinthepicture.com/artists/Felicien_Rops/
for Khnopff, see http://www.fernandkhnopff.com/
for Delville, see http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/art/delville.html
Poetry relevant to today's images:
Beauty (Je suis belle, o mortels! – cf. Rodin)
I am fair, O mortals! like a dream carved in stone,
And my breast where each one in turn has bruised himself
Is made to inspire in the poet a love
As eternal and silent as matter.
On a throne in the sky, a mysterious sphinx,
I join a heart of snow to the whiteness of swans;
I hate movement for it displaces lines,
And never do I weep and never do I laugh.
Poets, before my grandiose poses,
Which I seem to assume from the proudest statues,
Will consume their lives in austere study;
For I have, to enchant those submissive lovers,
Pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful:
My eyes, my large, wide eyes of eternal brightness!
— Charles Baudelaire, 1857, trans. William Aggeler, 1954
Lesson 3:
for Max, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qzn7uaZSiQ - part 2 of the interview & a slide show of Max paintings should appear at the right as well
for Keller, see http://www.sightswithin.com/Albert.von_Keller/
for Stuck, see http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/symbolism/Franz-Von-Stuck.html
for Munch, see http://romanjaster.com/edvard-munch/index.htm
for Kollwitz, see http://www.spaightwoodgalleries.com/Pages/Kollwitz.html
for Klimt, see http://www.iklimt.com/
for Olbrich's Secessiongebaude, see http://www.secession.at/e.html
for the Wiener Werkstaette, see http://www.artsmia.org/modernism/rintro.html
Lesson 4:
for Art Nouveau in general, see http://www.nga.gov/education/tchan_1.shtm
for Horta, see
for Guimard, see http://lartnouveau.com/artistes/guimard.htm (in French, but great Metro photos)