Les Fleurs du mal: Baudelaire and the Modern City
“Le cygne” (“The Swan”) | Baudelaire & the Modern City
À Victor Hugo
I
Andromaque, je pense à vous! Ce petit fleuve,
Pauvre et triste miroir où jadis resplendit
L'immense majesté de vos douleurs de veuve,
Ce Simoïs menteur qui par vos pleurs grandit,
A fécondé soudain ma mémoire fertile,
Comme je traversais le nouveau Carrousel.
Le vieux Paris n'est plus (la forme d'une ville
Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel);
Je ne vois qu'en esprit tout ce camp de baraques,
Ces tas de chapiteaux ébauchés et de fûts,
Les herbes, les gros blocs verdis par l'eau des flaques,
Et, brillant aux carreaux, le bric-à-brac confus.
Là s'étalait jadis une ménagerie;
Là je vis, un matin, à l'heure où sous les cieux
Froids et clairs le Travail s'éveille, où la voirie
Pousse un sombre ouragan dans l'air silencieux,
Un cygne qui s'était évadé de sa cage,
Et, de ses pieds palmés frottant le pavé sec,
Sur le sol raboteux traînait son blanc plumage.
Près d'un ruisseau sans eau la bête ouvrant le bec
Baignait nerveusement ses ailes dans la poudre,
Et disait, le coeur plein de son beau lac natal:
«Eau, quand donc pleuvras-tu? quand tonneras-tu, foudre?»
Je vois ce malheureux, mythe étrange et fatal,
Vers le ciel quelquefois, comme l'homme d'Ovide,
Vers le ciel ironique et cruellement bleu,
Sur son cou convulsif tendant sa tête avide
Comme s'il adressait des reproches à Dieu!
II
Paris change! mais rien dans ma mélancolie
N'a bougé! palais neufs, échafaudages, blocs,
Vieux faubourgs, tout pour moi devient allégorie
Et mes chers souvenirs sont plus lourds que des rocs.
Aussi devant ce Louvre une image m'opprime:
Je pense à mon grand cygne, avec ses gestes fous,
Comme les exilés, ridicule et sublime
Et rongé d'un désir sans trêve! et puis à vous,
Andromaque, des bras d'un grand époux tombée,
Vil bétail, sous la main du superbe Pyrrhus,
Auprès d'un tombeau vide en extase courbée
Veuve d'Hector, hélas! et femme d'Hélénus!
Je pense à la négresse, amaigrie et phtisique
Piétinant dans la boue, et cherchant, l'oeil hagard,
Les cocotiers absents de la superbe Afrique
Derrière la muraille immense du brouillard;
À quiconque a perdu ce qui ne se retrouve
Jamais, jamais! à ceux qui s'abreuvent de pleurs
Et tètent la Douleur comme une bonne louve!
Aux maigres orphelins séchant comme des fleurs!
Ainsi dans la forêt où mon esprit s'exile
Un vieux Souvenir sonne à plein souffle du cor!
Je pense aux matelots oubliés dans une île,
Aux captifs, aux vaincus! . . . à bien d'autres encor!
— Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal,
“Tableaux parisiens”
The Swan
To Victor Hugo
I
Andromache, I think of you! That little river — poor sad mirror once glorious with the boundless majesty of your painful widowhood — the false Simois, grown from your tears —
flowered of a sudden in my fertile memory, as I was crossing the new Carrousel. Old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal heart);
it’s only in my mind I see that field of hovels, the herd of rough-hewn cornice and chimney, the grass, whole blocks the color of puddles and, glittering at corners, odd bric-à-brac.
A menagerie once sprawled there, where I saw one morning, at the hour Labor wakes to cold clear skies, while traffic makes a dull hurricane in the still air,
a swan, escaped from his cage, webbed feet scuffling the dry pavement, white plumage trailing the rough ground. Near a waterless brook the beast, with open beak,
bathed irritably in the dust, saying — heart full with the beauty of his native lake — “Waters, when will you rain down? when, lightening, will you thunder?” I see that wretched creature, strange myth of fate,
sometimes, like Ovid’s humans, tilt a greedy head on a quivering neck, toward the sky, toward the cruelly blue ironic sky, as if reproaching God!
II
Paris changes! but nothing of my melancholy as lifted. New palaces, scaffoldings, blocks, old outer districts: for me everything becomes allegory and my cherished memories weigh like rocks.
Then too, before the Louvre an image presses down on me: I recall my great swan with his crazy movements, as if in exile, ridiculous, sublime, gnawed by ceaseless craving! and think of
you, Andromache (from a great spouse’s arms, fallen — mere chattel — under superb Pyrrhus’s thumb) bent in ecstasy over an empty tomb, Hector’s widow, alas! wife of Helenus!
I think of a negress, wasted, consumptive, trudging the mud, wild eyed, looking for faraway palms of glorious Africa behind an immense wall of fog; of
whoever has lost what can never be found again, ever! of those steeped in tears, suckling Pain like a kind she-wolf; of starved orphans dried like flowers!
So in the forest of my mind’s exile an old Memory sounds a clear note on the horn! I think of sailors lost on desert islands, of prisoners, of the vanquished! . . . and of still others!
— The Flowers of Evil, “Parisian Scenes,”
trans. Keith Waldrop. Reproduced with the permission of Keith Waldrop.
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Baudelaire and the Modern City
Just as Charles Méryon’s 1853 “Stryge” overlooks an evolving Paris, so does Baudelaire contemplate the modernization of the capital under the Second Empire. Both Les Fleurs du mal and Méryon’s Eaux-fortes sur Paris were published in 1857, and Baudelaire’s discovery of the artist’s etchings inspired him to write an additional section of poems to be added to the 1861 edition of Les Fleurs du mal. Entitled “Tableaux parisiens,” this series of poems is a reflection on the baron Haussmann’s plans to urbanize Paris — “Paris change!”(“Le Cygne”) — and an aesthetic response to the changes the city undergoes through both construction and demolition. Nominated Préfet of Paris in 1853, Haussmann demolished major areas in the city to allow for new and renovated monuments, boulevards, parks and waterways, and established a new sewage system and railroad services.
This city of evolution and decay proved to be a great inspiration to Baudelaire. In addition, Baudelaire juxtaposed Parisian city life and public life, commented on the conditions of the lower-classes and manual workers in the capital, and mused on the life of the flâneur and the Parisian crowd. These themes found in many of Baudelaire’s poems, as well as in his posthumous series of prose poems Le Spleen de Paris (1869), were the result of his own exploration and contemplation of the capital of modernity. It is believed that Baudelaire occupied nearly forty residences in Paris during his lifetime.
Méryon, Charles, 1821-1868
"Le Stryge"
In : Old Paris : twenty etchings / by Charles Meryon ;
with an essasy on the etcher by Philip Gilbert Hamerton,
Liverpool : Henry Young & Sons Ltd., 1914.
Brown University Library Collection
Rochegrosse, Georges
"Tableaux parisiens"
In : Les fleurs du mal / Charles Baudelaire ;
nombreuses illustrations de Georges Rochegrosse
gravées à l’eau-forte et sur bois.
Paris : Librairie des amateurs, A. Ferroud, F. Ferroud,
successeur, 1917.
This etching by Georges Rochegrosse evokes the figure of the poet looking over the city, drawing poetic inspiration from its transformation.
"Place du Carrousel en 1850"
In : Paris à travers les âges : aspects successifs des monuments et quartiers historiques de Paris depuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu'à nos jours / fidèlement restitués d'après les documents authentiques par M. F. Hoffbauer ; texte par MM. Édouard Fournier, Paul Lacroix, A. de Montaiglon, A. Bonnardot, Jules Cousin, Franklin, Valentin Dufour, etc.
Paris : Firmin-Didot, 1875-1882.
John Hay Library Starred Books Collection
Located near the Louvre, the Place du Carrousel was once home to various art and book vendors. These vendors were forced to relocate in 1848 due to newly established laws under the Second Republic. This is a representation of the Place as it existed in 1850.
"Vue cavalière du Louvre, avec ses nouveaux bâtiments"
In : L’illustration, journal universel, 26 janvier 1856, no. 674, vol. XXVII.
John Hay Library Starred Books Collection
This engraving represents the space as it probably looked like when Baudelaire wrote the poem “Le Cygne.” The small houses (still visible in the Hoffbauer version of the “Place du Carrousel”) have disappeared, and the entire “cour” has been cleared. It is precisely what Baudelaire regrets in the poem, and what makes him suffer from a feeling of exile in his own city.
"Démolition du pavillon de Flore d’après une photographie de M. Marville."
In : L’Illustration, journal universel, 10 aout 1861, no. 963, vol. XXXVIII.
Ever since the Tuileries were constructed, successive kings of France have embraced what is known as “Le grand dessein”: a monumental project that consisted in uniting the Louvre and the Tuileries Palace. The Pavillon de Flore was a crucial architectural point, since it was located at the corner of the Tuileries, and therefore could serve as a potential juncture point between the two buildings. It had been built by Catherine de Medicis and Henri IV. Napoleon III, who wanted to realize “le grand dessein,” had it taken down and rebuilt as sturdier construction, and in a style that would be closer to the concept of the “Nouveau Louvre.” The Tuileries Palace was burnt down in the 1871 Commune.
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