View source for "Au Lecteur"

==“Au Lecteur” (“To the Reader”) by Charles Baudelaire==

'''“The South African poet Roy Campbell (1901-1957) offered this translation of “To the Reader” in his Poems of Baudelaire: A Translation of Les Fleurs du mal (New York: Pantheon, 1952):'''


Folly and error, avarice and vice,

Employ our souls and waste or bodies’ force.

As mangey beggars incubate their lice,

We nourish our innocuous remorse.



Our sins are stubborn, craven our repentance.

For our weak vows we ask excessive prices.

Trusting our tears will wash away the sentence,

We sneak off where the muddy road entices.



Cradles in evil, that Thrice-Great Magician,

The Devil, rocks our souls, that can’t resist; 

And the rich metal of our own volition

Is vaporized by that sage alchemist.



The Devil pulls the strings by which we’re worked:

By all revolting objects lured, we slink

Hellwards; each day down one more step we’re jerked

Feeling no horror, through the shades that stink.



Just as a lustful pauper bites and kisses 

The scarred and shriveled breast of an old whore,

We steal, along the roadside, furtive blisses,

Squeezing them, like stale oranges, for more.



Packed tight, like hives of maggots, thickly seething,

Within our brains a host of demons surges.

Deep down into our lungs at every breathing

Death flows, an unseen river, moaning dirges.



If rape or arson, poison or the knife

Has wove no pleasing patters in the stuff

Of this drab canvas we accept as life—

It is because we are not bold enough!



Among the jackals, leopards, mongrels, apes,

Snakes, scorpions, vultures, that wish hellish din,

Squeal, roar, writhe, gambol, crawl, with monstrous shapes, 

In each man’s foul menagerie of sin—



There’s one more damned than all.  He never gambols,

Nor crawls, nor roars, but, from the rest withdrawn,

Gladly of this whole earth would make a shambles

And swallow up existence with a yawn…



Boredom!  He smokes his hookah, while he dreams 

Of gibbets, weeping tears he cannot smother.

You know this dainty monster, to, it seems

Hypocrite reader!—You!—My twin!—My brother!