Spleen


Je suis comme le roi d'un pays pluvieux,
Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant très vieux,
Qui, de ses précepteurs méprisant les courbettes,
S'ennuie avec ses chiens comme avec d'autres bêtes.
Rien ne peut l'égayer, ni gibier, ni faucon,
Ni son peuple mourant en face du balcon.
Du bouffon favori la grotesque ballade
Ne distrait plus le front de ce cruel malade ;
Son lit fleurdelisé se transforme en tombeau,
Et les dames d'atour, pour qui tout prince est beau,
Ne savent plus trouver d'impudique toilette
Pour tirer un souris de ce jeune squelette.
Le savant qui lui fait de l'or n'a jamais pu
De son être extirper l'élément corrompu,
Et dans ces bains de sang qui des Romains nous viennent,
Et dont sur leurs vieux jours les puissants se souviennent,
Il n'a su réchauffer ce cadavre hébété
Où coule au lieu de sang l'eau verte du Léthé.

I've been thinking about this poem a lot. Here are my mental notes.

"Je suis comme..." We never hear about the "je" after this first line. The whole poem is an extended simile. The decadent bloodthirsty king of a rainy country is supposed to be the equivalent of the splenetic Parisian poet.

"d'un pays pluvieux." sounds like "plus vieux." All the rhymes in the poem are "riches." That is, the entire final tonic syllable is identical. The poem was easy for me to memorize.

"S'ennuie avec ses chiens, comme avec d'autres bêtes." The normal phrase would be "s'amuse avec ses chiens..." We have a Hamletian moment here: "What is a man / if the chief profit of his days / be but to eat and sleep? a beast no more..."

"Rien ne peut l'égayer, ni gibier ni faucon,
Ni son peuple mourant en face du balcon."

Not the use of metonymy, often used for "stock" images. Falconery is "the sport of kings." Where does this cultural stereotype come from? The bloodthirsty, decadent monarch, intelligent but bored with everything? Hamlet is one archetype. Then there's the idea of "oriental despotism." What is interesting about the poem is how Baudelaire grafts one cultural stereotype (bored Parisian decadent poet) onto a previously recongizable literary archetype. Baudelaire invented the new stereotype, yet it is based on what must already be culturally recognizable.

"Du buffon favori..." We get a series of stock figures, the obsequious "précepteurs," the court jester, the licentious court ladies, the wise alchemist, the formerly powerful old men reading their Tacitus. We are supposed to recognize these images, and the poet uses the deictic "ce / ces" [this / these] with some frequency, drawing us into the scene.

How is the poet like this other figure? The reader has to do all the work to complete the metaphorical transformation, reading this poem along with a few others with the same title.

[Quick prose translation: I am like the king of a rainy country, Rich but powerless, young yet very old, who, disdaining the flattery of his tutors, bores himself with his dogs and other beasts. Nothing can cheer him up, neither game nor falcon, Nor his people dying across from his balcony. The grotesque ballad of the favorite clown Can no longer distract the brow of this cruel invalid. His bed decorated with fleurs de lys becomes a tomb, And the court ladies, for whom all princes are goodlooking, Cannot find a way to dress immodestly enough To draw out a smile from this young skeleton. The "savant" who makes his gold has never found a way To extirpate the corrupted element from his being. And in the blood baths we've inherited from the Romans, And which powerful men remember in their old days, He's not been able to reheat this decadent cadaver Where instead of blood the green water of Lethe flows.]