Myth of Arrival

Let us look at an actual Baudelaire sonnet and see what makes it different from other sonnets? First, there is the rhyme pattern. ABAB ABAB CCD EED But form in itself is not enough to make this poem Modern. Let us look at the original French. What do you see beyond the 14-lines?

La Géante
Charles Baudelaire

Du temps que la Nature en sa verve puissante
Concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux,
J'eusse aimé vivre auprès d'une jeune géante,
Comme aux pieds d'une reine un chat voluptueux.

J'eusse aimé voir son corps fleurir avec son âme
Et grandir librement dans ses terribles jeux;
Deviner si son coeur couve une sombre flamme
Aux humides brouillards qui nagent dans ses yeux;

Parcourir à loisir ses magnifiques formes;
Ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes,
Et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains,

Lasse, la font s'étendre à travers la campagne,
Dormir nonchalamment à l'ombre de ses seins,
Comme un hameau paisible au pied d'une montagne.

When I say this is a Modern poem what interests me about Baudelaire's point of view is the very real crisis he wrote this poem in. Bermann recounts the following:

By the nineteenth century, the poet's social position — and the very purpose of his poetry — had of course changed enormously from what they had been in the Renaissance, and Baudelaire's particular plight as a nearly destitute art critic and journalist for most of his adult life is a case in point. No longer attached to or supported by a court eager to promote the revival or ornamentation of a national language and literature, the poet of the 1850s was, if anything, a person without a clear social function. Needed by neither an aristocracy nor, as in the Renaissance, by a newly wealthy merchant class seeking to add artistic luster to commercial success, the poet had to appeal now to a growing middle-class public, a reading public broader by far than ever before existed.¹

Here, then, is a poet attempting to write a poem that will be looked at with commercial success. Indeed, La Géante is the sort of poem where, even if you have never read Baudelaire's work, you might think, "hey, that sounds sort of familiar … I didn't know he wrote that." It is the sort of poem the tired old Decadent poets loved sixty years ago. The objectifying of women's body becomes literal here, with the narrator of the poem describing fascination with a female body of mythical size and enough time to caress her marvelous flesh at my ease. In a 1961 translation of Flowers of Evil Francis Duke claims the notion of giantess here evoked is strictly of classical: one of the race of Gaia, earth-goddess and mother of all things: poetry, the physical sciences, etc.² I do not know if I agree completely with that statement, but regardless, La Géante is distinctive in that it struck a note with the licentious reading public, a note that carries on today. In fact, if you ask most people what sort of poetry they read in their spare time, many will cite poetry that has a care-free naughtiness to it, a joyous decadence. This is what makes this poem Modern and if you are the kind of person who likes decadence then we must thank Baudelaire for paving the way. If it was not for Charles Baudelaire we would never have had Charles Bukowski a hundred years later and all his glorifying of wine, women and song.

Giantess
translated by ZJC

In old times, when Nature's lust could transgress
and breed monster children, I wish I had been
in love with a girl giant, some teenage giantess,
like a voluptuous cat beside his queen.

Let me watch her body bloom with desire
that blooms with each new exquisite surprise.
Try to guess if her heart conceals dark fire,
fire whose misty smoke swims before her eyes.

Let me caress her marvelous flesh at my ease,
crawl on the cliffs of her enormous knees,
and when depraved suns in summer season

force her to lie down across a plain to rest
let me sleep in the shadows of her breast
like a town in the shade of its mountain.

1. Bermann, Sandra L. The sonnet over time: a study in the sonnets of Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Baudelaire Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press (1988) pages 96 - 97. [back]
2. Duke, Francis. Flowers of Evil and other poems. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press (1961) page 287 [back]

the new flowers of which I dream

Let us be honest; I do not have enough time in my amazingly short life to study every different type of sonnet ever crafted under the sun … and what a drab life that would be! Spring is here, the windows to this office are open, chirpy-birds are chirping on the budding branches, my neighbor's dog is howling at the grass, the great green world is calling me to leave behind my pen and ink and book and go jogging over its rolling surface. And for a guy who makes a living changing other people's adult diapers as a living, a chance to go gulmping over this great green world would be nice.

So, why a Baudelairean sonnet? Why a green Baudelaire? Perhaps because it is not easy being green, but more because Baudelaire's sonnet is amazing! Rosemary Lloyd quotes Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry in singing the praises of the irregular Baudelairean sonnet:

[A] combination of mind and body, a blend of solemnity, warmth and bitterness, of the eternal and the intimate, an extremely rare alliance of will power and harmony, the distinguish [the sonnets] from Romantic poetry just as clearly as from Parnassian poetry …¹

As for the lovely green hue? Baudelaire was a known user and abuser of the Green Fairy, absinthe. As was pointed out about Baudelaire, he …

… was known for making disparaging remarks about Paris. He quipped that Paris had become 'a center, radiating universal stupidity.' Nonetheless Paris served as his teacher and provided an inexhaustible source of subject matter for his poetry … misunderstood by the public and critics, [his] Les Paradis Artifcicels condemned fake mysticism … Baudelaire's premise was that modern man sought the most rapid (and false) path to spiritual gratification … After years of exile in Belgium, Baudelaire died at the age of 46, ravaged by veneral disease and long-term substance addictions.²

It is my hope in the next couple of days to not only translate several of his sonnets but to look into what exactly makes the Baudelairean Sonnet so fascinating, interesting, delightful. Who knows, you might just end up writing your own Green Fairy poems. Let us see what we shall learn, eh?

1. Ward, Patricia A. (ed.) Baudelaire and the Poetics of Modernity. With the assistance of James S. Patty. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press (2001) page 102. [back]
2. Wittels, Betina J. and Robert Hermesch. Absinthe, Sip of Seduction. Denver: Speck Press (2003) pages 13 - 14. [back]

Tim Lane will join poets Tiya Kunaiyi, Logic and Pete Vargas in honor of National Poetry Month at the Old Town Poetry Series on Wednesday, April 12, at 7:30 PM in the Creole Gallery, 1218 Turner Street in Lansing's historic Old Town. The four featured poets will demonstrate what many of us already know to be true — that Lansing has one of the hottest poetry scenes around.

An Open Mike Session will be held after the featured readers. Poets wishing to read are invited to "drop their names in the hat" at the front door.

Suggested donation: $3 (sliding scale $2-5). Free refreshments. Parking is available on the street and in the large lot on the south side of the intersection of Turner St. and Grand River Avenue.

Hope to see you there!

I first fell in love with Hayao Miyazaki's work when my brother Eli took me in L.A. to see Princess Mononoke on the big screen. From the opening credits, with the words: "in ancient times, the land lay covered in forests, where from ages long past, dwelt the spirits of the gods …" I was bewitched. Miyazaki is brilliant; I love his tales of enviornmental concern, his use of strong female characters, his ability to blend Shinto belief into his plots without being heavy-handed.

What does this have to do with Petrarch? you ask. Good question. Last night I watched Miyazaki's latest film, Howl's Moving Castle. It too was lovely. This morning I began to translate Petrarch's per fare una leggiadra sua vendetta and both, the sonnet and the movie, gave me a rather interesting insight to behavior I have been taking for granted. The metaphor of love as a violent act certainly shines through the film, if not directly then in the act of putting the story in the middle of a World War I-like backdrop. However, this very metaphor, that love is a violent act, similar to an arrow lodged deep in the chest, is an ancient idea. That is what I found in my translation, Petrarch might not have been the first to come up with the idea, but the second sonnet in Canzoniere certainly gave me pause when I was done with it.¹

Violent love, war-like love (regardless if you agree or disagree) has been a staple of Western thought for a very long time. Perhaps this is why I am comparing the two, the film and poem, since the source material for Howl's was the fantasy book by Diana Wynne Jones, which gave Miyazaki a very different working philosophy to play around with. Regardless, I recommend the film to anyone … and the poem?

Let us just say it is a curiosity.

II.

overo al poggio faticoso et alto
ritrarmi accortamente da lo strazio
del quale oggi vorrebbe, et non pò, aitarme.

2.

To make a vendetta a graceful art
punish a thousand wrongs at once, Amour
secretly took up his long bow once more,
like men plotting the time and place to start.

My life power was contained in my chest,
my own simple defense, but in my eyes
was where the mortal blow lodged and now lies,
where no other arrow had yet to rest.

So, confused by the first of Love's arrow,
my defense had no fortune or vigor
to take up arms when it was needed. What

could it do? Withdraw me to a narrow,
steep hill, out of the slaughter?
It might have wished to save me but cannot.

1. I used the source material from the following books:

   Young, David. The poetry of Petrarch. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2004)

   Bergin, Thomas G. (ed.) Selected Sonnets, Odes and Letters. Northbrook, Il.; AHM Publishing Corporation (1966) [back]

Up on stage let me dance by painted sun-
ribbon rivers. It is all a romance.
I prance through white fields, painted dun-ribbon
backdrop, my glance all green, lustful. This dance
is lust, is full. I, a boy bull, a fist
full of flesh, a lap full of tongue. Lewdly
we move to Bach, to Mozart, to foul Liszt.
But in Debussy's "L’Après-midi
d’un Faune," we turn the obscene to serene,
sinful to gospel. A satyr, painted
brook, a high dun sun. Somewhere in-between
the up and the down stroke, on my goat legged
legs, look! Everywhere I touch turns obscene.
Look! All of this is loud, vulgar, horrid.