Lethe

Lethe


Come to my heart, cruel, insensible one,
Adored tiger, monster with the indolent air;
I would for a long time plunge my trembling fingers
Into the heavy tresses of your hair;
And in your garments that exhale your perfume
I would bury my aching head,
And breathe, like a withered flower,
The sweet, stale reek of my love that is dead.
I want to sleep! sleep rather than live!
And in a slumber, dubious as the tomb's,
I would lavish my kisses without remorse
Upon the burnished copper of your limbs.
To swallow my abated sobs
Nothing equals your bed's abyss;
Forgetfulness dwells in your mouth,
And Lethe flows from your kiss.
My destiny, henceforth my pleasure,
I shall obey, predestined instrument,
Docile martyr, condemned innocent,
Whose fervour but augments his torment.
I shall suck, to drown my rancour,
Nepenthe, hemlock, an opiate,
At the charming tips of this pointed breast
That has never imprisoned a heart.

~ Charles Baudelaire

"Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art."

"The growth of the spirit is a tragic growth, which implies ever-increasing pain and destruction, but it nevertheless is a movement of becoming which marks a kind of progression. The failures are not just an alignment of identical absurdities, each one is enriched by the knowledge of the one that precedes it and the spirit grows by reflecting upon its successive aberrations."

~ Paul De Man, “The Double Aspect of Symbolism” in which he meditates upon the poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé as a poetry of becoming versus Charles Baudelaire’s poetry of being and in this “contrast is summarized the double aspect of Symbolism.”