Baudelaire, “Beauty,” from Fleurs du Mal

Beauty

I am beautiful, o mortals, like a dream of stone,
And my breast, where each one has in his turn shattered,
Is made to inspire in poets a love
As mute and eternal and silent as matter.

I reign in the azure like a sphinx out of mind;
I unite a heart of stone to the whiteness of swans;
I hate the movement that displaces the lines,
And never do I laugh and never do I cry.

Poets, before my grand attitudes,
Which I seem to assume from the proudest statues,
Consume their days in austere études,
For I have, to fascinate these docile amants,
Pure mirrors which beautify everything they see:
My eyes, my great eyes, of eternal clarity.
Tr. L. Shmailo

La Beauté

Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre,
Et mon sein, où chacun s'est meurtri tour à tour,
Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour
Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière.

Je trône dans l'azur comme un sphinx incompris;
J'unis un coeur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes;
Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes,
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.

Les poètes, devant mes grandes attitudes,
Que j'ai l'air d'emprunter aux plus fiers monuments,
Consumeront leurs jours en d'austères études;
Car j'ai, pour fasciner ces dociles amants,
De purs miroirs qui font toutes choses plus belles:
Mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clartés éternelles!

The Girl @theParisReview Says Uncool

The idiot girl @theParisReview says uncool:

that, to critique, the phrase, the trappings of,

is used by “100% pretentious hacks.” And  

 

the editor @PoetryFound retweets her crap,

and an article on pooping, besides. I was                 

going to tweet a Baudelaire, from “Beauty,” line,

line by displaced line:

I am beautiful, o mortals, like a dream of stone

But thought better of it (a proscribed phrase?)

 —an unpretentious #Stalinist might

tell me not to translate, or Baudelaire not to write.

(But what does this mean:

Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes?

Is the idiot girl @ParisCool right?) No, she is

an idiot, disliking a history without her part,

as I dislike the way the young are heartless, mean,

calling it honest (and I was different @18?)

This poem appeared in Gargoyle.

I am not your insect

Your underfoot, your exterminated, your bug. My unabashedly hairy legs, whose gymnopédies twitch like a chorus for a fatal Sharon Stone, delight in ces mouvements qui déplace les lignes, in the motion, the quiver, the mort, the catch. Mother Kali, you have made me what I am: feminine, brilliant, entirely without fear. Like my mother, I watch and pray for  prey—that it be there, that it give gore, that I feel it die, that there be more