Charles Baudelaire

hideous Child of Doom

Endeavour hard some grievance from his heart to tear

lucid spirit veil

"Oh blest be thou, Almighty who bestowest pain,
Like some divine redress for our infirmities,
And like the most refreshing and the purest rain,
To sanctify the strong, for saintly ecstasies."

"For it shall be engendered from the purest fire
Of rays primeval, from the holy hearth amassed,
Of which the eyes of Mortals, in their sheen entire,
Are but the tarnished mirrors, sad and overcast!"

My soul is a tomb where bad monk that I be
I dwell and search its depths from all eternity,

My childhood was nought but a ravaging storm,
Enlivened at times by a brilliant sun;
The rain and the winds wrought such havoc and harm
That of buds on my plot there remains hardly one.

Behold now the Fall of ideas I have reached,
And the shovel and rake one must therefore resume,
In collecting the turf, inundated and breached,
Where the waters dug trenches as deep as a tomb.

And yet these new blossoms, for which I craved,
Will they find in this earth like a shore that is laved
The mystical fuel which vigour imparts?

Oh misery! Time devours our lives,
And the enemy black, which consumeth our hearts
On the blood of our bodies, increases and thrives!

however much we may like general beauty, which is expressed by the classical poets and artists, we nonetheless make a mistake to neglect particular beauty, the beauty of circumstance, the description of manners.

my purpose at this moment is to discuss the painting of our contemporary social scene

These engravings can be translated into beauty or ugliness: in ugliness they become caricatures; in beauty, antique statues.