"To The Reader" by Charles Baudelaire trans. Robert Lowell (poetry reading)

This is the dedication which prefaces "Les Fleurs du Mal" (Flowers of Evil) which he originally intended to call "Les Lesbiennes". It got him prosecuted for obscenity. Six poems are still left out of some printings. The picture shown the frontispiece of the 1857 edition annotated Baudelaire's own handwriting.

Still there are some things Baudelaire dare not say in so many words. You have to figure out for yourself what he means by "rotten orange" etc. "deliquescent" means to turn into fluid.

Parts of the toad are posonous, although the meat isn't. Quacks selling cure-alls had an assistant who would pretend to "eat a toad", and be cured . Hence the word "toady"

Sadism is named after the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) who wrote about sexual perversions. I pronounce it as in "Sade" not as in "blade": I know nobody else does but I think they should, so it's an idiosyncrasy. It came up when a friend of mine wrote a little ditty which went, "You made me so sad, you sadist, you." Listen at the link below:
http://www.forvo.com/word/marquis_de_sade

The last line is quoted, in French, by T S Eliot at the end of Part I of "The Waste Land."

This poem has been translated by everybody and his Poetry Professor. No translation could possibly convey the contempt for humanity of the original.
http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/50359-Charles-Baudelaire-Au-Lecteur---To-The-Reader-

Here's the original, even if your French is rusty you can still feel his loathing.

Au Lecteur

La sottise, l'erreur, le péché, la lésine,
Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps,
Et nous alimentons nos aimables remords,
Comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine.

Nos péchés sont têtus, nos repentirs sont lâches;
Nous nous faisons payer grassement nos aveux,
Et nous rentrons gaiement dans le chemin bourbeux,
Croyant par de vils pleurs laver toutes nos taches.

Sur l'oreiller du mal c'est Satan Trismégiste
Qui berce longuement notre esprit enchanté,
Et le riche métal de notre volonté
Est tout vaporisé par ce savant chimiste.

C'est le Diable qui tient les fils qui nous remuent!
Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas;
Chaque jour vers l'Enfer nous descendons d'un pas,
Sans horreur, à travers des ténèbres qui puent.

Ainsi qu'un débauché pauvre qui baise et mange
Le sein martyrisé d'une antique catin,
Nous volons au passage un plaisir clandestin
Que nous pressons bien fort comme une vieille orange.

Serré, fourmillant, comme un million d'helminthes,
Dans nos cerveaux ribote un peuple de Démons,
Et, quand nous respirons, la Mort dans nos poumons
Descend, fleuve invisible, avec de sourdes plaintes.

Si le viol, le poison, le poignard, l'incendie,
N'ont pas encor brodé de leurs plaisants dessins
Le canevas banal de nos piteux destins,
C'est que notre âme, hélas! n'est pas assez hardie.

Mais parmi les chacals, les panthères, les lices,
Les singes, les scorpions, les vautours, les serpents,
Les monstres glapissants, hurlants, grognants, rampants,
Dans la ménagerie infâme de nos vices,

II en est un plus laid, plus méchant, plus immonde!
Quoiqu'il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris,
Il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris
Et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde;

C'est l'Ennui! L'oeil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,
II rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
— Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!

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[ImGoingToBeAnMD]

I think this poem is very modest.

[SpokenVerse]

"Modest" has a few different meanings. It wasn't considered decorous in its day but it wasn't offensive enough by itself to get the book banned. However some of the other poems in Les Fleurs du Mal are still considered indecorous or immodest.

[alizee2010]

I'm a bit confused by the description. How should "Marquis de Sade" be pronounced?

[SpokenVerse]

I added a link to the notes - hear it in French.

[rappamarfil]

young man carbuncular of the perfunctory kiss

[SpokenVerse]

I like your comments but you should keep them relevant to the poem. Perhaps this would be better on The Fire Sermon...

[Arcomatik]

@SpokenVerse This one was considered against the church, others poems with too much sex. At (french) school, if I remember well (this is 20 years old memories), "Ainsi qu'un débauché pauvre qui baise et mange / Le sein martyrisé d'une antique catin," refers to Adam and Eve. The old orange=eden's apple=eve's breast. He critiized the church for punishing the knowledge and praise Hermes Trismegiste and Lucifer (etymology is "the one who brings the ligth") for that.

That couldn't be said in 1865 :)

[dxwar]

traduttore traditore

nothing to do with the original

[alizee2010]

merci beaucoup

[rappamarfil]

what one wants is unrestrained passion , fire by fire

my previous comment in question blurs the corrosives and obscene of the poem. Listening to The Wasteland in parts is primitive ritual-like, incantatory and symmetries occur, cisterns , circles rats so many piss ants in step in London fog toward chain-smokes yearning for the guillotine , sadistic . Madness is tonic and invigorating . It makes the sane more sane . The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane .

[rappamarfil]

this poem is one base plant and payload dirt for ratoons ( great poets steal from others ) placed in the substrate of The Wasteland . I did not thieve but i do peculate the other tenth remainder of the other ninth tenths of the law .

[rappamarfil]

Is this segue apt ?

Seems as if in this Bawdy lair the cycles are like Inferno's vicious circles .  The speaker is screwing tighter and tighter like he got screwed up himself with infernal flotsam coming to the surface as he uproots the persistent existential malaise (20th century poems were still irrelevant then ) and eschews boredom we lecteura scandal too: boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.