May 3, 2015
By Randi Schiavi
Welcome to Crushing the Classics, a new, regular edition to HiA where we will be analyzing different genres of classical works, taking time to interpret incomprehensible gibberish and make it relatable. After all, who really understands the prissy, flowery language? It looks nothing like the language today, you might even say some of these works aren’t even English!
Before you read this first poem, prepare yourself. Channel your inner Mr. Bean and put on a ridiculous accent– the stodgier, the better. Really, I mean that. Poetry is taken farrrrrrrrrrrr too seriously and it’s time to take it down a notch. This poem is written by a 19th century (1800’s) French dude who had a real stick up his ass. For real. Maybe not literally, but you get what I mean. So, put on your best snooty French accent and read on…
The Flowers of Evil
by Charles Beaudelaire
To the Reader
Infatuation, sadism, lust, avarice
possess our souls and drain the body’s force;
we spoonfeed our adorable remorse,
like whores or beggars nourishing our lice.
Our sins are mulish, our confessions lies;
we play to the grandstand with our promises,
we pray for tears to wash our filthiness,
importantly pissing hogwash through our styes.
The devil, watching by our sickbeds, hissed
old smut and folk-songs to our soul, until
the soft and precious metal of our will
boiled off in vapor for this scientist.
Each day his flattery makes us eat a toad,
and each step forward is a step to hell,
unmoved, though previous corpses and their smell
asphyxiate our progress on this road.
Like the poor lush who cannot satisfy,
we try to force our sex with counterfeits,
die drooling on the delinquiscent tits,
mouthing the rotten orange we suck dry.
Gangs of demons are boozing in our brain —-
ranked, swarming like a million warrior-ants,
they drown and choke the cistern of our wants;
each time we breathe, we tear our lungs with pain.
If poison, arson, sex, narcotics, knives
have not yet ruined us and stitched their quick,
loud patterns on the canvas of our lives,
it is because our souls are still too sick.
Among the vermin, jackals, panthers, lice,
gorillas and tarantulas that suck
and snatch and scratch and defecate and fuck
in the disorderly circus of our vice,
there’s one more ugly and abortive birth.
It makes not gestures, never beats its breast,
yet it would murder for a moment’s rest,
and willingly annihilate the earth.
It’s BOREDOM. Tears have glued its eyes together.
You know it well, my Reader. This obscene
beast chain-smokes yawning for the guillotine —-
you—-hypocrite Reader —- my double —- my brother!
Dark. Definitely dramatic. Doing a stuck up voice helped, right?
Now, if you’re anything like me, poetry usually has you going “what the hell?!” and Charles Beaudelaire is no exception to this. The Flowers of Evil is gruesome, it’s confusing, and it’s a little insulting. Beaudelaire is brash and dark in all of his poetry, probably because he was French. The French, stereotypically, have this dramatic and fatalistic outlook on life. A little like Edgar Allen Poe, only Poe was an American. Much like Poe, Beaudelaire leaves us scratching our heads searching for what he really means.
Before we can just dive into Beaudelaire’s work and try to decipher it, it goes a long way to know a little about this gruesome little man. In short, Beaudelaire was the bratty, self-absorbed child of post-Revolution aristocrats. Not only could he not be trusted with money, but was a total mama’s boy and a womanizer. He had a taste for drugs and women and died of syphilis at the ripe old age of 46. It helps to know that Beaudelaire was kicking around not too long after Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had their heads lopped off and the glory that was the French Revolution took place. Safe to say, Beaudelaire lived in a very muddled world, and it shows up in his writing.
So, what does this all mean? The Flowers of Evil (or Les Fleurs du Mal, en francais) is really about the impossibility of boredom. The idea that there is nothing more agonizing or tortuous than being bored. We all know the feeling— that restless, listless itching that usually gets us all in trouble. Beaudelaire is describing everything in his poem that affects a person less profoundly than boredom.
Being a lousy, immoral, sinful waste of a human is still better than being bored. Living a life of debauchery and corruption? WAY, way better than being bored.
Really, there’s nothing worse to Beaudelaire than experiencing boredom. Honestly, I think he’d rather walk on Legos™ barefoot than experience boredom. That’s a hell of a statement. In a way, it is similar to Louis C.K.. You know him, right? American comedian? If not, go look him up. I promise you won’t be disappointed. He’s sarcastic and maybe a bit of a jackwad. Louis C.K. is known to have told his child who professed boredom that “‘I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.’” Sounds a little bit like Beaudelaire, right? Boredom is impossible. Literally and figuratively.
Just because they are going a little differently about it all doesn’t mean they aren’t saying the exact same thing.
Louis C.K. points out the obvious when it comes to boredom that, really, it can’t happen. Unless you are actively trying to do nothing and think of nothing (which, really, is still doing something, by the way) you can’t be bored. Really, it’s just the refusal to use your damned brain. Even Beaudelaire came up with a list of things you can do instead of being bored. Granted, I don’t know if any of Beaudelaire’s suggestions are up high on anyone’s to-do list.
Now think about that… is boredom really impossible?
There are no wrong answers here. Beaudelaire believes that boredom is absolutely absurd and inconceivable. I can’t even imagine what it would look like to be him, boredom. I mean, he’s come up with very destructive ways to pass his time, so has he even been bored? Or is it that he cannot fathom the possibility of boredom, just like Louis? Maybe Beaudelaire really just experienced idleness and hated it. Who knows? I mean, hell, Louis points out what Beaudelaire is talking about. Louis says that “you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of ,” and Beaudelaire is literally listing all kinds of things that aren’t boredom. I mean, do the things on his list and you’ll see a fair amount of the world– might make you a depressed, sad person. That’s probably why Beaudelaire was such a dark writer. He may have exhausted the world around him in an attempt to stave off boredom.
So what do you think?
Is boredom impossible? Do agree with Louis C.K. when he says that it is literally impossible because your mind and world is vast? or maybe you side with Charles Beaudelaire in the idea of avoiding boredom altogether by filling time with anything.
Or, maybe you have a totally different school of thought altogether… tell me in the comments!
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