To the Reader

Poem by Charles Baudelaire Collection The Flowers of EvilThemes ArtPeriod 19th century

Folly, error, sin, avarice,
Occupy our minds and work our bodies,
And we feed our pleasant remorse,
As beggars nourish their vermin.

Our sins are stubborn, our repentances are cowardly;
We make ourselves pay handsomely for our confessions,
And we cheerfully return to the muddy path,
Believing with vile tears to wash away all our stains.

On the pillow of evil it is Satan Trismegistus
Who lulls our enchanted mind at length,
And the rich metal of our will
Is entirely vaporized by this learned chemist.

It is the Devil who holds the threads that move us!
In repugnant objects we find charms;
Each day toward Hell we descend a step,
Without horror, through darkness that stinks.

Like a poor debauchee who kisses and eats
The martyred breast of an ancient whore,
We steal in passing a clandestine pleasure
That we squeeze very hard like an old orange.

Tight, swarming, like a million helminths,
A people of Demons carouses in our brains,
And, when we breathe, Death in our lungs
Descends, invisible river, with muffled complaints.

If rape, poison, dagger, fire,
Have not yet embroidered with their pleasant designs
The banal canvas of our pitiful destinies,
It is because our soul, alas! is not bold enough.

But among the jackals, the panthers, the hounds,
The monkeys, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents,
The monsters yelping, howling, grunting, crawling,
In the infamous menagerie of our vices,

There is one uglier, more wicked, more filthy!
Though he makes neither great gestures nor great cries,
He would willingly make the earth a wreck
And in a yawn swallow the world;

It is Ennui! – with an eye charged with an involuntary tear,
He dreams of scaffolds while smoking his hookah.
You know him, reader, this delicate monster,
– Hypocrite reader, – my likeness, – my brother!

Charles Baudelaire

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