Correspondences

Poem by Charles Baudelaire Collection The Flowers of EvilThemes NaturePeriod 19th centuryArthur's analysis ↓

Nature is a temple where living pillars
Sometimes let out confused words;
Man passes there through forests of symbols
That observe him with familiar looks.

Like long echoes that from afar blend together
In a dark and profound unity,
Vast as the night and as the light,
Perfumes, colors and sounds answer one another.

There are perfumes fresh as children’s flesh,
Sweet as oboes, green as meadows,
— And others, corrupt, rich and triumphant,

Having the expansion of infinite things,
Like amber, musk, benzoin and incense,
Which sing the transports of the spirit and the senses.

Charles Baudelaire

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-correspondences-charles-baudelaire/

Arthur

Interpretation

Arthur's analysis

A sonnet presenting the poet as a mediator between nature and men, this poem also sets out a new conception of poetry, founded on correspondences, that is, the links between the various sensations.

One can note first of all the conception of the universe that Baudelaire delivers to his readers by distinguishing the natural (matter) from the spiritual (profound reality). In this understanding of the universe in which nature is compared to a temple whose trees would be the pillars, it is the poet who has the role of apprehending reality and deciphering the meaning of the signs that nature sends him. Indeed, for the author, men merely "pass through forests of symbols" without seeking their meaning and without seeking to penetrate their density and darkness.

Likewise, if "colors and sounds answer one another," this means that the artist can therefore use sounds or colors indiscriminately to convey his feelings, without having to limit himself to a single artistic form. Here, Baudelaire will have made use of these correspondences, for example, by using the scent of perfumes, their own characteristics and their expansion in the air (lines 9 to 12).

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