The Irremediable, Poem by Charles Baudelaire

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

An Idea, a Form, a Being
That left the azure and fell
Into a muddy, leaden Styx
Where no eye of Heaven can pierce;

An Angel, imprudent traveler
Tempted by love of the deformed,
In the depths of an enormous nightmare
Struggling like a swimmer,

And fighting, funereal anguish!
Against a gigantic whirlpool
That goes singing like madmen
And pirouetting in the darkness;

An unfortunate bewitched man
In his futile gropings,
To flee a place full of reptiles,
Seeking the light and the key;

A damned soul descending without a lamp,
At the edge of an abyss whose odor
Betrays the humid depth,
Of eternal staircases without a railing,
Where watch viscous monsters
Whose large phosphorus eyes
Make a night even blacker
And render visible only themselves;

A ship caught in the pole,
As in a crystal trap,
Seeking through what fatal strait
It fell into this jail;

– Clear emblems, perfect picture
Of an irremediable fortune,
That gives one to think that the Devil
Always does well all that he does!

A dark and limpid tête-à-tête
With a heart that has become its mirror!
Well of Truth, clear and black,
Where a livid star trembles,

An ironic, infernal lighthouse,
Torch of satanic graces,
Sole relief and glory
– Conscience in Evil!

Charles Baudelaire

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

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