I Love the Memory of Those Naked Ages

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

I love the memory of those naked ages,
When Phoebus took delight in gilding statues.
Then man and woman in their agility
Reveled without falsehood and without anxiety,
And, with the amorous sky caressing their backs,
They exercised the health of their noble machine.
Cybele then, fertile in generous produce,
Did not find her sons too heavy a burden,
But, a she-wolf with a heart swollen with common tenderness,
Gave the universe drink from her brown teats.
Man, elegant, robust and strong, had the right
To be proud of the beauties that named him their king;
Pure fruits of all outrage and virgins of chapping,
Whose smooth and firm flesh invited bites!

The Poet today, when he wants to conceive
Those native grandeurs, in the places where are seen
The nakedness of man and that of woman,
Feels a dark cold envelop his soul
Before this black picture full of dread.
O monstrosities weeping for their clothing!
O ridiculous trunks! torsos worthy of masks!
O poor twisted bodies, thin, pot-bellied or flabby,
Whom the god of the Useful, implacable and serene,
Swaddled in his brazen diapers as infants!
And you, women, alas! pale as candles,
Whom debauchery gnaws and feeds, and you, virgins,
Dragging the heredity of maternal vice
And all the hideousness of fertility!

We have, it is true, corrupted nations,
Beauties unknown to the ancient peoples:
Faces eaten away by the chancres of the heart,
And, as it were, beauties of languor;
But these inventions of our late muses
Will never prevent the sickly races
From rendering to youth a profound homage,
– To holy youth, with simple air, sweet brow,
To the eye limpid and clear as running water,
And who goes spreading over everything, carefree
Like the azure of the sky, the birds and the flowers,
Its perfumes, its songs and its gentle warmth!

Charles Baudelaire

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