![\"valery-baudelaire-rimbaud-688po\"](\"https:\/\/eden-saga.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/valery-baudelaire-rimbaud-688po.jpg\" "\\"A")
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Nature is a temple whose living colonnades
\nBreathe forth a mystic speech in fitful sighs;
\nMan wanders among symbols in those glades
\nWhere all things watch him with familiar eyes.<\/p>\n
Like dwindling echoes gathered far away
\nInto a deep and thronging unison
\nHuge as the night or as the light of day,
\nAll scents and sounds and colors meet as one.<\/p>\n
Perfumes there are as sweet as the oboe’s sound,
\nGreen as the prairies, fresh as a child’s caress,
\n– And there are others, rich, corrupt, profound<\/p>\n
And of an infinite pervasiveness,
\nLike myrrh, or musk, or amber, the excite
\nThe ecstasies of sense, the soul’s delight.<\/p>\n
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![\"baudelaire-688po\"](\"https:\/\/eden-saga.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/baudelaire-688po.jpg\" "\\"Charles")
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So said Charles Baudelaire. How difficult it is to add one single word to this spellbinding poem without being a pedant. This risk, let us take it: we’ve already taken many others whose enormity, precisely, is an excuse. Let’s continue. They say you like Rimbaud when you’re 20, Verlaine at 30, and Baudelaire at 40. After this subtle exchange between harmonic sounds, colors and fragrances, let us move from maturity to the exuberance of youth, with this sonnet of Fresh Prince of Romanticism, Arthur Rimbaud.<\/p>\n
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Black A, white E, red I, green U, blue O – vowels,
\nSome day I will open your silent pregnancies:
\nA, black belt, hairy with burst flies,
\nBumbling and buzzing over stinking cruelties,<\/p>\n
Pits of night; E, candour of sand pavilions,
\nHigh glacial spears, white kings, trembling Queen
\nAnne’s lace;
\nI, bloody spittle, laughter dribbling from a face
\nIn wild denial or in anger, vermilions;<\/p>\n
U, \u2026 divine movement of viridian seas,
\nPeace of pastures animal-strewn, peace of calm lines
\nDrawn on foreheads worn with heavy alchemies;<\/p>\n
O, supreme Trumpet, harsh with strange stridencies,
\nSilences traced in angels and astral designs:
\nO\u2026Omega\u2026the violet light of His Eyes!<\/p>\n
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![\"rimbaud-vert-688po\"](\"https:\/\/eden-saga.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/rimbaud-vert-688po.jpg\" "\\"Arthur")
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Another genius, another language. The music is almost the same, but in a minor tone, on the surface, with all violins. The same Rimbaud later sells other dreams, brutal and bloody. Each one his own hell. In contrast to the great rogue, here is the studious Paul Valery. With him, everything is meaning, work, consciousness. No style effects, no words rare or precious as with Arthur R, nor the silent lethal symphony emanating from the alexandrines of Charles B. For Paul V composes decasyllabics.<\/p>\n
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This quiet roof, where dove-sails saunter by,
\nBetween the pines, the tombs, throbs visibly.
\nImpartial noon patterns the sea in flame —
\nThat sea forever starting and re-starting.
\nWhen thought has had its hour, oh how rewarding
\nAre the long vistas of celestial calm!<\/p>\n
What grace of light, what pure toil goes to form
\nThe manifold diamond of the elusive foam!
\nWhat peace I feel begotten at that source!
\nWhen sunlight rests upon a profound sea,
\nTime’s air is sparkling, dream is certainty —
\nPure artifice both of an eternal Cause.<\/p>\n
Even as a fruit’s absorbed in the enjoying,
\nEven as within the mouth its body dying
\nChanges into delight through dissolution,
\nSo to my melted soul the heavens declare
\nAll bounds transfigured into a boundless air,
\nAnd I breathe now my future’s emanation.<\/p>\n
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![\"paul-valery-688po\"](\"https:\/\/eden-saga.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/paul-valery-688po.jpg\" "\\"")
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Beautiful heaven, true heaven, look how I change!
\nAfter such arrogance, after so much strange
\nIdleness — strange, yet full of potency —
\nI am all open to these shining spaces;
\nOver the homes of the dead my shadow passes,
\nGhosting along — a ghost subduing me.<\/p>\n
The bird-sharp cries of girls whom love is teasing,
\nThe eyes, the teeth, the eyelids moistly closing,
\nThe pretty breast that gambles with the flame,
\nThe crimson blood shining when lips are yielded,
\nThe last gift, and the fingers that would shield it —
\nAll go to earth, go back into the game.<\/p>\n
Zeno, Zeno, cruel philosopher Zeno,
\nHave you then pierced me with your feathered arrow
\nThat hums and flies, yet does not fly! The sounding
\nShaft gives me life, the arrow kills. Oh, sun! —
\nOh, what a tortoise-shadow to outrun
\nMy soul, Achilles’ giant stride left standing!<\/p>\n
The wind is rising! … We must try to live!
\nThe huge air opens and shuts my book: the wave
\nDares to explode out of the rocks in reeking
\nSpray. Fly away, my sun-bewildered pages!
\nBreak, waves! Break up with your rejoicing surges
\nThis quiet roof where sails like doves were pecking.<\/p>\n
Decasyllabics instead of alexandrines … We can hear two feet are missing, what gives the poem a fast rhythm in an ample pace. Inimitable Paul Valery … The astute reader will have noted that we give here only significant excerpts from the poem “The Graveyard By The Sea<\/a>” that is longer than the dimensions of these articles. At what age are we supposed to like this great poet of the intellect, with his sharpened\u00a0multi-faceted word like a precious diamond?\u00a0When are we supposed to read Paul Val\u00e9ry? When we read Proust? Or a little later, when we read Bergson? These three are alike as brothers, each in his way, the poet, the novelist, the philosopher. Bergson as the philosopher of vital strength, Proust as the novelist of memory and Valery as the poet of light.\u00a0But i’ll give all three for one spleen of Baudelaire.<\/p>\n You should always be drunk.\u00a0 So as not to feel Time’s horrible burden which breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without cease. With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk.<\/p>