Read the poem: “Be Drunken”

by Charles Baudelaire

Extract of The Flowers of Evil

Download PDF

French Literature – French Poetry – Charles Baudelaire
< < < “Anywhere Out of the World”
Callings > > >

Be Drunken

Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually.

Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken.

And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock, of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock, will answer you: “It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.”

Translated by Arthur Symons

< < < “Anywhere Out of the World”
Callings > > >

French Literature – French Poetry – Charles Baudelaire

If you liked this article, subscribe , put likes, write comments!

Share on social networks

Visit us on Facebook or Twitter

Check out Our Latest Posts

by Charles Baudelaire

Extract of The Flowers of Evil

Be Drunken

Leave a comment Cancel reply