by Charles Baudelaire
Extract of The Flowers of Evil
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French Literature – French Poetry – Charles Baudelaire
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Solitude
A philanthropic journalist once said to me that solitude is harmful to man, and, to support his thesis, he cited—as do all unbelievers—words of the Christian Fathers.
I know that the Demon gladly frequents parched places, and that the spirit of murder and lechery is marvellously inflamed in solitude. But it is possible that solitude is dangerous only to the idle, rambling soul, who peoples it with his passions and his chimeras.
It is certain that a babbler, whose supreme pleasure consists in speaking from a pulpit or a rostrum, would be taking great chances of going stark mad on the island of Crusoe. I do not demand of my journalist the courageous virtues of Robinson, but I ask that he do not summon in accusation lovers of solitude and mystery.
There are in our chattering races individuals who would accept the supreme agony with less reluctance, if they were permitted to deliver a copious harangue from the height of the scaffold, without fear that the drums of Santerre [1] would unseasonably cut short their oration.
I do not pity them, for I guess that their oratorical effusions bring them delights equal to those which others draw from silence and seclusion; but I despise them.
I desire above all that my accursed journalist leave me to amuse myself as I will. “Then you never feel,” he says in a very apostolic nasal tone, “the need of sharing your joys?” Do you see the subtle jealous one! He knows that I scorn his, and he comes to insinuate himself into mine, the horrible killjoy!
“The great misfortune of not being able to be alone,” La Bruyère says somewhere, as though to shame those who rush to forget themselves in the crowd, fearing, doubtless, that they will be unable to endure themselves.
“Almost all our ills come to us from inability to remain in our room,” said another sage, Pascal, I believe, recalling thus in the cell of meditation the frantic ones who seek happiness in animation, and in a prostitution which I could call fraternary, if I wished to use the fine language of my century.
[1]Santerre is the general of the French Revolution who ordered his drummers to play, drowning the words of Louis XVI from the scaffold.
Translated by Joseph T. Shipley
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French Literature – French Poetry – Charles Baudelaire
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