there are laughs and then there are laughs.
there is the laugh of truth.
there is the laugh of falsehood.
and then there is the laugh you wish was of truth, which embodies the same belly clutching as that of truth, and yet has the desperate cause imbued into it that can survive quite well in good company.
there is the laugh of truth.
there is the laugh of falsehood.
and then there is the laugh you wish was of truth, which embodies the same belly clutching as that of truth, and yet has the desperate cause imbued into it that can survive quite well in good company.
posted by Lela Harbinger at 11:53 AM
4 Comments:
Obsession
Forest, I fear you! In my ruined heart
your roaring wakens the same agony
as in cathedrals when the organ moans
and from the depths I hear that I am damned.
Ocean, I hate you! For I recognize
the sobs and insults of my own despair,
the bitter laughter of a beaten man
repeated in the sea's huge gaiety.
Night! You'd please me more without these stars
which speak a language I know all too well -
I long for darkness, silence, nothing there. . .
Yet even shadows have their shapes which live
where I imagine them to be, the hordes
of vanished souls whose eyes acknowledge mine.
~Charles Baudelaire
There's a better translation here. It's the second stanza that made me think of this post.
hee hee, can't access it - my school's computer labeled it porn. so why do you have midterms in october??
Because we have midterms for each semester, and the semester is over sometime in December, at which point we take finals.
I'm sorry; I didn't think your school would disable the site. Apparently the person who took the trouble to post Charle's Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal up there is actually a necrophiliac (or associated with necrophilia; I don't know. I didn't check out his other site.) But it is a very nice place to read Baudelaire's 'Flowers of Evil,' which incidentally has a number of condemned poems and was put on trial for its sensual and vulgar nature.
So why am I reading this? Because his depiction of evil and/ or shattered people is fascinating, and if the translations are so exquisite, how much more so the original French! He reminds me of Dante a bit (from the little I know); he's writing from the vantage point of someone in hell.
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