The Abstract Resonances of Baudelaire

Even amidst the encroaching mists of materialism, in this mechanical tyranny of devices and artifices, there are moments—rare as a sudden breeze through suffocating air—when existence pauses, and silence sets the stage for a secret drama of consciousness. It is on such a backdrop, made of solitude and clarity, that the incantations of verse without rhythm, the footfalls of inexorable cadence, make their appearance.
 
Sisyphus, all thy courage falters
Before this colossal burden!
However fervently I surrender myself to the task,
Art is immense, yet life unbearably brief.
 
From remote epitaphs, from forgotten graves, a summons resounds—funereal, muffled, like the drumbeat of a heart in anguish. Yet even so, within the half-slumbering mine of my soul, jewels lie buried, unexhumed by pick or spade. Blossoms, too, surrender their secret perfumes into the emptiness, scattering mournful fragrance at the margins of desolate silence.
 
Thus despair itself, in the poet’s interior, becomes transfigured—not resignation but a clandestine rebellion, a hidden protest against the tyranny of fate. The poet utters with pride the inescapable gospel of suffering:
 
O my sorrow, grow wise! Learn patience.
Thou hast desired nightfall; lo, it approaches.
A smudged horizon slowly veils the city,
Calm descends on some hearts, while others bow beneath anxiety.
 
Meanwhile, the unforgiving executioners—let them strike! Let the ignoble crowd, scourged into obedience, repay in repentance the very laughter that enslaved them. Sorrow, take my hand, and together let us go afar, where the heavens lean their ancient ornaments over the balconies of dusk, where the dying sun collapses into the funereal arch of cloud, and night descends on velvet feet as a shroud stretched across the East.
 
The Mirror of the Poem
Poetry is not an abstraction: it is the canvas of a restless mind, the condensation of lived experience, mirrored in cadence or in dissonance. In it, the human life is reflected—like the sudden recognition of one’s own visage in the river’s surface. The poem is a mirror where man confronts both body and soul, as in a glass pane, utterly transparent.
 
And yet, within that transparency, another mystery unfurls. In its fluid language, in its subterranean currents, in its resonance, poetry bears the abstract shimmer of a world that belongs neither here nor there. It is the poet’s singularity, his chosen mode—sometimes the attempt at symmetry, followed deliberately by the fracture of rhythm. Out of barren materials he conjures a climate of justice, an atmosphere of meaning. Poetry is the ore mined from the temporal moment; its relation to nature is paradoxical, shadowed. It is, rather, the emblem of a society in decay, the final residue of a civilization intoxicated with matter.
 
The Wound of Desire
 
That night I lay beside a haggard Jewess,
Our bodies as though two corpses pressed in embrace.
Futile desire! In the commerce of flesh
A sorrowful beauty drifted into my dream.
 
Her natural regal bearing haunted me:
the mocking glance upon her proud brow,
locks of hair like crowns steeped in perfumed wine—
memories of them reawakened my covenant with love.
Upon that fragile body I would have poured
a cataract of kisses—from cold feet to raven tresses—
the gems of passion lavished entire.
And had she, without effort, let fall a single tear
in the cruel twilight of her beauty—
it would have dimmed the merciless fire of her eyes.
 
Thus it seems the poet, too, must bear society’s wounds. He is no stranger to its degradations, for he belongs to this same wounded earth. Out of the fat and sinew of existence the words of verse feed; without devouring life, they cannot live. The poet’s breath, his being itself, is the sacrifice demanded by language.
 
Visions in the Colonnade
Beneath solemn colonnades I dwelt for centuries,
Where the infinite flames of sunset
Painted the ocean’s edge in everlasting fire,
Cavernous, immense, solemn as stone.
In that enchanted world I lost myself.
 
There I tasted the luxury of pure sensation,
seated at the blue axis of radiance and motion.
The incense of slave-women bowed before me—
their meditations, their unceasing ministrations—
while the agitation of palm-leaves
whispered the hidden grief that slowly consumed my heart.
 
The Imperative of Intoxication
Poetry and liberation rarely walk together. Poetry is the vessel of rhythm, of dance, of music—the way wood, dead and dry, becomes the body of an instrument, and the way the strings of metal, locked in their cage, yield weeping sound only when touched by love. As long as poetry breathes, music breathes; as long as humanity craves freedom, man will write poems. Language cannot always explain that beauty of release—but poetry is never mortal. To celebrate it is to unearth it, again and again, by new voices.
 
And so the poet’s last command, Baudelaire’s eternal refrain:
Be drunk. Always, at all times, remain intoxicated. That is the only law. For the moment sobriety returns, consciousness grows heavy, the weight of time crushes you. The only escape is drunkenness.
 
But drunk on what? Wine, poetry, or virtue—choose for yourself. Only—be drunk.
 
And if one day, on the steps of a palace, upon the green grass, or in the solitary gloom of your chamber, you awake with your intoxication fled, then ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock—whatever moves, whatever sings, whatever cries, whatever speaks. All will reply: “It is time to be drunk! If you would not be the martyred slave of Time, then be intoxicated—drunk without ceasing. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you please. But be drunk.”