The Favours of the Moon
THE MOON, who is caprice itself, looked through the window while you were sleeping in your cradle, and said to herself: ‘I like this child.’
And softly she decended her staircase of clouds and, noislessly, passed through the window-panes. Then she stretched herself out over you with the supple tenderness of a mother, and laid down her colors on your face. Ever since, the pupils of your eyes have remained green and your cheeks unusually pale. It was while comtemplating this vistor that your eyes became so strangely enlarged; and she clasped your neck so tenderly that you have retained for ever the desire to weep.
However, in the expansion of her joy, the Moon filled the whole room with phosphorescent vapour, like a luminous poison; and all the living light thought and said: ‘You shall suffer for ever the influence of my kiss. You shall be beautiful in my fashion. You shall love that which I love and that which loves me: water, clouds, silence and the night; the immense green sea; the formless and multiform streams; the place where you shall not be; the lover whom you shall not know; flowers of monstrous shape; perfumes that cause delirium; cats that shudder, swoon and curl up on pianos and groan like women, with a voice that is hoarse and gentle!
‘And you shall be loved by my lovers, courted by my courtiers. You shall be the queen of all men that have green eyes, whose necks also I have clasped in my nocturnal caresses; of those who love the sea, the sea that is immense, tumultuous and green, the formless and multform streams, the place where they are not, the woman whom they do not know, sinister flowers that resemble the censers of a strange religion, perfumes that confound the will; and the savage and voluptuous animals which are the emblems of their dementia.’
And that, my dear, cursed, spoiled child, is why I am now lying at your feet, seeking in all your person the reflection of the formidable divinity, of the foreknowing godmother, the poisoning wet-nurse of all the lunatics.
by Charles Baudelaire, published 1869
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I, who love to lie in the moonlight through my window, read this tonight for the first time. With my mouth agape. And it touched me at a personally deep level more than anything else I have ever read. This piece now resides in my heart. From now on, I’ll blame the moon 🙂 And I think I suddenly love Baudelaire.
Image: Kay Nielsen illustration, from East of the Sun West of the Moon, 1914
I just fell in here on a whim, but I’m at work and I don’t have time to give it the attention it deserves, as I like it here.
Oh, I meant to add:
I’ll be back.
Thank you for visiting! And I look forward to seeing you back.
I was supposed to tell you something about Baudelaire and his Creole girlfriend and some painter, Manet maybe? Either way I can’t recall what it is I was supposed to tell you after telling someone else about the passage and being given a little lesson on the connective tissue that flows between the arts. How people that create and engage the darkness and light of their minds always find one another.
I love Baudelaire, he’s not nearly as fatalistic as some asshole critics would have people believe.
He is the better Charlie.