An Invitation to Voyage with Baudelaire

Discovering a 19th century French poet, more than 150 years after his passing, must be more than some happenstance. One must find a symbol to mark the significance of this singular event. Where can I find such a symbol? Perhaps in Charles Baudelaire's own forest of symbols. My dream at Northstar is that everyone, once in a while, finds something so terribly beautiful that it stays marked in their memory forever. Like the yellow blossoms of the Amaltas in summer, the red canopies of Gulmohar, like the image of that woman in Homebound film where she gives water to the thirsty (when we saw the movie in Northstar film club), like reading the poems of Baudelaire. These moments of sheer force, sometimes tragic mostly majestic, create a mark so deep that one cannot help but cry. How many times can we find such moments of magic? How many times have we lost these moments of revelation, of numenous beauty, of diabolical ugliness - experiences that go deep in our soul.

I wonder if this stanza from Baudelaire's Invitation to the Voyage would do that to you - be a revelation or freeze you at the threshold of a revelation that never arrives.

Let me share the whole poem below:

My child, my sister, dream
How sweet all things would seem
Were we in that kind land to live together, And there love slow and long,
There love and die among
Those scenes that image you, that sumptuous weather.
Drowned suns that glimmer there Through cloud-dishevelled air
Move me with such a mystery as appears Within those other skies
Of your treacherous eyes
When I behold them shining through their tears.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

Furniture that wears
The lustre of the years
Softly would glow within our glowing chamber,
Flowers of rarest bloom
Proffering their perfume a

Mixed with the vague fragrances of amber;
Gold ceilings would there be,
Mirrors deep as the sea,
The walls all in an Eastern splendor hung — Nothing but should address
The soul’s loneliness,
Speaking her sweet and secret native tongue.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

See, sheltered from the swells
There in the still canals
Those drowsy ships that dream of sailing forth; It is to satisfy
Your least desire, they ply
Hither through all the waters of the earth. The sun at close of day
Clothes the fields of hay,
Then the canals, at last the town entire
In hyacinth and gold :
Slowly the land is rolled a
Sleepward under a sea of gentle fire.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté, Luxe, calme et volupté.

There is nothing else but grace and measure. Richness, quietness and pleasure.

This Richard Wilbur translation is beautiful. Calm and lyrical.

This is what Northstar is to me and I hope someday to you. A forest of symbols, of grace, of measure, of richness, of quietness, of pleasure.