Charles Baudelaire, born April 9, 1841, lived what we now definitively imagine to be the poet’s life – producing a brilliant body of work while battling emotional distress, entertaining the brightest artistic lights of Paris while cavorting with prostitutes (and possibly contracting a couple venereal diseases). Below, a poem from his best-known collection, Les Fleurs Du Mal, translated by Richard Howard.

Moesta et Errabunda

Lady, do you sometimes long to escape
From the filth of the city, from this black sea
to one whose everlasting splendor glows
blue, bright and deep – a virgin sea!
Lady, do you sometimes long to escape?

The titan sea console us for our toil!
What demon gave that raucous amateur
supported by the organ of the winds
the sacred task of singing lullabies?
The titan sea console us for our toil?

By wheel or sail, just take me anywhere
far from here where mud is made of our tears!
Lady, listen to your heart; doesn’t it say
‘Far from regret, from crime, from suffering,
by wheel or sail, just take me anywhere’?

How far away, that fragrant paradise
where love and pleasure share the same blue sky,
where pure delight can satiate the heart
and all we love is worthy of our love!
How far away, that fragrant paradise!

But that green paradise of puppy love,
of songs and games, of kisses and bouquets –
the jugs of wine at evening in the groves,
the violins that die behind the hills –
but that green paradise of puppy love,

the innocent paradise of timid joys,
is it already farther than Cathay?
What silvery voice can waken it again,
what plaintive cries can ever call it back,
the innocent paradise of timid joys?

*Photo courtesy.