# Harmonie du soir · Evening Harmony

Les Fleurs du mal · Charles Baudelaire · Spleen and Ideal

Source: https://1732studios.com/books/baudelaire/harmonie-du-soir. Data: https://1732studios.com/books/baudelaire/harmonie-du-soir.json.

**1** Voici venir les temps où vibrant sur sa tige  
Now comes the season when, quivering on its stem,
> «voici» + infinitive: «voici» (or «voilà») followed by a bare infinitive presents an action as it arrives before the eyes: «voici venir les temps» = 'here come the times / now comes the season'. It is more vivid than «voici les temps qui viennent», staging the hour of dusk as something that steps forward onto the page. «vibrant» is the present participle of «vibrer» (to vibrate, quiver), here describing each flower trembling on its «tige» (stem).

**2** Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir;  
each flower evaporates like a censer;
> Pronominal «s'évaporer»: «s'évaporer» is the pronominal form of «évaporer», meaning 'to evaporate, to vanish into vapour' on its own. The reflexive «se» makes the flower the agent of its own dissolving — it does not merely give off scent, it breathes itself away. «ainsi que» is a literary 'just as / like', and «un encensoir» is the swinging censer that scatters incense at Mass, the first of the poem's liturgical objects.

**3** Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir;  
the sounds and the perfumes turn in the evening air;
> Synesthesia: «les sons» and «les parfums» together: «le son» is a sound, «le parfum» a scent or perfume. Yoking them into a single subject that 'turns' («tournent») in the air fuses hearing and smell, the cross-sensory mingling Baudelaire calls «correspondances». The dusk is not described sense by sense but as one swirling, waltzing medium in which sound and fragrance circle together.

**4** Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!  
melancholy waltz and languorous vertigo!


**5** Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir;  
Each flower evaporates like a censer;

**6** Le violon frémit comme un coeur qu'on afflige;  
the violin shudders like a heart one wounds;
> Indefinite «on» in a relative clause: «qu'on afflige» = 'that one afflicts / that is being grieved'. «on» is the indefinite subject ('one, someone, people'), often best turned into an English passive: 'a heart that is wounded'. «affliger» is to grieve, to distress; «frémir» is to quiver or shudder. The trembling string is likened to a heart at the moment pain is inflicted on it — the simile that pivots the poem from beauty toward ache.

**7** Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!  
melancholy waltz and languorous vertigo!

**8** Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir.  
the sky is sad and lovely like a great altar of repose.
> «le reposoir» — the wayside altar: «un reposoir» is the temporary altar, banked with flowers and candles, on which the consecrated Host is set to rest during a Corpus Christi procession. There is no single English word for it ('altar of repose', 'resting-altar'). Set beside «un encensoir» (censer) above and «un ostensoir» (monstrance) at the close, it makes the evening sky one more sacred furnishing — the dusk staged as a Mass.


**9** Le violon frémit comme un coeur qu'on afflige,  
The violin shudders like a heart one wounds,

**10** Un coeur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir!  
a tender heart, that hates the vast black void!
> «haïr» — to hate, and the form «hait»: «hait» is the third-person singular present of «haïr» (to hate): «qui hait le néant» = 'that hates the void'. «haïr» keeps the diaeresis (the two dots) through most of its forms, but drops it in the singular present — «je hais, tu hais, il hait» — where the «ai» is one syllable. «le néant» is nothingness, the void, non-being; the tender heart recoils from the «vaste et noir» abyss the evening opens beneath its beauty.

**11** Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir;  
the sky is sad and lovely like a great altar of repose;

**12** Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.  
the sun has drowned in its own congealing blood.
> Pronominal «se noyer» in the «passé composé»: «se noyer» is the pronominal verb 'to drown (oneself)'; in the «passé composé» it takes «être», so «le soleil s'est noyé» = 'the sun has drowned'. The reflexive makes the sunset an act the sun performs on itself, sinking into «son sang qui se fige» — 'its blood that congeals', «se figer» being 'to set, to clot, to grow stiff'. The setting sun bleeds out and clots on the horizon.


**13** Un coeur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir,  
A tender heart, that hates the vast black void,

**14** Du passé lumineux recueille tout vestige!  
gathers up every vestige of the luminous past!
> Fronted object «du passé lumineux»: The natural order is «recueille tout vestige du passé lumineux» — 'gathers up every trace of the luminous past'. Baudelaire fronts «du passé lumineux» to the head of the line for emphasis and rhyme; read it as the source from which «tout vestige» is gathered. «recueillir» is to collect, gather up, glean; «un vestige» is a trace or remnant. Against the encroaching void, the tender heart hoards the last glimmers of a radiant past.

**15** Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige...  
the sun has drowned in its own congealing blood...

**16** Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir!  
your memory shines within me like a monstrance!
> «l'ostensoir» — the monstrance: «un ostensoir» is the monstrance, the radiant gold vessel — often sunburst-shaped — in which the consecrated Host is displayed for adoration. «luire» is 'to shine, to glow'. The poem's final image completes its liturgy: «encensoir» (censer), «reposoir» (resting-altar), «ostensoir» (monstrance) chime as rhymes, and the beloved's remembered face becomes the gleaming Host raised against the dark, the one light left when the sun has bled away.

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Source text: public domain (Charles Baudelaire, d. 1867). English translation: © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC — original draft, pending editorial review.