# La Géante · The Giantess

Les Fleurs du mal · Charles Baudelaire · Spleen and Ideal

Source: https://1732studios.com/books/baudelaire/la-geante. Data: https://1732studios.com/books/baudelaire/la-geante.json.

**1** Du temps que la Nature en sa verve puissante  
In the days when Nature, in her mighty exuberance,
> «du temps que» — 'back when': «du temps que» is an older, literary equivalent of «à l'époque où» or «au temps où»: 'in the days when, back when'. It opens the sonnet in a lost mythic past — and governs the whole imperfect-tense clause that follows, «Concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux».
> «la verve» — creative drive: «la verve» is spirited inspiration, gusto, the heat of creative energy (think of a writer or speaker «en verve»). «en sa verve puissante» — 'in her mighty verve' — casts Nature as an exuberant maker, teeming with the force to breed «des enfants monstrueux» day after day.

**2** Concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux,  
Conceived each day her monstrous offspring,

**3** J'eusse aimé vivre auprès d'une jeune géante,  
I should have loved to live beside a young giantess,
> «j'eusse aimé» — past conditional, literary form: «eusse aimé» is the second form of the past conditional (the «conditionnel passé deuxième forme»), built on the imperfect subjunctive of «avoir». In modern French this is simply «j'aurais aimé» — 'I would have loved'. The archaic form lifts the wish into a grand, hypothetical past: a longing for a world that never was.

**4** Comme aux pieds d'une reine un chat voluptueux.  
Like a voluptuous cat at the feet of a queen.


**5** J'eusse aimé voir son corps fleurir avec son âme  
I should have loved to watch her body flower with her soul
> «fleurir» — to bloom: «fleurir» (to flower, to blossom) is used here transitively in sense but intransitively in grammar: «voir son corps fleurir» = 'to see her body bloom'. The infinitive depends on «voir» — 'to watch (her body) flower' — and pairs body with soul, the physical growth matched to an inner ripening «avec son âme».

**6** Et grandir librement dans ses terribles jeux;  
And grow up freely in her terrible games;

**7** Deviner si son coeur couve une sombre flamme  
To guess whether her heart broods a darksome flame
> «couver» — to brood, to smoulder: «couver» first means 'to brood / hatch' (a hen on her eggs), then by extension 'to nurse or harbour' a hidden feeling, and of a fire 'to smoulder'. «son coeur couve une sombre flamme» fuses all three: her heart secretly broods and smoulders with a dark flame. «Deviner si…» — 'to guess whether…' — keeps the flame uncertain, only suspected.

**8** Aux humides brouillards qui nagent dans ses yeux;  
From the moist mists that swim within her eyes;


**9** Parcourir à loisir ses magnifiques formes;  
To roam at leisure over her magnificent forms;
> «parcourir» + «à loisir»: «parcourir» is to travel or range all over something — to cover its whole extent. «à loisir» means 'at leisure, unhurriedly, as much as one likes'. Together: 'to roam over her magnificent forms at leisure'. The verb treats the giantess's body as a landscape to be explored — an image the closing tercet completes with hamlet and mountain.

**10** Ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes,  
To clamber up the slope of her enormous knees,
> «le versant» — a mountainside: «le versant» is the slope or flank of a hill or mountain. Applied to «ses genoux énormes» — her enormous knees — it pursues the landscape metaphor: the speaker, dwarfed, would «ramper» (crawl, clamber) up her knee as up a hillside. «Ramper» also carries a faint sense of creeping, fitting the cat-like devotion of stanza one.

**11** Et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains,  
And sometimes in summer, when the sickly suns,
> «malsain» — unhealthy, noxious: «malsain» means unhealthy, unwholesome, noxious. The plural «les soleils malsains» — 'the sickly suns', the oppressive suns of high summer — is the subject of a sentence that runs across the stanza break into the final tercet, where these suns «la font s'étendre à travers la campagne»: they make her lie down across the countryside.


**12** Lasse, la font s'étendre à travers la campagne,  
Weary, make her stretch out across the countryside,
> «faire» + infinitive (the causative): «faire» + infinitive means 'to make / cause (someone) to do': «les soleils… la font s'étendre» = 'the suns make her stretch out'. The object pronoun «la» (= the giantess) comes before «font». «s'étendre» is the pronominal 'to stretch oneself out, to lie down'; «lasse» (weary, fem.) describes her as she does so.

**13** Dormir nonchalamment à l'ombre de ses seins,  
To sleep idly in the shadow of her breasts,
> «Dormir» — the last in a chain of infinitives: «Dormir» continues the long series of infinitives that began with «J'eusse aimé… vivre» and runs through «voir», «grandir», «deviner», «parcourir», «ramper»: the speaker would have loved 'to sleep' too. «nonchalamment» (idly, languidly, without a care) is the adverb of «nonchalant» — the same drowsy ease as the «chat voluptueux» of the opening.

**14** Comme un hameau paisible au pied d'une montagne.  
Like a peaceful hamlet at the foot of a mountain.
> «un hameau» — a hamlet: «un hameau» is a hamlet, a tiny cluster of houses smaller than a village. The closing simile shrinks the sleeping speaker to a peaceful hamlet «au pied d'une montagne» — at the foot of a mountain — sealing the poem's vision of the woman as a whole sheltering landscape, vast and serene.

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