French · Spleen and Ideal

La Musique

Music

14 lines · 9 notes

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1
Music often takes hold of me like a sea!
Lathele · determiner, feminine, singulardeterminer of musique
musiqueMusicmusique · noun, feminine, singularsubject of prend
souventoftensouvent · adverbmodifies prend
mememe · pronoun, first-person, singulardirect object of prend
prendtakes hold ofprendre · verb, present, indicative, third-person, singularmain verb of the sentence
commelikecomme · prepositionpreposition marking mer
uneaun · determiner, feminine, singulardeterminer of mer
merseamer · noun, feminine, singularoblique argument of prend
Grammar«prendre» + direct-object pronoun = to seize, overtake Here «prendre» does not mean 'to take (and hold)' but 'to seize, to come over, to overtake' — the way an emotion or a swoon grips you: «la musique me prend» = 'music takes hold of me, sweeps me away'. «me» is the direct object. The simile «comme une mer» ('like a sea') is launched at once, so that the seizure of music and the surge of the sea are one and the same motion, and the whole sonnet will read as a single voyage.
2
Toward my pale star,
3
Under a ceiling of mist or in a vast ether,
4
I set sail;
Word«mettre à la voile» — to set sail «mettre à la voile» is the fixed nautical idiom 'to set sail, to put out to sea' — «la voile» here is the sail. The short hexasyllable «Je mets à la voile» completes the first long alexandrine, and the very act of casting off lets the poem leave the land of statement for the open water of metaphor. Watch the word «voile»: it returns in line 8 («me voile») as a verb, 'veils', a deliberate echo.
5
My chest thrown forward and my lungs swelled out
6
Like sailcloth,
Word«toile» — cloth, here sailcloth / canvas «toile» is woven cloth, canvas; on a ship it is the sailcloth itself. The lungs «gonflés / Comme de la toile» ('swelled like canvas') turn the speaker's body into the rigging of the vessel — his breathing is the wind filling the sails. «de la» is the partitive ('some canvas, canvas-stuff'), keeping the comparison to a material rather than a single named sail.
7
I scale the back of the heaped-up waves
Word«amonceler» — to heap up, pile up «amonceler» means 'to heap, to pile up'; «les flots amoncelés» are the waves massed into ridges, the swell piled into hills the speaker climbs. «le dos des flots» ('the back of the waves') keeps the sea animal, a great beast whose spine he scales. The past participle «amoncelés» agrees in the masculine plural with «flots».
8
That the night veils from me;
Grammar«voiler» as a verb + the «me» of disadvantage «voile» here is the present of «voiler», 'to veil, to hide from view' — not the noun 'sail' of line 4, though Baudelaire means us to hear both. «Que» is the relative object: 'the heaped-up waves that the night veils from me'. The pronoun «me» is a dative of disadvantage — the night hides them on me, to my cost — heightening the danger of a climb made blind.
9
I feel vibrate within me all the passions
GrammarVerb of perception + bare infinitive After verbs of perception such as «sentir» ('to feel'), French uses a bare infinitive where English would often use a present participle: «je sens vibrer ... toutes les passions» = 'I feel all the passions vibrate / vibrating within me'. The logical subject of «vibrer» («toutes les passions») is held back to the line's end, so the feeling is registered before its cause is named — the body trembling first, the reason after.
10
Of a vessel in distress;
Word«vaisseau» — ship; «souffrir» of a straining hull «vaisseau» is an old, elevated word for a ship (it also means 'vessel' in the bodily sense, which colours the line). «un vaisseau qui souffre» — 'a ship that suffers' — uses «souffrir» of a hull labouring and groaning in heavy seas, so that the passions «de» the ship ('belonging to', 'of') are at once the timbers' strain and the speaker's own. The identification of self and ship is now complete.
11
The fair wind, the tempest and its convulsions
12
Upon the immense gulf
13
Cradle me. Other times, dead calm, great mirror
GrammarDelayed plural verb across the enjambment «Me bercent» ('cradle me, rock me') is the main verb that the previous tercet has been waiting for: its plural subject is «Le bon vent, la tempête et ses convulsions» of two lines above, reaching across the stanza break and over «Sur l'immense gouffre». «bercer» is 'to rock, to lull (as a cradle)'. Place it after this long suspension and even the tempest becomes a cradle — until the sentence breaks off mid-line at the full stop and the poem swerves into stillness.
Word«calme plat» — dead calm «calme plat» is the sailor's term for a 'dead calm', a flat, windless sea where the ship cannot move — the opposite of the storm just described. Set against «grand miroir» ('great mirror'), the becalmed water turns into a glass that gives the speaker back his own «désespoir». The turn from tempest to flat calm is the sonnet's true volta: motion was bearable, but the mirror of stillness is despair.
14
Of my despair!

The particulars

The text: Les Fleurs du mal, Charles Baudelaire. Spleen and Ideal.
Words: Every word of the text, by letter.
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