French · Parisian Scenes

Les Sept Vieillards

The Seven Old Men

53 lines · 12 notes

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To Victor Hugo
Àtoà · prepositionpreposition marking Victor
VictorVictorVictor · proper noun, masculine, singularhead of the phrase
HugoHugoHugo · proper nounpart of the name Victor Hugo
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Swarming city, city full of dreams,
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where the specter in broad daylight accosts the passer-by!
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Mysteries everywhere flow like sap
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in the narrow channels of the mighty colossus.
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One morning, while in the dismal street
Grammarcependant que = pendant que «cependant que» is a literary conjunction meaning 'while, during the time that' — equivalent to «pendant que» / «tandis que». It launches a long suspended clause; the main verb «M'apparut» does not arrive until two stanzas later.
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the houses, whose height the fog stretched taller,
Grammar«dont» for possession «dont» = 'of which / whose'. «les maisons dont la brume allongeait la hauteur» unpacks as 'the houses, the height of which the fog was lengthening'. French keeps the normal word order «la brume allongeait la hauteur» after «dont», where English inverts to 'whose height the fog stretched'.
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feigned the two banks of a swollen river,
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and while, a set matching the soul of the actor,
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a dirty yellow fog was flooding all the space,
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I was following, stiffening my nerves like a hero
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and arguing with my already weary soul,
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the suburb shaken by the heavy tip-carts.
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All at once, an old man whose yellow rags
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mimicked the color of that rainy sky,
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and whose look would have made the alms rain down,
GrammarConditional + faire + infinitive «aurait fait pleuvoir» = 'would have made rain' — the past conditional of «faire» plus an infinitive (the causative: 'to make something happen'). It sets up the cruel reversal of the next line: his pitiable look would have made alms rain down, were it not for the malice in his eyes.
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but for the malice that gleamed in his eyes,
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appeared to me. One would have said his eye was steeped
Grammar«on eût dit» (past conditional) «eût dit» is the past conditional (literary second form, identical to the pluperfect subjunctive) of «dire». «On eût dit…» = «on aurait dit…» = 'one would have said / you'd have thought…' — a fixed way of introducing a vivid comparison or impression.
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in gall; his gaze sharpened the frost,
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and his beard of long bristles, stiff as a sword,
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jutted out, like that of Judas.
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He was not stooped, but broken, his spine
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making with his leg a perfect right angle,
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so that his stick, completing his figure,
Grammarsi bien que = so that (result) «si bien que» introduces a clause of result: 'so that, with the result that'. The broken right angle of the body, plus the stick, produces the consequence in the next lines — the awkward gait of a crippled quadruped.
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gave him the bearing and the clumsy step
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of a crippled quadruped or a three-legged Jew.
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Through the snow and the mud he went floundering,
Grammaraller + present participle «aller» + present participle expresses a continuous, ongoing action: «il allait s'empêtrant» = 'he kept getting entangled / went floundering along'. «s'empêtrer» is reflexive ('to get oneself tangled up'), here in the snow and mud.
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as if he were crushing the dead beneath his slippers,
Grammarcomme si + imperfect «comme si» ('as if') takes the imperfect for an unreal present comparison: «comme s'il écrasait des morts» = 'as if he were crushing the dead'. The hypothetical image turns his shuffling walk into a desecration.
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hostile to the universe rather than indifferent.
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His double followed him: beard, eye, back, stick, rags,
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No feature set apart, come from the same hell,
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this hundred-year-old twin, and these grotesque specters
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walked with the same step toward an unknown goal.
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To what vile plot was I then exposed,
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or what malicious chance was humiliating me so?
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For I counted seven times, from minute to minute,
Grammarpassé simple «comptai» is the passé simple (literary past) of «compter». Used for a single completed action in narration: 'I counted'. The tense, reserved for written storytelling, gives the count of the multiplying old man the finality of fact.
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this sinister old man who kept multiplying himself!
Grammarse multiplier (reflexive) «se multiplier» = 'to multiply, to proliferate' (reflexive). The imperfect «se multipliait» gives the horror its duration — not one duplication but a continuous breeding, the same old man counted seven times over.
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Let him who laughs at my unease
Grammar«Que» + subjunctive (third-person command) «Que» plus the subjunctive forms a third-person imperative: 'let him…, may he…'. The subject «celui-là qui rit… et qui n'est pas saisi» is long, and the verb «Songe» (subjunctive of «songer», 'to consider') arrives only at the start of the third line: 'Let him who laughs… consider well…'.
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and is not gripped by a brotherly shudder
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consider well that, despite such decrepitude,
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these seven hideous monsters looked eternal!
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Could I, without dying, have beheld the eighth,
GrammarPast conditional in a question «Aurais-je contemplé…?» is the past conditional with subject-verb inversion: 'would I have contemplated…?'. It poses an unreal, dreaded hypothesis — whether he could have looked on an eighth old man and survived it.
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an inexorable double, ironic and fatal,
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disgusting Phoenix, son and father of himself?
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— But I turned my back on the infernal procession.
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Exasperated like a drunkard who sees double,
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I went home, I shut my door, terrified,
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sick and downcast, my mind feverish and clouded,
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wounded by the mystery and by the absurdity!
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In vain my reason tried to take the helm;
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the tempest, in its play, threw off its efforts,
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and my soul danced, danced, an old barge
Wordune gabarre «une gabarre» is a flat-bottomed cargo barge, clumsy and unglamorous. The soul as a «vieille gabarre / Sans mâts» — an old, mastless barge tossed on a monstrous shoreless sea — closes the poem on helpless, undignified drifting.
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without masts, on a sea monstrous and without shores!

The particulars

The text: Les Fleurs du mal, Charles Baudelaire. Parisian Scenes.
Words: Every word of the text, by letter.
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