# Spleen (Pluviôse irrité) · Spleen (Pluviôse, Enraged)

Les Fleurs du mal · Charles Baudelaire · Spleen and Ideal

Source: https://1732studios.com/books/baudelaire/spleen-pluviose-irrite. Data: https://1732studios.com/books/baudelaire/spleen-pluviose-irrite.json.

**1** Pluviôse, irrité contre la ville entière,  
Pluviôse, enraged against the whole city,

**2** De son urne à grands flots verse un froid ténébreux  
from his urn in great floods pours a tenebrous cold
> «urne» and the pouring vessel: «une urne» is both a funerary urn and the tilted vessel from which a river-god or the zodiac sign Aquarius pours water. «verser» = 'to pour, to spill'. The image fuses death-urn and rain-urn: «Pluviôse» tips it «à grands flots» ('in great floods') to spill a «froid ténébreux» — a 'tenebrous', shadowy cold — over the living and the dead alike.

**3** Aux pâles habitants du voisin cimetière  
on the pale inhabitants of the neighbouring graveyard

**4** Et la mortalité sur les faubourgs brumeux.  
and mortality upon the misty outskirts.
> Zeugma: one verb, two objects: «verse» from line 2 still governs this line: Pluviôse pours «un froid ténébreux» onto the dead and «la mortalité» onto the living suburbs. Yoking a concrete object (cold) and an abstract one (mortality) under a single verb is a zeugma — the same gesture spills chill on the graveyard and death on the «faubourgs» (the outlying districts). The verb is held back across three lines, mimicking the slow seep of the cold.


**5** Mon chat sur le carreau cherchant une litière  
My cat on the tiled floor, seeking a bed of straw,

**6** Agite sans repos son corps maigre et galeux;  
stirs its thin and mangy body without rest;

**7** L'âme d'un vieux poète erre dans la gouttière  
the soul of an old poet wanders in the gutter
> «errer» — to wander: «errer» = 'to wander, to roam' — a false friend, not 'to err'. The dead poet's soul has come to nothing grander than a ghost roaming the «gouttière» (the roof-gutter), the realm of stray cats and damp, its voice that of a «fantôme frileux» (a shivering phantom) in the next line.

**8** Avec la triste voix d'un fantôme frileux.  
with the sad voice of a shivering phantom.


**9** Le bourdon se lamente, et la bûche enfumée  
The great bell mourns, and the smoking log
> «se lamenter» (pronominal): «se lamenter» = 'to lament, to wail, to bewail oneself' — the pronominal «se» makes the verb reflexive, the bell mourning of its own accord. «le bourdon» is the deep tenor bell of a church (its low droning note); it 'wails' the funeral toll that pervades the stanza alongside the wheezing clock and smoking log.

**10** Accompagne en fausset la pendule enrhumée  
accompanies in falsetto the clock with its cold,
> «enrhumé(e)» — having a cold: «enrhumé(e)» means 'having a head-cold, stuffed up' (from «un rhume», a cold). The mantel clock «pendule» is personified as 'rheumy', its tick gone thick and snuffling; the green log answers it «en fausset» ('in falsetto', a strained high pipe). The whole hearth is sick — Baudelaire's deadpan way of making domestic objects share the season's chill.

**11** Cependant qu'en un jeu plein de sales parfums,  
while, in a deck of cards full of foul odours,
> «cependant que» — while: «cependant que» is a literary conjunction meaning 'while, all the while that' — the older, fuller form of «pendant que». It opens the long final sentence that runs across the two tercets, setting the card game «un jeu» (here a deck of playing-cards) alongside the wailing hearth of the stanza above.


**12** Héritage fatal d'une vieille hydropique,  
fatal legacy of an old dropsical woman,
> «hydropique» — dropsical: «hydropique» = 'suffering from dropsy' (edema), the old name for a body swollen with retained water. The greasy, foul-smelling deck of cards is the deathbed bequest of a bloated old woman — disease passed down with the inheritance. The water-logged body chimes with the rain and flooding «urne» that opened the poem.

**13** Le beau valet de coeur et la dame de pique  
the handsome jack of hearts and the queen of spades

**14** Causent sinistrement de leurs amours défunts.  
talk sinisterly of their departed loves.
> «amour» and its shifting gender: «amour» is masculine in the singular but traditionally feminine in the poetic plural — yet Baudelaire writes «amours défunts» with the masculine adjective, a licence the older usage allowed and that suits the formal, archaic tone. «défunt(e)» = 'deceased, departed'; here the cards' loves are themselves dead, the only thing left to talk about.

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