From Les Fleurs du Mal
by Charles Baudelaire

Translation and glosses by Millie Niss

This is one of many poems in Les Fleurs du Mal in which the Poet is placed above other mortals. Often in these poems the poet is explicitly freed from having to obey the rules of society and his apparent faults are revealed as signs of a higher purpose. This somewhat presumptuous notion was a favorite of many young poets during and after Baudelaire's time. In particular, this self-aggrandizement permeates the poetry of Rimbaud, who wrote 50 years later.

Three out of four stanzas in this poem develop the extended metaphor of the albatross, and it is only in the final stanza that we find out what the albatros symbolizes. Baudelaire uses this device frequently. The best parts of these poems are often the concrete descriptions of the symbol in the beginning of the poem rather than the somewhat conventional symbolism in the conclusion.

To hear a stanza read aloud, click on the speaker button to the left of the desired stanza.

L'ALBATROS

THE ALBATROSS

Souvent, pour s'amuser, les hommes d'équipages
Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux der mers,
Qui suivent, indolent compagnons de voyage,
Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.

 Often, as a lark, the crewmen will take hold
Of albatrosses, those vast birds of the sea
Which follow, lazy voyage-mates above
The ship sliding over the sour abyss.

A peine les ont-ils déposés sur les planches,
Que ces rois de l'azur, maladroits et honteux,
Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes blanches
Comme des avirons traîner a côté d'eux.

 Hardly after they're released on the deck
These kings of the sky become clumsy and shy
Pitifully letting their great white wings
Drag like oars beside them on the boards.
Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule!
Lui naguère si beau, qu'il est comique et laid!
L'un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule,
L'autre mime, en boitant, l'infirme qui volait!

 This wingèd traveller, how awkward, how weak!
He who was once so fine, now so comic and plain!
One man tortures his beak with a sailor's pipe
Another mimes with a limp the cripple who flew!
Le poète est semblable au prince des nuées
Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l'archer;
Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées
Ses ailes de géant l'empêchent de marcher.

 The poet is like this prince of the clouds
Who scares away the storm and mocks the archer's aim;
Exiled on the ground amid cruel taunts
Hindered by giant's wings, he cannot walk.