The Unfinished Sonnet - Charles Baudelaire - August 31st, 1867

Many years have passed since I have read the works of de Nerval or even thought of him. Today though, I walked home from an early breakfast at the café that’s run by an old Roma couple on the corner of my street. It was at a time when our labors had surpassed the successful career of Romanticism’s founding father to be deemed by academic institutions, literary reviews, and, most importantly, the informal conversations of the fine art’s aficionados as “all the rage of Paris.” Delacroix, where were you when he needed you?

De Nerval had hair that much evoked thoughts of a raven’s plumage. I remember how during the winter months, his long periods spent composing in the confines of his flat in my same neighborhood of Montmartre would make him seem frail and fragile. You could have recognized him from afar, with his large and honest green eyes that shone from his pale face. Overall, de Nerval was of a pleasant disposition. I recall how he would incessantly poke fun at my eccentric attire, whether it was the ruffle-collared shirts that I used to wear, or my formal black suit with the ever-present pink gloves. And in turn, I would mock him by telling him that he reminded me of a peasant who didn’t like the sun. On one memorable occasion, we had also made Théophile Gautier take flight, running in a formidable fright, when we had drunkenly threatened to fight him for having published a review in La Presse, which described me as a “languorous mortician.” How silly people can be when they are young and so free spirited! It turns out that de Nerval eventually took over Gautier’s column, so there was no long-lasting bitterness.

De Nerval came to my flat one early winter morning at a time of life when I still felt young at heart, in spite of my composition’s association to heavyheartedness. It was a welcome break from my translation of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, an author with whom I had developed a friendship through a slow overseas correspondence. De Nerval had always been somewhat slim, but the constant look of general enthusiasm on his face left one with the impression of robust health. On that day however, his emaciated countenance indicated a rapid and mysterious regression of his well-being. An agile connoisseur of human sentiment, I assessed that his expression, at the time blank, had just previously, perhaps even the day before, been one that bore the mark of deep-seeded melancholy. This interior state of mind, I could only guess, had for some time manifested itself through a regression of his physical well-being. In any case, his gloomy presence had motivated me to do something to warm him up - as if a single cup of tea could restore his vigor that had extinguished itself in a seemingly sudden manner.

“What are you staring at Gérard? Is everything alright?”

“She followed me here!”

He then started yelling diatribe, something about a woman that had been stalking him for years. As he was in an increasingly agitated mental state, I decided to say nothing. During the weeks prior to his last visit, I had taken the pleasure of conversing with Théophile Gautier on four occasions. He briefly expressed concern over the increasingly forlorn temperament that he had noticed in de Nerval, who was a dear friend to both of us. And thus I had recalled that when I had seen him some three weeks prior to this occasion, he hadn’t seemed his usual self. We had been sitting outside of the Café des Arbres, rue de Vanus, on a mild late-Autumn day. We waited for the ice cubes to melt through the small screens, drip by drip, to distill themselves into the absinthe within our cups. He absentmindedly commented on Les Fleurs du Mal, which I had at the time not yet published. I had shown him some of my poetry in order to get some preliminary feedback from him. It now occurs to me that he had doubtlessly associated his state of melancholy to the extreme sadness, regret, and void of hopelessness that my compilation of poems set out by personal mandate to convey.

De Nerval, on the other hand, adopted a distant and worried stare towards me and then towards the far corner of the room, frantically switching the direction of his sad gaze back and forth as the absinthe rapidly nourished the inner turmoil of his soul, drowning as far as I could tell, his sense of being. And I had been under the impression that a stranger sat before my eyes. So it happened that, as I looked for the last time upon the countenance of my friend, I noticed that the green eyes had lost their habitual brightness and had ceased to shine. It was as if something had extinguished itself in his soul to leave room for a growing state of unease, le mal de vivre!

On that day, de Nerval had not seemed to have been in total control of his senses. He cast forth an aura of dreariness about him. He had been exhausted since collaborating on works with the ungrateful Alexandre Dumas and translating the writings of Goethe. I spoke to him, inviting him to open his emotions up to me. He then told me the story of how he still painfully mourned for the loss of Aurélia, who had left him feeling virtually alone in this world. I then reassured him that this longing for one whose calling it is to walk upon a different path is a most common plight for all humans, whether they be man or woman. I asked him, with the frankest of sincerity: “Is Aurélia the one you keep staring at in the corner?” He then started yelling that she was indeed his muse, who had at first been visiting him at night in his bedroom and then even during daylight hours, even outside of his home. Out of instinct, I cast a nervous glance to the empty corner.

I decided to not pursue my line of questioning any further, having noticed his increasing agitation. We then drank our tea and rum silently and I eventually decided to switch to absinthe, which he gladly partook in. De Nerval then interrupted the silence. He told me that he had something very special to show me and that I would be the first to see it. It was his most recent composition, a sonnet.

My eyes moved down the paper independent of my command, unwilling and unable to tear themselves from Heaven and its green hills, fruit laden orchards, and clouds that rolled endlessly before them. I sat for what seemed to be an hour, in silence, while de Nerval listlessly flipped through my draft of Les Fleurs du Mal and occasionally poked the fire and added a few more twigs to it. I then went back to his poem that hadn’t left my hands, and analyzed its style, simply because I suddenly felt clumsy and didn’t know what else to do in its presence. Upon the paper lay eleven alexandrines, and a single octet. This lingering, out of place verse was the ultimate contradiction to all poetic convention, and I at first considered that it was a shame that it undermined the near perfection of the sonnet. It stood out, smaller than all the other verses yet most obviously proud and defiant towards them. And I could still not bring myself to understand how such a poem could be flawed. I thought deep and far, back to my teenage years, to a time when I was preparing to pass the written part of the literary section of the baccalaureate. I recalled my instructor cite a poem of Ronsard, in which an exceptional and very rare rule of classical composition had been applied. The exact words of my old teacher then suddenly rang once again in my head, as if reaching forth to me from the forgotten realm of my past: “In a sonnet constituted by the most noble type of verse, the alexandrine, it is permitted to introduce one eight syllable verse. However this condition may apply if and only if this verse accelerates the tempo of the previous alexandrine, while conserving the same cadence. But don’t worry about this arrangement. It’s virtually never used, and is almost unanimously unappealing to poets. You’ll never see on a test. For that matter you might not even find it in any of the books you come across in your lifetime.” The sonnet was thus perfect in every way. Any supporter of the classic movement, which happens to consider Romanticism to be an insult and degradation of the poetic language, would immediately adopt it as the textbook example of the proper methodology for composition. Ronsard and Corneille would never have believed that it was composed two hundred years after their time. They certainly would have held it in a praise. Today there are rogue poets who believe that they hold the answer and know all of what there is to know, who wish to rebel against all existing poetic conventions, who disrespectfully spit on classicism, and who wish to revolutionize our Romantic movement, or at the very least to destroy it and to replace with their own hideous definition of poetry that my contemporaries and I had struggled and fought to create. Even they would have put their eyes to the ground in silent reverence, after reading the Poem. For all poets by definition strive towards an intangible point of perfection, knowing that it is impossible to grasp it, but using it only as a reference point towards which a best effort should be set forth. I had written many a poem and highly acclaimed dissertation on the subject of this existential void between the truth and our limited capacity to express it: Le Néant! But de Nerval had bridged the gap. He had reached the beacon of total truth and unparalleled harmony. I jumped out of my seat, as I too, heard a whisper in my ear. And it was the voice of his muse, Aurélia! Any who stumble upon my memoirs will surely believe this remarkable account to be a fabrication of my own fancy, as a way to draw the attention of the press by refuting my own widely diffused theories through an example of a poem that is impossible to prove, as well as a deceased woman who directed its composition. I say only this. To this day, I cannot remember a single word of the poem, only what it felt like to read it. I remember the cold brush against my ear, as I heard her voice. It expressed all of the joy that dwells in silence upon the Earth and hidden amidst humanity. It spoke of a joy so profound that it can only exist in the context of our needless sorrows, hatred, greed, jealousy, and war. And it was the greatest poem that anyone has ever written, and that shall be written no more.

"She wrote most of it! I woke up one night, and SAW HER, writing with my pen! Then, when I tried to go to speak with her, to kiss her once again, one last time from the grave, she disappeared!"

I looked at de Nerval, now understanding, and we both knew that I needn’t speak a word. Without warning, he suddenly grasped his poem, strode to the fireplace and set it ablaze upon the dwindling flame. I ran and collapsed to my knees, sinking my hands into the glowing coals. And the paper shone streaks of red and gold before it crumbled into ash in my searing hands.

I had felt sorry for de Nerval. He had written what I or any of the greats could only theorize about. But I believe that a greater force had spoken through him. My guess is that while he was in the process of composing the Poem, he had experienced euphoric emotions, dwelling in supreme contentment similar only to that discovered by enlightened people. However it is my contention that afterwards he lost his sublime understanding of his own creation, and gradually grew to fear it, feeling lowly and wretched in the presence of his Poem. Before leaving that day, de Nerval, handed me two poems. Once again they were sonnets. But they were dull and abased reflections of the one that had shone as the brightest star in the heavens. My estimate is that he had composed both of them one after the other in the extremely brief and very dreary period after the completion of his chef d’oeuvre. They’re called On the subject of Death and On the subject of Life, respectively. However, the one entitled On the subject of Life is characterized by the most peculiar oddity. For it is undeniably a sonnet, but it is curiously enough missing the last two stanzas. When I inquired about the reasons surrounding this incompleteness, de Nerval merely replied that he felt he had encapsulated all of the joy belonging to Earth, in two stanzas. He had simply said all he had to say. That was the last time I saw de Nerval. He took his life two days later on rue de la Vieille-Lanterne after writing a brief goodbye note to his aunt. He died alone, in poverty, and in a sadness so profound that I have difficulty finding the words to describe it. I think that it’s because he was a lonely and hounded soul to begin with, and because of the pain Aurélia had left him with. Not to mention that after living the splendor of the Poem everything must have seemed bland to him afterwards. I know that’s how I felt for a month after having read it. He was probably just in a rush to go join her in Heaven anyway. I do wish that I was there for him on his last day. He had delivered his soul in the darkest street that he could find. Had I known the seriousness of his intention to hang himself, I could have talked him out of it. But such is life. Théophile Gautier and Arsène Houssaye published his book Aurélia ou le rêve et la vie shortly after his death. They were as distraught as I was, and so I agreed to proof read his work with them before they sent it over to the publisher.

I still have his poems today. I never had them published postmortem, as he had requested that I didn’t.

De Mortis

The specter of joy upon the boulevard sails,

Masked as lamenting widows by darkening veils.

The performance has consumed all our youthful hopes

The stagehand refused to glide the phoenix on ropes.

In deep dreams the awakening is proclaimed,

To lie dormant in the day, by the sunlight maimed

The syllable once translated by long phrases,

Now mutters in a well of regressing phases.

Futile is pronounced each action in masquerade,

While in charade is played the faded serenade

When amid brothers and sisters is instilled disdain.

Fatigue orchestrates man’s funerals through the years

In obscurity of eloquent chandeliers,

Under Sun and Moon that alternate their refrain.

De Mortis

Spectres du bonheur défilent le long des boulevards,

Masqué comme soupirantes par de sombres foulards.

Le théâtre a consumé les espoirs de la jeunesse :

Spectateurs ne voulant que le bonheur se redresse.

Dans de rêves profonds se proclame le réveil,

Qui reste englouti par des journées pareilles.

La syllabe qui se traduisait par de longues phrases,

Maintenant balbutie dans de fades phases.

Futile se prononce chaque action en mascarade

Alors qu’en charade se jouent de fades sérénades

Quand parmi frères et sœurs se cimente dédain.

La fatigue orchestre pour l’homme les funérailles

Dans l’obscurité entre d’éloquentes failles :

Sous Soleil et Lune qui alternent le refrain.

De Vitae

Life surrounds our days with joyous bubbling streams,

Regardless of angles an image’s light beams

We are always at home; even those grieving loss

Have purpose in watching the sky’s albatross.

Heaven glides about floating on butterfly wings

In the melody of the cicada that sings,

Life drinks its thirst in the Universe’s rivers

And onto this earthly test all lives delivers.

De Vitae

La vie déborde et ruisselle autour de nous tous,

Quel que soit l’angle d’une image à notre vue.

On est toujours chez soi ; même ceux qui sont perdus

Sont à leur domicile sous l’Aube rousse.

Le papillon de bonheur palpite ses ailes,

Même mélodie des cigales chantant entre elles,

Car dans le fleuve de l’Univers l’œuvre s’abreuve

Fait naitre la vie dans cette terrestre épreuve.

De Nerval, I have come to the decision to take the completion of your sonnet upon myself, you being somewhat… unavailable at the moment. If only you had learned how to just relax, you stubborn jackass. I even added a verse of eight syllables you poor excuse for a poet. This is for you my friend.

Lost loves and trees from nature felled

Are henceforth in couple by Eternity held

Away from hate floats love from mountain to vale

Let us dwell far from the turmoil of the beehive,

Heavy thoughts shall not take us far when we’re alive.

Life is beautiful. I miss you my friend Nerval.

Amours perdus comme arbres de nature coupés

Sont désormais par l’Eternité accouplés

De simples voix portés à l’amour, non du mal.

Demeurons au lointain de tout bourdonnement,

La vie n’est pas faite pour écouter lourdement.

La vie est belle. Tu me manques mon ami Nerval.

C. B. - August 31st, 1867