Tuesday, March 15, 2011

daughter of Michelangelo

"It will never be those theater beauties,
Corrupt products of a worthless century,
Those feet shod in buskins, those fingers holding castanets,
Who will satisfy a heart like my own.I leave to Gavarni, the poet of chlorosis,
His babbling flock of hospital beauties,
For I cannot find among those pale roses
A flower that ressembles my red ideal.

What this heart, as deep as an abyss, needs
Is you, Lady Macbeth, a soul powerful in crime,
A dream of Aeschylus blooming in a climate of south winds;

Or rather you, great Night, daughter of Michelangelo,Who peacefully twists into a strange pose
Those feminine charms fashioned in the mouths of the Titans!"

~Baudelaire

1 comment:

Lisa said...

Your tastes run to the vital and passionate, yet also solid, deep and tranquil -- excellent combination to form a real human. No fripperies for you!

In a slightly different translation, "Whose charms to suit a Titan's appetite / You twist, so strange, yet peaceful, to the view." Strange, perhaps, b/c she is not postured, and apart from the run-of-the-mill.