‘’L’Ennemi’’ ténébreux orage – obscure/dark storm Le tonnerre – the thunder un tel ravage - devestation fruits vermeil – vermilion (red) fruits la pelle et les râteaux – shovel and rakes l'eau creuse – water hollows out ronge le cœur – eats away at the heart '' The Enemy '' was the tenth poem of the collection '' Les fleurs du mal ''. It associates time with the seasons of the year. He regrets that this one passes too quickly, that it prevents him to finish what he started and that it flouts his inspiration. This poem is a sonnet. Charles Baudelaire often uses this form in Les Fleurs du Mal with multiple variations as to the disposition of rhymes. This sonnet whose rhymes are presented according to the ABAB-ABAB-CCD-EDE scheme does not respect the arrangement of the rhymes of the classical sonnets especially for the quatrains. "The enemy", in this poem, is the time, major component of the Baudelairian spleen. One finds this idea of anxiety facing the time that passes in the poems "L'Horloge" and "The taste of the nothing". In this text, the poet describes the conscious anguish of the passing time.This sonnet in alexandrines, whose versification (the arrangement of rhymes is abab-abab-ccd-ede) does not follow the strict rules of the sonnet marotique, is constructed on a spun metaphor by which the poet reports, in a chronological sequence, The episodes of his life that are represented symbolically by the seasons. The metaphor develops in the first three strophes: in the first quatrain, youth is compared to a summer shattered by the vicissitudes of the climate; In the second quatrain, a negative balance of maturity is established, which is compared to the autumn, while the announcement of death is recorded; In the first tercet, appears the hope of a renewal which is similar to the spring. But in the second tercet there is a categorical denial of this hope: the destructive presence of Almighty Time imposes itself not only on the poet but on every human being. The poet (who is the narrator, who calls himself personally) evokes a past («fut»), that of his «jeunesse», and then makes it a discouraging balance sheet, the stanza thus consisting of two complementary parts (vers 1-2 et vers 3-4), clearly delimited by a strong punctuation. Youth is presented as a tumultuous, tormented summer, in which it undergoes attacks illustrated by bad weather «ténébreux orage», which does not exclude an alternation («çà et là») of fugitive but luminous periods of happiness («brillants soleils»), verse 2 dissipating a little the impression of permanent disturbance induced by the beginning of the poem. This alternation of contradictory meteorological elements is metaphorically that of hope and despair, of impulses towards the ideal and of falling back into the spleen. It results in the choice of a structure of cross rhymes (abab and non abba). It is also noted that «orage» rhyme significantly with «ravage», and «soleils» with «vermeils». Baudelaire highlighting the time that passes through a progression from the past to the present, the discouraging record of this stormy youth is underlined by the past composed «on fait» (vers 3) and by the proposition of consequence to the present. The metaphor continues in the mention of a nature which has undergone the meteorological elements in their destructive character, the past having left traces: a life ravaged by «le tonnerre et la pluie», by the blows of fate and the daily grisaille . The expression «un tel ravage» marks the importance of the damage of time. In verse 4, the narrator indicates that his tormented youth had an effect on the present, on his «jardin», in which one can see his talent, which is almost entirely stripped of his «fruits vermeils» which are of a red The other fruits being dull, in which one can see his poems, which are, according to him, too scattered, his inspiration thus failing. 2. The présentatif «Voilà»" marking the culmination of the progression evoked before, the poet makes a resigned statement, establishes a negative balance of his mature age, using the present time. This negative balance is the consequence of the first stanza, and after the summer evoked in it, Baudelaire, in a chronological order, is seen in his autumn, autumn being a poetic metaphor used to avoid a «vieillesse». This autumn is that of his "ideas," which reaffirms his sense of the decline of his creative vitality. But, in verse 6, it appears that, comparing himself to a gardener, he declares himself ready to make efforts to regain enlightenment. Indeed, we can see in these concrete terms that «la pelle et les râteaux», are tools used by the gardener to «rassembler à neuf» (in order to restore the state of new, to restore , To restore the exhausted soil in good condition to make it fertile again), the techniques used by the poet to deepen and organize his talent. This makes it possible to emphasize that, in fact, Baudelaire was suspicious of inspiration, which for him was too much a part of nature, coming when he wanted, and spontaneously, resembling needs; He considered that it is dangerous to abandon oneself to the «jaillissements» of the heart, the reverie, the imagination, the thought, these first facts being legitimated only if they were authenticated by an «intelligent» formalization. It is because Baudelaire accumulates images that make this stanza a visual illustration of the disasters of time, the garden is in poor condition: it has suffered a devastation, the «terres» (symbol of the poet's mind) being «inondées», «des trous» having been dug by water. As these holes are «grands comme des tombeaux», these disasters may be considered as a sign of death, and water, the terrestrial element which usually gives life to life, holds the morbid role of a gravedigger. In this stanza, the life and creation of the poet are sacked by time. 1st Tercet Looking to the future, the poet throws a hypothesis («Et qui sait»), which is accentuated by the interrogation that is the sentence constituting this stanza. This hypothesis may never be validated. It is like an impulse of hope in perspective, since there is a cycle of seasons, a return of spring, a spring of ideas, which would be the return of a creative energy blunted beforehand by the trials of the The «fleurs nouvelles» of verse 9 representing another creation nourished by misfortunes, and surpassing them. One can see there the «fleurs du mal» that are the poems of the collection, Baudelaire having consecrated all its life of writer to perfect them. It would be necessary to welcome this new flowering of a new land, a «sol lavé comme une grève», that is to say a flat ground at the edge of a stream or the sea, where surf, wave Soil having known as a purification, the water of destructive it was being revivifying.And this purification being related to a religious rite, the flowers would receive (cautiously conditional) a «mystique aliment»,provided by the muse or a divine power. 2nd tercet He answered the question in the negative. It brings to the hope previously expressed a categorical denial, which is expressed in two stages: - The first hemistich of verse 12 repeats a lament («Ô douleur ! ô douleur !»),, Or a supplicating invocation, emphasizing the desolation and despair of the poet. Then the rest of the stanza, with a present that is now the present of generality (and no longer of immediate experience), which emphasizes a statement that affects not only the one who speaks but all humans, denounces, in very , The devouring and irremediable action of time, which, if implicitly omnipresent in the metaphor of the seasons, is finally named, endowed with the capital letter which makes it an allegory. Thus personified he is, Baudelaire using realistic images, assimilated to a devouring, carnivorous and very voracious monster: he «mange la vie», he «ronge le coeur» («ronger» emphasizing the insidious character of time that gradually mines ,«coeur» here having the classic meaning of «courage», and rhyming significantly with "«vigueur»). Time is then designated by a periphrasis («l'obscur Ennemi», vers 13), which justifies the title, which insists on its hostility and on the fact that its action on the human being is insensibly exercised. And it is exercised over all humanity (hence the use of «nous»), which undergoes the fatality of the degradation of time passing and destroying lives. Time is then truly presented as a vampire who, to ensure his immortality, nourishes himself, a horror that is revealed only after a dramatic enjambent, of the«sang que nous perdons»,, blood being a symbol of the living forces of the human. Consequently, as we make use of the trials of life, we «nous perdons» this vital energy which begins to lose its «vigueur», and «croît et se fortifie», towards 14). If the poet can not be reborn as nature does, it is because time has led to his loss. Thus, the sonnet, if it does not respect the classical arrangement of rhymes, leads to a striking fall. From this poem to elegiac, pathetic and desperate lyricism, whose theme belongs to a long tradition, one finds a pessimistic observation, that of the impossibility for the aging author to recover all his creative vigor, victim that he is, as All human beings, from the omnipotence of time which gradually degrades them and ultimately destroys them, the time which is therefore the great limitation of the human being, his inescapable flight being one of the great causes of his spleen, The anguish that gripped her. It was with talent that he used a metaphor spun on the seasons representing the ages of life, a common image but treated here with originality, its subtle development allowing many analogies. Thus, it appears that we can fight against time by art, which is a way of exorcising it, of opposing the resistance of intelligence to the corrosive force of nature. ‘’La géante’’ sa verve puissante – his powerful verve (enthusiasm) fleurir - to bloom Aux humides brouillards – damp fog Ramper sur le versant – crawling on the slope les soleils malsains – unhealthy suns Lasse - weary un hameau paisible – peaceful hamlet Then it was the nineteenth poem of the "Flowers of evil". The poem is a sonnet, composed of two quatrains and two tercets. In ‘’La géante’’, Baudelaire, in an explicit gradation, gives this woman to the disproportionate body a paradoxical vision at once repulsive and fascinating, which unfolds at the boundary between dream and nightmare. He sees her less as a mistress than as a mother, even seems to have wanted to return to the period before her birth. In any case, he seems to delight in a report of submission, in an acceptance of the state of inferiority to which he condemns beauty. "To attract the gaze of a giant, to see herself by the eyes of her like a domestic animal, to lead the nonchalant, voluptuous and perverse existence of A cat in an aristocratic society where giants, god-men have decided for him and without him the sense of the universe and the ultimate ends of his life, that is his dearest wish; He would like to enjoy the limited independence of a beast of luxury, idle and useless, whose games are protected by the seriousness of the masters "(Baudelaire). This sonnet belongs to a group of poems in which Baudelaire expressed his curious aesthetic opinions. In ‘’La beauté’’, he had affirmed the fatality of the fate of the one who seeks it. In ‘’La géante’’, which appears to show an additional form of beauty, immense, monstrous, but protective and generous, it reverses this fatality in the soothing warmth of a domestic relationship: the lover, depicted elsewhere as being Perpetual combat, has here found his mistress like a cat his, the two senses of the word «maîtresse» blending. The mistress of the lover is no longer the Belle Dame sans mercy», even if a suspicion of terror remains because she is one of the «enfants monstrueux» of nature, a «géante», Shade that protects «soleils malsains», and allows to live «paisiblement», «dormir nonchalamment». Baudelaire felt the contradictions which tormented him habitually, and was relieved of the tensions which occupied his mind. 1. Quatrain In two ample verses which are only a circumstantial proposition, the author imagines a distant time when «la Nature» had a «verve puissante», of great energy, which, what is under hearing, is lost In modern times. Moreover, the word "verve", which comes from the Latin word "verbum" which means "verb", seems to be an allusion to the beginning of "Genesis": "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was turned towards God, and the Word was God. " And in "every day," we could see a remembrance of the seven days which, according to "Genesis" always were necessary to God to carry out his creation. Conceiving this previous life as a game in which everything was disproportionate, he sees this power of nature to enable him to produce « des enfants monstrueux», the latter word not having to have a pejorative value here. In verse 3, with the appearance of the subject and the verb, he surprises us by transposing himself into this antediluvian world, seeing himself fascinated by this greatness, living "near a young giant", which suggests The possibility of a loving connection, confirmed by the word "voluptuous" in verse 4. But the comparison found there marks an increased submission by the gap between the «reine» and «chat.» We must note the effect of rhymes, «puissante» finding an echo in «géante», while «monstrueux» is opposed «voluptueux». 2 Quatrain In verse 5, the poet, continuing to imagine himself near the giant, sees her as a being whose harmonious development would be just as much physical as moral. In verse 6, he is also growing up, but not without a tension between the freedom and the fear that the «terribles jeux» imply. In the other two verses, there is an uncertainty about the feelings of this formidable mistress, who seems to be the real mistress of Baudelaire, Jeanne Duval, whose character was indeed, according to other poems , ombrageux; whose love (meaning of the word «flamme») was somewhat maleficent; which could be invaded by a sadness that could go as far as tears (les «humides brouillards qui nagent dans ses yeux»). But it is perhaps a memory of Lamartine's poem, ‘’La chute d’un ange’’ 'where the globe of the eyes of the giant Assafiel «Semblait toujours trempé d'un humide nuage, Et regardant à vide à travers ce brouillard...» (Xe vision). The verses of this quatrain are the succession of two ample and equal movements. 1 Tercet There follows the movement launched in the second quatrain, for, after the general picture of the first quatrain, the other stanzas merely develop and specify it. The usual opposition between the quatrains and the tercets is not to be found in this sonnet. The poet envisages other acts that he could afford on the body of this woman, &la...
