CXXVI - The Voyage

To Maxime du Camp

To a child who is fond of maps and engravings

The universe is the size of his immense hunger.

Ah! how vast is the world in the light of a lamp!

In memory's eyes how small the world is!

One morning we set out, our brains aflame,

Our hearts full of resentment and bitter desires,

And we go, following the rhythm of the wave,

Lulling our infinite on the finite of the seas:

Some, joyful at fleeing a wretched fatherland;

Others, the horror of their birthplace; a few,

Astrologers drowned in the eyes of some woman,

Some tyrannic Circe with dangerous perfumes.

Not to be changed into beasts, they get drunk

With space, with light, and with fiery skies;

The ice that bites them, the suns that bronze them,

Slowly efface the bruise of the kisses.

But the true voyagers are only those who leave

Just to be leaving; hearts light, like balloons,

They never turn aside from their fatality

And without knowing why they always say: "Let's go!"

Those whose desires have the form of the clouds,

And who, as a raw recruit dreams of the cannon,

Dream of vast voluptuousness, changing and strange,

Whose name the human mind has never known!

II

Horror! We imitate the top and bowling ball,

Their bounding and their waltz; even in our slumber

Curiosity torments us, rolls us about,

Like a cruel Angel who lashes suns.

Singular destiny where the goal moves about,

And being nowhere can be anywhere!

Toward which Man, whose hope never grows weary,

Is ever running like a madman to find rest!

Our soul's a three-master seeking Icaria;

A voice resounds upon the bridge: "Keep a sharp eye!"

From aloft a voice, ardent and wild, cries:

"Love... glory... happiness!" �Damnation! It's a shoal!

Every small island sighted by the man on watch

Is the Eldorado promised by Destiny;

Imagination preparing for her orgy

Finds but a reef in the light of the dawn.

O the poor lover of imaginary lands!

Must he be put in irons, thrown into the sea,

That drunken tar, inventor of Americas,

Whose mirage makes the abyss more bitter?

Thus the old vagabond tramping through the mire

Dreams with his nose in the air of brilliant Edens;

His enchanted eye discovers a Capua

Wherever a candle lights up a hut.

III

Astonishing voyagers! What splendid stories

We read in your eyes as deep as the seas!

Show us the chest of your rich memories,

Those marvelous jewels, made of ether and stars.

We wish to voyage without steam and without sails!

To brighten the ennui of our prisons,

Make your memories, framed in their horizons,

Pass across our minds stretched like canvasses.

Tell us what you have seen.

IV

"We have seen stars

And waves; we have also seen sandy wastes;

And in spite of many a shock and unforeseen

Disaster, we were often bored, as we are here.

The glory of sunlight upon the purple sea,

The glory of cities against the setting sun,

Kindled in our hearts a troubling desire

To plunge into a sky of alluring colors.

The richest cities, the finest landscapes,

Never contained the mysterious attraction

Of the ones that chance fashions from the clouds

And desire was always making us more avid!

— Enjoyment fortifies desire.

Desire, old tree fertilized by pleasure,

While your bark grows thick and hardens,

Your branches strive to get closer to the sun!

Will you always grow, tall tree more hardy

Than the cypress? — However, we have carefully

Gathered a few sketches for your greedy album,

Brothers who think lovely all that comes from afar!

We have bowed to idols with elephantine trunks;

Thrones studded with luminous jewels;

Palaces so wrought that their fairly-like splendor

Would make your bankers have dreams of ruination;

And costumes that intoxicate the eyes;

Women whose teeth and fingernails are dyed

And clever mountebanks whom the snake caresses."

And then, and then what else?

VI

"O childish minds!

Not to forget the most important thing,

We saw everywhere, without seeking it,

From the foot to the top of the fatal ladder,

The wearisome spectacle of immortal sin:

Woman, a base slave, haughty and stupid,

Adoring herself without laughter or disgust;

Man, a greedy tyrant, ribald, hard and grasping,

A slave of the slave, a gutter in the sewer;

The hangman who feels joy and the martyr who sobs,

The festival that blood flavors and perfumes;

The poison of power making the despot weak,

And the people loving the brutalizing whip;

Several religions similar to our own,

All climbing up to heaven; Saintliness

Like a dilettante who sprawls in a feather bed,

Seeking voluptuousness on horsehair and nails;

Prating humanity, drunken with its genius,

And mad now as it was in former times,

Crying to God in its furious death-struggle:

'O my fellow, O my master, may you be damned!'

The less foolish, bold lovers of Madness,

Fleeing the great flock that Destiny has folded,

Taking refuge in opium's immensity!

— That's the unchanging report of the entire globe."

VII

Bitter is the knowledge one gains from voyaging!

The world, monotonous and small, today,

Yesterday, tomorrow, always, shows us our image:

An oasis of horror in a desert of ennui!

Must one depart? Remain? If you can stay, remain;

Leave, if you must. One runs, another hides

To elude the vigilant, fatal enemy,

Time! There are, alas! those who rove without respite,

Like the Wandering Jew and like the Apostles,

Whom nothing suffices, neither coach nor vessel,

To flee this infamous retiary; and others

Who know how to kill him without leaving their cribs.

And when at last he sets his foot upon our spine,

We can hope and cry out: Forward!

Just as in other times we set out for China,

Our eyes fixed on the open sea, hair in the wind,

We shall embark on the sea of Darkness

With the glad heart of a young traveler.

Do you hear those charming, melancholy voices

Singing: "Come this way! You who wish to eat

The perfumed Lotus! It's here you gather

The miraculous fruits for which your heart hungers;

Come and get drunken with the strange sweetness

Of this eternal afternoon?"

By the familiar accent we know the specter;

Our Pylades yonder stretch out their arms towards us.

"To refresh your heart swim to your Electra!"

Cries she whose knees we kissed in other days.

VIll

O Death, old captain, it is time! let's weigh anchor!

This country wearies us, O Death! Let us set sail!

Though the sea and the sky are black as ink,

Our hearts which you know well are filled with rays of light

Pour out your poison that it may refresh us!

This fire burns our brains so fiercely, we wish to plunge

To the abyss' depths, Heaven or Hell, does it matter?

To the depths of the Unknown to find something new!"

— William Aggeler, ​The Flowers of Evil​ (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Discussion questions :

1. What is the poem’s opening image? More generally, what does it represent? What does
the child have an appetite for?
2. In the second stanza, what do the verbs “following” and “lulling” evoke? What do they
suggest about the reasons why people travel?
3. To whom does “we” refer? From the narrator’s description of various kinds of travelers
(“some… a few…”), what can be inferred about their motivations for travelling? Can you
think of any examples (from film, literature, music, personal experience, etc.) that
illustrate this observation?
4. How do the motivations of the last group of travelers differ from those described in the
preceding stanzas? In what makes them ‘true voyagers’ in the narrator’s eyes?
5. Interpret the paradoxical verse “[Man] Is ever running like a madman to find rest!” In
what sense is travel a form of madness? Which other metaphors does Baudelaire
employ in section II to express this thought?
6. Sections III-IV take the form of a dialogue. Who are the speakers? How are their
experiences of travel different and how are they the same?
7. In the stanza describing a “voyage without steam and without sails!/To brighten the
ennui of our prisons” by making “memories, framed in their horizons,/Pass across our
minds stretched like canvasses”, to which kind of travel is Baudelaire alluding? Could
this be read anticipating certain modern-day technologies? Can a parallel be drawn with
our contemporary context?
8. To which part of the world do the orientalist details at the end of section IV (“idols with
elephantine trunks”, “Thrones studded with luminous jewels”, “ costumes that intoxicate
the eyes”) probably allude? What about in the following section (VI)? Which culture does
Baudelaire seem to have in mind?