The Confiteor of the Artist

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section eleven of Little Poems in Prose by Charles Baudelaire.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The confiture
of the artist. How penetrating is the end of an
autumn day. Ah, Yes, penetrating enough to be painful, even

(00:20):
for there are certain delicious sensations whose vagueness does not
prevent them from being intense, And none more keen than
the perception of the infinite. He has a great delight
who drowns his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea, solitude, silence,
the incomparable chastity of the azure, a little sail trembling

(00:44):
upon the horizon by its very littleness and isolation, imitating
my irremediable existence, the melodious monotone of the surge, all
these things thinking through me and I through them. For
in the grandeur of the reverie, the ego swiftly lost.
They think, I say, but musically and picturesquely, without quibbles,

(01:05):
without syllogisms, without deductions. These thoughts, as they arise in
me or spring forth from external objects, soon become always
too intense. The energy working within pleasure creates an uneasiness,
a positive suffering. My nerves are too tense to give
another than clamoring and dolorous vibrations. And now the profundity

(01:30):
of the sky dismays me, Its limpidity exasperates me. The
insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle revolt me.
Ah must one eternally suffer. Forever be a fugitive from beauty, nature,
pitiless enchantress, ever victorious rival. Leave me tempt, my desires,

(01:53):
and my pride no more. The contemplation of beauty is
a duel where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished.
End of Section eleven.