L’Albatros
- Author
- Charles Baudelaire
- Date
- 1861
- Language
- French
- Country
- Form
- Four quatrains of alexandrines, with alternating rhymes
- First published
- Les Fleurs du Mal, 1861 (first published 1859)
The source
Souvent, pour s’amuser, les hommes d’équipage
Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers,
Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage,
Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.
À peine les ont-ils déposés sur les planches,
Que ces rois de l’azur, maladroits et honteux,
Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes blanches
Comme des avirons traîner à côté d’eux.
Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule !
Lui, naguère si beau, qu’il est comique et laid !
L’un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule,
L’autre mime, en boitant, l’infirme qui volait !
Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées
Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer ;
Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,
Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.
“Often, to amuse themselves, the crew take albatrosses, vast birds of the sea, that follow, indolent travelling companions, the ship gliding over the bitter gulfs. Hardly have they set them down on the planks than these kings of the azure, clumsy and ashamed, pitifully let their great white wings drag at their sides like oars. This winged traveller, how awkward and weak he is! He, lately so beautiful, how comic and ugly! One teases his beak with a pipe; another mimics, limping, the cripple who flew! The Poet is like the prince of the clouds, who haunts the tempest and laughs at the archer; exiled on the ground amid the jeers, his giant wings keep him from walking.”
Commentary
Dr. Ruxandra RouxHead of Literary Research & Development
Charles Baudelaire, published in 1859 and placed second in the 1861 Les Fleurs du mal, in the section “Spleen et Idéal”. Sailors catch an albatross for fun, drop it on the deck, and watch the king of the sky waddle. It may echo his 1841 sea voyage toward the Indian Ocean. I would not bet on it.
The last stanza spells it out: the Poet is “the prince of the clouds”. In the sky those wings are power. On deck they are the problem: “His giant wings keep him from walking.” That is the cruelty of the poem. Baudelaire does not say the poet is better than the sailors. He says that what makes you extraordinary in one place makes you ridiculous in another, and that being displaced hurts. The sailors, for the record, are not remembered.
Songs
The song made from L’Albatros.
