Читать книгу Paris Spleen - Charles Baudelaire - Страница 10

How the close of an autumn day pierces! Pierces to the point of pain, for delightful sensations, though vague, may be intense, and there is no sharper pang than that of Infinity.

What greater delight than for the eye to drown in the immensity of sky and sea! Solitude, silence, incomparably chaste blue, on the horizon a tiny sail quivering which, by its smallness and isolation, resembles my irredeemable existence, monotonous melody of the sea swell — all these things think through me, or I think through them (for, in the grandeur of reverie, the I is soon lost); they think, I say, but musically and picturesquely, without quibble, without syllogism, without deduction.

These thoughts, whether from inside me or from external things, soon become too intense. Voluptuous energy creates uneasiness and positive suffering. My overtense nerves then give out only peevish and painful vibrations.

And now the depth of sky is appalling; its clarity exasperates me. I find the indifference of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle, revolting . . . Ah! must I suffer eternally, or else eternally flee the beautiful? Nature, pitiless enchantress, always victorious rival, let me go! Tempt no more my desires and my pride! Study of the beautiful is a duel in which the artist cries out in fear, before being bested.

2. The confiteor is a liturgical form (beginning, literally, I confess) acknowledging sinfulness and requesting mercy.