With Baudelaire in Brussels, #02
Monday, 26 September 1864
To mark the 160th anniversary of Georges Barral’s trip to Brussels and his five-day visit with the poet Charles Baudelaire, I am publishing my translation of the first four days from his memoir on Substack. You can find the previous instalment here.
It is exactly ten o’clock in the morning. I leave the Orangerie greenhouse in haste and enter the confines reserved for the inflation of the Géant. I take the workers’ exit onto the boulevard Botanique and make my way hurriedly through Brussels. I fly like an arrow, descending rue Royale, saluting the elegant statue of Léopold I as I pass below the Colonne de la Constitution. Soon he will be offering me his hand, in flesh and blood.
Following the instructions that I was given, I turn right, then left to cross rue de Ligne and Bois-Sauvage. I tear down towards the lower town and dive into the interminable rue de la Montagne. I must ask my way on several occasions. The street is on a steep slope, narrow, busy, and commercial. I feel troubled at the thought of seeing Baudelaire. Nadar has warned me that he is of a complicated and distant nature. I have never come into contact with the author of the Les Fleurs du mal, but I am acquainted with his audacious and utterly beautiful poems. I even know some of the more notorious parts by heart, and I recollect them while walking.
I finally arrive at number 28 and the Hôtel du Grand Miroir, well known in Brussels for its splendour. Today, it is famous the world over because of that great and sorrowful writer’s prolonged stay. It is a place of pilgrimage for poets and cultivated spirits.
In the lobby the proprietor Mr. Lepage (a kind and generous compatriot – he is French and a Parisian) is just seeing out some travellers.
“Mr. Baudelaire, if you please!”
Mr Lepage studies me, hesitates, and then makes a spirited reply. “Ah, Mr. Charles, you mean?”
“Yes, it is Mr. Charles Baudelaire whom I have come to see,” I repeat, laughing at this skeptical question.
“Well,” continues Mr. Lepage, “Mr. Charles is in the courtyard, and is waiting for someone.”
I make my way towards the stated location. In a corner brightly lit by a ray of sunlight, the imperious silhouette of Baudelaire rises immediately. Guessing by my appearance that I must be the anticipated emissary, he does not give me time to tell him that I have come on Nadar’s behalf.
“Well, nicely done,” he bursts out. “I have been waiting for more than an hour!” He then softens, and holds out his right hand to me – an elegant one with very slender fingers. “Let us go, let us go. It seems to me that we are running short of time.”
I mention Nadar’s instructions that I must take him to eat something along the way. In order to reach Porte de Schaerbeek, Baudelaire decides to take rue de la Madeline and rue Montagne de la Cour to Place Royale. There, we can easily lunch at the Taverne du Globe. The poet holds my arm as we climb up the inclined streets and asks me, “Who are you? What do you do? You are awfully young to be part of a daunting scientific commission. For that, you should have some grey hair,” he says wryly as he looks at my budding moustache.
I give my name, my background (a student of both law and science), my occupation, as well as the place of my birth in Paris; rue de Grenelle, opposite the Houdon fountain. I tell him about my various studies. I go into numerous and minute details which seem to greatly amuse Baudelaire. I am garrulous, and very enthusiastic. I talk about myself with the candour of an adolescent who is intoxicated by his recent entry into active life. In any case, Baudelaire seems delighted. His face lights up. He encourages me in my confidences. I feel that I have won him over, and here we are fast friends.
“I, too, am a child of the Latin quarter and of the Luxembourg,” he says when it is his turn to speak. “I was born on rue Hautefeuille, in a very old house with turrets, at number 13 – an unlucky number and one that has brought me no joy. Ah, how happy I am to finally meet a Frenchman from France, a Parisian from Paris, a true compatriot! I am so alone, so abandoned. For five months now I have been drowning in this barren, unsympathetic, hostile Brussels.”
A little inconsiderately, I interrupt him and ask, “But why did you come here, and why do you stay?”
“Nadar asked me the same question when he came at the beginning of September to meet with the authorities. I don’t know exactly. I hoped to find peace, a way to escape – at least momentarily – from the worries of Parisian life, and from the pursuit of an insatiable woman. Ah, you are young and free. Keep watch over your heart! Do not ever fall into female clutches! And now I am ill, fundamentally ill. Since my birth I have possessed a loathsome temperament, the fault of my poorly matched parents. I am frayed because of their disparity. This is what it means to be the child of a twenty-seven-year-old mother and a sixty-two-year- old father! A disproportionate union; thirty five years between them! You told me that you studied experi- mental physiology with Claude Bernard, so ask your professor what he thinks of the ill-conceived fruit of such a coupling. On stud farms, the stallions that are too young are made to wait, and the older ones are sent to the knackers. Why should we not do the same thing in human society? Sparta had its good points. My language is not rigorously scientific, but you understand me all the same!”
This confession, made in halting speech, astonishes and unsettles me so much that Baudelaire hesitates a moment in his thoughts, looking for the right words. I remain silent.
This is another fascinating glimpse of the poet and congratulations on such a flowing translation!