The full text of Harmonie du soir in the original French with an English rendering, why the same lines return from one stanza to the next, and where this sunset leads.
Read the poem
The four stanzas inside a fine rule, under the title of the collection and a large title in capitals, the first word in small capitals, and at the foot the poet's name with the number XLIII from the 1857 edition. Printed on thick matte eco-friendly paper.
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Voici venir les temps où vibrant sur sa tigeChaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir ;Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir,— Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige ! —
Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir ;Le violon frémit comme un cœur qu'on afflige ;— Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige ! —Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir.
Le violon frémit comme un cœur qu'on afflige,Un cœur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir !— Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir ;Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.
Un cœur tendre qui hait le néant vaste et noirDu passé lumineux recueille tout vestige ;— Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige ;Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir !
A plain English rendering, offered as a reading aid. The poster keeps the original French.
Now comes the time when, quivering on its stem, each flower evaporates like a censer; sounds and scents turn in the evening air; a melancholy waltz and a languid dizziness!
Each flower evaporates like a censer; the violin trembles like a heart in distress; a melancholy waltz and a languid dizziness! The sky is sad and beautiful like a great altar.
The violin trembles like a heart in distress, a tender heart that hates the vast black nothingness! The sky is sad and beautiful like a great altar; the sun has drowned in its own congealing blood.
A tender heart that hates the vast black nothingness gathers every trace of the luminous past; the sun has drowned in its own congealing blood; your memory shines in me like a monstrance!
Evening falls. The flowers give off their scent, a violin plays in the distance, the sky reddens and then goes out. Nothing else happens: no character, no action, just a moment of the day dissolving.
But the vocabulary is that of the church, and it takes over everything: censer, altar, monstrance. Baudelaire turns the sunset into a mass, and the last line reveals who it is for: a memory, kept like a host. The religious poem was a love poem, one that tradition places among those addressed to Apollonie Sabatier.
Why do the lines come back? Because Baudelaire borrows the principle of the pantoum, a form of Malay origin that the French Romantics adopted: the second and fourth lines of each stanza become the first and third of the next. He takes liberties with it, which is why it is often called a false pantoum. The effect is physical: by dint of returning, the lines stop being read and become pure sound, like the waltz and the violin the poem speaks of. The poem does not only describe a dizziness, it produces one. Debussy, fittingly, set it to music.
Four quatrains of alexandrines on only two rhymes. The poem moves forward by turning on itself, like a waltz.
"Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir"
"Voici venir les temps," now comes the time: the phrase is almost biblical, it announces an event. Then everything evaporates, turns, waltzes. Sounds and scents mingle in the same air, what Baudelaire calls elsewhere correspondences.
"Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige."
The repeated lines return like a refrain no one chose. The violin trembles, the heart suffers, the vast black nothingness draws near. The twilight stops being pretty: it becomes a death agony watched head on.
"Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir !"
At the end of its night, the poem turns everything around. The heart gathers the traces of the luminous past, and the memory shines like a monstrance, the vessel that displays the host. Where the sun went out, an inner light takes over.
Because you can see its form. On the page, the returning lines answer each other from one stanza to the next, and the eye travels the path the ear does. In 50x70 cm (20x28 in), this play of mirrors reads from across the room, and the large title in capitals holds the wall.
In a bedroom, above a piano or in a living room where music plays in the evening, it is the most musical poem in Les Fleurs du mal, the one you remember without ever learning it.
With Watercolor Sunset, an exclusive studio creation: gray clouds pierced by a golden light. It is the sky of the poem, "triste et beau comme un grand reposoir," sad and beautiful like a great altar, at the exact moment the sun drowns.
Side by side in 50x70 cm, the page and the sky tell the same hour. The gray answers the ink, the gold warms the cream paper: a wall for the end of the day.
In 30x40, 40x50 or 50x70 cm (12x16, 16x20 or 20x28 in).
From Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) by Charles Baudelaire, published in 1857, where the poem is number XLIII in the section Spleen et Idéal. Tradition places it among the poems addressed to Apollonie Sabatier.
A poetic form of Malay origin in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza become the first and third of the next. Baudelaire adapts the principle freely, which is why the poem is called a false pantoum.
Because repeating the lines creates a circular movement, like a waltz. By dint of returning, the lines become music, and the poem produces the dizziness it describes.
A monstrance is the liturgical vessel that displays the host. By comparing the memory of the beloved woman to it, Baudelaire turns that memory into a sacred light that endures once the sun has set.
Four quatrains of alexandrines built on only two rhymes, in -ige and in -oir, with lines carried over from one stanza to the next.
Yes: Heure d'été sets Harmonie du soir like a page from a book, in 30x40, 40x50 or 50x70 cm (12x16, 16x20 or 20x28 in), on thick matte eco-friendly paper.
Harmonie du soir is the most musical poem in Les Fleurs du mal. If it is one of yours, give it a place where you can see it every day. To stay with the music of verse, read L'Invitation au voyage or Verlaine's Autumn Song.
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