The full text of L'Albatros in the original French with an English rendering, what happens on the deck of that ship, and why this bird became the most famous portrait of the poet.
Read the poem
The four stanzas of L'Albatros, laid out as in an old edition: the poet's name, the number II the poem bears in the 1861 edition, the title in capitals, and nothing else. Printed on thick matte eco-friendly paper.
Printed and shipped from a studio near you: most orders arrive in 5 business days.
Souvent, pour s'amuser, les hommes d'équipagePrennent 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 blanchesComme 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 Poëte est semblable au prince des nuéesQui 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.
A plain English rendering, offered as a reading aid. The poster keeps the original French.
Often, to amuse themselves, the men of the crew catch albatrosses, vast birds of the seas, which follow, idle companions of the voyage, the ship gliding over the bitter deep.
No sooner have they set them down on the deck than these kings of the azure, clumsy and ashamed, pitifully let their great white wings drag beside them like oars.
This winged traveler, how awkward and limp he is! He, once so beautiful, how comic and ugly! One teases his beak with a stubby pipe, another, limping, mimics the cripple who once flew!
The Poet is like the prince of the clouds, who haunts the storm and laughs at the archer; exiled on the ground amid the jeering, his giant's wings keep him from walking.
On long crossings, sailors would sometimes catch albatrosses to pass the time. Baudelaire starts from that real scene: a magnificent bird, king of the open sea, turns clumsy and ridiculous the moment it is set down on the deck. The crew laughs, teases its beak with a pipe, mimics its limping walk.
He may well have seen the scene himself. In 1841, his stepfather, General Aupick, sent him on a long sea voyage to the île Bourbon, today's Réunion, to keep him away from Paris and its debts. Baudelaire hated the crossing, but it marked him for life. The poem did not appear until 1859, in the Revue française, and two years later it entered the second edition of Les Fleurs du mal, in second place.
The last stanza turns the anecdote into a self-portrait: the poet is that bird. Made for the open sea and the storm, he becomes awkward and mocked as soon as he has to walk among the crowd. What makes him great is exactly what makes him unfit for ordinary life. And you do not need to be a poet to know that feeling: the student who shines on paper and freezes when called on, the artist ill at ease in meetings, anyone whose inner life is larger than their social ease.
Four quatrains of alexandrines with alternating rhymes: a classical form for a movement of falling, from the sky down to the deck of the ship.
"Comme des avirons traîner à côté d'eux."
The first stanza glides like the bird, with a long sentence and a calm rhythm above the bitter deep. The second breaks the flight: on the deck, the kings of the azure are ashamed, and their great white wings are nothing but dead weight, dragging like oars.
"L'autre mime, en boitant, l'infirme qui volait !"
Nothing but exclamations: awkward, limp, comic, ugly. The bird is no longer described, it is jeered at. Two sailors step in, one with his pipe, the other mimicking it. The crowd never understands the fall of what once flew higher than it.
"Ses ailes de géant l'empêchent de marcher."
The comparison arrives, explicit: at home in the storm, laughing at the archer, the poet is exiled on the ground, hobbled by his own wings. The last line is one of the most quoted in French poetry, because everyone who has ever felt out of place recognizes themselves in it.
Because the poem reads in a single glance: sixteen alexandrines in four even blocks, like a horizon. In 50x70 cm (20x28 in), every line keeps its place, and the white of the paper becomes the sky where the bird was king.
Above a desk, in a reading nook or in a teenager's bedroom, it is a poem that comforts everyone who feels too large for the room they are in.
With Stillness No. 3, an exclusive studio creation: midnight blue clouds rising toward a lavender sky. It is the albatross's sky, the storm he laughs at, before he is set down on the deck.
Side by side in 50x70 cm, the text on one side and the sky on the other, the two posters tell the same flight. The cream of the page answers the lavender, and the deep blue gives the wall its height.
In 30x40 or 50x70 cm (12x16 or 20x28 in).
From Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1859 in the Revue française, the poem entered the second edition of the collection in 1861, where it is number II in the section Spleen et Idéal.
The poet is like the albatross: majestic in the sky, clumsy and mocked on the deck of a ship. Sublime in his art, he is awkward and misunderstood in ordinary life.
Four quatrains of alexandrines with alternating rhymes. The first three stanzas tell of the bird's capture and mockery, and the fourth delivers the comparison with the poet.
It is traced back to the 1841 sea voyage to the île Bourbon, today's Réunion, that General Aupick, Baudelaire's stepfather, imposed on him. Baudelaire was twenty at the time.
Léo Ferré sang it in 1967 on his album Léo Ferré chante Baudelaire. Ernest Chausson had already written a song on it, published in 1879.
Yes: Heure d'été sets it like a page from a book, in 30x40, 40x50 or 50x70 cm (12x16, 16x20 or 20x28 in), on thick matte eco-friendly paper.
The Albatross is the portrait of every soul too large for the room it stands in. If it is one of yours, give it a place where you can see it every day. And to carry on the crossing, read Man and the Sea or Demain, dès l'aube.
See the poster
