The Sword and the Sickle (William Blake)

 

When scorched lands replace sunflower fields, I search for words that gave refuge to others before me.

Last night, when walking my dog under a midnight moon, I listened to the coyote howl. And, imperceptibly, murmured the immortal lines from William Blake, as if my own howl:

The sword sang on the barren heath,
The sickle in the fruitful field;
The sword he sung a song of death,
But could not make the sickle yield.

 

… This morning, I thought about Baudelaire and the prévoyant title of his most famous book Les Fleurs du Mal circa 1857.  While my sky was blue and the clouds were gone, I knew of past dark skies. So I leafed through the copy of Baudelaire’s book that I have had since my high school years.

Ciel brouillé was not one of my favorite poems in that collection. But since my mind was to cloudy skies, I decided to read it again.

As the title indicates, The Flowers of Evil deals with decadence, suffering we have inherited from the original sin, and self hatred consequently. But that is the “evil” in Baudelaire’s view. The flowers, while blooming out of the evil in humanity, sometimes promise a better world, even an ideal one once we recognise the evil in us and do not let it dominate our days.

Since my high school days, I have always searched for these flowers in Baudelaire’s words, even when the skies were dark and cloudy.

So, re-reading Ciel brouillé I looked for the promise for blue skies.

On dirait ton regard d'une vapeur couvert;
Ton oeil mystérieux (est-il bleu, gris ou vert?)
Alternativement tendre, rêveur, cruel,
Réfléchit l'indolence et la pâleur du ciel.

Tu rappelles ces jours blancs, tièdes et voilés,
Qui font se fondre en pleurs les coeurs ensorcelés,
Quand, agités d'un mal inconnu qui les tord,
Les nerfs trop éveillés raillent l'esprit qui dort.

The poem was about a woman, as many of the book’s pages are. But there is more, perhaps between the lines, than just a regretful and morbid attitude toward that woman’s memory. I think there is a statement about humanity, perhaps following the poet’s constant sufferance from the sequelae of the original sin.

In that regard, the translation of the second stanza by William Aggeler are worth noting⁽¹⁾

You call to mind those days, white, soft, and mild,
That make enchanted hearts burst into tears,
When, shaken by a mysterious, wracking pain,
The nerves, too wide-awake, jeer at the sleeping mind.

 

… When the scorched lands replace sunflower fields, I wonder if the original sin was indeed the disobedience leading to tasting the fruit from the tree of good and evil. Or perhaps it was the jealousy of Cain leading to the murderous act toward his own brother Abel as Baudelaire predicted in the preface of  Les Fleurs du Mal ⁽²⁾

C'est l'Ennui!—l'œil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,
Il rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!

It's Boredom!—eye brimming with an involuntary tear
He dreams of gallows while smoking his hookah.
You know him, reader, this delicate monster,
Hypocritical reader, my likeness, my brother!

March 10, 2022

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2022

 

(1)   William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

(2)   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Fleurs_du_mal