Page:Poems of Baudelaire Sturm.djvu/37

 xxxiv CHARLES BAUDELAIRE:

appreciation of the artiﬁcial in beauty. There again he is comparable to Aubrey Beardsley, for I have read somewhere that when Beardsley was asked if ever he saw visions, he replied, “I do not permit myself to see them, except upon paper." The whole question of the colour of sound is one of supreme interest to the poet,o but it is too difﬁcult and abstract a question to be written of here. A famous sonnet by Rimbaud on the colour of the vowels has

founded a school of symbolists in France. I

will content myself with quoting that—in the original, since it loses too much by translation:

“ A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu, voyelles, Je dirai quelque jour vos naisszmces latentes,

A. noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes

Qui bourdonnent amour des puanteurs cruelles,

Golfes d’ombres; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes, Lances des glaciers tiers, rois blancs, frissons d’ombrelles; I, poupre, sang craché, rite des lévres belles

Dans la colére ou les ivresses pénitentes;

U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,

l’aix (les lrﬁtis semés d’animaux, paix des rides

Que l’alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux.

O, supreme clairon, plein de strideurs étranges,

Silences traverses des mondes et des anges.

.—-0 l’Omega, rayon violet de ses yer-1x."