La Beauté 

"La Beauté"— Charles Baudelaire, "Les Fleurs du mal", (Spleen et Idéal).

Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre,
Et mon sein, où chacun s'est meurtri tour à tour,
Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour
Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière.

Je trône dans l'azur comme un sphinx incompris;
J'unis un coeur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes;
Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes,
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.

Les poètes, devant mes grandes attitudes,
Que j'ai l'air d'emprunter aux plus fiers monuments,
Consumeront leurs jours en d'austères études;

Car j'ai, pour fasciner ces dociles amants,
De purs miroirs qui font toutes choses plus belles:
Mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clartés éternelles!


"Beauty"— Charles Baudelaire, "The Flowers of Evil”, (Spleen and Ideal).

I am as lovely as a dream in stone,
And this my heart where each finds death in turn,
Inspires the poet with a love as lone
As clay eternal and as taciturn.

Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows,
My throne is in the heaven's azure deep;
I hate all movements that disturb my pose,
I smile not ever, neither do I weep.

Before my monumental attitudes,
That breathe a soul into the plastic arts,
My poets pray in austere studious moods,

For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts,
Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies,
The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.


This sculpture in marble was fashioned by the preeminent French sculptor Auguste Rodin.
I shot this image at Hôtel Biron (Rodin Museum) in Paris and I thought that a poem by my favorite French poet could be used as a comment.
Like any French teenager I had to study Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) at school and ever since his words never left my soul.
Whatever I have done in my life was always influenced by Baudelaire and Rodin...