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by Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867)
Translation © by Richard Joseph Howard (b. 1929)

À la très‑chère, à la très‑belle
Language: French (Français) 
Our translations:  CAT ENG
À la très-chère, à la très-belle
Qui remplit mon cœur de clarté,
À l'ange, à l'idole immortelle,
Salut en immortalité !

Elle se répand dans ma vie
Comme un air imprégné de sel,
Et dans mon âme inassouvie
Verse le goût de l'éternel.

Sachet toujours frais qui parfume
L'atmosphère d'un cher réduit,
Encensoir oublié qui fume
En secret à travers la nuit,

Comment, amour incorruptible,
T'exprimer avec vérité ?
Grain de musc qui gis, invisible,
Au fond de mon éternité !

À la [très-bonne]1, à la très-belle,
Qui [fait ma joie et ma santé]2,
À l'ange, à l'idole immortelle,
Salut en immortalité !

G. Fauré sets stanzas 1, 2, 4, 5

About the headline (FAQ)

View original text (without footnotes)

Confirmed with Charles Baudelaire, Les Épaves, Amsterdam: À l'enseigne du Coq, 1866, in Galanteries, pages 71-73. Also confirmed with Charles Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes de Charles Baudelaire, vol. I : Les Fleurs du mal, Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1868, in Spleen et Idéal, pages 227-228. Punctuation follows first edition.

First published by À l'enseigne du Coq in Les Épaves, 1866; also appears under Spleen et Idéal as number 94 in the 1868 edition of Les Fleurs du mal.

1 Fauré: "très chère" (very dear)
2 Fauré and Gretchaninov: "remplit mon cœur de clarté"

Text Authorship:

  • by Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867), "Hymne", appears in Les Épaves, in 2. Galanteries, no. 10, appears in Les Fleurs du mal, in 1. Spleen et Idéal, no. 94, Amsterdam, À l'enseigne du Coq, first published 1866

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • CAT Catalan (Català) (Salvador Pila) , copyright © 2023, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • ENG English (Shawn Thuris) , "Hymn", copyright ©, (re)printed on this website with kind permission


Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 20
Word count: 103

Hymn
 (Sung text for setting by B. Bennett)
 Matches base text
Language: English  after the French (Français) 
To Love in all her loveliness
 [ ... ]
This text may be copyright, so we will not display it until we obtain permission to do so or discover it is public-domain.

Composition:

    Set to music by Bruce Christian Bennett (b. 1968), "Hymn", 1996-97 [ SATB chorus ], from Four Pieces, no. 1

Text Authorship:

  • by Richard Joseph Howard (b. 1929), copyright ©

Based on:

  • a text in French (Français) by Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867), "Hymne", appears in Les Épaves, in 2. Galanteries, no. 10, appears in Les Fleurs du mal, in 1. Spleen et Idéal, no. 94, Amsterdam, À l'enseigne du Coq, first published 1866
    • Go to the text page.

Go to the general single-text view

This text was added to the website: 2003-12-07
Line count: 20
Word count: 103

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

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