La musique [parfois]1 me prend comme une mer !
	Vers ma pâle étoile,
Sous un plafond de brume ou dans un [pur]2 éther,
	Je mets à la voile ;

La poitrine en avant et [gonflant mes poumons
	De toile pesante,
Je monte et je descends sur le dos des grands monts
	D'eau retentissante ;]3

Je sens vibrer en moi toutes les passions
	D'un vaisseau qui souffre
Le bon vent, la tempête et ses convulsions

	Sur l'immense gouffre
Me [bercent, et parfois le calme, -- grand]4 miroir
	De mon désespoir !

View original text (without footnotes)

Confirmed with Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, Paris: Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 1857, in Spleen et Idéal, pages 174-175. Also confirmed with Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, Paris: Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 1861, in Spleen et Idéal, pages 158-159. 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, page 192. Punctuation follows 1857 edition. Note: this was number 76 in the 1857 edition of Les Fleurs du mal but number 69 or 71 in subsequent editions.

¹ 1857 edition, 1861 edition, E. Carter, and G. Charpentier: "souvent"
² 1857 edition, 1861 edition, E. Carter, and G. Charpentier: "vaste"
³ 1857 edition, 1861 edition, E. Carter, and G. Charpentier: "les poumons gonflés / Comme de la toile, / J'escalade le dos des flots amoncelés / Que la nuit me voile ;"
⁴ 1857 edition, 1861 edition, E. Carter, and G. Charpentier: "bercent. D'autres fois, calme plat, grand"

Text Authorship:

• by Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867), "La Musique", written 1857, appears in Les Fleurs du mal, in 1. Spleen et Idéal, no. 69, Paris, Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, first published 1857 [author's text checked 4 times against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

• by Jean-Guy Bailly (1925 - 2009), "La musique", 1982 [ medium voice and piano ], from Six poèmes de Charles Baudelaire, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]
• by Michel Bosc (b. 1963), "La musique", op. 135 [ high voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
• by Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. (1908 - 2012), "La musique" [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Gustave Charpentier (1860 - 1956), "La musique", 1894, published 1895 [ medium voice and piano ], from Poèmes chantés, no. 1, Éd. H. Tellier [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Marc Delmas (1885 - 1931), "La Musique", 1907, published [1909] [ high voice and piano ], Éd. littéraires et musicales A. Z. Mathot [sung text not yet checked]
• by Joseph Jongen (1873 - 1953), "La musique", op. 135 no. 2 (1948) [ medium voice and piano; or soprano, piano and string quartet ] [sung text not yet checked]
• by Gordon Kerry (b. 1961), "La musique", 1985 [ voice and piano ], from Obsessions, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]
• by Léon Orthel (1905 - 1985), "La musique", op. 72 (Deux mélodies) no. 1 (1975), published 1975 [ voice and piano ], Amsterdam, Donemus [sung text not yet checked]
• by Émile Poirson , "La Musique", op. 1 no. 3, published [1907] [ medium voice and piano ], from Chansons de poètes, no. 3, Éd. A.Z. Mathot [sung text not yet checked]
• by Lex Zwaap (1919 - 1988), as Lex van Delden, "La musique", op. 5 no. 1 (1939), published 2000, copyright © 1999 [ low voice and piano ], from Trois mélodies, no. 1, Amsterdam, Donemus [sung text not yet checked]

Settings in other languages, adaptations, or excerpts:

• Also set in English, a translation by John Kinsella (b. 1963) , appears in Divine Comedy: Journeys through a Regional Geography, W. W. Norton & Co, first published 2008, copyright ©, (re)printed on this website with kind permission ; composed by Gordon Kerry.
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• Also set in German (Deutsch), a translation by Stefan Zweig (1881 - 1942) , "Die Musik" ; composed by Robert Lillinger.
  • Go to the text. [Note: the text is not in the database yet.]
    
• Also set in Russian (Русский), a translation by Lev L'vovich Kobylinsky (1889 - 1947) , no title ; composed by Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev.
  • Go to the text.
    

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

• CZE Czech (Čeština) (Jaroslav Vrchlický) , "Hudba"
• ENG English (Cyril Meir Scott) , "Music", appears in The Flowers of Evil, London, Elkin Mathews, first published 1909
• ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "La musica", copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this page: Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 14
Word count: 90

Music often carries me away like a sea!
Toward my pale star,
Beneath a ceiling of mist or in a vast sky,
I cast anchor;

My chest a bowsprit and lungs billowing
Like sails,
I scale the back of waves gathering
As night drops its veil;

I feel all the passions of a stricken
Vessel vibrating inside me;
The fair wind, the tempest and its convulsions

Upon the immense gulf rock me.
At other times, becalmed, great mirror
Of my despair!