The Poor Glazier

a poem in prose

by Charlie Baudelaire

translated by Samuel Lees

for Chrisy

There are those, of a nature purely contemplative and altogether unfit for action, who, nevertheless, on occasion, under the influence of a mysterious and unknown force, will sweep to action with a speed of which they would not have thought themselves capable.

Those fierce cowards who, dreading to find their concierge in a foul mood, pace for an hour on her doorstep without daring to enter, or leave a letter on the side for a fortnight without opening it, or only make up their minds after six months to do something that should have been done a year ago, sometimes, driven by an irresistible force, will dart into the fray and fly like an arrow towards the heart of danger. The doctor and the moralist, who claim to know everything, cannot explain the source of this crazed energy, and how these idle lovers of pleasure, incapable of accomplishing the most simple and necessary things, at a given moment, find within themselves a supreme courage to commit the most absurd and often the most dangerous acts.

A friend of mine, the most harmless layabout in existence, once set fire to a forest to see, he claimed, whether the fire would take to it as eagerly as everyone claims. Ten times he tried and the experiment failed; but, on the eleventh attempt, it succeeded only too well.

Another will light a cigar by a barrel of gunpowder, to see, to know, to tempt fate, to prove to himself that he can do it, to play the game, to taste the pleasures of anxiety, for no real reason, on a whim, out of boredom.

It is a kind of energy that is born of boredom and idle thoughts, and those in whom it manifests itself so unexpectedly are, in general, as I have said, the most indolent and ethereal of individuals.

Another, timid to the point that he cannot look another man in the eye, that he has to muster all of his miserable courage to enter a cafe or to go up to the desk of the box office, whose guardians seem in his eyes to be invested with the majesty of Minos, Aeacus and Radamanthus, will throw himself around the neck of an old man in the street and kiss him passionately before a crowd of stunned spectators.

Why? Because… because the old man’s face was irresistibly lovely? Perhaps, but it is more likely that even he does not know the reason for his actions.

More than once was I the victim of one of these fits of passion, that give us reason to believe that evil spirits haunt our bodies and are making us fulfil their most absurd desires.

One morning I got up feeling sullen and sad, tired from doing nothing, and prompted, it seemed to me, to do something great, something scandalous, and I opened the window, alas!

(Note that the spirit of mystification that, in some people, is not the result of prolonged effort or calculation, but of a sudden and accidental inspiration, resembles, if only in the intensity of desire, that humour ― hysterical according to doctors, satanic according to those who know better ― which leads us dutifully towards a swarm of dangerous and discreditable deeds.)

The first person I saw down in the road was a glazier whose shrill cry floated up through the dense filthy air of the city. Why I was seized by a sudden and despotic hatred towards this poor fellow, I cannot tell you.

― Hey, you down there! I shouted, come up here! and as I waited, I reflected, not without a certain glee, that, my room being on the sixth floor, and the staircase extremely narrow, he must have had all the trouble in the world to get up, constantly bumping the edges of his fragile merchandise.

At last he appeared. With a curious eye I examined his wares, and then said ― What? no coloured glasses? no pinks, no reds, nor blues, no magical panes, no windows onto paradise? What insolence! How dare you parade through these grey slums without glasses that will put colour into people’s lives, that will make life beautiful! ― And with that, I pushed him towards the stairs, down which he stumbled, while muttering imprecations.

I went to the balcony and took a small flowerpot, and when the man emerged from the building, I dropped my bomb on the back of his load. The shock made him tumble backwards, destroying his pitiful ambulant fortune, with a sound like a crystal palace shattered by thunder.

And, drunk with folly, I yelled with fury: « Make life beautiful! make life beautiful! »

These nervous pleasantries are not without danger, and often they can cost one dear. But what does eternal damnation matter to one who in one second finds an infinite pleasure?