Litanies of Satan (Charles Baudelaire, 1857)
Wisest of Angels, whom your fate betrays,
And, fairest of them all, deprives of praise,
Satan have pity on my long despair!
O Prince of exiles, who have suffered wrong,
Yet, vanquished, rise from every fall more strong,
Satan have pity on my long despair!
All-knowing lord of subterranean things,
Who remedy our human sufferings,
Satan have pity on my long despair!
To lepers and lost beggars full of lice,
You teach, through love, the taste of Paradise.
Satan have pity on my long despair!
You who on Death, your old and sturdy wife,
Engendered Hope — sweet folly of this life —
Satan have pity on my long despair!
You give to the doomed man that calm, unbaffled
Gaze that rebukes the mob around the scaffold,
Satan have pity on my long despair!
You know in what closed corners of the earth
A jealous God has hidden gems of worth.
Satan have pity on my long despair!
You know the deepest arsenals, where slumber
The breeds of buried metals without number.
Satan have pity on my long despair!
You whose huge hand has hidden the abyss
From sleepwalkers that skirt the precipice,
Satan have pity on my long despair!
You who give suppleness to drunkards' bones
When trampled down by horses on the stones,
Satan have pity on my long despair!
You who, to make his sufferings the lighter,
Taught man to mix the sulphur with the nitre,
Satan have pity on my long despair!
You fix your mask, accomplice full of guile,
On rich men's foreheads, pitiless and vile.
Satan have pity on my long despair!
You who fill the hearts and eyes of wh0res
With love of trifles and the cult of sores,
Satan have pity on my long despair!
The exile's staff, inventor's lamp, caresser
Of hanged men, and of plotters the confessor,
Satan have pity on my long despair!
Step-father of all those who, robbed of pardon,
God drove in anger out of Eden's garden
Satan have pity on my long despair!
Prayer
Praise to you, Satan! in the heights you lit,
And also in the deeps where now you sit,
Vanquished, in Hell, and dream in hushed defiance
O that my soul, beneath the Tree of Science
Might rest near you, while shadowing your brows,
It spreads a second Temple with its boughs.
Translated by Roy Campbell in 1952.
Unfortunately, this poem has been appropriated by metal groups worldwide because they fancy its supposed Satanism (there are two adaptations by Greek bands alone smh). This is a distortion of what Baudelaire had in mind. Not that he does not refer in an affectionate manner to Satan in the poem. He also clearly wanted to annoy the religious establishment and the poem earned him a deserving fine for insulting public decency.
But IMO this is not the main thing that makes the poem attractive.I see it more as an attempt to offer solace to victims of injustice as well as pity for the outcasts. Baudelaire's peculiar ethics can be exemplified in the following quotes:
"There is an invincible taste for prostitution in the heart of man, from which comes his horror of solitude. He wants to be 'two'. The man of genius wants to be 'one'.... It is this horror of solitude, the need to lose oneself in the external flesh, that man nobly calls 'the need to love'."
"Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage."
The poem is also beautifully constructed and helped revitalize Romanticism. The dedication to Theophile Gautier might be a sign that he was more interest in form than one might think - and the poem having the form of a litany might have something to do with aesthetic reasons too. It is no accident that someone as remote as Victor Hugo from Baudelaire's ethics and values praised his work.
Nikopol quoting the poem in
The Carnival of the Immortals.