The Swan (Baudelaire)
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''Le Cygne'' () is a poem by
Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited fro ...
published in the section "''Tableaux Parisiens''" () of ''
Les Fleurs du mal ''Les Fleurs du mal'' (; en, The Flowers of Evil, italic=yes) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. ''Les Fleurs du mal'' includes nearly all Baudelaire's poetry, written from 1840 until his death in August 1867. First publish ...
'' ().


Situation

It is the fourth poem of the section "Tableaux Parisiens", and the first in a series of three poems dedicated to
Victor Hugo Victor-Marie Hugo (; 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. During a literary career that spanned more than sixty years, he wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the great ...
. It is the second poem of the section named after one of its characters. The Swan is also the only poem of this section to feature a titular non-human protagonist.


Form

It is made up of two parts: seven
quatrains A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines. Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India, Ancient Greec ...
followed by six quatrains in
alexandrine Alexandrine is a name used for several distinct types of verse line with related metrical structures, most of which are ultimately derived from the classical French alexandrine. The line's name derives from its use in the Medieval French '' Rom ...
s. Its crossed
rhyme A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic ...
scheme alternates male and female endings.


Study


The characters


Andromache In Greek mythology, Andromache (; grc, Ἀνδρομάχη, ) was the wife of Hector, daughter of Eetion, and sister to Podes. She was born and raised in the city of Cilician Thebe, over which her father ruled. The name means 'man battler' or ...

Andromache, married to
Hector In Greek mythology, Hector (; grc, Ἕκτωρ, Hektōr, label=none, ) is a character in Homer's Iliad. He was a Trojan prince and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan War. Hector led the Trojans and their allies in the defense o ...
—a hero killed by
Achilles In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ) or Achilleus ( grc-gre, Ἀχιλλεύς) was a hero of the Trojan War, the greatest of all the Greek warriors, and the central character of Homer's ''Iliad''. He was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, k ...
during the
Trojan War In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans (Greeks) after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has ...
— after the fall of
Troy Troy ( el, Τροία and Latin: Troia, Hittite language, Hittite: 𒋫𒊒𒄿𒊭 ''Truwiša'') or Ilion ( el, Ίλιον and Latin: Ilium, Hittite language, Hittite: 𒃾𒇻𒊭 ''Wiluša'') was an ancient city located at Hisarlik in prese ...
becomes the captive of Pyrrhus (also called Neoptolemus), a son of Achilles, who has made her his concubine. Her son
Astyanax In Greek mythology, Astyanax (; grc, Ἀστυάναξ ''Astyánax'', "lord of the city") was the son of Hector, the crown prince of Troy, and his wife, Princess Andromache of Cilician Thebe."Astyanax". ''Oxford Classical Dictionary''. Oxford, 1 ...
was killed by the Greeks. Later she married Helenus, without ever forgetting Hector. Andromache symbolizes the desolate widow, the mourning mother. She is referred to in a number of works, in the ''
Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odysse ...
'' , ''the
Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan_War#Sack_of_Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to ...
'' , or in
Jean Racine Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ) (; 22 December 163921 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western traditio ...
‘s play ''Andromaque''. Her portrayal in the poem is built upon oppositions and
antitheses Antithesis (Greek for "setting opposite", from "against" and "placing") is used in writing or speech either as a proposition that contrasts with or reverses some previously mentioned proposition, or when two opposites are introduced together f ...
: ''bras d’un grand époux'' / ''tombeau vide'' (''arms of a great husband'' / ''empty tomb''), ''la main du superbe Pyrrhus'' / ''vil bétail'' (''hand of the superbe Pyrrhus'' / ''vile cattle''). She is also an allegory of the individual in exile .


The Swan

Pure and white, the swan symbolises metamorphosis. On earth it is ridiculous and out of its natural element, like ''th
Albatros
':the anti-hero applies equally (''ridicule et sublime'' / ''ridiculous and sublime''). Note the
alliteration Alliteration is the conspicuous repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase, often used as a literary device. A familiar example is "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers". Alliteration is used poetically in various ...
s in expression of a sigh, in the line ''Je pense à mon grand cygne , avec ses gestes fous'' (''I think of my great swan with its mad gestures''), and in in the lines ''Comme les exilés, ridicule et sublime / Et rongé d’un désir sans trêve !'' (''Like exiles , ridiculous and sublime / And gnawed by incessant desire''). The author also refers to the swan song as one among many symbols.


The negress

Her portrait is built on oppositions: the ''mud'', the ''wall'', the ''mist'' echoed the ''coconut tree'' and ''sublime Africa''. The Negress is surely a reference to
Jeanne Duval Jeanne Duval (; – c. 1862) was a Haitian-born actress and dancer of Multiracial, mixed French and Black people, black African ancestry. For 20 years, she was the muse of French poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire. They met in 1842 when ...
, the poet’s first mistress, a mixed race woman.


The orphans

These are an echo of the Roman She-Wolf, the
Capitoline Wolf The Capitoline Wolf (Italian: ''Lupa Capitolina'') is a bronze sculpture depicting a scene from the legend of the founding of Rome. The sculpture shows a she-wolf suckling the mythical twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. According to the ...
: they are compared to flowers and, like her, are withered and static.


The others

The poem opens and closes with an enumeration. At the same time, the characters are in no way specific: one can note the use of ''quiconque'' ("whomever".)


Conclusion

These beings are united in loss, and are figures, allegories of exile; they echo the exile of Victor Hugo, to whom the poem is dedicated (he left for the
Channel Islands The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...
as a result of his opposition to
Napoleon III Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...
). The poet chooses figures which are less and less sublime, becoming more and more commonplace, recalling once again the figure of the poet as alchemist. They are implicitly linked together and put on an equal footing— with Andromache becoming an animal (''vil bétail'' / ''vile cattle''), while the swan is humanized (''avec ses gestes fous'' / ''with its mad gestures'').


Reminiscence

The memory of the poet is fertilized by the Paris of the Grand Boulevards. The memory which ''sonne à plein souffle du cor'' () recalls the death of
Roland Roland (; frk, *Hrōþiland; lat-med, Hruodlandus or ''Rotholandus''; it, Orlando or ''Rolando''; died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the ...
in ''La
Chanson de Roland ''The Song of Roland'' (french: La Chanson de Roland) is an 11th-century ''chanson de geste'' based on the Frankish military leader Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778 AD, during the reign of the Carolingian king Charlemagne. It is ...
'', but is also expressed in the line ''mes chers souvenirs sont plus lourds que des rocs'' (''my dear memories are heavier than rocks''): the alliterations in (expressive of breath) and in (expressing heaviness) oppose one another, while ''cor'' and ''roc'' are a
palindrome A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as the words ''madam'' or ''racecar'', the date and time ''11/11/11 11:11,'' and the sentence: "A man, a plan, a canal – Panam ...
. Memory passes from plural to singular, from heaviness to lightness, from matter to music, from banality to value. The correspondences, allegories and images bring back to life those memories made static by
spleen The spleen is an organ found in almost all vertebrates. Similar in structure to a large lymph node, it acts primarily as a blood filter. The word spleen comes .
. One notes the semantic field of evil, as well as the anaphora ''Je pense...''(''I think...''). The poet seems to be frozen in an inaccessible dream, and this is reinforced by the repetitions of the word ''jamais'' (''never'')— a word also given emphasis by an
enjambment In poetry, enjambment ( or ; from the French ''enjamber'') is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning 'runs over' or 'steps over' from one poetic line to the next, without punctuation. Lines without enjambment are end-stopped. The or ...
.


Structure

The poem is structured mirror-like, in the form of a chiasmus: we are taken from Andromache to the swan, and from the swan to Andromache. The many repetitions of ''souvenirs'', ''superbe'' (''sublime''), ''vieux'' (''old''), ''maigre'' (''lean'') are also to be noted.


Paris changing

The poem is infused with the rhythm of
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
changing, recalling Hugo, to whom the poem is dedicated. One notes the opposition between two semantic fields: one of architecture expressing stability, the other one of mutation, with the nostalgia for a city turned upside down by the Hausmannian alterations.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swan (Baudelaire) Poetry by Charles Baudelaire French poems 1857 poems