Observations placeholder
Baudelaire, Charles - My Beatrice
Identifier
000305
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The 'pitted place' is the spiritual world.
A description of the experience
From My Beatrice – Charles Baudelaire translated by Robert Lowell
While I was walking in a pitted place
Crying aloud against the human race
Letting thoughts ramble here and there apart –
Knives singing on the whetstone of my heart –
I saw a cloud descending on my head
In the full noon, a cloud inhabited
By black devils, sharp, humped, inquisitive
As dwarfs. They knew where I was sensitive
Now idling there, and looked me up and down,
As cool delinquents watch a madman clown
I heard them laugh and snicker blasphemies
While swapping signs and blinking with their eyes.
