19 pages • 38 minutes read
Charles Baudelaire, Transl. Eli SiegelThe Albatross
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1861A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Alienation of the Poet
The poem reflects Baudelaire’s concern for the fate of the poet (or more generally, any individual with an artistic temperament). The albatross’s brutal mistreatment at the hands of the sailors is a metaphor for the poet’s plight in a society that fails to understand him and actively berates and mocks his unique gifts. By creating this elaborate image of the poet’s struggle to retain his dignity in the face of society’s cruelty, Baudelaire reveals the poet as a hopelessly alienated figure who nonetheless possesses incredible beauty and strength.
Baudelaire depicts the humiliation and degradation of the poet through the sailors’ sadistic game of capturing the albatross simply “to amuse themselves,” a cruel diversion they engage in “Often” (Line 1). By emphasizing the habitual, thoughtless nature of this activity, Baudelaire reveals the poet’s debasement to be routine and pervasive. The unfeeling sailors, who ruthlessly mock the high-flying “kings of the azure” (Line 6), are stand-ins for the indiscriminate, uneducated bourgeois mob, whom Baudelaire viewed as insensitive to the higher aims of art. For Baudelaire, who was deeply concerned with art’s role in society as both a poet and a critic, the poet occupies a confrontational, combative role. The aloof poet is a “prince of the clouds” (Line 13), but must remains irrevocably entangled with society, its “sluggish companion” (Line 3), following its every move.
Baudelaire suggests that the poet’s alienation from society stems from society’s inability to recognize beauty. The sailors, like the bourgeois society whom Baudelaire confronts, fail to see the majesty of the “vast birds of the seas” (Line 2). Their eyes miss the glory of the albatrosses and instead see only a “clumsy and shameful” beast (Line 6), a crude reflection of their own boorishness. Their grotesque “limping” imitation of the grounded albatross (Line 12) transforms the sailors into beastly caricatures. Likewise, Baudelaire suggests, a society that mocks and harangues its artists debases itself, failing to recognize the soaring human spirit (i.e., “the ill thing that flew” (Line 12)).
Baudelaire argues that a society’s spiritual well-being is tied to the fate of its poets. Although the poet alone can provide a bird’s-eye view of society and its ills, the cruel impulse of society to bring its poets and artists down to its own level suggests that society is unwilling to see itself with such clarity. The sailors’ descent into brutish behavior thus represents the debasement of beauty and the degradation of the human spirit.
The Tragedy and Comedy of Artistic Endeavor
Since the albatross represents the far-seeing vision of the poet, the bird’s degradation is a tragedy worthy of memorialization. However, by depicting the sailors’ delight in attacking the bird, Baudelaire adds a perverse element of comedy to the scene. He adopts a tone of ambivalence to show that the poet’s tragic humiliation has its own comical sublimity, juxtaposing ugliness and beauty in the poet’s downfall. Baudelaire is interested in this dichotomy of tragedy and comedy because it reveals the dual nature of the poet’s role. The poet is capable of transcending the limitations of bourgeois society through his sublime vision, but is likewise bound to society, a helpless companion subject to society’s derision.
Baudelaire juxtaposes diction, or word choice, of exaltation with diction of ridicule to describe the albatross, making the bird both an emblem of poetic excellence and a caricature of poetic failure. For example, he introduces albatrosses as both “vast birds of the seas” and “sluggish companions of the voyage” (Lines 2-3), creating contrasting images of freedom and servile devotion. He calls albatrosses “kings of the azure” then immediately follows this grandiose metaphor by deeming the creature “clumsy and shameful” (Line 6), a juxtaposition so stark that his own attitude toward the bird becomes ambiguous. This obscuring of Baudelaire’s perspective reaches a critical point in the third stanza, where he adopts the sailors’ perspective, layering insults on the bird in a frenzied tone: “how he is awkward and weak! […] how comic he is and uncomely!” (Lines 9-10). By pairing this abusive language with the sailors’ crude display of superiority, Baudelaire participates in the shaming of the bird and, by extension, the degradation of the poet. He thus raises the albatross’s fate to the high level of tragedy while simultaneously lowering it to the level of farce, reflecting the poet’s ambiguous status as both “prince of the clouds” and slapstick buffoon (Line 13).
Beauty and Cruelty
For Baudelaire and the French Symbolist poets who followed his example, the creation of beauty was the ultimate goal of the poet, but in order to create beauty in a bourgeois, utilitarian-focused society, these poets believed they had to make themselves outsiders, challenging the conventional morality of their time (hence the term “poète maudit,” meaning accursed poet, applied to Baudelaire and his followers). “The Albatross” illustrates Baudelaire’s notion of how poets create beauty in the face of society’s hostility.
The poet, as exemplified by the albatross, demonstrates beauty and inimitable strength through suffering. Albatrosses, which rule the sky as “kings of the azure” (Line 6), can hardly walk once “Banished to the ground” (Line 15), evoking the image of stately magnificence fallen from grace. For Baudelaire, beauty arises from such abasement, because the bird’s true majesty is still apparent even when it is deprived of its power of flight. Likewise, the sailors’ grotesque display of cruelty reveals their own essence. When they imitate the grounded bird and taunt it with “hootings” (Line 15), they reveal themselves to be bestial, feral, and sadistic. Baudelaire finds beauty in such revelations of evil, because they allow him to access the Symbolist ideal of absolute truth.
In Baudelaire’s poem “Hymne à la Beauté” (translated as “Hymn to Beauty” by William Aggeler), he writes of the ambiguous and beguiling nature of beauty: “Do you come from Heaven or rise from the abyss, / Beauty? Your gaze, divine and infernal, / Pours out confusedly benevolence and crime.” Beauty is thus a duality for Baudelaire, and its complexity endows the poet with a divine mission to reveal truths that remain out of reach for the masses, even if the poet must suffer to reveal these truths.
