Painting in progress (detail)-Jan ’10

The Vampire

C. Baudalaire

You invaded my sorrowful heart
Like the sudden stroke of a blade;
Bold as a lunatic troupe
Of demons in drunken perade,

You in my mortified soul
Made your bed and your domain;
-Abhorrence, in whom I am bound
As the convict is to the chain,

As the drunkard is to the jug
As the gambler is to the game,
As to the vermin the corpse,
-I damn you, out of my shame!

And I prayed to the eager sword
To win my deliverance,
And have asked the perfidious vial
To redeem my cowardice.

Alas! the vial and the sword
Disdainfully said me;
‘You are not worthy to lift
From your wretched slavery,

You fool!-if from your command
Our efforts delivered you forth,
Your kisses would waken again
Your vampire lovers corpse!’

(Translation by James McGowen
Oxford world classics)

January is almost over! at last.

(post updated-1.2.10)

really odd angle of the work in progress above.
and for an idea of scale……(still in prog 8.2.10)

The Vampire
(translation in verse-it offers a deeper understanding of the poem posted above, a layer of metaphor)

You who plunged into my despondent heart like the stab of a knife, who with all the power of a pack of devils came with your wantonness and glamour to make my humiliated mind your bed, your empire; foul creature to whom I am shacked like a galley-slave to his chains, a dogged gambler to his game, a boozer to his bottle, a corpse to its own maggots: may you be doubly damned.

I begged the swift dagger to retrieve my liberty, I implored the treacherous poison to stiffen my cowardice but the poison and the blade turned away from me and said ‘Fool, you don’t deserve to be saved from your hellish abjection; for even if our efforts could set you free, you would soon give your vampire the kiss of life’.
(published in 1855 as ‘La Beatrice’)
Francis Scarfe-Complete verse.

Although posted along side a painting in progress, I do not seek to illustrate.