“Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées
Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer;
Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,
Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.”
I do not expect the majority of readers to understand these words, written in a foreign language, even worse, in verse. “What is this sorcery?” you’ll probably ask with a confused frown. I said the exact same thing a year ago.
One drowsy afternoon in the middle of October, I struggled to understand a poem from Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelairein the back of a French classroom. Half of the words were unknown to me, yet I worked with what I knew. The letters and accents floated around me like notes written in a music clef I cannot read, but the rhythm of the words, the essence of the verse resonated in my mind.
This connection intrigued me. Though I was reading an elaborate poem in a language I barely knew, through the poet’s verse, I seemed to understand the message. The gaps in between the lines turned from blank to filled with my scrawls in misspelled French, and the story was foggy yet half visible.
I wondered what sparked this connection. What drew the line between me, a sleep-deprived floundering high school student, and an artistic but hedonistic French man that died back in the 19th century? What was the thing that connected me with his words, his musings?
After spending the next few months studying the art of literature (and cramming for the A-Level examination), that exact moment, the spark of inspiration, reentered my thoughts. I reflected upon my journey and my love-hate relationship with words. Coming to terms with the fact that my only true passion is located in a field of dying importance, I have come to the conclusion that it is valuable after all.
Because literature is not merely the study of words, stories and Shakespearean sonnets. It is the study of human nature.
The thing that put me in Baudelaire’s shoes, the common trait that we shared, is being human. Nowadays, people’s minds are permeated with instant gratification: vertical seven-second videos, high-tech, inhuman gadgets and unmeaningful phrase contractions (ily, imo, ig, idk and so on). And we often forget the innate patterns, the homeostasis and nature that differentiates us from automations. Sometimes, we get caught in routines, ambitions and the strive for productivity that we disregard the importance of literature and the art of cryptic yet substantial words.
I had spent countless sleepless nights staring at paragraphs written on creamy, yellow pages and writing rigid essays with stiff sentences that followed the A-Level “point, explanation, evidence,” structure. As I tried to decipher the hidden meaning between the words “There’s a way to be good again…” in the novel The Kite Runner , “She, it, had never learned to speak,” in the poem Giuseppe or the infamous “To be, or not to be,” in Hamlet , I recalled complaining aloud: “I’m never studying literature ever again.”
Essay after essay became stuffed into a fixed mold. The words I scribbled on lined paper were recited and automated, the same way automations like ChatGPT or Notion’s new AI feature could cook up within seconds. I thought to myself: “What’s exactly the point of writing these monotonous essays?” Why am I studying literature and scribbling reports according to the A-Level mark scheme? Why am I stressing over something I am supposed to enjoy? Why am I harvesting the humanity from somebody’s work of art?
It is apparent that more importance and appreciation is placed on the sciences, especially in a world where robots are replacing humans in a myriad of jobs ranging from repetitive to creative ones. The majority of people prefer to wrap their minds around something that is concrete and consistent rather than open-ended and abstract. There is a stark contrast between the stability and certainty that comes with calculations and patterns over the cryptic and inexplicable verses.
Some may regard art and literature as a useless craft compared to technology-advancing astronomy and reliable mathematics. However, without humanity, what is the core that drives us forward in our ambitions? Why do we want to learn the size and extent of our universe, discover distant galaxies and calculate a star’s luminosity? I believe cavemen, explorers, world leaders and people of the past have posed similar questions regarding gravity, constellations, the Pythagorean theorem, cardiac cycles, acid and base concentration and so on.
This curiosity embedded into human minds is what automations lack. Despite the reliability and consistency of the sciences and mathematics, without the yearning for knowledge, these discoveries and numbers would not matter. Why do we want to know exactly when the Sun engulfs planet Earth?
Maybe because that would mark the extinction of humanity which would terminate millenia of innovations, discoveries, creations and imagination only incarnatable by us humans. I can attest that at least a few scientists who have investigated this issue have had this thought in mind either consciously or unconsciously. Imagine all of our creations – the symphonies, the sonnets, the stories and sequels that have been preserved for millenia – all eradicated at one point in time. We will never know whether the existence of a civilization like ours will spark somewhere in the universe again. However, this exclusiveness is a commodity among us humans. Human nature is all about ambiguity, contradiction and repetition, which is exactly the essence of the art of literature. All the poems, novels and lyrics will resonate with somebody in this universe, no matter the distance or language barrier. These universal themes will always find a way to connect us all.
The poets, bards, lyricists, writers and us all all share a common trait: humanity. As we are surrounded by fellow human beings, in the end, none of us are that different from one another. And that is such a beautiful thought to appreciate. So, I present you with the English translation of the extract presented at the beginning of this essay: the last stanza from Charles Baudelaire’s poem, L’Albatros (The Albatross). I hope the clarity this provides will allow you to put yourself in my shoes and experience the enlightening moment I stepped back and viewed this poem as a human creation rather than a cryptic message to be analyzed.
“The Poet is like that wild inheritor of the cloud,
A rider of storms, above the range of arrows and slings;
Exiled on earth, at bay amid the jeering crowd,
He cannot walk for his unmanageable wings.”