YOU'D TAKE TO BED THE WHOLE WORLD…
You’d take to bed the whole world as your prize,
You slut of sluts, by boredom brutalized!
To exercise your jaws at this rare sport
each day you must be served a fresh-killed heart.
Lit up like shop-windows in vulgar blaze
or street lamps glaring on public holidays,
your insolent eyes with borrowed power burn.
Their beauty’s proper law they never learn.
Oh blind and deaf machine, rich in torment—
drinker of the world’s blood, wholesome instrument,
how can you not feel shame, how can you not
blanch at each mirror from which your charms look out?
This hideous wrong in which you feel secure,
has it not made you shrink one step in fear,--
that nature, strong in her concealed designs,
makes use of you, oh woman, queen of sins,
vile animal! to mould a genius?
Oh foul magnificence—sublime disgrace!
The speaker is expressing his or her disgust with society’s desire to objectify the beautiful or sacred and use reifying them for use and later disposal when a new want is created; “each day you must be served a fresh-killed heart.” ‘You’ refers to the society under the narrator’s scrutiny and the ‘fresh-killed heart’ as a metaphor for the sacred or beautiful being transformed into the profane or a “wholesome instrument”. The prostitution of society refers to the exchange of authenticity for money, or the commercialization and abuse of the revered. Every previously untouchable item, idea, or person is at the hands of industry if it can be transformed into profit, therefore making it vulnerable to harassment of the consumer, or utilized in consumption to later be thrown away like a used condom rather then revered and respected as unique and sacred.
The world “wholesome” is ironic in this frame of prostitution [you slut of sluts] but revealing because the narrator is in awe of how society is working. “Oh foul magnificence”. This grotesque aspect of life is inspiration for the narrator who thrives within this strange context. Baudelaire is almost doing with this poem and The Flowers of Evil as a whole what society does as it drinks the “world’s blood”. Baudelaire, because he is “rich in torment” like the “blind and deaf machine” of society and also in response to this machine, he shamelessly drinks the blood of the vampire himself in order to produce this work. Society is like a machine because it works efficiently and automatically to reduce everything into an abstract and marketable value. The grotesqueness of society is his inspiration to create; the “sublime disgrace” moves him.
The problem of boredom is one in which The Flowers of Evil aims to thwart. “By boredom brutalized” or the attack of boredom has trapped society into this endless cycle of creative destruction; production of commodity, creation of need at the disposal of fulfillment, then consumption until a new need is produced again, the golden spiral. This poem expresses the desire to destroy boredom by stimulating the senses. Awaking the spirit to the genuine feeling of despair. The language of the poem resurrects the sacred beauty that is lost in commercial utilization, “Their beauty’s proper law they never learn”. Baudelaire wishes to seduce the reader, much like a consumer being seduced by a new product made especially with their comfort in mind, by reminded them of the beauty of life in order to manipulate them to leave their weary state and feel again. “To mould a genius?”: A question, or perhaps a suggestion, Baudelaire poses to connect the individual to his container, or environment. He wonders if a genius could be the result of just a society. At the same time, he wonders if his attempt to break the cycle of boredom by inspiring passion and consciousness will mould a genius of the consumer to crave beauty and redeem or channel the sacred.
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