Emaux et Camees E-Book

Théophile Gautier

• Herausgeber: CLXBX
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 71

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

Emaux et Camées by Théophile Gautier is a celebrated collection of poetry that stands as a defining work of the nineteenth-century aesthetic movement. Renowned for its precision, elegance, and devotion to artistic beauty, this volume reflects Gautier's belief in "art for art's sake"—the idea that art exists not to moralize or instruct, but to embody pure form and refined expression. The title, which translates to Enamels and Cameos, evokes miniature works of art—carefully crafted, polished, and enduring. In the same spirit, each poem in this collection is meticulously shaped, displaying Gautier's mastery of rhythm, imagery, and structure. His verses are vivid and sculptural, transforming fleeting moments into lasting artistic impressions. Like finely carved cameos, the poems capture scenes, emotions, and reflections with delicate precision. Throughout the collection, Gautier explores themes of beauty, mythology, love, mortality, art, and memory. Classical influences blend seamlessly with romantic sensibilities, creating a body of work that feels both timeless and deeply personal. Statues, paintings, landscapes, and historical figures come alive through his lyrical craftsmanship, revealing a poet deeply attuned to visual and sensory detail. Unlike more overtly emotional or political poetry of his era, Gautier's work often maintains a controlled and polished tone. His language is exacting and musical, emphasizing balance and harmony. Yet beneath the surface refinement lies profound contemplation—meditations on the permanence of art compared to the fragility of human life, and on the enduring power of beauty in a changing world. Emaux et Camées is widely regarded as one of Gautier's finest achievements and a cornerstone of French poetic tradition. Its influence extended beyond literature, shaping later movements that valued aesthetic purity and stylistic perfection. Readers encountering this collection will discover poetry that invites careful appreciation—verses that shimmer with clarity, artistry, and enduring grace. Elegant, reflective, and masterfully composed, Emaux et Camées remains a timeless tribute to the transformative power of artistic expression.

Leseprobe

Émaux et Camées

Théophile Gautier

Copyright © 2026 by George Sand

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

Preface

1. Secret affinities

2. The Poem of Woman

3. Study of hands

4. Variations on the Carnival of Venice

5. Symphony in White Major

6. Posthumous coquetry

7. Diamond of the Heart

8. First Smile of Spring

9. Contralto

10. Cærulei Oculi

11. Rondalla

12. Nostalgia for Obelisks

13. Old-timer

14. Sadness at sea

15. To a Pink Dress

16. The world is wicked

17. Inés de las Sierras

18. Anacreontic Odelette

19. Smoke

20. Apollonia

21. The Blind Man

22. Lied

23. Winter Fantasies

24. The source

25. Pyres and Tombs

26. The Supper of the Armor

27. The Watch

28. Les Néréides

29. Heart-Catchers

30. The Tea Rose

31. Carmen

32. What the swallows say

33. Christmas

34. The Dead Woman's Toys

35. After the Serial

36. The Castle of Remembrance

37. Camellia and Daisy

38. The Fellah

39. The Attic

40. The Naked

41. The Blackbird

42. The Flower That Brings Spring

43. Last Wish

44. Plaintive Turtle Dove

45. HAVE A GOOD EVENING

46. Art

Preface

During the wars of the Empire,

Goethe, amidst the brutal roar of the cannon,

composed The Western Divan ,

a fresh oasis where art breathes.

For Nisami, leaving Shakespeare,

he perfumed himself with citron,

and on an oriental meter

notated the song that Hudhud sighs.

As Goethe on his divan

in Weimar isolated himself from things

and plucked the petals of Hafiz's roses,

heedless of the hurricane

that lashed my closed windows,

I created Enamels and Cameos .

Chapter1

Secret affinities

MADRIGAL PANTHEIST

In the pediment of an ancient temple,

Two blocks of marble, three thousand years ago,

Against the blue background of the Attic sky,

Juxtaposed their white dreams; Frozen

in the same mother-of-pearl,

Tears of the waves weeping for Venus,

Two pearls plunged into the abyss

Have spoken unknown words to each other;

Blossoming in the cool Generalife,

Under the ever-weeping fountain,

In the time of Boabdil, two roses

Together made their flowers chatter;

On the domes of Venice,

Two white wood pigeons with rosy feet,

In the nest where love is eternalized,

One May evening, landed.

Marble, pearl, rose, dove,

all dissolves, all is destroyed;

the pearl melts, the marble falls,

the flower withers and the bird flees.

As they part, each particle

goes into the deep crucible

to swell the universal paste

made of the forms that God melts.

Through slow metamorphoses,

white marbles into white flesh,

pink flowers into rosy lips

are remade in diverse bodies;

wood pigeons coo again

in the hearts of two young lovers,

and pearls are molded into teeth

for the setting of charming laughter.

From this are born those sympathies

with their compelling sweetness,

by which discerning souls

everywhere recognize each other as sisters.

Docile to the call of an aroma,

a ray of light, or a color,

atom flies to atom

as the bee to the flower.

One remembers reveries

on the pediment or in the sea,

flowery conversations

near the fountain with its clear flow,

Kisses and shivers of wings

On domes with golden spheres,

And faithful molecules

Seek each other and love each other still.

Forgotten love awakens,

The past vaguely reborn,

The flower on the vermilion mouth

Breathes itself in and recognizes itself;

In the mother-of-pearl where laughter shines

The pearl sees its whiteness again;

On a young girl's skin

The moved marble feels its freshness;

The wood pigeon finds a sweet voice

Echoing its moan;

All resistance is blunted,

And the stranger becomes the lover.

You before whom I burn and tremble,

What wave, what pediment, what rosebush,

What dome knew us together,

Pearl or marble, flower or wood pigeon?

Chapter2

The Poem of Woman

PAROS MARBLE

One day, to the gentle dreamer who loved her,

as she displayed her treasures,

she wished to read a poem,

the poem of her beautiful body.

First, superb and triumphant,

she came in grand attire,

trailing with the airs of an infanta

a cascade of pearly velvet: just as she shines at the Théâtre-Italien

on the edge of her box , listening to her praise being sung by the musicians. Then, in her artist's verve, letting the thick velvet fall, in a cloud of cambric she sketched her proud contours.

Slipping from shoulder to hip,

The shirt with its nonchalant folds,

Like a white turtledove

Came to alight upon her white feet.

For Apelles or for Cleomenes,

She seemed, marble of flesh,

As Venus Anadyomene

Posing naked by the sea.

Large Venetian pearls

Rolled instead of drops of water,

Milky grains that a ray of light irises,

On the fresh satin of her skin.

Oh! what ravishing things,

In her divine nudity,

With the stanzas of her poses,

Sang this hymn of beauty!

Like the waves kissing the sand

Under the moon with trembling rays,

Her grace was inexhaustible

In soft undulations.

But soon, weary of ancient art,

Of Phidias and Venus,

In another plastic stanza

She groups her naked charms:

On a cashmere carpet,

She is the sultana of the seraglio,

Laughing at the mirror that admires her

With a coral laugh;

The languid Georgian woman,

with her supple hookah,

displaying her opulent hip,

one foot tucked under the other,

and, like Ingres's odalisque,

arching her back,

despite her feeble virtues,

despite her meager modesty!

Lazy odalisque, begone!

Here is the painting in its daylight,

the diamond in its light;

here is beauty in love!

Her head bows and falls back

, panting, raising her breasts,

in the arms of the dream that cradles her,

she falls onto her cushions;

her eyelids beat like wings

on their burnished silver globes,

and one sees her pupils rise

in the mother-of-pearl of infinity. Let her beauty be covered

with a shroud of English lace : ecstasy has taken her from the earth; she has died of voluptuousness! Let the violets of Parma, instead of the sad flowers of the dead where each pearl is a tear, weep in bouquets over his body!

And that gently we lay her

on her bed, a white and soft tomb,

where the poet, at nightfall,

will go to pray on his knees!

Chapter3

Study of hands

I

IMPERIA

At a sculptor's, molded in plaster,

I saw the other day a hand

of Aspasia or Cleopatra,

a pure fragment of a human masterpiece.

Under the snowy kiss, seized

like a lily by the silvery dawn,

like a white poem,

its beauty blossomed;

in the splendor of its matte pallor,

it displayed on the velvet

its delicate elegance

and its slender fingers with heavy rings;

A Florentine curve,

with a beautiful air of pride, made her outstretched thumb undulate

in a serpentine line . Did she play in the curls of Don Juan's lustrous hair, or comb the sultan's beard on his caftan of carbuncles , and hold, courtesan or queen, between her beautifully sculpted fingers, the sovereign's scepter or the scepter of pleasures? She must have, nervous and charming, often leaned on the neck and the lioness's rump of her chimera caught in flight. Imperial fantasies, love of sumptuousness, voluptuous frenzies, dreams of impossibilities, extravagant novels, poems of hashish and Rhine wine, mad dashes through the bohemians on the backs of unbridled steeds; We see all this in the lines of this palm, a blank book where Venus has traced signs that love reads only with trembling.

II

LACENAIRE

In contrast, the severed hand

of Lacenaire the assassin,

soaked in potent balms,

lay beside it on a cushion.

Depraved curiosity!

Despite my disgust, I touched,

still poorly cleansed by torture,

this cold flesh with its russet down.

Mummified and all yellow

like a Pharaoh's hand,

it stretches out its faun-like fingers,

clenched with temptation.

A tingle of gold and raw flesh

seems to tickle its fingers,

their convulsive stillness,

and twist them as in days of old.

All vices, with their claws , have traced dreadful hieroglyphs

in the folds of this skin, easily read by the executioner.

There one sees evil works

written in tawny furrows,

and the burning furnaces

where corruption boils;

the debaucheries in the Capris

of gambling dens and brothels,

dappled with wine and blood,

like the ennui of old Caesars!

At once soft and ferocious,