Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In Charles Baudelaire's "Invocation," the poet presents an ode to an ethereal love, a love that serves as the source of divine light and eternal yearning. Starting with a direct address to the beloved-"To her the dearest, loveliest"-the poem establishes a deep emotional resonance that permeates its entirety. The language is redolent with spiritual and sensory metaphors, illustrating love as both a celestial influence and an earthly experience.

From the opening stanza, the speaker establishes the beloved as an "idol and angel," an earthly object of desire as well as a divine messenger. The poet navigates through this paradox effortlessly, emphasizing that the love received from this being grants him "health and life that never ends." It is both restorative and perpetuating-a fountain of existential vitality.

The middle of the poem delves into how this love suffuses the poet's life, acting as a life force similar to the "air impregnate of the sea." This element of the poem stands out for its duality: air and sea, transient and constant, life-giving and infinitely vast. Moreover, the love feeds the poet's "craving soul," satisfying his "longings for Eternity." This line adds an additional layer of profundity by suggesting that the love in question doesn't merely exist in a physical or emotional realm but fulfills a spiritual, almost mystical, yearning as well.

Baudelaire employs olfactory images-"Perfume that ever fresh doth spread" and "Forgotten censer that doth shed / Through night a secret incense sweet"-to encapsulate the evanescent yet lasting nature of love. It permeates the atmosphere yet remains elusive, always sensed but never fully grasped. This echoes the nature of divine or ethereal experiences, which often defy human comprehension or capture.

The poem grapples with the ineffable quality of love when it declares, "O Love, whose nature death defies, / How can I picture what thou art?" It acknowledges the struggle to express in words an emotion so complex and immortal. Despite this ineffability, the love remains a "Sweet grain of musk," a persistent and indestructible essence, deep within the poet's heart.

The poem closes as it begins, drawing a circular narrative that captures the endless cycle of love. Just like the opening, the poet attributes the status of "most beautiful and best" to the beloved, emphasizing the continuous flow of "health and immortality" emanating from this love.

In "Invocation," Baudelaire artfully combines the earthly and the heavenly, the sensual and the divine, into a rich tapestry of poetic imagery and emotion. The poem itself becomes an act of invocation, calling forth the eternal and ineffable qualities of love, attempting to encapsulate an experience that is, ultimately, beyond words but deeply felt in the human soul.

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