Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Giantess" by Charles Baudelaire, translated by Karl Shapiro, delves into the realms of desire, fantasy, and a grotesque manifestation of love. In this poem, Baudelaire imagines a world where Nature, in a "lustful hot undress," gives birth to "gargantuan offspring," specifically a giantess. The speaker yearns to live by her, likening himself to a "voluptuous cat at a queen's feet." The very nature of this relationship is submissive, perhaps even masochistic, as the speaker revels in the idea of being dwarfed by the giantess's immensity.

The giantess is not merely an object of physical desire; she is also a landscape, a monumental figure in whom Nature's volatile energy is embodied. Her body, said to "flower with her desire," becomes a formidable tableau of sensual and dreadful elements. Baudelaire's choice of the word "dreadful" is significant; it captures the awe and fear inspired by the giantess, akin to the concept of the sublime, where beauty and terror coexist. The speaker attempts to "guess" the emotions of the giantess, imagining "some heavy fire" within her heart that could send "humid smokes" into her eyes. This suggests an internal turbulence, possibly reflecting the speaker's own tumultuous feelings.

In a world that often looks to scale down women to manageable or stereotypical dimensions, this poem defiantly celebrates the grandeur of femininity. Crawling "on the cliffs of her enormous knees" is an act of exploration, of mapping out her monumental form. In the summer, when "unhealthy suns" fatigue her, she stretches out "across the plains," and the speaker desires to find refuge in the "shadows of her breasts," as if her body itself were a sanctuary. The metaphor of sleeping "like a small hamlet at a mountain's base" evokes not just the magnitude of the giantess but also the sense of community and security that the speaker finds in her overwhelming physicality.

Although the speaker assumes a submissive role, this should not be interpreted as emasculating or diminishing. Instead, it signifies an embracing of vulnerability, a willingness to be overwhelmed by the sheer force of the other, whether that be love, nature, or the feminine. The poem also invokes themes prevalent in 19th-century French society, where exoticism and the distortion of form were integral to artistic representations of desire.

"Giantess" thus stands as an emblematic work that explores the darker, intricate corridors of human fantasy and passion. It raises questions about the nature of desire, the roles we assume in love, and the enigmatic allure of that which is grand, terrifying, yet irresistibly captivating. In the giantess, we find the embodiment of an otherworldly femininity-beautiful, terrifying, and ultimately magnetic-a love object that defies societal norms, existing as a testament to the boundless imagination of human desire.