Analysis of The Game
Charles Baudelaire 1821 (Paris) – 1867 (Paris)
Old courtesans in washed-out armchairs,
pale, eyebrows blacked, eyes ‘tender’, ‘fatal’,
simpering still, and from their skinny ears
loosing their waterfalls of stone and metal:
Round the green baize, faces without lips,
lips without blood, jaws without the rest,
clawed fingers that the hellish fever grips,
fumbling an empty pocket, heaving breast:
below soiled ceilings, rows of pallid lights,
and huge candelabras shed their glimmer,
across the brooding brows of famous poets:
here it’s their blood and sweat they squander:
this the dark tableau of nocturnal dream
my clairvoyant eye once watched unfold.
In an angle of that silent lair, I leaned
hard on my elbows, envious, mute, and cold,
yes, envying that crew’s tenacious passion,
the graveyard gaiety of those old whores,
all bravely trafficking to my face, this one
her looks, that one his family honour,
heart scared of envying many a character
fervently rushing at the wide abyss,
drunk on their own blood, who’d still prefer
torment to death, and hell to nothingness!
Scheme | ABCBDEDEFGHGIJKJLMLGGNGO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110111 11111010 11011101 1011011010 101110011 101110101 1101010101 10011010101 0111011101 0111110 01010111010 111101110 1010110101 101011101 01101110111 1111100101 111101010 0111111 11010011111 011111001 1111100100 1001010101 111111101 111011100 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,029 |
Words | 168 |
Sentences | 3 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 24 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 821 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 166 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 50 sec read
- 119 Views
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