poetry texts, poem archive at plagiarist.com

Please in French ... or in English if it's easier.

I think there are a few themes that can be read INTO this one.

death, love, beauty, memory - some of baudelaires preoccupations.

On one hand, he's talking about our mortality, something gruesome, something he fears.
Yet at the same time, he calls the corpse "la carcasse superbe" and juxtaposes beautiful and revolitng images.
Finally, he addresses his own lover and say that one day she will be like that. But that the vermin that will one day eat her body will never be able to take away the memory of her FROM him.

You've got to love how Baudelaire moves from this earthy, rather gross description of the charogne into pure aesthetic talk. What a brilliant combination of themes.

It shows the 'ars longa vita brevas' that art is long and life is short. The woman is being immortalized in the poetry.