Voyage to Cythera

A tale of author influencing poet based on the Ionian island of Cythera.

In 1851, Gerard de Nerval sailed by legendary Cythera, unimpressed by what he saw. As recorded in Voyage en Orient.

One must admit that Cythera has kept none of its beauties except its rocks of porphyry, as gloomy to look at as ordinary sandstone rocks. Not a tree on the coast we followed, not a rose, alas! not a shell along this shore where the Nereids once chose a conch for Aphrodite. I searched for the shepherds and shepherdesses of Watteau, their ships adorned with garlands made fast to flowery shores; I dreamt of those crazy bands of pilgrims of love in cloaks of variegated satin . . . and I saw only a gentleman shooting at woodcock and pigeon, and blond and dreamy Scottish soldiers, seeking on the horizon, perhaps, the fogs of their own country.

As we skirted the coast, before putting in at San-Nicolo, I observed a small monument, vaguely outlined against the azure of the sky, which, atop its rock, seemed to be the statue, yet standing, of some protecting divinity . . . But, as we came closer, we distinguished clearly the object which signalled this coastline to attentive voyagers. It was a gibbet, a gibbet with three branches, one of which alone was adorned. The first real gibbet I had ever seen, and it was given to me to see it on the soil of Cythera, an English possession!

An account read by Charles Baudelaire which led to the following poem.

Voyage to Cythera
by Charles Baudelaire

Free as a bird and joyfully my heart
Soared up among the rigging, in and out;
Under a cloudless sky the ship rolled on
Like an angel drunk with brilliant sun.

"That dark, grim island there—which would that be?"
"Cythera," we're told, "the legendary isle
Old bachelors tell stories of and smile.
There's really not much to it, you can see."

O place of many a mystic sacrament!
Archaic Aphrodite's splendid shade
Lingers above your waters like a scent
Infusing spirits with an amorous mood.

Worshipped from of old by every nation,
Myrtle-green isle, where each new bud discloses
Sighs of souls in loving adoration
Breathing like incense from a bank of roses

Or like a dove roo-cooing endlessly . . .
No; Cythera was a poor infertile rock,
A stony desert harrowed by the shriek
Of gulls. And yet there was something to see:

This was no temple deep in flowers and trees
With a young priestess moving to and fro,
Her body heated by a secret glow,
Her robe half-opening to every breeze;

But coasting nearer, close enough to land
To scatter flocks of birds as we passed by,
We saw a tall cypress-shaped thing at hand—
A triple gibbet black against the sky.

Ferocious birds, each perched on its own meal,
Were madly tearing at the thing that hung
And ripened; each, its filthy beak a drill,
Made little bleeding holes to root among.

The eyes were hollowed. Heavy guts cascading
Flowed like water halfway down the thighs;
The torturers, though gorged on these vile joys,
Had also put their beaks to use castrating

The corpse. A pack of dogs beneath its feet,
Their muzzles lifted, whirled and snapped and gnawed;
One bigger beast amidst this jealous lot
Looked like an executioner with his guard.

O Cytherean, child of this fair clime,
Silently you suffered these attacks,
Paying the penalty for whatever acts
Of infamy had kept you from a tomb.

Grotesquely dangling, somehow you brought on—
Violent as vomit rising from the chest,
Strong as a river bilious to taste—
A flow of sufferings I'd thought long gone.

Confronted with such dear remembered freight,
Poor devil, now it was my turn to feel
A panther's slavering jaws, a beak's cruel drill—
Once it was my flesh they loved to eat.

The sky was lovely, and the sea divine,
but something thick and binding like a shroud
Wrapped my heart in layers of black and blood;
Henceforth this allegory would be mine.

O Venus! On your isle what did I see
But my own image on the gallows tree?
O God, give me the strength to contemplate
My own heart, my own body without hate!