THE INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE

It is a superb land, a country of Cockaigne, as they say, that I dream
of visiting with an old friend. A strange land, drowned in our northern
fogs, that one might call the East of the West, the China of Europe; a
land patiently and luxuriously decorated with the wise, delicate
vegetations of a warm and capricious phantasy.

A true land of Cockaigne, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil, and
honest; where luxury is pleased to mirror itself in order; where life is
opulent, and sweet to breathe; from whence disorder, turbulence, and the
unforeseen are excluded; where happiness is married to silence; where
even the food is poetic, rich and exciting at the same time; where all
things, my beloved, are like you.

Do you know that feverish malady that seizes hold of us in our cold
miseries; that nostalgia of a land unknown; that anguish of curiosity?
It is a land which resembles you, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil
and honest, where phantasy has built and decorated an occidental China,
where life is sweet to breathe, and happiness married to silence. It is
there that one would live; there that one would die.

Yes, it is there that one must go to breathe, to dream, and to lengthen
one's hours by an infinity of sensations. A musician has written the
"Invitation to the Waltz"; where is he who will write the "Invitation to
the Voyage," that one may offer it to his beloved, to the sister of his
election?

Yes, it is in this atmosphere that it would be good to live, -- yonder,
where slower hours contain more thoughts, where the clocks strike the
hours of happiness with a more profound and significant solemnity.

Upon the shining panels, or upon skins gilded with a sombre opulence,
beatified paintings have a discreet life, as calm and profound as the
souls of the artists who created them.

The setting suns that colour the rooms and salons with so rich a light,
shine through veils of rich tapestry, or through high leaden-worked
windows of many compartments. The furniture is massive, curious, and
bizarre, armed with locks and secrets, like profound and refined souls.
The mirrors, the metals, the ail ver work and the china, play a mute and
mysterious symphony for the eyes; and from all things, from the corners,
from the chinks in the drawers, from the folds of drapery, a singular
perfume escapes, a Sumatran _revenez-y_, which is like the soul of the
apartment.

A true country of Cockaigne, I have said; where all is rich, correct and
shining, like a beautiful conscience, or a splendid set of silver, or a
medley of jewels. The treasures of the world flow there, as in the house
of a laborious man who has well merited the entire world. A singular
land, as superior to others as Art is superior to Nature; where Nature
is made over again by dream; where she is corrected, embellished,
refashioned.

Let them seek and seek again, let them extend the limits of their
happiness for ever, these alchemists who work with flowers! Let them
offer a prize of sixty or a hundred thousand florins to whosoever can
solve their ambitious problems! As for me, I have found my _black tulip_
and my _blue dahlia_!

Incomparable flower, tulip found at last, symboli-cal dahlia, it is
there, is it not, in this so calm and dreamy land that you live and
blossom? Will you not there be framed in your proper analogy, and will
you not be mirrored, to speak like the mystics, in your own
_correspondence_?

Dreams! -- always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate the soul,
the farther from possibility is the dream. Every man carries within him
his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from
birth to death, how many hours can we count that have been filled with
positive joy, with successful and decided action? Shall we ever live in
and become a part of the picture my spirit has painted, the picture that
resembles you?

These treasures, furnishings, luxury, order, perfumes and miraculous
flowers, are you. You again are the great rivers and calm canals. The
enormous ships drifting beneath their loads of riches, and musical with
the sailors' monotonous song, are my thoughts that sleep and stir upon
your breast. You take them gently to the sea that is Infinity,
reflecting the profundities of the sky in the limpid waters of your
lovely soul; -- and when, outworn by the surge and gorged with the
products of the Orient, the ships come back to the ports of home, they
are still my thoughts, grown rich, that have returned to you from
Infinity.

End of title

THE INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE

Charles Pierre Baudelaire

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