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| Martin Johnson Heade Magnolia Grandiflora ca. 1885-95 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Mariano Fortuny An Ecclesiastic ca. 1874 oil on panel Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Henri Fantin-Latour Plate of Peaches 1862 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Eugène Delacroix Christ on the Cross 1846 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Edwin Austin Abbey A Pavane 1897 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Gustave Caillebotte Man at his Bath 1884 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Mary Cassatt Mrs Duffee seated on a Striped Sofa, Reading 1876 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
The Voice
Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where
Latin ashes and the dust of Greece
mingled with novels, history, and verse
in one dark Babel. I was folio-high
when I first heard the voices. 'All the world,'
said one, insidious but sure, 'is cake –
let me make you an appetite to match,
and then your happiness need have no end.'
And the other: 'Come, O come with me in dreams
beyond the possible, beyond the known!'
that second voice sang like the wind in the reeds,
a wandering phantom out of nowhere, sweet
to hear yet somehow horrifying too.
'Now and forever!' I answered, whereupon
my wound was with me – ever since, my Fate:
behind the scenes, the frivolous decors
of all existence, deep in the abyss,
I see distinctly other, brighter worlds;
yet victimized by what I know I see,
I sense the serpent coiling at my heels;
and therefore, like the prophets, from that hour
I've loved the wilderness, I've loved the sea;
no ordinary sadness touches me
though I find savor in the bitterest wine;
how many truths I trade away for lies,
and musing on heaven, stumble over trash . . .
Even so, the voice consoles me: 'Keep your dreams,
the wise have none so lovely as the mad.'
– Charles Baudelaire, from the Additional Poems published with Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) in Richard Howard's translation (David R. Godine, 1982)
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| Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec The Model Resting 1889 tempera on panel Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| James McNeill Whistler Street in Old Chelsea ca. 1880-85 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Henry Oliver Walker Narcissus 1890s oil on board Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Grieve Family Theatre Design, probably representing Baghdad 1843 tempera on paper Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Robert Henri Café by Night with Japanese Lanterns ca. 1895 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| William Morris Hunt Italian Peasant Boy 1866 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Edwin Landseer Victoria, Princess Royal with a Pony 1842 oil on canvas Royal Collection, Great Britain |