The Albatross

Baudelaire structures “The Albatross” as an extended metaphor, or a conceit, comparing poets to a captured and persecuted albatross. Given the poem’s concern with the role of the poet in society, the poem might be considered a work of ars poetica, or a poem that reflexively meditates on the art of poetry. However, the poem goes beyond a simple statement of Baudelaire’s aesthetics by presenting a moral critique of society’s subjugation of poets and, more broadly, of the poetic imagination. By illustrating the albatross’s harsh treatment at the hands of crude sailors, Baudelaire shows how the bourgeois public denigrates those who view the world differently.

The poem opens with an image of ennui, or bored listlessness, which Baudelaire viewed as the prime motivator of evil. The sailors of a ship seek “to amuse themselves” by “Lay[ing] hold of the albatross,” a diversion that they partake in “Often” (Lines 1-2). Baudelaire shows that their habitual capture of the great oceanic bird arises simply out of a desire for entertainment, painting their pastime as sadistic, a banal act of evil committed with nonchalance. The sky-bound albatross and the seafaring “men of the crew” clearly occupy different worlds (Line 1), but Baudelaire is interested in exploring their forced collision. A series of albatrosses, which once flew above as a “sluggish companions of the voyage” (Line 3), find themselves grounded among men that they previously viewed with detachment. Thus displaced from their natural habitat, these “vast birds of the seas” are out of their element (Line 2), no longer able to exercise agency. “Lay[ing] hold” of the albatross transforms the bird into a commodity, an object that can be seized and possessed, thus defiling nature with the commercializing impulse of the bourgeoisie.

The second stanza envisions the albatross’s helpless panic once dropped onto the ship’s deck, allowing Baudelaire to meditate on how the sailors’ cruel actions degrade the bird. Baudelaire contrasts the albatross’s former glory with its vulnerable state on the ship. Birds that were once “kings of the azure” become “clumsy and shameful” (Line 6), dethroned and humiliated by the mob of sailors. Baudelaire’s use of a regal metaphor paired with the word “azure,” an elevated term for a blue sky, suggests that the albatross represents a poetic ideal, distinct from the vulgar (i.e., “clumsy and shameful”) world of the sailors. However, when the sailors force the bird down to their level, the albatross’s “great wings in white” become “Like oars” that “drag at [its] sides” (Lines 7-8). Baudelaire’s simile likens the bird’s body to a ship, showing that the sailors’ brutality deprives the poetic creature of its power. The clunky cadence of this stanza, too, with its many pauses, enacts the clumsy “drag” of the albatross’s great wings on the ship’s deck.

The third stanza elaborates upon the albatross’s pitiful state by describing its fall from glory. The first two lines of the stanza ridicule the bird, parroting the abusive perspective of the sailors: “how [the albatross] is awkward and weak! / […] how comic he is and uncomely!” (Lines 9-10). The exclamatory sentences mimic the sailors’ glee in degrading the great bird; they delight in the spectacle of conquest, their public hysteria a stark contrast to the solitary contemplation that the sky-bound albatross represents. In these lines, Baudelaire personifies the bird, describing its appearance as one might describe a human: The albatross that was “lately so handsome” now appears “uncomely” (Line 10). Humanizing the bird is ironic because it comes at the precise moment in the poem when the sailors’ actions are most inhumane. One of the sailors “bothers [the albatross’s] beak with a short pipe” while “Another imitates, limping, the ill thing that flew!” (Lines 11-12). By taunting and mocking the helpless creature, the men make a travesty of the bird’s former magnificence. Baudelaire depicts their cruelty to show that in degrading the bird, they actually degrade themselves, transforming into beasts.

The final stanza marks a significant shift in the poem, as Baudelaire reveals the metaphorical meaning of the albatross’s struggle. He makes the connection between poet and albatross explicit for the first time: “The poet resembles the prince of the clouds” (Line 13). Again Baudelaire adopts regal imagery, the prince-poet endowed with dignity and stateliness, unlike the crude mob of society represented by the sailors. This monarchical poet, like the albatross, finds him/herself “Banished to the ground” among the bestial “hootings” of the mob (Line 15), deposed from the exalted view that art affords. Baudelaire closes the poem with the image of the poet’s “wings” acting as an obstacle, “hinder[ing] him from walking” (Line 16). The metaphor suggests that the poet possesses a unique perspective on the world, but this uniqueness makes him a target for the mob, which demands conformity and profit. The high-flying poetic consciousness cannot survive its confrontation with the crowd, but Baudelaire suggests that the poet nonetheless remains “a giant” for bravely remaining true to himself (Line 16).