No More Learning

The Etudes Critiques of Edmond Scherer were collected in 1863. In them
we find this unhappy, uncritical judgment: "Baudelaire, lui, n'a rien,
ni le coeur, ni l'esprit, ni l'idee, ni le mot, ni la raison, ni la
fantaisie, ni la verve, ni meme la facture . . . son unique titre c'est
d'avoir contribue a creer l'esthetique de la debauche. " It is not our
intention to dilate upon the injustice of this criticism. It is
Baudelaire the critic of aesthetics in whom we are interested. Yet I
cannot forbear saying that if all the negations of Scherer had been
transformed into affirmations, only justice would have been accorded
Baudelaire, who was not alone a poet, the most original of his century,
but also a critic of the first rank, one who welcomed Richard Wagner
when Paris hooted him and his fellow composer, Hector Berlioz, played
the role of the envious; one who fought for Edouard Manet, Leconte de
Lisle, Gustave Flaubert, Eugene Delacroix; fought with pen for the
modern etchers, illustrators, Meryon, Daumier, Felicien Rops, Gavarni,
and Constantin Guys. He literally identified himself with De Quincey and
Poe, translating them so wonderfully well that some unpatriotic persons
like the French better than the originals. So much was Baudelaire
absorbed in Poe that a writer of his times asserted that the translator
would meet the same fate as the American poet. A singular, vigorous
spirit is Baudelaire's, whose poetry with its "icy ecstasy" is profound
and harmonious, whose criticism is penetrated by a catholic quality, who
anticipated modern critics in his abhorrence of schools and
environments, preferring to isolate the man and uniquely study him. He
would have subscribed to Swinburne's generous pronouncement: "I have
never been able to see what should attract man to the profession of
criticism but the noble pleasure of praising. " The Frenchman has said
that it would be impossible for a critic to become a poet; and it is
impossible for a poet not to contain a critic.

Theophile Gautier's study prefixed to the definitive edition of Les
Fleurs du Mal is not only the most sympathetic exposition of Baudelaire
as man and genius, but it is also the high-water mark of Gautier's gifts
as a critical essayist. We learn therein how the young Charles, an
incorrigible dandy, came to visit Hotel Pimodan about 1844.
In this
Hotel Pimodan a dilettante, Ferdinand Boissard, held high revel. His
fantastically decorated apartments were frequented by the painters,
poets, sculptors, romancers, of the day--that is, carefully selected
ones such as Liszt, George Sand, Merimee, and others whose verve or
genius gave them the privilege of saying Open Sesame! to this cave of
forty Supermen. Balzac has in his Peau de Chagrin pictured the same sort
of scenes which were supposed to occur weekly at the Pimodan. Gautier
eloquently describes the meeting of these kindred artistic souls, where
the beautiful Jewess, Maryx, who had posed for Ary Scheffer's Mignon
and for Paul Delaroche's La Gloire, met the superb Madame Sabatier, the
only woman that Baudelaire loved, and the original of that extraordinary
group of Clesinger's--the sculptor and son-in-law of George Sand--la
Femme au Serpent, a Salammbo a la mode in marble. Hasheesh was eaten, so
Gautier writes, by Boissard and Baudelaire. As for the creator of
Mademoiselle Maupin, he was too robust for such nonsense. He had to work
for his living at journalism, and he died in harness, an irreproachable
father, while the unhappy Baudelaire, the inheritor of an intense,
unstable temperament, soon devoured his patrimony of 75,000 francs, and
for the remaining years of his life was between the devil of his dusky
Jenny Duval and the deep sea of hopeless debt.

It was at these Pimodan gatherings, which were no doubt much less wicked
than the participants would have us believe, that Baudelaire encountered
Emile Deroy, a painter of skill, who made his portrait, and encouraged
the fashionable young fellow to continue his art studies. We have seen
an album containing sketches by the poet. They betray talent of about
the same order as Thackeray's, with a superadded note of the
"horrific"--that favourite epithet of the early Poe critics. Baudelaire
admired Thackeray, and when the Englishman praised the illustrations of
Guys, he was delighted. Deroy taught his pupil the commonplaces of a
painter's technique; also how to compose a palette--a rather meaningless
phrase nowadays. At least, he did not write of the arts without some
technical experience. Delacroix took up his enthusiastic disciple, and
when the Salons of Baudelaire appeared in 1845, 1846, 1855, and 1859,
the praise and blame they evoked were testimonies to the training and
knowledge of their author. A new spirit had been born.