(Curiously enough, he actually
contemplated, in 1861, becoming a candidate for Lacordaire's vacant seat
in the French Academy.
contemplated, in 1861, becoming a candidate for Lacordaire's vacant seat
in the French Academy.
Baudelaire - Poems and Prose Poems
Again a riddle which the published letters hardly solve.
One letter, however, does show that Baudelaire had tried to be faithful,
and failed. He could not extort from his exhausted soul the sentiment;
but he put its music on paper. His most seductive lyrics were addressed
to Madame Sabatier: "A la tres chere, a la tres-belle," a hymn saturated
with love. Music, spleen, perfumes--"colour, sound, perfumes call to
each other as deep to deep; perfumes like the flesh of children, soft as
hautboys, green as the meadows"--criminals, outcasts, the charm of
childhood, the horrors of love, pride, and rebellion, Eastern
landscapes, cats, soothing and false; cats, the true companions of
lonely poets; haunted clocks, shivering dusks, and gloomier
dawns--Paris in a hundred phases--these and many other themes this
strange-souled poet, this "Dante, pacer of the shore," of Paris has
celebrated in finely wrought verse and profound phrases. In a single
line he contrives atmosphere; the very shape of his sentence, the ring
of the syllables, arouse the deepest emotion. A master of harmonic
undertones is Baudelaire. His successors have excelled him in making
their music more fluid, more lyrical, more vapourous--many young French
poets pass through their Baudelarian green-sickness--but he alone knows
the secrets of moulding those metallic, free sonnets, which have the
resistance of bronze; and of the despairing music that flames from the
mouths of lost souls trembling on the wharves of hell. He is the supreme
master of irony and troubled voluptuousness.
Baudelaire is a masculine poet. He carved rather than sang; the plastic
arts spoke to his soul. A lover and maker of images. Like Poe, his
emotions transformed themselves into ideas. Bourget classified him as
mystic, libertine, and analyst. He was born with a wound in his soul, to
use the phrase of Pere Lacordaire.
(Curiously enough, he actually
contemplated, in 1861, becoming a candidate for Lacordaire's vacant seat
in the French Academy. Sainte-Beuve dissuaded him from this folly. )
Recall Baudelaire's prayer: "Thou, O Lord, my God, grant me the grace to
produce some fine lines which will prove to myself that I am not the
last of men, that I am not inferior to those I contemn. " Individualist,
egoist, anarchist, his only thought was letters. Jules Laforgue thus
described Baudelaire: "Cat, Hindoo, Yankee, Episcopal, Alchemist. " Yes,
an alchemist who suffocated in the fumes he created. He was of Gothic
imagination, and could have said with Rolla: "Je suis venu trop tard
dans un monde trop vieux. " He had an unassuaged thirst for the absolute.
The human soul was his stage, he its interpreting orchestra.
In 1857 The Flowers of Evil was published by Poulet-Malassis, who
afterward went into bankruptcy--a warning to publishers with a taste for
fine literature. The titles contemplated were Limbes, or Lesbiennes.
Hippolyte Babou suggested the one we know. These poems were suppressed
on account of six, and poet and publisher summoned. As the municipal
government had made a particular ass of itself in the prosecution of
Gustave Flaubert and his Madame Bovary, the Baudelaire matter was
disposed of in haste. He was condemned to a fine of three hundred
francs, a fine which was never paid, as the objectionable poems were
removed. They were printed in the Belgian edition, and may be read in
the new volume, OEuvres.
One letter, however, does show that Baudelaire had tried to be faithful,
and failed. He could not extort from his exhausted soul the sentiment;
but he put its music on paper. His most seductive lyrics were addressed
to Madame Sabatier: "A la tres chere, a la tres-belle," a hymn saturated
with love. Music, spleen, perfumes--"colour, sound, perfumes call to
each other as deep to deep; perfumes like the flesh of children, soft as
hautboys, green as the meadows"--criminals, outcasts, the charm of
childhood, the horrors of love, pride, and rebellion, Eastern
landscapes, cats, soothing and false; cats, the true companions of
lonely poets; haunted clocks, shivering dusks, and gloomier
dawns--Paris in a hundred phases--these and many other themes this
strange-souled poet, this "Dante, pacer of the shore," of Paris has
celebrated in finely wrought verse and profound phrases. In a single
line he contrives atmosphere; the very shape of his sentence, the ring
of the syllables, arouse the deepest emotion. A master of harmonic
undertones is Baudelaire. His successors have excelled him in making
their music more fluid, more lyrical, more vapourous--many young French
poets pass through their Baudelarian green-sickness--but he alone knows
the secrets of moulding those metallic, free sonnets, which have the
resistance of bronze; and of the despairing music that flames from the
mouths of lost souls trembling on the wharves of hell. He is the supreme
master of irony and troubled voluptuousness.
Baudelaire is a masculine poet. He carved rather than sang; the plastic
arts spoke to his soul. A lover and maker of images. Like Poe, his
emotions transformed themselves into ideas. Bourget classified him as
mystic, libertine, and analyst. He was born with a wound in his soul, to
use the phrase of Pere Lacordaire.
(Curiously enough, he actually
contemplated, in 1861, becoming a candidate for Lacordaire's vacant seat
in the French Academy. Sainte-Beuve dissuaded him from this folly. )
Recall Baudelaire's prayer: "Thou, O Lord, my God, grant me the grace to
produce some fine lines which will prove to myself that I am not the
last of men, that I am not inferior to those I contemn. " Individualist,
egoist, anarchist, his only thought was letters. Jules Laforgue thus
described Baudelaire: "Cat, Hindoo, Yankee, Episcopal, Alchemist. " Yes,
an alchemist who suffocated in the fumes he created. He was of Gothic
imagination, and could have said with Rolla: "Je suis venu trop tard
dans un monde trop vieux. " He had an unassuaged thirst for the absolute.
The human soul was his stage, he its interpreting orchestra.
In 1857 The Flowers of Evil was published by Poulet-Malassis, who
afterward went into bankruptcy--a warning to publishers with a taste for
fine literature. The titles contemplated were Limbes, or Lesbiennes.
Hippolyte Babou suggested the one we know. These poems were suppressed
on account of six, and poet and publisher summoned. As the municipal
government had made a particular ass of itself in the prosecution of
Gustave Flaubert and his Madame Bovary, the Baudelaire matter was
disposed of in haste. He was condemned to a fine of three hundred
francs, a fine which was never paid, as the objectionable poems were
removed. They were printed in the Belgian edition, and may be read in
the new volume, OEuvres.
