Chopin wrote for the
pianoforte
a revolutionary etude.
Baudelaire - Poems and Prose Poems
Baudelaire divined the work of the artist and set it
down scrupulously in a prose of exceeding rectitude. He did not paint
pictures in prose. He did not divagate. He did not overburden his pages
with technical terms. But the spirit of his subject he did disengage in
a few swift phrases. The polemics of historical schools were a cross for
him to bear, and he wore his prejudices lightly. Like a true critic, he
judged more by form than theme. There are no types; there is only life,
he asserted, and long before Jules Laforgue. He was ever art-for-art,
yet, having breadth of comprehension and a Heine-like capacity for
seeing both sides of his own nature with its idiosyncrasies, he could
write: "The puerile utopia of the school of art-for-art, in excluding
morality, and often even passion, was necessarily sterile. All
literature which refuses to advance fraternally between science and
philosophy is a homicidal and a suicidal literature. "
Baudelaire, then, was no less sound a critic of the plastic arts than of
music and literature. Like his friend Flaubert, he had a horror of
democracy, of the democratisation of the arts, of all the sentimental
fuss and fuddle of a pseudo-humanitarianism. During the 1848 agitation
the former dandy of 1840 put on a blouse and spoke of barricades. Those
things were in the air. Wagner rang the alarm-bells during the Dresden
uprising.
Chopin wrote for the pianoforte a revolutionary etude. Brave
lads! Poets and musicians fight their battles best in the region of the
ideal. Baudelaire's little attack of the equality-measles soon vanished.
He lectured his brother poets and artists on the folly and injustice of
abusing or despising the bourgeois (being a man of paradox, he dedicated
a volume of his Salons to the bourgeois), but he would not have
contradicted Mr. George Moore for declaring that "in art the democrat
is always reactionary. In 1830 the democrats were against Victor Hugo
and Delacrois. " And Les Fleurs du Mal, that book of opals, blood, and
evil swamp-flowers, will never be savoured by the mob.
In his Souvenirs de Jeunesse, Champfleury speaks of the promenades in
the Louvre he enjoyed the company with Baudelaire. Bronzino was one of
the poet's preferences. He was also attracted by El Greco--not an
unnatural admiration, considering the sombre extravagance of his own
genius. Of Goya he has written in exalted phrases. Velasquez was his
touchstone. Being of a perverse nature, his Derves ruined by abuse of
drink and drugs, the landscapes of his imagination were more beautiful
than Nature herself. The country itself, he declared, was odious. Like
Whistler, whom he often met--see the Hommage a Delacrois by
Fantin-Latour, with its portraits of Whistler, Baudelaire, Manet,
Bracquemond the etcher, Legros, Delacrois, Cordier, Duranty the critic,
and De Balleroy--he could not help showing his aversion to "foolish
sunsets.
down scrupulously in a prose of exceeding rectitude. He did not paint
pictures in prose. He did not divagate. He did not overburden his pages
with technical terms. But the spirit of his subject he did disengage in
a few swift phrases. The polemics of historical schools were a cross for
him to bear, and he wore his prejudices lightly. Like a true critic, he
judged more by form than theme. There are no types; there is only life,
he asserted, and long before Jules Laforgue. He was ever art-for-art,
yet, having breadth of comprehension and a Heine-like capacity for
seeing both sides of his own nature with its idiosyncrasies, he could
write: "The puerile utopia of the school of art-for-art, in excluding
morality, and often even passion, was necessarily sterile. All
literature which refuses to advance fraternally between science and
philosophy is a homicidal and a suicidal literature. "
Baudelaire, then, was no less sound a critic of the plastic arts than of
music and literature. Like his friend Flaubert, he had a horror of
democracy, of the democratisation of the arts, of all the sentimental
fuss and fuddle of a pseudo-humanitarianism. During the 1848 agitation
the former dandy of 1840 put on a blouse and spoke of barricades. Those
things were in the air. Wagner rang the alarm-bells during the Dresden
uprising.
Chopin wrote for the pianoforte a revolutionary etude. Brave
lads! Poets and musicians fight their battles best in the region of the
ideal. Baudelaire's little attack of the equality-measles soon vanished.
He lectured his brother poets and artists on the folly and injustice of
abusing or despising the bourgeois (being a man of paradox, he dedicated
a volume of his Salons to the bourgeois), but he would not have
contradicted Mr. George Moore for declaring that "in art the democrat
is always reactionary. In 1830 the democrats were against Victor Hugo
and Delacrois. " And Les Fleurs du Mal, that book of opals, blood, and
evil swamp-flowers, will never be savoured by the mob.
In his Souvenirs de Jeunesse, Champfleury speaks of the promenades in
the Louvre he enjoyed the company with Baudelaire. Bronzino was one of
the poet's preferences. He was also attracted by El Greco--not an
unnatural admiration, considering the sombre extravagance of his own
genius. Of Goya he has written in exalted phrases. Velasquez was his
touchstone. Being of a perverse nature, his Derves ruined by abuse of
drink and drugs, the landscapes of his imagination were more beautiful
than Nature herself. The country itself, he declared, was odious. Like
Whistler, whom he often met--see the Hommage a Delacrois by
Fantin-Latour, with its portraits of Whistler, Baudelaire, Manet,
Bracquemond the etcher, Legros, Delacrois, Cordier, Duranty the critic,
and De Balleroy--he could not help showing his aversion to "foolish
sunsets.
