Women played a
commanding
role in his life.
Baudelaire - Poems and Prose Poems
Minerva springing full-fledged from
Jupiter's skull to the desk of the poet is a pretty fancy; but Balsac
and Flaubert did not encourage this fancy. Work literally killed Poe, as
it killed Jules de Goncourt, Flaubert and Daudet. Maupassant went insane
because he would work and he would play the same day. Baudelaire worked
and worried. His debts haunted him his life long. His constitution was
flawed--Sainte-Beuve told him that he had worn out his nerves--from the
start, he was detraque; but that his entire life was one huge debauch is
a nightmare of the moral police in some red cotton nightcap country.
His period of mental production was not brief nor barren. He was a
student. Du Camp's charge that he was an ignorant man is disproved by
the variety and quality of his published work. His range of sympathies
was large. His mistake, in the eyes of his colleagues, was to write so
well about the seven arts. Versatility is seldom given its real
name--which is protracted labour. Baudelaire was one of the elect, an
aristocrat, who dealt with the quintessence of art; his delicate air of
a bishop, his exquisite manners, his modulated voice, aroused unusual
interest and admiration. He was a humanist of distinction; he has left a
hymn to Saint Francis in the Latin of the decadence. Baudelaire, like
Chopin, made more poignant the phrase, raised to a higher intensity the
expressiveness of art.
Women played a commanding role in his life. They always do with any poet
worthy of the name, though few have been so frank in acknowledging this
as Baudelaire. Yet he was in love more with Woman than the individual.
The legend of the beautiful creature he brought from the East resolves
itself into the dismal affair with Jeanne Duval. He met her in Paris,
after he had been in the East. She sang at a cafe concert in Paris. She
was more brown than black. She was not handsome, not intelligent, not
good; yet he idealized her, for she was the source of half his
inspiration. To her were addressed those marvellous evocations of the
Orient, of perfume, tresses, delicious dawns on strange far-away seas
and "superb Byzant," domes that devils built. Baudelaire is the poet of
perfumes; he is also the patron saint of ennui. No one has so chanted
the praise of odours. His soul swims on perfume as do other souls on
music, he has sung. As he grew older he seemed to hunt for more acrid
odours; he often presents an elaborately chased vase the carving of
which transports us, but from which the head is quickly averted. Jeanne,
whom he never loved, no matter what may be said, was a sorceress. But
she was impossible; she robbed, betrayed him; he left her a dozen times
only to return. He was a capital draughtsman with a strong nervous line
and made many pen-and-ink drawings of her.
Jupiter's skull to the desk of the poet is a pretty fancy; but Balsac
and Flaubert did not encourage this fancy. Work literally killed Poe, as
it killed Jules de Goncourt, Flaubert and Daudet. Maupassant went insane
because he would work and he would play the same day. Baudelaire worked
and worried. His debts haunted him his life long. His constitution was
flawed--Sainte-Beuve told him that he had worn out his nerves--from the
start, he was detraque; but that his entire life was one huge debauch is
a nightmare of the moral police in some red cotton nightcap country.
His period of mental production was not brief nor barren. He was a
student. Du Camp's charge that he was an ignorant man is disproved by
the variety and quality of his published work. His range of sympathies
was large. His mistake, in the eyes of his colleagues, was to write so
well about the seven arts. Versatility is seldom given its real
name--which is protracted labour. Baudelaire was one of the elect, an
aristocrat, who dealt with the quintessence of art; his delicate air of
a bishop, his exquisite manners, his modulated voice, aroused unusual
interest and admiration. He was a humanist of distinction; he has left a
hymn to Saint Francis in the Latin of the decadence. Baudelaire, like
Chopin, made more poignant the phrase, raised to a higher intensity the
expressiveness of art.
Women played a commanding role in his life. They always do with any poet
worthy of the name, though few have been so frank in acknowledging this
as Baudelaire. Yet he was in love more with Woman than the individual.
The legend of the beautiful creature he brought from the East resolves
itself into the dismal affair with Jeanne Duval. He met her in Paris,
after he had been in the East. She sang at a cafe concert in Paris. She
was more brown than black. She was not handsome, not intelligent, not
good; yet he idealized her, for she was the source of half his
inspiration. To her were addressed those marvellous evocations of the
Orient, of perfume, tresses, delicious dawns on strange far-away seas
and "superb Byzant," domes that devils built. Baudelaire is the poet of
perfumes; he is also the patron saint of ennui. No one has so chanted
the praise of odours. His soul swims on perfume as do other souls on
music, he has sung. As he grew older he seemed to hunt for more acrid
odours; he often presents an elaborately chased vase the carving of
which transports us, but from which the head is quickly averted. Jeanne,
whom he never loved, no matter what may be said, was a sorceress. But
she was impossible; she robbed, betrayed him; he left her a dozen times
only to return. He was a capital draughtsman with a strong nervous line
and made many pen-and-ink drawings of her.
