He fell in love with the
celebrated
Madame Sabatier, a reigning beauty,
at whose salon artistic Paris assembled.
at whose salon artistic Paris assembled.
Baudelaire - Poems and Prose Poems
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. They are not prepossessing.
In her rapid decline she was not allowed to want. Madame Aupick paid her
expenses in the hospital. A sordid history. She was a veritable flower
of evil for Baudelaire. Yet poetry, like music, would be colourless,
scentless, if it sounded no dissonances. Fancy art reduced to the
beatific and banal chord of C major!
He fell in love with the celebrated Madame Sabatier, a reigning beauty,
at whose salon artistic Paris assembled. She had been christened by
Gautier Madame la Presidente, and her sumptuous beauty was portrayed by
Ricard in his La Femme au Chien. She returned Baudelaire's love. They
soon parted. 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.
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. They are not prepossessing.
In her rapid decline she was not allowed to want. Madame Aupick paid her
expenses in the hospital. A sordid history. She was a veritable flower
of evil for Baudelaire. Yet poetry, like music, would be colourless,
scentless, if it sounded no dissonances. Fancy art reduced to the
beatific and banal chord of C major!
He fell in love with the celebrated Madame Sabatier, a reigning beauty,
at whose salon artistic Paris assembled. She had been christened by
Gautier Madame la Presidente, and her sumptuous beauty was portrayed by
Ricard in his La Femme au Chien. She returned Baudelaire's love. They
soon parted. 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.
