No More Learning

But the legend of Charles Baudelaire is seemingly indestructible. This
French poet has suffered more from the friendly malignant biographer and
chroniclers than did Poe. Who shall keep the curs out of the cemetery?
asked Baudelaire after he had read Griswold on Poe. A few years later
his own cemetery was invaded and the world was put into possession of
the Baudelaire legend; that legend of the atrabilious, irritable poet,
dandy, maniac, his hair dyed green, spouting blasphemies; that grim,
despairing image of a diabolic, a libertine, saint, and drunkard. Maxime
du Camp was much to blame for the promulgation of these tales--witness
his Souvenirs litteraires. However, it may be confessed that part of the
Baudelaire legend was created by Charles Baudelaire. In the history of
literature it is difficult to parallel such a deliberate piece of
self-stultification. Not Villon, who preceded him, not Verlaine, who
imitated him, drew for the astonishment or disedification of the world a
like unflattering portrait. Mystifier as he was, he must have suffered
at times from acute cortical irritation. And, notwithstanding his
desperate effort to realize Poe's idea, he only proved Poe correct, who
had said that no man can bare his heart quite naked; there always will
be something held back, something false ostentatiously thrust forward.
The grimace, the attitude, the pomp of rhetoric are so many buffers
between the soul of man and the sharp reality of published confessions.
Baudelaire was no more exception to this rule than St. Augustine,
Bunyan, Rousseau, or Huysmans; though he was as frank as any of them, as
we may see in the printed diary, Mon coeur mis a nu (Posthumous Works,
Societe du Mercure de France); and in the Journal, Fusees, Letters, and
other fragments exhumed by devoted Baudelarians.

To smash legends, Eugene Crepet's biographical study, first printed in
1887, has been republished with new notes by his son, Jacques Crepet.
This is an exceedingly valuable contribution to Baudelaire lore; a
dispassionate life, however, has yet to be written, a noble task for
some young poet who will disentangle the conflicting lies originated by
Baudelaire--that tragic comedian--from the truth and thus save him from
himself. The Crepet volume is really but a series of notes; there are
some letters addressed to the poet by the distinguished men of his day,
supplementing the rather disappointing volume of Letters, 1841-1866,
published in 1908. There are also documents in the legal prosecution of
Baudelaire, with memories of him by Charles Asselineau, Leon Cladel,
Camille Lemonnier, and others.

In November, 1850, Maxime du Camp and Gustave Flaubert found themselves
at the French Ambassador's, Constantinople. The two friends had taken a
trip in the Orient which later bore fruit in Salammbo. General Aupick,
the representative of the French Government, cordially the young men
received; they were presented to his wife, Madame Aupick. She was the
mother of Charles Baudelaire, and inquired rather anxiously of Du Camp:
"My son has talent, has he not? " Unhappy because her second marriage, a
brilliant one, had set her son against her, the poor woman welcomed from
such a source confirmation of her eccentric boy's gifts. Du Camp tells
the much-discussed story of a quarrel between the youthful Charles and
his stepfather, a quarrel that began at table. There were guests
present. After some words Charles bounded at the General's throat and
sought to strangle him. He was promptly boxed on the ears and succumbed
to a nervous spasm. A delightful anecdote, one that fills with joy
psychiatrists in search of a theory of genius and degeneration. Charles
was given some money and put on board a ship sailing to East India. He
became a cattle-dealer in the British army, and returned to France
years afterward with a Venus noire, to whom he addressed extravagant
poems! All this according to Du Camp.