No More Learning

The relations of Baudelaire and Edouard Manet were exceedingly cordial.
In a letter to Theophile Thore, the art critic (Letters, p. 361), we
find Baudelaire defending his friend from the accusation that his
pictures were pastiches of Goya. He wrote: "Manet has never seen Goya,
never El Greco; he was never in the Pourtales Gallery. " Which may have
been true at the time, 1864, nevertheless Manet had visited Madrid and
spent much time studying Velasquez and abusing Spanish cookery.
(Consider, too, Goya's Balcony with Girls and Manet's famous Balcony. )
Raging at the charge of imitation, Baudelaire said in this same epistle:
"They accuse even me of imitating Edgar Poe. . . . Do you know why I so
patiently translated Poe? Because he resembled me. " The poet italicized
these words. With stupefaction, therefore, he admired the mysterious
coincidences of Manet's work with that of Goya and El Greco.

He took Manet seriously.
He wrote to him in a paternal and severe tone.
Recall his reproof when urging the painter to exhibit his work. "You
complain about attacks, but are you the first to endure them? Have you
more genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed by
derision. And in order not to make you too proud I must tell you that
they are models, each in his way, and in a very rich world, while you
are only the first in the decrepitude of your art. " (Letters, p. 436. )

Would Baudelaire recall these prophetic words if he were able to revisit
the glimpses of the Champs Elysees at the Autumn Salons? What would he
think of Cezanne? Odilon Redon he would understand, for he is the
transposer of Baudelairianism to terms of design and colour. And perhaps
the poet whose verse is saturated with tropical hues--he, when young,
sailed in southern seas--might appreciate the monstrous debauch of form
and colour in the Tahitian canvases of Paul Gauguin.

Baudelaire's preoccupation with pictorial themes may be noted in his
verse. He is par excellence the poet of aesthetics. To Daumier he
inscribed a poem; and to the sculptor Ernest Christophe, to Delacroix
(Sur Tasse en Prison), to Manet, to Guys (Reve Parisien), to an unknown
master (Une Martyre); and Watteau, a Watteau a rebours, is seen in Un
Voyage a Cythere; while in Les Phares this poet of the ideal, spleen
music, and perfume, shows his adoration for Rubens, Leonardo da Vinci,
Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Puget, Goya, Delacroix--"Delacroix, lac de sang
hante des mauvais anges. " And what is more exquisite than his quatrain
to Lola de Valence, a poetic inscription for the picture of Edouard
Manet, with its last line as vaporous, as subtle as Verlaine: "Le charme
inattendu d'un bijou rose et noir!