No More Learning

But, like Flaubert, on his return home
Baudelaire was seized with the nostalgia of the East; over there he had
yearned for Paris. Jules Claretie recalls Baudelaire saying to him with
a grimace: "I love Wagner; but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung
up by his tail outside of a window, and trying to stick to the panes of
glass with its claws. There is an odd grating on the glass which I find
at the same time strange, irritating, and singularly harmonious. " Is it
necessary to add that Baudelaire, notorious in Paris for his love of
cats, dedicating poems to cats, would never have perpetrated such
revolting cruelty?

Another misconception, a critical one, is the case of Poe and
Baudelaire. The young Frenchman first became infatuated with Poe's
writings in 1846 or 1847--he gave these two dates, though several
stories of Poe had been translated into French as early as 1841 or 1842;
L'Orang-Outang was the first, which we know as The Murders in the Rue
Morgue; Madame Meunier also adapted several Poe stories for the reviews.
Baudelaire's labours as a translator lasted over ten years. That he
assimilated Poe, that he idolized Poe, is a commonplace of literary
gossip. But that Poe had overwhelming influence in the formation of his
poetic genius is not the truth. Yet we find such an acute critic as the
late Edmund Clarence Stedman writing, "Poe's chief influence upon
Baudelaire's own production relates to poetry. " It is precisely the
reverse. Poe's influence affected Baudelaire's prose, notably in the
disjointed confessions, Mon coeur mis a nu, which vaguely recall the
American writer's Marginalia. The bulk in the poetry in Les Fleurs du
Mal was written before Baudelaire had read Poe, though not published in
book form until 1857. But in 1855 some of the poems saw the light in the
Revue des deux Mondes, while many of them had been put forth a decade or
fifteen years before as fugitive verse in various magazines. Stedman was
not the first to make this mistake.
In Bayard Taylor's The Echo Club we
find on page 24 this criticism: "There was a congenital twist about Poe
. . . Baudelaire and Swinburne after him have been trying to surpass him
by increasing the dose; but his muse is the natural Pythia inheriting
her convulsions, while they eat all sorts of insane roots to produce
theirs. " This must have been written about 1872, and after reading it
one would fancy that Poe and Baudelaire were rhapsodic wrigglers on the
poetic tripod, whereas their poetry is often reserved, even glacial.
Baudelaire, like Poe, sometimes "built his nests with the birds of
Night," and that was enough to condemn the work of both men by critics
of the didactic school.

Once, when Baudelaire heard that an American man of letters(? ) was in
Paris, he secured an introduction and called on him. Eagerly inquiring
after Poe, he learned that he was not considered a genteel person in
America, Baudelaire withdrew, muttering maledictions. Enthusiastic poet!
Charming literary person! Yet the American, whoever he was, represented
public opinion at the time. To-day criticisms of Poe are vitiated by the
desire to make him an angel. It is to be doubted whether without his
barren environment and hard fortunes we should have had Poe at all. He
had to dig down deep into the pit of his personality to reach the
central core of his music. But every ardent young soul entering
"literature" begins by a vindication of Poe's character.