A woeful decadence for this
aristocrat
of life
and letters.
and letters.
Baudelaire - Poems and Prose Poems
Baudelaire is an egoist He hated the sentimental
sapping of altruism. His prose-poem, Crowds, with its "bath of
multitude," may have been suggested by Poe; but in Charles Lamb we find
the idea: "Are there no solitudes out of caves and the desert? or
cannot the heart, in the midst of crowds, feel frightfully alone? "
His best critical work is the Richard Wagner and Tannhauser, as
significant an essay as Nietzsche's Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. And
Baudelaire's polemic appeared at a more critical period in Wagner's
career. Wagner sent a brief hearty letter of thanks to the critic, and
later made his acquaintance. To Wagner, Baudelaire introduced a young
Wagnerian, Villiers de l'Isle Adam. This Wagner letter is included in
the volume of Crepet; but there are no letters published from Baudelaire
to Franz Liszt, though they were friends. In Weimar I saw at the Liszt
Museum several from Baudelaire which should have been included in the
Letters. The poet understood Liszt and his reforms as he understood
Wagner. The German composer admired the French poet, and his Kundry, in
the sultry second act of Parsifal, has a Baudelairian hue, especially in
the temptation scene.
The end was at hand. Baudelaire had been steadily, rather, unsteadily,
going downhill; a desperate figure, a dandy in shabby attire. He went
out only after dark, he haunted the exterior boulevards, associated
with birds of nocturnal plumage. He drank without thirst, ate without
hunger, as he has said.
A woeful decadence for this aristocrat of life
and letters. Most sorrowful of sinners, a morose delectation scourged
his nerves and extorted the darkest music from his lyre. He fled to
Brussels, there to rehabilitate his dwindling fortunes. He gave a few
lectures, and met Rops, Lemonnier, drank to forget, and forgot to work.
He abused Brussels, Belgium, its people. A country, he cried, where the
trees are black, the flowers without odour, and where there is no
conversation! He, the brilliant causeur, the chief blaguer of a circle
in which young James McNeill Whistler was reduced to the role of a
listener--this most spiritual among artists, found himself a failure in
the Belgian capital. It may not be amiss to remind ourselves that
Baudelaire was the creator of many of the paradoxes attributed, not only
to Whistler, but to an entire school--if one may employ such a phrase.
The frozen imperturbability of the poet, his cutting enunciation, his
power of blasphemy, his hatred of Nature, his love of the artificial,
have been copied by the aesthetic blades of our day. He it was who first
taunted Nature with being an imitator of art, with always being the
same. Oh, the imitative sunsets! Oh, the quotidian eating and drinking!
And as pessimist, too, he led the mode. Baudelaire, like Flaubert,
grasped the murky torch of pessimism once held by Chateaubriand,
Benjamin Constant, and Senancour. Doubtless, all this stemmed from
Byronism. And now it is as stale as Byronism.
sapping of altruism. His prose-poem, Crowds, with its "bath of
multitude," may have been suggested by Poe; but in Charles Lamb we find
the idea: "Are there no solitudes out of caves and the desert? or
cannot the heart, in the midst of crowds, feel frightfully alone? "
His best critical work is the Richard Wagner and Tannhauser, as
significant an essay as Nietzsche's Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. And
Baudelaire's polemic appeared at a more critical period in Wagner's
career. Wagner sent a brief hearty letter of thanks to the critic, and
later made his acquaintance. To Wagner, Baudelaire introduced a young
Wagnerian, Villiers de l'Isle Adam. This Wagner letter is included in
the volume of Crepet; but there are no letters published from Baudelaire
to Franz Liszt, though they were friends. In Weimar I saw at the Liszt
Museum several from Baudelaire which should have been included in the
Letters. The poet understood Liszt and his reforms as he understood
Wagner. The German composer admired the French poet, and his Kundry, in
the sultry second act of Parsifal, has a Baudelairian hue, especially in
the temptation scene.
The end was at hand. Baudelaire had been steadily, rather, unsteadily,
going downhill; a desperate figure, a dandy in shabby attire. He went
out only after dark, he haunted the exterior boulevards, associated
with birds of nocturnal plumage. He drank without thirst, ate without
hunger, as he has said.
A woeful decadence for this aristocrat of life
and letters. Most sorrowful of sinners, a morose delectation scourged
his nerves and extorted the darkest music from his lyre. He fled to
Brussels, there to rehabilitate his dwindling fortunes. He gave a few
lectures, and met Rops, Lemonnier, drank to forget, and forgot to work.
He abused Brussels, Belgium, its people. A country, he cried, where the
trees are black, the flowers without odour, and where there is no
conversation! He, the brilliant causeur, the chief blaguer of a circle
in which young James McNeill Whistler was reduced to the role of a
listener--this most spiritual among artists, found himself a failure in
the Belgian capital. It may not be amiss to remind ourselves that
Baudelaire was the creator of many of the paradoxes attributed, not only
to Whistler, but to an entire school--if one may employ such a phrase.
The frozen imperturbability of the poet, his cutting enunciation, his
power of blasphemy, his hatred of Nature, his love of the artificial,
have been copied by the aesthetic blades of our day. He it was who first
taunted Nature with being an imitator of art, with always being the
same. Oh, the imitative sunsets! Oh, the quotidian eating and drinking!
And as pessimist, too, he led the mode. Baudelaire, like Flaubert,
grasped the murky torch of pessimism once held by Chateaubriand,
Benjamin Constant, and Senancour. Doubtless, all this stemmed from
Byronism. And now it is as stale as Byronism.
