No More Learning

Women played a commanding role in his life. They always do with any poet
worthy of the name, though few have been so frank in acknowledging this
as Baudelaire. Yet he was in love more with Woman than the individual.
The legend of the beautiful creature he brought from the East resolves
itself into the dismal affair with Jeanne Duval. He met her in Paris,
after he had been in the East. She sang at a cafe concert in Paris. She
was more brown than black. She was not handsome, not intelligent, not
good; yet he idealized her, for she was the source of half his
inspiration. 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.