Baudelaire Notes
Baudelaire Lectures
Lecture 1
- ‘La modernité, c’est le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moitié de l’art, dont l’autre moitié
est l’éternel et l’immuable’. (Le Peintre de la vie moderne) Tension between modernity and
eternity in Baudelaire’s poetry.
- Modernity=transience of urban life. This sense of eeting experience is an essential ingredient
in art. All art is double: contains an element which is concrete and particular and an element
that is absolute and eternal. Contingent element has become more transient than it had been in
the past—life has speeded up. Transient element is both modern world itself and the particular
glimpses an observer has of it and transient becomes part of nished work of art.
- Baudelaire uses a variety of means to formally convey the contingent—condensed forms,
concrete vocabulary and lots of irony. Thematically, he explores the e ects of the new socio-
economic reality: new kinds of loneliness, hopeless yearning for spiritual values, doubts about
the very place of art. The modern world in which Baudelaire found himself was one in which
religion no longer held sway, so art was the only remaining site of spiritual value in a fallen
world. Society concerned with producing things that were useful and pro table, so poets felt
they had no role, were no longer writing for a predicable and cohesive audience. Earlier
Romantics like Hugo had reacted to this by forging a myth of the poet as a spiritual leader and
by using the musical and rhetorical qualities of poetry to suggest connections between the
visible and divine worlds. Baudelaire instead transformed the modern world into art. Mystery
and beauty can be found within this discordant experience (projected epilogue to 1861 edition
of Les Fleurs du mal: ‘Tu m’as donné ta boue et j’en ai fait de l’or’).
- Art can’t isolate the absolute because the ideal itself is only an abstract notion: ‘Toutes les
beautés contiennent, comme tous les phénomènes possibles, quelque chose d’éternel et
quelque chose de transitoire, d’absolu et de particulier. La beauté absolue et éternelle n’existe
pas, ou plutôt elle n’est qu’une abstraction écrémée à la surface générale des beautés
diverses.’ (Salon de 1846). The ideal only exists within particular concrete situations. In FDM,
Baudelaire often uses everyday situations as a starting point for the invocation of the ideal:
cats, a woman’s hair, a passer by. He uses lyric form to contain and transform these
epiphanies.
- Most lyrical poems of FDM attempt to capture the eternal by using xed forms to create e ects
of unity and harmony. e.g. Correspondances uses symmetry and musicality to create e ects of
unity: ‘Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent… sans se répondent.’ Alexandrines
combine opposites within a balanced whole (dark and light embraced in a single line). Sense of
a spiritual whole arises from connections being made between contingent elements (perfumes,
colours and sounds). This unity is underlined by the pattern of musical echoes. The form is
highly condensed and yet it evokes an awareness of vastness and expansion (like la vie
intérieure and harmonie du soir). Magical e ect created by linguistic manipulation.
- Baudelaire was well aware of the decrepitude of modern times in which use value had become
dominant and he views poetry as a refuge from this. Walter Benjamin (On some motifs in
Baudelaire): ‘What Baudelaire meant by correspondances may be described as an experience
which seeks to establish itself in crisis-proof form.’ Using linguistic form to create something
beautiful as a refuge from reality.
- For Baudelaire, the ideal does not exist in pure form, but is always glimpsed in real life or felt
through real experiences: ‘Le beau est toujours bizarre.’ He emphasised the role of the
individual perceiving subject in the art of conveying spirituality: ‘Deux qualités littéraires
fondamentales : surnaturalisme et ironie. Coup d’oeil individuel, aspect dans lequel se tiennent
les choses devant l’écrivain, puis tournure d’esprit satanique.’ (Fusées). By mid-19th century,
meaning no longer determined by divinity but created by human mind.
- ‘Qu’est-ce que l’art pur suivant la conception moderne ? C’est créer une magie suggestive
contenant à la fois l’objet et le sujet, le monde extérieur à l’artiste et l’artiste lui-
même.’ (Exposition universelle, ‘L’Art philosophique’ (1855)). Art mingles subject and object.
Emphasis on subjective perception (ideal momentarily extracted, often in unlikely situations—
especially in tableaux parisiens).
1
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, - Symbols have to be elaborated by poet—aren’t plucked fully-formed from out of life. Fusées:
‘Dans certains états de l’âme presque surnaturels, la profondeur de la vie se révèle tout entière
dans le spectacle, si ordinaire qu’il soit, qu’on a sous les yeux. Il en devient le symbole.’
- Di erent editions of FDM: 1857 ( rst edition); 1861 (second edition—more poems with explicitly
modern themes like tableaux parisiens). Baudelaire’s emphasis on subjective perception is key.
- Parfum exotique (‘Quand, les deux yeux… soleil monotone’): formal connections between
inside and outside (‘je’ followed by two verbs in lines 2 and 3; ‘chaleureux’ and ‘heureux’
rhyme, connecting real woman to imagined landscape).
- Les petites vieilles (‘Dans les plis… charmants.’): lines 1 and 4 describe outside world and lines
2 and 3 explain perspective of the observing poet. His attitude is dictated by his mood. Old
ladies re ect the poet—old and isolated.
- Parfum exotique and Les petites vieilles both involve making connections, although of di erent
kinds. Parfum exotique suggests a fundamental connection between self and world is possible
—the poem creates a sense of unity. In Les petites vieilles, the connection between the self and
the world is less certain; it has to be created (poem makes explicit that enchantment is
produced by poet struggling to extract beauty from unpromising material). No absolute unity
underpinning this vision.
- Le Cygne: ‘Un cygne qui s’était… blanc plumage’. Chance encounter but surprising—swan
displaced from natural habitat and exiled to the city. Scene combines the everyday and the
unexpected. Speaker transforms this experience into a symbol of the poet exiled from the ideal
world of beauty to the world of urban ugliness: ‘Je vois ce malheureux, mythe… reproches à
Dieu !’. Swan becomes a myth invested with great importance. Baudelaire combines
conventional lyrical vocabulary with very concrete speci c terms (e.g. sonorous rst line ‘un
cygne qui s’était évadé de sa cage’ gives way to prosaic observation ‘frottant le pavé sec’).
Baudelaire aware poet no longer uses homogenous language to communicate with an
audience that shares the same values. Instead, he picks words from di erent discourses and
combines them in new ways.
- “À une passante”: tercets emphasise impact eeting encounter has on poet (‘Moi, je buvais…
dans l’éternité ?’). Encounter is transitive and contingent (‘éclair). ‘crispé comme un
extravagant’—describing himself as though he is watching somebody from outside—so tensed
by experience of walking through the city that he can only react to feeling with neurotic spasm.
Very modern beauty, yet poem shows that the modern world limits our ability to respond to
such moments.
- Description of beauty tips into the grotesque in Les Petites vieilles (‘Honteuses d’exister…
mûrs’). Old women don’t t into the world—like poet (‘Mais moi, moi… incertains’—poet
ironically occupying god-like position, parodying romantic all-powerful rst person— rst person
repeated twice in ironic exaggeration. Use of metaphor in the poem shows a nities and
analogies can still operate in the modern world, but this comes into doubt in Les sept vieillards,
in which reality proliferates without having any meaning—as though speaker is unable to
comprehend or unify his fractured experience. First stanza represents outside world as other-
worldly (‘formillante cité… puissant’). Second stanza shows strain of making sense of world
(buildings compared to river banks, word ‘simulaient’ underlines the forced parallel between
pastoral image and urban setting). External world perceived by speaker who is alienated from
himself in some way. Repetition of ‘nerfs’ in ‘héros’ underlines that heroism in modern life is
akin to a nervous spasm rather than being a con dent strength. Baudelaire’s language
dissonant in juxtaposing the sentimental description of the soul with the mundane everyday
‘tombereaux’. The speaker experiences sudden shock (‘Tout à coup… frimas’)—chance
encounter turns out to be dysphoric—odd analogy between old man’s rags and sky—idea of
‘imitaient’ suggests debased relationship—idea of copying nature rather than the poet sensing
a harmonious correspondence; rather abrupt enjambement in lines 4 and 5 and leaving
‘m’apparut’ at the start of the line and making a strong syntactic break after the third syllable
destabilises the balance of the Alexandrine which re ects the destabilised self. Description of
the old man escalates to underline his malevolence (‘dans la neige… indi érant’—outright
hostility here, not the indi erence of spleen—some kind of plot, sense of paranoia, as though
Romantic theme of mystery and unknowability of the world has become an exaggerated
scheme here. Plurality of old men re ects speaker’s fear of fragmenting into parts.
Fragmentation is major theme in the spleen de Paris—many poems based on di erent voices
enacting di erent parts of the self. Speaker of Les sept vieillards aware that his fears are
exaggerated and ironising his own capacity to produce meaning—meanings he produces are
obsessive and distort reality—self-irony is form of self-protection—real sense that there is a
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, threat from the outside world—subject bracing itself to negotiate hostile world. Poet can
transform reality into symbols, but their meaning isn’t stable—not surprising that this is di cult
if the poet is also negotiating noisy streets and hostile passers by. Modernity in art means many
things but one of them is that the process of making meaning is no longer determined by
authority but is created by an individual. In petites vieilles poet successful in creating beauty
out of mundane observed reality, but in les sept vieillards the poet’s mind loses grip on reality
and veers towards producing disturbing visions.
- Subjective perceptions—power of imagination to create beauty out of eeting experiences.
Obstacles to this: some poems evoke deadening emotional e ect of spleen (modern
melancholy without cause—‘j’ai plus de souvenirs que si j’avais mille ans’); poems present
external reality as inimical to the imagination (e.g. in “Paysage” ‘l’émeute… tiède atmosphère);
ideal presented as inaccessible (e.g. les aveugles, l’irremediable that lament absence of ideal);
dangers of celebrating subjective responses which often result in a distorted view of reality and
make it di cult for the disturbed individual to escape from his own obsessions).
Lecture 2 (prose poetry)
- Many poems stage the act of distorting reality (e.g. in les 7 vieillards he presents the vision of
old men as hallucination by deranged speaker).
- Di erent critics have di erent views regarding the relative importance of FDM and le Spleen de
Paris. Baudelaire’s prose poetry neglected until 1960s and still viewed as secondary by many
French critics, although often celebrated in its own right in English world. Prose poems strange
and indirect texts.
- Prose poetry as experimental form—have to read his language very closely to grasp what he is
saying. Baudelaire combined traditional poetic language with very concrete/medical/everyday
terms to create a poetic language characterised by its overall arti ce (Baudelaire always
preferred arti ce to imitations of nature). He takes this further in the prose poems by combining
the attributes of prose and poetry. Prose poetry is hybrid genre—plays on the tension between
poetry and prose—we can’t read it by relating it to existing models. Baudelaire inspired to
experiment with prose poetry by Aloysius Bertrand’s "Gaspard de la nuit”. Boundaries between
poetry and prose being blurred by changing conception of poetry—increasingly felt that poetry
was not just a function of a xed form but a quality that could be found in di erent experiences
and depended on the strength of feeling—poet must create form to convey that experience.
Much foreign poetry at the time translated into French into prose. Baudelaire wrote both prose
and verse poetry concurrently for many years. His collection of prose poetry published in 1869
(two years after his death and put together by editors; unclear what title he intended for it).
Some of the prose poetry seems to be response to lack of audience understanding (FDM
condemned); some are like short stories, some like transpositions of verse poems; some like
philosophical re ections. Allows Baudelaire to combine ‘magie suggestive’ of poetry with
analytical quality of prose—new way of exploring relationship between the ideal and the
contingent. It also problematises the very form of poetry and the way it is read—hence o ers
challenges to the reader—even the so-called preface to the Spleen de Paris is seen as ironic.
Preface says can read poems singularly—many of them were indeed published individually in
periodicals during Baudelaire’s lifetime. Aesthetic advantages to poet of being able to cut
where he wants—he doesn’t have to stick to conventional forms and make the poems rounded
wholes. Bathos, irony and double-edged irony all key elements of Baudelaire’s style in the
prose poems. Irony shows control of the poet—like the verse poems here in that they show
close attention to craft. Baudelaire viewed verse as not a restriction but as a great way of
enabling the poet to express what he wants to say: ‘les rhétoriques et les prosodies ne sont
pas des tyrannies inventées arbitrairement, mais une collection des règles réclamées par
l’organisation même de l’être spirituel. Et jamais les prosodies et les rhétoriques n’ont empêché
l’originalité de se produire distinctement. Le contraire, à savoir qu’elles ont aidé l’éclosion de
l’originalité, serait in niment plus vrai.’ (Salon de 1859). Image of cutting is violent—violence
very common in the prose poems—crime and violence fundamental aspect of human nature—
preface represents reading itself as violent.
- In preface, Baudelaire also talks about style of poetic prose: ‘Quel est celui de nous qui n’a
pas… soubresauts de la conscience ?’ Musicality suggests it would borrow some of the
qualities of verse but the combination of ‘double’ and ‘heurtée’ suggests a tension between the
sinuous and the staccato. Such poetic prose would be able to re ect a variety of states of
mind, both more abrupt leaps and lyric ights. Baudelaire constantly uses lyrical e ects and
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, undercuts them with shocks and prosaic interruptions. Tension between di erent kinds of
writing—this is a continuity of the later verse (tableaux parisiens). Also in preface: emphasises
setting of the city and its random encounters. Many of the prose poems about interpreting and
deciphering the curious environment of the city. Very often narrators shown to try to make
sense of surprising events but narrators themselves are mysterious gures and reader has to
work hard to interpret them. Preface establishes antagonistic relationship between poet and
reader (theme of unappreciative audience in both prose and verse poems). Romantic poetry
had encouraged reader to identity with poet (Hugo said ‘quand je vous parle de moi je parle de
vous’) Baudelaire in contrast emphasises more complex relationship between reader and poet
(‘au lecteur’ emphasises complicity between reader and poet—‘hypocrite lecteur’ is ‘mon
semblable, mon frère’) but no such pact in prose poems and this makes it di cult for readers to
know where they stand.
- Sudden intrusion of prosaic into an otherwise lyrical description in “L’invitation au voyage”:
o ers a description of a distant and beautiful land and then suddenly says ‘la cuisine elle-même
est poétique’, which is surprising because cooking isn’t traditionally poetic. Also “Le Gateau”:
lyrical description of a poet’s lyrical response to a landscape and he sums it up as follows:
‘Bref, je me sentais… en parfaite paix avec moi-même et avec l’univers.’ Colloquial dismissive
‘bref’ undercuts e usive lyrical idea of peace. He systematically plays on these juxtapositions in
the prose poems—part of his hybrid style.
- Lots of di erent types of prose poems. At lyrical end there are transpositions of verse poems;
anecdotes, scenes, dialogues and narratives; at most prosaic end of the spectrum more
philosophical pieces which discuss an aesthetic or moral issue.
- Di cult to de ne prose poetry—prose is everything that isn’t verse yet prose poetry de nes
itself against the genre of verse. Prose poetry undoes symmetrical opposition between prose
and poetry.
- Two prose poems which are transpositions of verse poems are “un hémisphère dans une
chevelure” (double of verse poem “la chevelure”) and “l’invitation au voyage” (double of verse
poem of the same name).
- “Un hémisphère dans une chevelure”: prose version published two years before the verse
version, but not known which version was written rst. Structure mirrors verse version closely
(seven stanzas vs seven paragraphs). Structures by images rather than logical argument. Prose
starts with poet’s appetite.
- First stanza/paragraph: Verse starts with hair and then shows poet’s feeling in response;
prose starts with poet’s appetite. Instead of using suggestive metaphors to suggest the hair
becomes other things, Baudelaire spells out the distance between literal things and the
gurative images (‘comme’ used repeatedly to underline just images, not real things). In the
verse, Baudelaire evokes perfume of the hair; prose does not begin by describing the
qualities of the scent or its e ects but rather the speaker’s desire for it. Speaker seems to
start o knowing what he wants. In verse, memories are shaken out of hair.
- Second paragraph/stanza: poet states he is seeing/smelling/hearing before we get the
images that the hair is conjuring up—his appetite is again emphasised more than his
response—he approaches the woman with an aim and he isn’t really engaging with her but
remains separate and focussing on his own desires. Although he addresses her as ‘tu’, he
seems somehow to be excluding her from the experience.
- Paragraph 3: list of all things the speaker nds in the hair. Way hair contains these things is
very literal, as though hair just a vessel. Verse is less literal in way it turns hair into other
things—in rst two stanzas of verse hair had been handkerchief, Asia, Africa, forest, waves
and word ‘contient’ only used once. But the construction hair contains dream is broken up
by the ‘mer d’ébène’ in the fourth line of the stanza—hair likened simultaneously to the sea
and to ebony—combination of the metaphors already used.
- Paragraphs 4 and 5: two prose paragraphs correspond to one verse. Hair is just starting
point to precise description that unfolds according to its own logic. Exotic images not
connected to the hair as metaphors. Flowers and jugs are comically accumulated clutter.
Piling up of concrete items seems to empty hair of kind of emotional meaning it had in the
verse—Baudelaire reveals the arti ce of nding such meaning in the hair; it seems almost
comic to cram all this clutter into the hair. In the prose version, we are forced to question the
posture of the poet using the woman as a springboard for his own voyage towards the ideal.
Prose poem making us aware here that the seductive qualities of the verse disguise the
poet’s exclusion of reality—prose poems constantly bringing us back to reality and revealing
the ideal to be illusory—description here is of the real world.
4
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Baudelaire Lectures
Lecture 1
- ‘La modernité, c’est le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moitié de l’art, dont l’autre moitié
est l’éternel et l’immuable’. (Le Peintre de la vie moderne) Tension between modernity and
eternity in Baudelaire’s poetry.
- Modernity=transience of urban life. This sense of eeting experience is an essential ingredient
in art. All art is double: contains an element which is concrete and particular and an element
that is absolute and eternal. Contingent element has become more transient than it had been in
the past—life has speeded up. Transient element is both modern world itself and the particular
glimpses an observer has of it and transient becomes part of nished work of art.
- Baudelaire uses a variety of means to formally convey the contingent—condensed forms,
concrete vocabulary and lots of irony. Thematically, he explores the e ects of the new socio-
economic reality: new kinds of loneliness, hopeless yearning for spiritual values, doubts about
the very place of art. The modern world in which Baudelaire found himself was one in which
religion no longer held sway, so art was the only remaining site of spiritual value in a fallen
world. Society concerned with producing things that were useful and pro table, so poets felt
they had no role, were no longer writing for a predicable and cohesive audience. Earlier
Romantics like Hugo had reacted to this by forging a myth of the poet as a spiritual leader and
by using the musical and rhetorical qualities of poetry to suggest connections between the
visible and divine worlds. Baudelaire instead transformed the modern world into art. Mystery
and beauty can be found within this discordant experience (projected epilogue to 1861 edition
of Les Fleurs du mal: ‘Tu m’as donné ta boue et j’en ai fait de l’or’).
- Art can’t isolate the absolute because the ideal itself is only an abstract notion: ‘Toutes les
beautés contiennent, comme tous les phénomènes possibles, quelque chose d’éternel et
quelque chose de transitoire, d’absolu et de particulier. La beauté absolue et éternelle n’existe
pas, ou plutôt elle n’est qu’une abstraction écrémée à la surface générale des beautés
diverses.’ (Salon de 1846). The ideal only exists within particular concrete situations. In FDM,
Baudelaire often uses everyday situations as a starting point for the invocation of the ideal:
cats, a woman’s hair, a passer by. He uses lyric form to contain and transform these
epiphanies.
- Most lyrical poems of FDM attempt to capture the eternal by using xed forms to create e ects
of unity and harmony. e.g. Correspondances uses symmetry and musicality to create e ects of
unity: ‘Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent… sans se répondent.’ Alexandrines
combine opposites within a balanced whole (dark and light embraced in a single line). Sense of
a spiritual whole arises from connections being made between contingent elements (perfumes,
colours and sounds). This unity is underlined by the pattern of musical echoes. The form is
highly condensed and yet it evokes an awareness of vastness and expansion (like la vie
intérieure and harmonie du soir). Magical e ect created by linguistic manipulation.
- Baudelaire was well aware of the decrepitude of modern times in which use value had become
dominant and he views poetry as a refuge from this. Walter Benjamin (On some motifs in
Baudelaire): ‘What Baudelaire meant by correspondances may be described as an experience
which seeks to establish itself in crisis-proof form.’ Using linguistic form to create something
beautiful as a refuge from reality.
- For Baudelaire, the ideal does not exist in pure form, but is always glimpsed in real life or felt
through real experiences: ‘Le beau est toujours bizarre.’ He emphasised the role of the
individual perceiving subject in the art of conveying spirituality: ‘Deux qualités littéraires
fondamentales : surnaturalisme et ironie. Coup d’oeil individuel, aspect dans lequel se tiennent
les choses devant l’écrivain, puis tournure d’esprit satanique.’ (Fusées). By mid-19th century,
meaning no longer determined by divinity but created by human mind.
- ‘Qu’est-ce que l’art pur suivant la conception moderne ? C’est créer une magie suggestive
contenant à la fois l’objet et le sujet, le monde extérieur à l’artiste et l’artiste lui-
même.’ (Exposition universelle, ‘L’Art philosophique’ (1855)). Art mingles subject and object.
Emphasis on subjective perception (ideal momentarily extracted, often in unlikely situations—
especially in tableaux parisiens).
1
ff fl fi fi ff fi ff ff
, - Symbols have to be elaborated by poet—aren’t plucked fully-formed from out of life. Fusées:
‘Dans certains états de l’âme presque surnaturels, la profondeur de la vie se révèle tout entière
dans le spectacle, si ordinaire qu’il soit, qu’on a sous les yeux. Il en devient le symbole.’
- Di erent editions of FDM: 1857 ( rst edition); 1861 (second edition—more poems with explicitly
modern themes like tableaux parisiens). Baudelaire’s emphasis on subjective perception is key.
- Parfum exotique (‘Quand, les deux yeux… soleil monotone’): formal connections between
inside and outside (‘je’ followed by two verbs in lines 2 and 3; ‘chaleureux’ and ‘heureux’
rhyme, connecting real woman to imagined landscape).
- Les petites vieilles (‘Dans les plis… charmants.’): lines 1 and 4 describe outside world and lines
2 and 3 explain perspective of the observing poet. His attitude is dictated by his mood. Old
ladies re ect the poet—old and isolated.
- Parfum exotique and Les petites vieilles both involve making connections, although of di erent
kinds. Parfum exotique suggests a fundamental connection between self and world is possible
—the poem creates a sense of unity. In Les petites vieilles, the connection between the self and
the world is less certain; it has to be created (poem makes explicit that enchantment is
produced by poet struggling to extract beauty from unpromising material). No absolute unity
underpinning this vision.
- Le Cygne: ‘Un cygne qui s’était… blanc plumage’. Chance encounter but surprising—swan
displaced from natural habitat and exiled to the city. Scene combines the everyday and the
unexpected. Speaker transforms this experience into a symbol of the poet exiled from the ideal
world of beauty to the world of urban ugliness: ‘Je vois ce malheureux, mythe… reproches à
Dieu !’. Swan becomes a myth invested with great importance. Baudelaire combines
conventional lyrical vocabulary with very concrete speci c terms (e.g. sonorous rst line ‘un
cygne qui s’était évadé de sa cage’ gives way to prosaic observation ‘frottant le pavé sec’).
Baudelaire aware poet no longer uses homogenous language to communicate with an
audience that shares the same values. Instead, he picks words from di erent discourses and
combines them in new ways.
- “À une passante”: tercets emphasise impact eeting encounter has on poet (‘Moi, je buvais…
dans l’éternité ?’). Encounter is transitive and contingent (‘éclair). ‘crispé comme un
extravagant’—describing himself as though he is watching somebody from outside—so tensed
by experience of walking through the city that he can only react to feeling with neurotic spasm.
Very modern beauty, yet poem shows that the modern world limits our ability to respond to
such moments.
- Description of beauty tips into the grotesque in Les Petites vieilles (‘Honteuses d’exister…
mûrs’). Old women don’t t into the world—like poet (‘Mais moi, moi… incertains’—poet
ironically occupying god-like position, parodying romantic all-powerful rst person— rst person
repeated twice in ironic exaggeration. Use of metaphor in the poem shows a nities and
analogies can still operate in the modern world, but this comes into doubt in Les sept vieillards,
in which reality proliferates without having any meaning—as though speaker is unable to
comprehend or unify his fractured experience. First stanza represents outside world as other-
worldly (‘formillante cité… puissant’). Second stanza shows strain of making sense of world
(buildings compared to river banks, word ‘simulaient’ underlines the forced parallel between
pastoral image and urban setting). External world perceived by speaker who is alienated from
himself in some way. Repetition of ‘nerfs’ in ‘héros’ underlines that heroism in modern life is
akin to a nervous spasm rather than being a con dent strength. Baudelaire’s language
dissonant in juxtaposing the sentimental description of the soul with the mundane everyday
‘tombereaux’. The speaker experiences sudden shock (‘Tout à coup… frimas’)—chance
encounter turns out to be dysphoric—odd analogy between old man’s rags and sky—idea of
‘imitaient’ suggests debased relationship—idea of copying nature rather than the poet sensing
a harmonious correspondence; rather abrupt enjambement in lines 4 and 5 and leaving
‘m’apparut’ at the start of the line and making a strong syntactic break after the third syllable
destabilises the balance of the Alexandrine which re ects the destabilised self. Description of
the old man escalates to underline his malevolence (‘dans la neige… indi érant’—outright
hostility here, not the indi erence of spleen—some kind of plot, sense of paranoia, as though
Romantic theme of mystery and unknowability of the world has become an exaggerated
scheme here. Plurality of old men re ects speaker’s fear of fragmenting into parts.
Fragmentation is major theme in the spleen de Paris—many poems based on di erent voices
enacting di erent parts of the self. Speaker of Les sept vieillards aware that his fears are
exaggerated and ironising his own capacity to produce meaning—meanings he produces are
obsessive and distort reality—self-irony is form of self-protection—real sense that there is a
2
ff fl ff fffi fi fl fl fi fl fi fffi ff ffi fffi fi ff
, threat from the outside world—subject bracing itself to negotiate hostile world. Poet can
transform reality into symbols, but their meaning isn’t stable—not surprising that this is di cult
if the poet is also negotiating noisy streets and hostile passers by. Modernity in art means many
things but one of them is that the process of making meaning is no longer determined by
authority but is created by an individual. In petites vieilles poet successful in creating beauty
out of mundane observed reality, but in les sept vieillards the poet’s mind loses grip on reality
and veers towards producing disturbing visions.
- Subjective perceptions—power of imagination to create beauty out of eeting experiences.
Obstacles to this: some poems evoke deadening emotional e ect of spleen (modern
melancholy without cause—‘j’ai plus de souvenirs que si j’avais mille ans’); poems present
external reality as inimical to the imagination (e.g. in “Paysage” ‘l’émeute… tiède atmosphère);
ideal presented as inaccessible (e.g. les aveugles, l’irremediable that lament absence of ideal);
dangers of celebrating subjective responses which often result in a distorted view of reality and
make it di cult for the disturbed individual to escape from his own obsessions).
Lecture 2 (prose poetry)
- Many poems stage the act of distorting reality (e.g. in les 7 vieillards he presents the vision of
old men as hallucination by deranged speaker).
- Di erent critics have di erent views regarding the relative importance of FDM and le Spleen de
Paris. Baudelaire’s prose poetry neglected until 1960s and still viewed as secondary by many
French critics, although often celebrated in its own right in English world. Prose poems strange
and indirect texts.
- Prose poetry as experimental form—have to read his language very closely to grasp what he is
saying. Baudelaire combined traditional poetic language with very concrete/medical/everyday
terms to create a poetic language characterised by its overall arti ce (Baudelaire always
preferred arti ce to imitations of nature). He takes this further in the prose poems by combining
the attributes of prose and poetry. Prose poetry is hybrid genre—plays on the tension between
poetry and prose—we can’t read it by relating it to existing models. Baudelaire inspired to
experiment with prose poetry by Aloysius Bertrand’s "Gaspard de la nuit”. Boundaries between
poetry and prose being blurred by changing conception of poetry—increasingly felt that poetry
was not just a function of a xed form but a quality that could be found in di erent experiences
and depended on the strength of feeling—poet must create form to convey that experience.
Much foreign poetry at the time translated into French into prose. Baudelaire wrote both prose
and verse poetry concurrently for many years. His collection of prose poetry published in 1869
(two years after his death and put together by editors; unclear what title he intended for it).
Some of the prose poetry seems to be response to lack of audience understanding (FDM
condemned); some are like short stories, some like transpositions of verse poems; some like
philosophical re ections. Allows Baudelaire to combine ‘magie suggestive’ of poetry with
analytical quality of prose—new way of exploring relationship between the ideal and the
contingent. It also problematises the very form of poetry and the way it is read—hence o ers
challenges to the reader—even the so-called preface to the Spleen de Paris is seen as ironic.
Preface says can read poems singularly—many of them were indeed published individually in
periodicals during Baudelaire’s lifetime. Aesthetic advantages to poet of being able to cut
where he wants—he doesn’t have to stick to conventional forms and make the poems rounded
wholes. Bathos, irony and double-edged irony all key elements of Baudelaire’s style in the
prose poems. Irony shows control of the poet—like the verse poems here in that they show
close attention to craft. Baudelaire viewed verse as not a restriction but as a great way of
enabling the poet to express what he wants to say: ‘les rhétoriques et les prosodies ne sont
pas des tyrannies inventées arbitrairement, mais une collection des règles réclamées par
l’organisation même de l’être spirituel. Et jamais les prosodies et les rhétoriques n’ont empêché
l’originalité de se produire distinctement. Le contraire, à savoir qu’elles ont aidé l’éclosion de
l’originalité, serait in niment plus vrai.’ (Salon de 1859). Image of cutting is violent—violence
very common in the prose poems—crime and violence fundamental aspect of human nature—
preface represents reading itself as violent.
- In preface, Baudelaire also talks about style of poetic prose: ‘Quel est celui de nous qui n’a
pas… soubresauts de la conscience ?’ Musicality suggests it would borrow some of the
qualities of verse but the combination of ‘double’ and ‘heurtée’ suggests a tension between the
sinuous and the staccato. Such poetic prose would be able to re ect a variety of states of
mind, both more abrupt leaps and lyric ights. Baudelaire constantly uses lyrical e ects and
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, undercuts them with shocks and prosaic interruptions. Tension between di erent kinds of
writing—this is a continuity of the later verse (tableaux parisiens). Also in preface: emphasises
setting of the city and its random encounters. Many of the prose poems about interpreting and
deciphering the curious environment of the city. Very often narrators shown to try to make
sense of surprising events but narrators themselves are mysterious gures and reader has to
work hard to interpret them. Preface establishes antagonistic relationship between poet and
reader (theme of unappreciative audience in both prose and verse poems). Romantic poetry
had encouraged reader to identity with poet (Hugo said ‘quand je vous parle de moi je parle de
vous’) Baudelaire in contrast emphasises more complex relationship between reader and poet
(‘au lecteur’ emphasises complicity between reader and poet—‘hypocrite lecteur’ is ‘mon
semblable, mon frère’) but no such pact in prose poems and this makes it di cult for readers to
know where they stand.
- Sudden intrusion of prosaic into an otherwise lyrical description in “L’invitation au voyage”:
o ers a description of a distant and beautiful land and then suddenly says ‘la cuisine elle-même
est poétique’, which is surprising because cooking isn’t traditionally poetic. Also “Le Gateau”:
lyrical description of a poet’s lyrical response to a landscape and he sums it up as follows:
‘Bref, je me sentais… en parfaite paix avec moi-même et avec l’univers.’ Colloquial dismissive
‘bref’ undercuts e usive lyrical idea of peace. He systematically plays on these juxtapositions in
the prose poems—part of his hybrid style.
- Lots of di erent types of prose poems. At lyrical end there are transpositions of verse poems;
anecdotes, scenes, dialogues and narratives; at most prosaic end of the spectrum more
philosophical pieces which discuss an aesthetic or moral issue.
- Di cult to de ne prose poetry—prose is everything that isn’t verse yet prose poetry de nes
itself against the genre of verse. Prose poetry undoes symmetrical opposition between prose
and poetry.
- Two prose poems which are transpositions of verse poems are “un hémisphère dans une
chevelure” (double of verse poem “la chevelure”) and “l’invitation au voyage” (double of verse
poem of the same name).
- “Un hémisphère dans une chevelure”: prose version published two years before the verse
version, but not known which version was written rst. Structure mirrors verse version closely
(seven stanzas vs seven paragraphs). Structures by images rather than logical argument. Prose
starts with poet’s appetite.
- First stanza/paragraph: Verse starts with hair and then shows poet’s feeling in response;
prose starts with poet’s appetite. Instead of using suggestive metaphors to suggest the hair
becomes other things, Baudelaire spells out the distance between literal things and the
gurative images (‘comme’ used repeatedly to underline just images, not real things). In the
verse, Baudelaire evokes perfume of the hair; prose does not begin by describing the
qualities of the scent or its e ects but rather the speaker’s desire for it. Speaker seems to
start o knowing what he wants. In verse, memories are shaken out of hair.
- Second paragraph/stanza: poet states he is seeing/smelling/hearing before we get the
images that the hair is conjuring up—his appetite is again emphasised more than his
response—he approaches the woman with an aim and he isn’t really engaging with her but
remains separate and focussing on his own desires. Although he addresses her as ‘tu’, he
seems somehow to be excluding her from the experience.
- Paragraph 3: list of all things the speaker nds in the hair. Way hair contains these things is
very literal, as though hair just a vessel. Verse is less literal in way it turns hair into other
things—in rst two stanzas of verse hair had been handkerchief, Asia, Africa, forest, waves
and word ‘contient’ only used once. But the construction hair contains dream is broken up
by the ‘mer d’ébène’ in the fourth line of the stanza—hair likened simultaneously to the sea
and to ebony—combination of the metaphors already used.
- Paragraphs 4 and 5: two prose paragraphs correspond to one verse. Hair is just starting
point to precise description that unfolds according to its own logic. Exotic images not
connected to the hair as metaphors. Flowers and jugs are comically accumulated clutter.
Piling up of concrete items seems to empty hair of kind of emotional meaning it had in the
verse—Baudelaire reveals the arti ce of nding such meaning in the hair; it seems almost
comic to cram all this clutter into the hair. In the prose version, we are forced to question the
posture of the poet using the woman as a springboard for his own voyage towards the ideal.
Prose poem making us aware here that the seductive qualities of the verse disguise the
poet’s exclusion of reality—prose poems constantly bringing us back to reality and revealing
the ideal to be illusory—description here is of the real world.
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