Summary
Highlights
Born in Paris in 1821, Charles Baudelaire led a bohemian life. His family, concerned, sent him on a journey to India, which awakened his love for the exotic. After his father's death, he inherited money, which he spent living as a dandy in Paris. His relationship with Jeanne Duval, a mulatto woman, profoundly influenced his aesthetic. His family had him interdicted in 1844 due to his extravagant lifestyle, forcing him to support himself. In 1846, he discovered Edgar Allan Poe, feeling a deep kinship with the American author, seeing him as a fraternal, cursed spirit. Baudelaire translated Poe's works, feeling as though Poe's sentences were his own thoughts.
In 1857, Baudelaire published 'Les Fleurs du Mal' (The Flowers of Evil), which immediately caused a scandal. The first edition comprised 100 poems across five sections: Spleen et Idéal, Fleurs du Mal, La Révolte, Le Vin, and La Mort. It faced legal action, leading to the confiscation of copies and the suppression of six 'obscene' poems, a fate also shared by Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary.' A second, expanded edition was published in 1861. Baudelaire's health declined, suffering from syphilis, opium, and laudanum dependence. Harassed by debt, he moved to Belgium, suffered a stroke in 1866, and died a year later.
Baudelaire explores the conflict between 'spleen' (a state of profound depression, ennui, and disgust with the world) and the 'ideal' (a pursuit of beauty and purity). This tension is often futile, leading him back to despair. Other sections of the collection, like 'Tableaux Parisiens,' depict the squalid spectacle of the industrial city. He seeks escape through exoticism, artificial paradises induced by alcohol and opium, and the 'disorder of the senses.' Ultimately, he turns to Satan in 'La Révolte' and finally to death, seeing it as the 'great journey' to explore the unknown.
The title 'Les Fleurs du Mal' itself is provocative, juxtaposing delicate flowers with evil. Baudelaire's flowers are decadent, diseased, monstrous, and poisonous. He described the book as containing 'all my thought, all my heart, all my religion in disguise.' The opening poem, 'Au Lecteur,' aims to provoke rather than charm, highlighting a morally degraded humanity consumed by 'spleen.' Baudelaire felt perpetually torn between heaven and hell, attracted to both purity and vice, with death being his only perceived escape into a mysterious but fascinating world.
Baudelaire's 'Correspondances' is a foundational poem for French Symbolism. It posits a mystic view of reality where natural forms are symbols of deeper truths, accessible only to the poet. The poet becomes a 'seer,' capable of deciphering the mysterious connections within reality. Poetry moves beyond logical communication to the unconscious, embracing a mystical, ineffable quality. The poem 'L'Albatros' from 'Spleen et Idéal' illustrates the conflict between the intellectual and society. The albatross, majestic in flight, is clumsy on land, symbolizing the poet's elevated spirit versus his awkwardness in the mundane world and society's derision of artists.
Spleen is depicted as a profound depression, ennui, and disgust with life. In the poem 'Spleen,' Baudelaire contrasts a dreary external world (a sky like a lid, black light, damp earth) with his internal suffering, allegorized by hope as a bat and spiders weaving webs of anguish. Baudelaire also explores these themes in his prose work, 'Le Spleen de Paris,' where he recounts the poet's loss of his 'aureole,' symbolizing the decline of the poet's sacred dignity in modern society. The poet is no longer a privileged figure but an ordinary man, his halo lost in the Parisian mud.
In the second half of the 19th century, Symbolism became a significant literary movement, with Baudelaire's 'Correspondances' as its manifesto. Key Symbolist poets include Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé. Verlaine emphasized that language should emulate music, focusing on indefiniteness and nuance. His collections explore Decadent themes like existential ennui, akin to Baudelaire's spleen.