I
The first time that we met Baudelaire was towards the middle of the
year 1849, at the Hôtel Pimodan, where we occupied, near Fernand
Boissard, a strange apartment which communicated with his by a private
staircase hidden in the thickness of the wall, and which was haunted
by the spirits of beautiful women loved long since by Lauzun. The
superb Maryx was to be found there who, in her youth, had posed for
"La Mignon" of Scheffer, and later, for "La Gloire distribuant des
couronnes" of Paul Delaroche; and that other beauty, then in all her
splendour, from whom Clesinger modelled "La Femme au serpent," that
statue where grief resembles a paroxysm of pleasure, and which throbs
with an intensity of life that the chisel has never before attained and
which can never be surpassed.
Charles Baudelaire was then an almost unknown genius, preparing himself
in the shadow for the light to come, with that tenacity of purpose
which, in him, doubled inspiration; but his name was already becoming
known amongst poets and artists, who heard it with a quivering of
expectation, the younger generation almost venerating him. In the
mysterious upper chamber where the reputations of the future are in the
making he passed as the strongest. We had often heard him spoken of,
but none of his works were known to us.
His appearance was striking: he had closely shaved hair of a rich
black, which fell over a forehead of extraordinary whiteness, giving
his head the appearance of a Saracen helmet. His eyes, coloured like
tobacco of Spain, had great depth and spirituality about them, and a
certain penetration which was, perhaps, a little too insistent. As
to the mouth, in which the teeth were white and perfect, it was seen
under a slight and silky moustache which screened its contours. The
mobile curves, voluptuous and ironical as the lips in a face painted by
Leonardo da Vinci, the nose, fine and delicate, somewhat curved, with
quivering nostrils, seemed ever to be scenting vague perfumes. A large
dimple accentuated the chin, like the finishing touch of a sculptor's
chisel on a statue; the cheeks, carefully shaved, with vermilion
tints on the cheek-bones; the neck, of almost feminine elegance and
whiteness, showed plainly, as the collar of his shirt was turned down
with a Madras cravat.
His clothing consisted of a paletot of shining black cloth,
nut-coloured trousers, white stockings, and patent leather shoes; the
whole fastidiously correct, with a stamp of almost English simplicity,
intentionally adopted to distinguish himself from the artistic folk
with the soft felt hats, the velvet waistcoats, red jackets, and
strong, dishevelled beards. Nothing was too new or elaborate about
him. Charles Baudelaire indulged in a certain dandyism, but he would
do anything to take from his things the "Sunday clothes" appearance so
dear and important to the Philistine, but so disagreeable to the true
gentleman.
Later, he shaved off his moustache, finding that it was the remains
of an old picturesqueness which it was both childish and bourgeois to
retain. Thus, relieved of all superfluous down, his head recalled that
of Lawrence Sterne; a resemblance that was augmented by Baudelaire's
habit of leaning his temple against his first finger, which is, as
every one knows, the attitude of the English humorist in the portrait
placed at the beginning of his books.
Such was the physical impression made on us after our first meeting
with the future author of "The Flowers of Evil."
We find in the "Nouveaux Camées parisiens" of Théodore de Banville,
one of the poet's best and most constant friends whose loss we deplore,
a portrait of Baudelaire in his youth. We are permitted to transcribe
the lines here, prose equal in perfection to the most beautiful verse.
It portrays Baudelaire as he is very little known, and as he was only
at that particular time.
"In a portrait painted by Émile Deroy, one of the rarest works of art
by modern painters, we see Charles Baudelaire at twenty years of age,
at a time when, rich, happy, well-loved, already becoming celebrated,
he wrote his first verses which were applauded by Paris, the literary
leader of the whole world! O rare example of a divine face, uniting
all graces, power, and most irresistible seductiveness! The eyebrow
well-marked and curved like a bow, the eyelid warm and softly coloured;
the eye, large, black, deep and of unequalled fire, caressing and
imperious, embraces, interrogates and reflects all that surrounds it;
the nose, beautifully chiselled, slightly curved, makes us dream of the
celebrated phrase of the poet:
'Mon âme voltige sur les parfums, comme l'âme des autres hommes voltige
sur la musique!' The mouth is arched and refined by the mind, and at
the moment is of the delicate tint that reminds one of the royal beauty
of freshly plucked fruit. The chin is rounded, but nevertheless haughty
and powerful as that of Balzac. The whole face is of a warm pallor,
under which the rose tints of beautiful rich blood appear. A newly
grown beard, like that of a young god, decorates it. The forehead, high
and broad, magnificently drawn, is ornamented by black, thick hair,
naturally wavy and curly like that of Paganini, which falls over a
throat worthy of Achilles or Antinous."
One must not take this portrait too literally. It is seen through
the medium of painting and poetry, and embellished by a certain
idealisation. Still, it is no less sincere and faithful of Baudelaire
as he appeared at that time. Charles Baudelaire had his hour of supreme
beauty and perfect expansion, and we relate it after this faithful
witness. It is rare that a poet, an artist, is known in the spring-time
of his charm.
Reputation generally comes later, when the fatigue of study, the
struggles of life, and the torture of passion have taken away
youthfulness, leaving only the mask, faded and altered, on which each
sorrow has made her impress. It is this last picture, which also has
beauty, that one remembers. With his evasive singularity was mingled a
certain exotic odour like the distant perfume of a country well loved
of the sun. It is said that Baudelaire travelled for some time in
India, and this fact explains much.
Contrary to the somewhat loose manners of artists generally, Baudelaire
prided himself upon observing the most rigid _convenances_; his
courtesy was often excessive to the point of affectation. He measured
his phrases, using only the most carefully selected terms, and
pronounced certain words in a particular manner, as though he wished to
underline them and give them a mysterious signification. Italics and
capital letters seemed to be marked in his voice.
Exaggeration, much in honour at Pimodan's, he disdained as theatrical
and coarse, though he allowed himself the use of paradox. With a very
simple, natural, and perfectly detached air, as though retailing, _à
la_ Prudhomme, a newspaper paragraph on the state of the weather, he
would advance monstrous axioms, or uphold with perfect sang-froid
some theory of mathematical extravagance; for he had method in the
development of his follies. His spirit was neither in words nor traits;
he saw things from a particular point of view which changed their
outlines, as objects seen in a bird's-eye view are changed from when
seen at their own elevation; he perceived analogies, inappreciable to
others, the fantastic logic of which was very striking.
His gestures were slow, sober, and rare; for he held southern
gesticulation in horror. Neither did he like volubility of speech,
and British reserve appealed to his sense of good form. One might
describe him as a dandy strayed into Bohemia; but preserving there his
rank, and that cult of self which characterises a man imbued with the
principles of Brummel.
Such was our impression of Baudelaire at our first meeting, the memory
of which is as vivid as though it had occurred yesterday.
We were in the big salon, decorated in the style of Louis XIV, the
wainscot enriched and set off with dull gold of a perfect tone,
projecting cornices, on which some pupil of Lesueur or of Poussin,
having studied at the Hôtel Lambert, had painted nymphs chased by
satyrs through reed-grass, according to the mythological taste of the
period. On the great marble chimney, veined with vermilion and white,
was placed, in the guise of a clock, a golden elephant, harnessed like
the elephant of Porus in the battle of Lebrun, supporting on its back
a tower with an inscribed dial-plate. The chairs and settees were old
and covered with faded tapestry, representing subjects of the chase by
Oudry and Desportes.
It was in this salon, also, that the séances of the club of
hashish-eaters took place, a club to which we belonged, the ecstasies,
dreams, hallucinations of which, followed by the deepest dejection, we
have described.
As was said above, the owner of this apartment was Fernand Boissard,
whose short, curly, fair hair, white and vermilion complexion, grey
eyes scintillating with light and _esprit_, red lips and pearly
teeth, seemed to witness to the health and exuberance of a Rubens, and
to promise a life more than usually long. But, alas, who is able to
foresee the fate of another? Boissard, to whom none of the conditions
of happiness were lacking, fell a victim to a malady much the same as
that which caused the death of Baudelaire.
No one was better equipped than Boissard. He had the most open-minded
intelligence; he understood painting, poetry, and music equally well;
but, in him, the dilettante was stronger than the artist. Admiration
took up too much of his time; he exhausted himself in his enthusiasms.
There is no doubt that, had necessity with her iron hand compelled him,
he would have been an excellent painter. The success that was obtained
by the "Episode de la retraite de Russie" would have been his sure
guarantee. But, without abandoning painting, he allowed himself to be
diverted by other arts. He played the violin, organised quartettes,
studied Bach, Beethoven, Meyerbeer, and Mendelssohn, learnt languages,
wrote criticisms, and composed some charming sonnets.
He was a voluptuary in Art, and no one enjoyed real masterpieces with
more refinement, passion, and sensuousness than he did. From force of
admiring, he forgot to express beauty, and what he felt so deeply he
came to believe he had created. His conversation was charming, full
of gaiety and originality. He had a rare gift of inventing words and
phrases, and all sorts of bizarre expressions, that linger in the mind.
Like Baudelaire, amorous of new and rare sensations, even when they
were dangerous, he wished to know those artificial paradises, which,
later, made him pay so dearly for their transient ecstasies. It was
the abuse of hashish that, undoubtedly, undermined his constitution,
formerly so robust and strong.
This souvenir of a friend of our youth, with whom we lived under the
same roof, of a romantic to whom fame did not come because he loved
too much the work of others to dream of his own, will not be out of
place here, in this introduction destined to serve as a preface to the
complete works of a departed friend of us both.
On the day of our visit Jean Feuchères, the sculptor, was there.
Besides his talent in statuary, Feuchères had a remarkable power of
imitation, such as no actor was able to compass. He was the inventor of
the comic dialogues between Sergeant Bridais and gunner Pitou, which
even to-day provoke irresistible laughter. Feuchères died first, and,
of the four artists assembled on that day at the Hôtel Pimodan, we only
survive.
On the sofa, half recumbent, her elbow resting on a cushion, with
an immobility of pose she often assumed, Maryx listened dreamily
to Baudelaire's paradoxes. No surprise was manifested on her almost
Oriental countenance. She wore a white robe, oddly ornamented with red
spots like tiny drops of blood, and while Baudelaire talked she lazily
passed the rings from one hand to another--hands as perfect as was her
figure.
Near the window, the "Femme au serpent" (it is not permitted to give
her name) having thrown back her lace wrap and delicate little green
hood, such as never adorned Lucy Hocquet or Madame Baurand, over an
arm-chair, shook out her beautiful fawn-brown hair, for she had come
from the Swimming Baths, and, her person all draped in muslin, exhaled,
like a naiad, the fragrant perfume of the bath. With her eyes and smile
she encouraged this tilt of words, and threw in, now and again, her own
remarks, sometimes mocking, sometimes appreciative.
They have passed, those charming leisure hours, when poets, artists,
and beautiful women were gathered together to talk of Art, literature,
and love, as the century of Boccaccio has passed. Time, Death, the
imperious necessities of life, have dispersed this mutually sympathetic
group; but the memory is dear to all those who had the good fortune to
be admitted to it. It is not without an involuntary sigh that these
lines are penned.
Shortly after this first meeting Baudelaire came to see us and brought
a volume of his verses. He himself relates this visit in a literary
article which he wrote about us in terms of such admiration that we
dare not transcribe them.
From that moment a friendship was formed between us, in which
Baudelaire always wished to conserve the attitude of favourite disciple
to a sympathetic master, although he owed his success only to himself
and his own originality. Never in our greatest familiarity did he relax
that deference of manner which to us seemed excessive and with which
we would gladly have dispensed. He acknowledged it _à vive voix_, and
the dedication of the "Flowers of Evil" which is addressed to us,
consecrates in its lapidary form the absolute expression of his loving
and poetical devotion.
If we insist on these details, it is not for their actual worth, but
solely because they portray an unrecognised side of Baudelaire's
character.
This poet, whom people try to describe as of so satanic a nature,
smitten with evil and depravity (literary, be it well understood), knew
love and admiration in the highest degree.
But the distinguishing feature of Satan is that he is incapable
of admiration or love. The light wounds him, glory is a sight
insupportable to him, and makes him want to veil his eyes with his
bat-like wings. No one, even at the time of fervour for romanticism,
had more respect and adoration for the great masters than Baudelaire.
He was always ready to pay his legitimate tribute of praise to those
who merited it, and that without the servility of a disciple, without
fanaticism; for he himself was a master, having his realm, his
subjects, and his coinage of gold.
It would perhaps be fitting, after having portrayed Baudelaire in
all the freshness of his youth and in the fulness of his power, to
present him as he was during the later years of his life, before Death
stretched out his hand towards him, and sealed the lips which will no
longer speak here below. His face was thin and spiritualised; the eyes
seemed larger, the nose thinner; the lips were closed mysteriously,
and seemed to guard ironical secrets. The vermilion tints of the past
had given place to a swarthy, tired yellow. As to the forehead, it had
gained in grandeur and solidity--so to speak; one would have said that
it was carved in some particularly durable marble. The fine hair, silky
and long, nearly white, falling round a face which was young and old at
the same time, gave him an almost sacerdotal appearance.
Charles Baudelaire was born in Paris on April 21st, 1821, in an
old turreted house, in the Rue Hautefeuille. He was the son of M.
Baudelaire, the old friend of Condorcet and of Cabanis, a distinguished
and well-educated man who retained the polished manners of the
eighteenth century, which the pretentious tastes of the Republican
era had not so entirely effaced as is sometimes thought. This
characteristic was strong in the poet, who always retained the outward
forms of courtesy.
In his young days Baudelaire was in no way out of the ordinary, and
neither did he gain many laurels at his college prize distributions. He
even found the B.A. examination a great difficulty, and his degree was
honorary. Troubled by abstract questions, this boy, so fine of spirit
and keen of intelligence, appeared almost like an idiot. We have no
intention of declaring this inaptitude as a sign of cleverness; but,
under the eye of the pedagogue, often distrait and idle, or rather
preoccupied, the real man is formed little by little, unperceived by
masters or parents.
M. Baudelaire died, and his wife, Charles's mother, married General
Aupick, who became Ambassador to Constantinople. Dissension soon arose
in the family à propos of young Baudelaire's desire for a literary
career. We think it wrong to reproach parents with the fears they
manifest when the gift of poetry develops in their offspring. Alas!
They are right. To what sad, precarious, and miserable existence does
he vow himself--he who takes up a literary career? From that day he
must consider himself cut off from human beings, active life; he no
longer lives--he is the spectator of life. All sensation comes to
him as motif for analysis. Involuntarily he develops two distinct
personalities, and, lacking other subjects, one becomes the spy on the
other. If he lack a corpse, he stretches himself on the slab of black
marble and buries the scalpel deep in his own heart. And what desperate
struggles must he endure with the Idea, that elusive Proteus, who takes
all manner of forms to escape captivity, and who will only deliver his
oracle when he has been forced to show himself in his true aspect! This
Idea, when one holds it, frightened, trembling, vanquished, one must
nourish, clothe, fold round in that robe so difficult to weave, to
colour and to arrange in graceful curves. During this long-drawn-out
task the nerves become irritable, the brain on fire, the sensibilities
quickened, and then nervous disorder comes with all its odd anxieties,
its unconscious hallucinations, its indefinable sufferings, its
morbid capriciousness, its fantastic depravity, its infatuations and
motiveless dislikes, its mad energy and nervous prostration, its
searches for excitement and its disgust for all healthy nourishment.
We do not exaggerate the picture; but we have before us only the
talented poets, crowned with glory, who have, at the last, succumbed on
the breast of their ideal. What would it be if we went down into the
Limbo where the shades of still-born children are wailing, like those
abortive endeavours and larvæ of thought which can achieve neither
wing nor form? Yes! Desire is not power, nor is Love possession!
Faith is not enough. Another gift is necessary.
In literature, as in religion, work without grace is futile.
Although they do not suspect this region of anguish, for, to know it
really, it is necessary to go down oneself, not under the guidance
of a Vergil or a Dante, but under that of a Lousteau, of a Lucien de
Rubempré, parents instinctively display the perils and suffering of the
artistic life in the endeavour to dissuade the children they love, and
for for whom they desire one more happy and ordinarily human.
Once only since the earth has revolved round the sun have parents
ardently wished to have a son's life dedicated to poetry. The child
received the most brilliant literary education, and, with the irony of
Fate, became Chapelain, the author of "La Pucelle"! and this, one might
even say, was to play with sinister fortune!
To turn his stubborn ideas into another course, Baudelaire was made
to travel. He was sent a great distance, embarking on a vessel, the
captain of which took him to the Indian seas. He visited the Isles
of Mauritius, Bourbon, Madagascar, Ceylon perhaps, and some parts of
the "Isle of the Ganges"; but he would not, for all that, give up
his intention of becoming a man of letters. They tried vainly to
interest him in commerce, but a trade in cattle to feed Anglo-Indians
on beefsteak had no attractions for him. All he retained of this
voyage was a memory of great splendour which remained with him all his
life. He gloried in a sky where brilliant constellations, unknown in
Europe, were to be found; the magnificent vegetation with the exotic
perfumes, the elegantly odd pagodas, the brown faces and the soft white
draperies--all that in Nature was so warm, powerful, and full of colour.
In his verses he was frequently led from the mists and mud of Paris
to the countries of light, azure, and perfume. Between the lines of
the most sombre of his poems, a window is opened through which can be
seen, instead of the black chimneys and smoky roofs, the blue Indian
seas, or a beach of golden sand on which the slender figure of a
Malabaraise, half naked, carrying an amphora on the head, is running.
Without penetrating too deeply into the private life of the poet, one
can imagine that it was during this voyage that Baudelaire fell in love
with the "Venus noire," of whom he was a worshipper all his life.
When he returned from his distant travels he had just attained his
majority; there was no longer any reason--not even financial, for he
was rich for some time at least--to oppose Baudelaire's choice of a
vocation; it was only strengthened by meeting with obstacles, and
nothing would deter him.
Lodged in a little apartment under the roof of the same Hôtel
Pimodan where later we met him, as has been related earlier in this
introduction, he commenced that life of work, interrupted and resumed,
of varied studies, of fruitful idleness, which is that of each man of
letters seeking his particular field of labour. Baudelaire soon found
his. He conceived something beyond romanticism--a land unexplored, a
sort of rough and wild Kamtschatka; and it was at the extreme verge
that he built for himself, as Sainte-Beuve, who thoroughly appreciated
him, said, a kiosque of bizarre architecture.
Several of the poems which are to be found amongst the "Flowers of
Evil" were already composed. Baudelaire, like all born poets, from
the start possessed a form and style of which he was master; it was
more accentuated and polished later, but still the same. Baudelaire
has often been accused of studied bizarrerie, of affected and laboured
originality, and especially of mannerisms. This is a point at which
it is necessary to pause before going further. There are people who
have naturally an affected manner. In them simplicity would be pure
affectation, a sort of inverted mannerism. Long practice is necessary
to be naturally simple. The circumvolutions of the brain twist
themselves in such a manner that the ideas get entangled and confused
and go up in spirals instead of following straight lines. The most
complicated, subtle, and intense thoughts are those which present
themselves first. They see things from a peculiar angle which alters
the aspect and perspective. All fancies, the most odd, unusual, and
fantastically distant from the subject treated of, strike them chiefly,
and they know how to draw them into their woof by mysterious threads.
Baudelaire had a brain like this, and where the critic has tried to see
labour, effort, excess, there is only the free and easy manifestation
of individuality. These poems, of a savour so exquisitely strange, cost
him no more than any badly rhymed commonplace.
Baudelaire, always possessed of great admiration for the old masters,
never felt it incumbent upon him to take them for models; they had had
the good fortune to arrive in the early days of the world, at the dawn,
so to speak, of humanity, when nothing had been expressed yet, and each
form, each image, each sentiment, had the charm of virginal novelty.
The great commonplaces which form the foundation of human thought were
then in all their glory and sufficed for simple geniuses, speaking to
simple people.
But, from force of repetition, these general subjects of verse were
used up like money which, from continual circulation, has lost
its imprint; and, besides, Life had become more complex, fuller of
originality, and could no longer be represented in the artificial
spirit of another age.
As true innocence charms, so the trickery of pretended innocence
disgusts and displeases. The quality of the nineteenth century is not
precisely naïveté, and it needs, to render its thoughts and dreams
explicit, idiom a little more composite than that employed in the
classics. Literature is like a day; it has its morning, noon, evening,
and night. Without vain expatiation as to whether one should prefer
dawn or twilight, one ought to paint the hour which is at hand, and
with a palette of all the colours necessary to give it its full effect.
Has not sunset its beauty as well as dawn? The copper-reds, the
bronze-golds, the turquoise melting to sapphire, all the tints which
blend and pass away in the great final conflagration, the light-pierced
clouds which seem to take the form of a falling aerial Babel--have they
not as much to offer to the poet as the rosy-fingered Dawn? But the
time when the Hours preceded the Chariot of Day is long since fled.
The poet of the "Flowers of Evil" loved what is unwisely known as the
style of the decadence, and which is no other thing than Art arrived
at that point of extreme maturity that determines civilisations which
have grown old; ingenious, complicated, clever, full of delicate tints
and refinements, gathering all the delicacies of speech, borrowing from
technical vocabularies, taking colour from every palette, tones from
all musical instruments, forcing itself to the expression of the most
elusive thoughts, contours vague and fleeting, listening to translate
subtle confidences, confessions of depraved passions and the odd
hallucinations of a fixed idea turning to madness.
This style of the decadence is the "dernier mot" of Verbe, summoned
to express all and to venture to the very extremes. One can recall,
à propos of him, language already veined with the greenness of
decomposition, savouring of the Lower Roman Empire and the complicated
refinements of the Byzantine School, the last form of Greek Art
fallen into deliquescence; but such is the necessary and fatal idiom
of peoples and civilisations where an artificial life has replaced a
natural one and developed in a man who does not know his own needs.
It is not easy, moreover, this style condemned by pedants, for it
expresses new ideas in new forms and words that have never been heard
of before. Contrary to the classical style, it admits of backgrounds
where the spectres of superstition, the haggard phantoms of dreams, the
terrors of night, remorse which leaps out and falls back noiselessly,
obscure fantasies that astonish the day, and all that the soul in its
deepest depths and innermost caverns conceals of darkness, deformity,
and horror, move together confusedly. One can well imagine that the
fourteen hundred words of the dialect of Racine do not suffice an
author who is given the difficult task of rendering modern ideas and
things in all their infinite complexity and their diversity of colour.
Thus Baudelaire, who, despite his ill success at his baccalaureate
examination, was a good Latinist, preferred undoubtedly, to Vergil and
to Cicero, Apuleius, Juvenal, Saint Augustine, and Tertullian, whose
style has the black radiance of ebony. He went even to the Latin of
the Church, to hymns and chants in which the rhyme represents the old
forgotten rhythm, and he has addressed, under the title of "Franciscæ
meæ Laudes," "To an erudite and devotee," such are the terms of the
dedication, a Latin poem rhymed in the form that Brizeux called
ternary, which is composed of three rhymes following one another,
instead e of alternating as in the tiercet of Dante. To this odd piece
of work is joined a note no less singular. We transcribe it here, for
it explains and corroborates what has just been said about the idioms
of the decadence:
"Does it not seem to the reader, as to me, that the language of the
last Latin decadence--the supreme sigh of the strong man already
transformed and prepared for the spiritual life--is singularly
adequate to express the passion that is comprised in, and felt by, the
modern world? Mysticism is the opposite pole on the compass of Catullus
and his followers, purely cynical and superficial poets, who have only
known the pole of sensuality. In this marvellous language, solecism and
barbarism seem to me to express the negligences of a passion forgetful
of itself and regardless of conventionality. The words, taken in a new
acceptation, reveal the charming maladroitness of a northern barbarian
kneeling before a Roman beauty. The pun itself, when it crosses
pedantism, has it not the saving grace and irregularity of infancy?"
It is unnecessary to push this point further. Baudelaire, when he had
not to express some curious deviation, some unknown side of the soul,
employed pure, clear language, so correct and exact that even the
most difficult to please would find nothing to complain of. This is
especially noticeable in his prose writings, when he treats of more
general and less abstruse subjects than in his verse.
With regard to his philosophical and literary tenets, they were
those of Edgar Allan Poe, whom he had not then translated but whom
he greatly admired. One can apply to him the phrases that he himself
wrote of the American author in the preface to the "Extraordinary
Histories ":--"He considered progress, the great modern idea, as
the ecstasy of fools, and he called the perfectionings of human
habitations, scars and rectangular abominations. He believed only in
the Immutable, the Eternal, the self-same, and he was in the possession
of--cruel privilege! in a society amorous only of itself--the great
good sense of a Machiavelli who marches before the wise as a column of
light across the desert of history." Baudelaire had a perfect horror
of philanthropists, progressionists, utilitarians, humanitarians,
Utopians, and of all those who pretend to reform things, contrary
to nature and the universal laws of society. He desired neither the
suppression of hell nor of the guillotine for the disposal of sinners
and assassins. He did not believe that men were born good, and he
admitted original perversity as an element to be found in the depths of
the purest souls--perversity, that evil counsellor who leads a man on
to do what is fatal to himself, precisely because it is fatal and for
the pleasure of acting contrary to law, without other attraction than
disobedience, outside of sensuality, profit, or charm. This perversity
he believes to be in others as in himself; therefore, when he finds a
servant in fault he refrains from scolding him, for he regards it as an
irremediable curse. It is, then, very wrong of short-sighted critics to
have accused Baudelaire of immorality, an easy form of evil-speaking
for the mediocre and the jealous, and always well taken up by the
Pharisees and J. Prudhommes. No one has professed greater disgust for
baseness of mind or unseemliness of subject.
He hated evil as a mathematical deviation, and, in his quality of a
perfect gentleman, he scorned it as unseemly, ridiculous, bourgeois and
squalid. If he has often treated of hideous, repugnant, and unhealthy
subjects, it is from that horror and fascination which makes the
magnetised bird go down into the unclean mouth of the serpent; but
more than once, with a vigorous flap of his wings, he breaks the charm
and flies upwards to bluer and more spiritual regions. He should have
engraved on his seal as a device the words "Spleen et Idéal," which
form the title of the first part of his book of verse.
If his bouquet is composed of strange flowers, of metallic colourings
and exotic perfumes, the calyx of which, instead of joy contains
bitter tears and drops of aqua-tofana, he can reply that he planted
but a few into the black soil, saturating them in putrefaction, as the
soil of a cemetery dissolves the corpses of preceding centuries among
mephitic miasmas. Undoubtedly roses, marguerites, violets, are the more
agreeable spring flowers; but he thinks little of them in the black
mud with which the pavements of the town are covered. And, moreover,
Baudelaire, if he understands the great tropical landscapes where, as
in dreams, trees burst forth in strange and gigantic elegance, is only
little touched by the small rural sites on the outskirts; and it is
not he who will frolic like the Philistines of Heinrich Heine before
the romantic efflorescence of spring and faint away at the song of
the sparrows. He likes to follow the pale, shrivelled, contorted man,
convulsed by passions, and actual modern ennui, through the sinuosities
of that great madrepore of Paris--to surprise him in his difficulties,
agonies, miseries, prostrations, and excitements, his nervousness and
despair.
He watches the budding of evil instincts, the ignoble habits idly
acquired in degradation. And, from this sight which attracts and repels
him, he becomes incurably melancholy; for he thinks himself no better
than others, and allows the pure arc of the heavens and the brilliancy
of the stars to be veiled by impure mists.
With these ideas one can well understand that Baudelaire believed in
the absolute self-government of Art, and that he would not admit that
poetry should have any end outside itself, or any mission to fulfil
other than that of exciting in the soul of the reader the sensation
of supreme beauty--beauty in the absolute sense of the term. To this
sensation he liked to add a certain effect of surprise, astonishment,
and rarity. As much as possible he banished from poetry a too realistic
imitation of eloquence, passion, and a too exact truth. As in statuary
one does not mould forms directly after Nature, so he wished that,
before entering the sphere of Art, each object should be subjected to a
metamorphosis that would adapt it to this subtle medium, idealising it
and abstracting it from trivial reality.
Such principles are apt to astonish us, when we read certain of
the poems of Baudelaire in which horror seems to be sought like
pleasure; but that we should not be deceived, this horror is always
transfigured by character and effect, by a ray of Rembrandt, or a
trait of Velasquez, who portrayed the race under sordid deformity. In
stirring up in his cauldron all sorts of fantastically odd and enormous
ingredients, Baudelaire can say, with the witches of Macbeth, "Fair
is foul, and foul is fair." This sort of intentional ugliness is not,
then, in contradiction to the supreme aim of Art; and the poems, such
as the "Sept Vieillards" and the "Petits Vieilles," have snatched
from the poetical Saint John who dreams in Patmos this phrase, which
characterises so well the author of the "Flowers of Evil": "You have
endowed the sky of Art with one knows not what macabre ray; you have
created a new _frisson_."
But it is, so to speak, only the shadow of the talent of Baudelaire,
a shadow ardently fiery or coldly blue, which allows him to give the
essential and luminous touch. There is a serenity in his nervous,
febrile, and tormenting talent. On the highest summits he is tranquil:
_pacem summa tenent_.
But, instead of writing of the poet's ideas, it would be infinitely
better to allow him to speak for himself: "Poetry, little as one wishes
to penetrate one's self, to question one's soul, to recall the memories
of past enthusiasm, has no other end than itself; it cannot have any
other, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the
name of poem, as that which is written purely from the pleasure of
writing.
"I do not say that poetry does not ennoble tastes--be it well
understood--that its final result is not to raise men above vulgar
interests. This would be an obvious absurdity. I say that, if the poet
has followed a moral aim, he has diminished his poetical power, and it
would not be imprudent to lay a wager that his work will be bad. Poetry
is unable, under pain of death or decay, to assimilate itself to morals
or science.
"It has not Truth as an object; it has Itself. The demonstration of
Truth is elsewhere.
"Truth has only to do with songs; all that gives charm and grace to a
song will give to Truth its authority and power. Coldness, calmness,
impassivity, drive back the diamonds and flowers of the Muse; they are
absolutely in opposition to poetical humour.
"The Pure Intellect aspires to Truth, Taste informs us of Beauty,
and Moral Sense teaches us Duty. It is true that the middle sense is
intimately connected with the other two, and is only separated from
the Moral Sense by very slight divergences, so that Aristotle has not
hesitated to place some of its operations among the virtues themselves.
Also, that which especially exasperates the man of Taste in the sight
of Vice is its deformity and disproportion. Vice outrages justice and
truth, revolts the Intellect and Conscience; but, like an outrage in
harmony--a dissonance--it wounds more particularly certain poetical
natures, and I do not believe it would be scandalous to consider all
infraction of moral, the beautiful moral, as a fault against rhythm and
universal prosody.
"It is this admirable, this immortal instinct of Beauty which makes
us consider the earth and all its manifold forms, sounds, odours,
sentiments, as a hint of, and correspondence to, Heaven. The insatiable
thirst for that which is beyond and which veils life, is the most
lively proof of our immortality. It is at once by and through poetry,
by and through music, that the soul gets a glimpse of the splendours
beyond the tomb. And, when an exquisite poem brings tears to the eyes,
these tears are not the proof of an excess of joy, they are the
witness rather of an excited melancholy, an intercession of the nerves,
of a nature exiled in imperfection wishing to possess itself, even on
this earth, of a revealed paradise.
"Thus, the principle of poetry is, strictly and simply, the Human
Aspiration towards Supreme Beauty; and the manifestation of this
principle is in the enthusiasm, the awakening of the soul, enthusiasm
quite independent of that passion, which is the intoxication of the
heart, and of that Truth, which is the Food of Reason. For passion is
a natural thing, too natural even not to introduce a wounding note,
discordant in the domain of un-sullied Beauty; too familiar and too
violent not to degrade pure Desires, gracious Melancholies and noble
Despairs, which inhabit the supernatural regions of Poetry."
Although few poets have a more spontaneously sparkling inspiration and
originality than Baudelaire--doubtless through distaste for the false
poetic style which affects to believe in the descent of a tongue of
fire on the writer painfully rhyming a strophe--he pretended that the
true author provoked, directed, and modified at will this mysterious
power of literary production; and we find in a very curious piece which
precedes the translation of Edgar Poe's celebrated poem "The Raven,"
the following lines, half ironical, half serious, in which Baudelaire's
own opinion is set down under the guise of an analysis of the famous
American author:
"The poetic principle, which makes the rules of poetry, is formulated,
it is said, and modelled after the poems. Here is a poet who pretends
that his poems have been composed according to technique or principle.
He had certainly great genius and more inspiration than is general,
if by inspiration one understands energy, intellectual enthusiasm,
and the power of keeping all his faculties on the alert. He loved
work more than anything else; he liked to repeat, he, the finished
original, that originality is something needing apprenticeship, which
does not necessarily mean to say that it is a thing to be transmitted
by instruction. Chance and incomprehensibility were his two great
enemies. Has he willingly diminished that faculty which was in him
to take the most beautiful part? I should be inclined to think so;
however, one must not forget that his genius, so ardent and agile, was
passionately fond of analysis, combination, and calculation. One of
his favourite axioms was the following: 'Everything in a poem as in a
novel, everything in a sonnet as in a novelette, ought to contribute to
the _dénouement_. A good writer has the last line already in his mind
when he writes the first.'
"Owing to this admirable method the writer was able to begin even at
the end, and work, when it pleased him, at whatever part he liked.
Amateurs will perhaps sneer at these cynical maxims, but each can learn
from them what he wishes. It would be useless to show them what Art has
gained from deliberation, and to make clear to the world what exacting
labour this object of luxury known as poetry really is. After all, a
little charlatanry is permitted to genius. It is like the paint on the
cheeks of a naturally beautiful woman, a new condition of the mind."
This last phrase is characteristic and betrays the individual taste
of the poet for artificiality. He, moreover, does not hide this
predilection. He takes pleasure in this kind of composite beauty,
and now and then a little artificiality that elaborates advanced and
unsound civilisations. Let us say, to take a concrete example, that
he would prefer to a simple young girl who used no other cosmetic
than water, a more mature woman employing all the resources of
the accomplished coquette, in front of a dressing-table covered
with bottles of essences, _de lait virginal_, ivory brushes, and
curling-tongs. The sweet perfume of skin macerated in aromatics, like
that of Esther, who was steeped in oil of palms for six months and six
months in cinnamon, before presentation to King Ahasuerus, had on him a
powerful effect. A light touch of rose or hortensia on a fresh cheek,
beauty-spots carefully and provocatively placed at the corner of the
mouth or of the eye, eye-lashes burnished with kohl, hair tinted with
russet-brown and powdered with gold-dust, neck and shoulders whitened
with rice-powder, lips and the tips of the fingers brightened with
carmine, did not in any way revolt him.
He liked these touches of Art upon Nature, the high lights, the
strong lights placed by a clever hand to augment grace, charm and the
character of the face. It is not he who would write virtuous tirades
against painting, rougeing, and the crinoline. All that removed a man,
and especially a woman, from the natural state found favour in his
eyes. These tastes explain themselves and ought to be understandable in
a poet of the decadence, and the author of the "Flowers of Evil."
We shall astonish no one if we add that he preferred, to the simple
perfume of the rose or violet, that of benzoin, amber, and even musk,
so little appreciated in our days, and also the penetrating aroma
of certain exotic flowers the perfume of which is too strong for
our moderate climate. Baudelaire had, in the matter of perfumes, a
strangely subtle sensuality which is rarely to be met with except
amongst Orientals. He sought it always, and the phrase cited by
Banville and at the commencement of this article may very justly be
said of him: "Mon âme voltige sur les parfums comme l'âme des autres
hommes voltige sur la musique."
He loved also toilets of a bizarre elegance, a capricious richness,
striking fantasy, in which something of the comedian and courtesan was
mingled, although he himself was severely conventional in dress; but
this taste, excessive, singular, anti-natural, nearly always opposed to
classical beauty, was for him the sign of the human will correcting, to
its taste, the forms and colours furnished by matter.
Where the philosopher could only find a text for declamation he found
a proof of grandeur. Depravity--that is to say, a step aside from the
normal type--is impossible to the stupid. It is for the same reason
that inspired poets, not having the control and direction of their
works, caused him a sort of aversion, and why he wished to introduce
art and technique even into originality.
So much for the metaphysical; but Baudelaire was of a subtle,
complicated, reasoning, and paradoxical nature, and had more philosophy
than is general amongst poets. The æsthetics of his art occupied him
much; he abounded in systems which he tried to realise, and all that
he did was first planned out. According to him, literature ought to be
_intentional_, and the _accidental_ restrained as much as possible.
This, however, did not prevent him, in true poetical fashion, from
profiting by the happy chances of executing those beauties which
burst forth suddenly without premeditation, like the little flowers
accidentally mixed with the grain chosen by the sower. Every artist is
somewhat like Lope de Vega, who, at the moment of the composition of
his comedies, locked up his precepts under six keys--_con seis claves_.
In the ardour of his work, voluntarily or not, he forgot systems and
paradoxes.