Baudelaire's reputation, which during some years had not extended
beyond the limits of the little circle who rallied round the new poet,
widened suddenly when he presented himself to the public holding in
his hand the bouquet of the "Flowers of Evil," a bouquet which in no
way resembled the innocent posy of the débutante. Some of the poems
were so subtly suggestive, yet so abstruse and enveloped with the
forms and veils of Art, that the authorities demanded that they should
be withdrawn and replaced by others of less dangerous eccentricity,
before the book could be comprised in libraries. Ordinarily, there is
no great excitement about a book of verses; they are born, live, and
die in silence; for two or three poets suffice for our intellectual
consummation.
In the excitement, rumour, and allayed scandal which surrounded
Baudelaire, it was recognised that he had given the public, which is a
rare occurrence, original work of a peculiar savour. To create in the
public a new sensation is the greatest joy that can happen to a writer,
and especially to a poet.
"Flowers of Evil" was one of those happy titles that are more
difficult to find than is generally imagined. He summed up in a
brief and poetical form the general idea of the book and indicated
its tendencies. Although it was evidently romantic in intention and
composition, it was impossible, by even ever so frail a thread, to
connect Baudelaire with any one of the great masters of that particular
school. His verses, refined and subtle in structure, encasing the
subjects dealt with so closely as to resemble armour rather than
clothing, at first appeared difficult and obscure. This feeling was
caused, not through any fault of the author, but from the novelty
of the things he expressed--things that had not before been made
vocal. It was part of Baudelaire's doctrine that, to attain his end,
a poet must invent language and rhythm for himself. But he could not
prevent surprise on the part of the reader when confronted with verse
so different from any he had read before. In painting the evils which
horrified him, Baudelaire knew how to find the morbidly rich tints
of decomposition, the tones of mother-of-pearl which freeze stagnant
waters, the roses of consumption, the pallor of chlorosis, the hateful
bilious yellows, the leaden grey of pestilential fogs, the poisoned
and metallic greens smelling of sulphide of arsenic, the blackness
of smoke diluted by the rain on plaster walls, the bitumens baked
and browned in the depths of hell; and all that gamut of intensified
colours, correspondent to autumn, to the setting of the sun, to
over-ripe fruit, and the last hours of civilisation.
The book is opened by a poem to the reader, whom the poet does not
attempt to cajole, as is usual, and to whom he tells the absolute
truth. He accuses him, in spite of all his hypocrisy, of having the
vices for which he blames others, and of nourishing in his own heart
that great modern monster, Ennui, who, with his bourgeois cowardice,
dreams of the ferocity and debauches of the Romans, of bureaucrat Nero,
and shop-keeper Heliogabalus.
One other poem, of great beauty, and entitled, undoubtedly by an
ironical antiphrasis, "Benediction," depicts the coming of the poet to
the world, an object of astonishment and aversion to his mother as a
shameful offspring. We see him pursued by stupidity, envy, and sarcasm,
a prey to the perfidious cruelty of some Delilah, happy in delivering
him up to the Philistines, naked, disarmed, after having expended on
him all the refinements of a ferocious coquetry. Then there is his
arrival, after insults, miseries, tortures, purified in the crucible of
sorrow, to eternal glory, to the crown of light destined for the heads
of the martyrs who have suffered for Truth and Beauty.
One little poem which follows later, and which is entitled "Soleil,"
closes with a sort of tacit justification of the poet in his vagrant
courses. A bright ray shines on the muddy town; the author is going
out and runs through the unclean streets, the by-ways where the closed
shutters hide indications of secret luxuries; all the black, damp,
dirty labyrinths of old streets to the houses of the blind and leprous,
where the light shines here and there on some window, on a pot of
flowers, or on the head of a young girl. Is not the poet like the sun
which alone enters everywhere, in the hospital as in the palace, in the
hovel as in the church, always divine, letting his golden radiance fall
on the carrion or on the rose?
"Élévation" shows us the poet floating in the sky, beyond the starry
spheres; in the luminous ether; on the confines of our universe;
disappearing into the depths of infinity like a tiny cloud;
intoxicating himself with that rare and salubrious air where there are
none of the miasmas pertaining to the earth and only the pure ether
breathed by the angels. We must not forget that Baudelaire, although he
has often been accused of materialism, and reproached for expending his
talent upon doubtful subjects, is, on the contrary, endowed in a large
degree with the great gift of spirituality, as Swedenborg said. He also
possesses the power of correspondence, to employ a mystical idiom; that
is to say, he knows how to discover by secret intuition the unexpressed
feelings of others, and how to approach them, by those unexpected
analogies that only the far-sighted are able to seize upon. Each poet
has this power more or less developed, which is the very essence of his
art.
Undoubtedly Baudelaire, in this book dedicated to the painting of
depravity and modern perversity, has framed repugnant pictures, where
vice is laid bare to wallow in all the ugliness of its shame; but the
poet, with supreme contempt, scornful indignation, and a constant
recurrence towards the ideal which is so often lacking in satirical
writers, stigmatises and marks with an indelible red iron the unhealthy
flesh, plastered with unguents and white lead.
In no part is the thirst for pure air, the immaculate whiteness of
the Himalayan snows, the azure without blot, the unfading light, more
strong and ardent than in the poems that have been termed _immoral_,
as if the flagellation of vice was vice itself, and as if one is a
poisoner for having written of the poisonous pharmacy of the Borgia.
This method is by no means new, but it thrives always, and certain
people pretend to believe that one cannot read the "Flowers of Evil"
except with a glass mask, such as Exili wore when he worked at the
famous powder of succession.
We have read Baudelaire's poems often, and we are not struck dead with
convulsed face and blackened body, as though we had supped with Vanozza
in a vineyard of Pope Alexander VI. All such foolishness--unfortunately
detrimental, for all the fools enthusiastically adopt that
attitude--would make any artist worthy of the name but shrug his
shoulders when told that blue is moral and scarlet immoral. It is
rather as if one said: "The potato is virtuous, henbane is criminal."
A charming poem on perfumes classifies them, rousing ideas, sensations,
and memories. Some are fresh, like the flesh of an infant, green like
the fields in spring, recalling the blush of dawn and carrying with
them the thoughts of innocence. Others, like musk, amber, benzoin,
nard, and incense, are superb, triumphant, worldly, and provoke
coquetry, love, luxury, festivities, and splendours. If one transposed
them into the sphere of colours, they would represent gold and purple.
The poet often recurs to this idea of the significance of perfumes.
Surrounding a tawny beauty from the Cape, who seemed to have a mission
for sleeping off home sickness, he spoke of this mixed odour "of musk
and havana" which transported her soul to the well-loved lands of the
Sun, where the leaves of the palm-trees make fans in the blue and
tepid air, where the masts of the ships sway harmoniously to the roll
of the sea, while the silent slaves try to distract their young master
from his languishing melancholy. Further on, wondering what will remain
of his work, he compares himself to an old flagon, forgotten amongst
the spider-webs, at the bottom of some cupboard in a deserted house.
From the open cupboard comes the mustiness of the past, feeble perfumes
of robes, laces, powder-boxes, which revive memories of old loves and
antiquated elegance; and, if by chance one uncorks a rancid and sticky
phial, an acrid smell of English salts and vinegar escapes, a powerful
antidote to the modern pestilence.
In many à passage this preoccupation with aroma appears, surrounding
with a subtle cloud all persons and things. In very few of the poets
do we find this care. Generally they are content with putting light,
colour, and music in their verses; but it is rare that they pour in
that drop of pure essence with which Baudelaire's muse never failed to
moisten the sponge or the cambric of his handkerchief.
Since we are recounting the individual likings and minor passions
of the poet, let us say that he adored cats--like him, amorous of
perfumes, and who are thrown into a sort of epileptical ecstasy by
the scent of valerian. He loved these charming, tranquil, mysterious,
gentle animals, with their electrical shudders, whose favourite
attitude is the recumbent pose of the Sphinx, which seems to have
passed on to them its secret. They ramble round the house with their
velvet footfalls as the genius of the place--_genius loci_--or come and
seat themselves on the table near the writer, keeping company with his
thoughts and watching him from the depths of their sanded golden eyes
with intelligent tenderness and magical penetration.
It is said that cats divine the thoughts which the brain transmits
to the pen, and that, stretching out their paws, they wish to seize
the written passage. They are happy in silence, order, and quietude,
and no place suits them better than the study of a literary man. They
wait patiently until his task is done, all the time purring gently
and rhythmically in a sort of _sotto voce_ accompaniment. Sometimes
they gloss over with their tongue some disordered fur; for they are
clean, careful, coquettish, and will not allow of any irregularity in
their toilet, but all is done quietly and discreetly as though they
feared to distract or hinder. Their caresses are tender, delicate,
silent, _feminine_, having nothing in common with the clamorous, clumsy
petulance that is found in dogs, to whom all the sympathy of the vulgar
is given.
All these merits were appreciated by Baudelaire, who has more than
once addressed beautiful poems to cats--the "Flowers of Evil" contain
three--where he celebrates their physical and moral virtues, and
often he makes them pass through his compositions as a sort of
additional characteristic. Cats abound in Baudelaire's verse, as dogs
in the pictures of Paul Veronese, and form there a kind of signature.
It also must be added that in these sweet animals there is a nocturnal
side, mysterious and cabalistic, which was very attractive to the
poet. The cat, with his phosphoric eyes, which are like lanterns and
stars to him, fearlessly haunts the darkness, where he meets wandering
phantoms, sorcerers, alchemists, necromancers, resurrectionists,
lovers, pickpockets, assassins, grey patrols, and all the obscene
spectres of the night. He has the appearance of knowing the latest
sabbatical chronicle, and he will willingly rub himself against the
lame leg of Mephistopheles. His nocturnal serenades, his loves on the
tiles, accompanied by cries like those of a child being murdered, give
him a certain satanical air which justifies up to a certain point the
repugnance of diurnal and practical minds, for whom the mysteries of
Erebus have not the slightest attraction. But a doctor Faustus, in his
cell littered with books and instruments of alchemy, would love always
to have a cat for a companion.
Baudelaire himself was a voluptuous, cajoling cat, with just its
velvety manners, alluring mysteries, instinct with power concealed
in suppleness, fixing on things and men his penetrating look,
disquieting, eccentric, difficult to withstand, but faithful and
without perfidy.
Many women pass through the poems of Baudelaire, some veiled, some half
discernible, but to whom it is impossible to attribute names. They are
rather types than individuals. They represent _l'éternel féminin_,
and the love that the poet expresses for them is _the_ love and not a
love. We have seen that in his theories he did not admit of individual
passion, finding it too masterful, too familiar and violent.
Among these women some symbolise unconscious and almost bestial
prostitution, with plastered and painted masks, eyes brightened with
kohl, mouths tinted with scarlet, seeming like open wounds, false
hair and jewels; others, of a colder corruption, more clever and more
perverse, like marchionesses of Marteuil of the nineteenth century,
transpose the vice of the body to the soul. They are haughty, icy,
bitter, finding pleasure only in wickedness; insatiable as sterility,
mournful as ennui, having only hysterical and foolish fancies, and
deprived, like the devil, of the power of love. Gifted with a dreadful
beauty, almost spectral, that does not animate life, they march to
their deaths, pale, insensible, superbly contemptuous, on the hearts
they have crushed under their heels. From the departure of these
amours, allied to hate, from pleasures more wounding than sorrow, the
poet turns to his sad idol of exotic perfume, of savage attire, supple
and wheedling as the black panther of Java, which remains always and
compensates him for the spiteful Parisian cats with the pointed claws,
playing with the heart of the poet as with a mouse. But it is to none
of these creatures of plaster, marble, or ebony that he gives his soul.
Above this black heap of leprous houses, this infectious labyrinth
where the spectres of pleasure circle, this impure tingling of misery,
of ugliness and perversity, far, far distant in the unalterable azure
floats the adorable spirit of Beatrice, the ever-desired ideal, never
attained; the supreme and divine beauty incarnated in the form of an
ethereal woman, spiritualised, fashioned of light, fire, and perfume; a
vapour, a dream, a reflection of the enchanted and seraphic world, like
the Sigeias, the Morellas, the Unas, the Leonores of Edgar Poe, and the
Seraphita-Seraphitus of Balzac, that marvellous creation.
From the depths of his fall, his errors, and his despairs, it is
towards this celestial image, as towards the Madonna of Bon-Secours,
that he extends his arms with cries, tears, and a profound contempt for
himself. In his hours of loving melancholy it is always with her he
wishes to fly away and hide his perfect happiness in some mysterious
fairy refuge, some cottage of Gainsborough, some home of Gerard Dow,
or, better still, some marble palace of Benares or Hyderabad. Never did
his dreams lead him into other company.
Can one see in this Beatrice, this Laura whom no name designates, a
real young girl or woman, passionately loved by the poet during his
life-time? It would be romantic to suppose so, but it has not been
permitted to us to be intimate enough with the secret life of his soul
to answer this question affirmatively or negatively.
In his metaphysical conversations, Baudelaire spoke much of his ideas,
little of his sentiments, and never of his actions. As to the chapter
of his loves, he for ever placed a seal upon his fine and disdainful
lips. The safest plan would be to see in this ideal love a pleading
only of the soul, the soaring of the unsatisfied heart, and the eternal
sigh of the imperfect aspiring to the absolute.
At the end of the "Flowers of Evil" there is a set of poems on "Wine,"
and the different intoxications that it produces, according to the
brain it attacks. It is unnecessary to say that they are not Bacchic
songs celebrating the juice of the grape, or anything like it. They are
hideous and terrible paintings of drunkenness, but without the morality
of Hogarth. The picture has no need of a legend and the "Wine of the
Workman" makes one shudder. The "Litanies of Satan," god of evil and
prince of the world, are one of those cold, familiar ironies of the
author, in which one would be wrong to see impiety. Impiety is not in
the nature of Baudelaire, who believed in the superior law established
by God for all eternity, the least infraction of which is punished by
the severest chastisement, not only in this world, but in the future.
If he has painted vice and shown Satan in all his pomp, it is without
the least complacence in the task. He also had a singular prepossession
of the devil as a tempter in whom he saw a dragon who hurried him into
sin, infamy, crime, and perversity. Fault in Baudelaire was always
followed by remorse, contempt, anguish, despair; and the punishment was
far worse than any corporal one could have been. But enough of this
subject; we are critic, not theologian.
Let us point out, among the poems which comprise the "Flowers of Evil,"
some of the most remarkable; amongst others, that which is called, "Don
Juan aux Enfers." It is a picture of tragic grandeur, painted in sombre
and magisterial colours on the fiery vault of hell. The boat glides
on the black waters, carrying Don Juan and his cortège of victims.
The beggar whom he tried to make deny God, wretched athlete, proud in
his rags like Antisthenes, paddles the oars to the domain of Charon.
At the stern, a man of stone, a discoloured phantom, with rigid
and sculptural gestures, holds the helm. The old Don Luis shows his
whitened locks, scorned by his hypocritically impious son. Sganerelle
demands the payment of his wages from his henceforth insolvent master.
Donna Elvira tries to bring back the old smile of the lover to the
disdainful lips of her husband; and the pale lovers, brought to
evil, abandoned, betrayed, trampled under foot like flowers, expose
the ever-open wounds of their hearts. Under this passion of tears,
lamentations, and maledictions Don Juan remains unmoved; he has done
what he has wished. Heaven, hell, and the world judge him, according to
their understanding; his pride knows no remorse; the shot has been able
to kill, but not to make him repent.
By its serene melancholy, its cheerful tranquillity, and oriental
_kief_ the poem entitled "La Vie Antérieure" contrasts happily with the
sombre pictures of monstrous modern Paris, and shows that the artist
has, on his palette, side by side with the blacks, bitumens, umbers,
and siennas, a whole gamut of fresh tints: light, transparent, delicate
roses, ideal blues, like the far-away Breughel of Paradise, with which
to depict the Elysian Fields and mirage of his dreams.
It is well to note particularly the sentiment towards the _artificial_
betrayed by the poet. By the word _artificial_ one must understand a
creation owing its existence entirely to Art, and from which Nature
is entirely absent. In an article written during the life-time of
Baudelaire, we pointed out this odd tendency of which to poem entitled
"Rêve parisien" is a striking example. Here are the lines which
endeavoured to lender this splendid and sombre nightmare, worthy of the
engravings of Martynn: "Imagine a supernatural landscape, or rather a
perspective in metal, marble, and water, from which all vegetation is
banished. All is rigid, polished, mirrored under a sky without sun,
without moon, without stars. In the midst of the silence of eternity
rise up, artificially lit, palaces, colonnades, towers, stair-cases,
fountains from which fall heavy cascades like curtains of crystal. The
blue waters are encircled, like the steel of antique mirrors, in quays,
basins of burnished gold, or run silently under bridges of precious
stones. The crystallised ray enshrines the liquid, and the porphyry
flagstones of the terraces reflect the surrounding objects like ice.
The Queen of Sheba, walking there, would lift up her robe, fearing to
wet her feet, so glistening is the surface. The style of this poem is
brilliant, like black, polished marble."
[Illustration: Théophile Gautier.]
Is it not a strange fantasy, this composition made from rigid elements,
in which nothing lives, throbs, breathes, and where not a blade of
grass, not a leaf, not a flower comes to derange the implacable
symmetry of forms invented by Art? Does it not make one believe in the
unblemished Palmyra or the Palenqué remaining standing on a dead planet
bereft of its atmosphere?
These are, undoubtedly, strange imaginings, anti-natural, neighbours
of hallucination and expressions of a secret desire for unattainable
novelty; but, for our part, we prefer them to the insipid simplicity of
the pretended poets who, on the threadbare canvas of the commonplace,
embroider, with old wools faded in colour, designs of bourgeois
triviality or of foolish sentimentality: crowns of roses, green leaves
of cabbages, and doves pecking one another. Sometimes we do not fear to
attain the rare at the expense of the shocking, the fantastic, and the
exaggerated. Barbarity of language appeals to us more than platitude.
Baudelaire has this advantage: he can be bad, but he is never common.
His faults, like his good qualities, are original, and, even when he
has displeased, he has, after long reasoning, willed it so.
Let us bring this analysis, already rather too long, however much we
abridge it, to a close by a few words on that poem which so astonished
Victor Hugo--"Petites Vieilles" The poet, walking in the streets of
Paris, sees some little old women with humble and sad gait pass by.
He follows them as one would pretty women, recognising from the
threadbare cashmere, worn out, mended a hundred times, from the end
of lace frayed and yellow, the ring--sorrowful souvenir, disputed by
the pawn-broker and ready to leave the slender finger of the pale
hand--a past of happier fortune and elegance: a life of love and
devotion, perhaps; the remains of beauty under ruin and misery and
the devastations of age. He reanimates all these trembling spectres,
reclothes them, puts the flesh of youth on these emaciated skeletons,
revives in these poor wounded hearts illusions of other days. Nothing
could be more ridiculous, nothing more touching, than these Venuses
of Père-Lachaise and these Ninons of Petits-Ménages who file off
lamentably under the evocation of the master, like a procession of
ghosts surprised by the day.