I have just seen that, for the first time in your life, you have
delivered your physical person to the public. I allude to a portrait
of you published by "L'Illustration." It really is very like you!
The familiar, mocking, and rather concentrated expression, and the
little calotte itself is not hidden. Shall I tell you I am so bored
that this simple image has done me good? The phrase has an impertinent
air. It means simply that, in the loneliness in which some old Paris
friends have left me (J. L. in particular), your image has been enough
to divert me from my weariness. What would I not give to go, in five
minutes, to the rue Mont-Parnasse, to talk with you for an hour on
your articles on Proudhon; with you who know how to listen even to men
younger than yourself!
Believe me, it is not that I find the reaction in his favour
illegitimate. I have read him a good deal and known him a little. Pen
in hand, he was a _bon bougre_; but he was not, and would never have
been, even on paper, a dandy. For that I shall never pardon him. And it
is that that I shall express, were I to excite the ill-humour of all
the great beasts, right-thinking, of the "Universe."
Of your work I say nothing to you. More than ever you have the air of
a confessor and _accoucheur_ of souls. They said the same thing of
Socrates, I think; but Messrs. Baillarger and Lélut have declared, _on
their conscience_, that he was mad.
This is the commencement of a year that will doubtless be as boring,
as stupid, as criminal as all the preceding ones. What good can I wish
you? You are virtuous and lovable, and (extraordinary thing!) they are
beginning to do you justice!...
I chatter far too much, like a nervous man who is tired. Do not reply
to me if you have not five minutes of leisure.
Your very affectionate.
_Baudelaire to Sainte-Beuve_
15_th January_, 1866.
My dear friend, I do not know how to thank you enough for your good
letters. It is really all the kinder of you because I know you are very
busy. If I am sometimes long in replying it is on the score of health,
which prevents me and even sends me to bed for many days.
I shall follow your advice: I shall go to Paris and I shall see the
G...s myself. Then, perhaps, I shall commit the indiscretion of
asking you to give me a helping hand. But when? For six weeks I have
been immersed in a chemist's shop. If it should be necessary to give
up beer, I do not ask anything better. Tea and coffee, that is more
serious; but will pass. Wine? the devil! it is cruel. But here is a
still harder creature who says I must neither read nor study. What
a strange medicine is that which prohibits the principal function!
Another tells me for all consolation that I am hysterical. Do you
admire, like me, the elastic usage of these fine words, well chosen to
cloak our ignorance of everything?
I have tried to plunge again into the "Spleen de Paris" ["Poems in
Prose"], for that was not finished. Finally, I hope to be able to show,
one of these days, a new Joseph Delorme, grappling with his rhapsodic
thought at each incident in his stroll and drawing from each object a
disagreeable moral. But how difficult it is to make nonsense when one
wishes to express it in a manner at the same time impressive and light!
Joseph Delorme has arrived there quite naturally. I have taken up the
reading of your poems again _ab ovo_. I saw with pleasure that at each
turn of the page I recognised verses which are old friends. It appears
that, when I was a boy, I had not such very bad taste. (The same thing
happened to me in December with Lucain. "Pharsale," always glittering,
melancholy, lacerating, stoical, has consoled my neuralgia. And this
pleasure has led me to think that in reality we change very little.
That is to say, that there is something invariable in us.)
Since you own that it does not displease you to hear your works spoken
of, I am much tempted to write you thirty pages of confidences on this
subject; but I think I should do better to write them first in good
French for myself, and then to send them to a paper, if there still
exists a journal in which one can talk poetry.
However, here are some suggestions of the book which came to me by
chance.
I have understood, much better than heretofore, the "Consolations" and
the "Pensées d'août."
I have noted as more brilliant the following pieces: "Sonnet à Mad.
G...," page 225.
Then you knew Mme. Grimblot, that tall and elegant Russian for whom
the word "désinvolture" was made and who had the hoarse, or rather the
deep and sympathetic voice of some Parisian comediennes? I have often
had the pleasure of hearing Mme. de Mirbel lecture her and it was very
comical. (After all, perhaps I am deceiving myself; perhaps it is
another Mme. G.... These collections of poetry are not only of poetry
and psychology, but are also annals.) "Tu te révoltes" ... "Dans ce
cabriolet" ... "En revenant du Convoi" ... "La voilà."...
Page 235, I was a little shocked to see you desiring the approbation of
MM. Thiers, Berryer, Thierry, Villemain. Do these gentlemen really feel
the thunderclap or the enchantment of an object of art? And are you
then very much afraid of not being appreciated to have accumulated so
many justificatory documents? To admire you, do I need the permission
of M. de Béranger?
Good Heavens! I nearly forgot the "Joueur d'orgue," page 242. I have
grasped much better than formerly the object and the art of narratives
such as "Doudun," "Marèze," "Ramon," "M. Jean," etc. The word
"analytical energy" applies to you much more than to André Chénier.
There is still one piece that I find marvellous: it is the account of a
watch-night, by the side of an unknown corpse, addressed to Victor Hugo
at the time of the birth of one of his sons.
What I call the decoration (landscape or furniture) is always perfect.
In certain places of "Joseph Delorme" I find a little too much of
lutes, lyres, harps, and Jehovahs. This is a blemish in the Parisian
poems. Besides, you have come to destroy all that.
Indeed, pardon me! I ramble on! I should never have dared to talk to
you so long about it.
I have found the pieces that I know by heart again. (Why should one
reread, with pleasure, in printed characters, that which memory could
recite?)
"Dans l'île de Saint-Louis" (Consolations).
"Le Creux de la Vallée," p. 113. Here is much of Delorme!
And "Rose" (Charming), p. 127.
"Stances de Kirke White" p. 139.
"La Plaine" (beautiful October landscape), p. 138.
Heavens! I must stop. I seem to pay you compliments, and I have no
right. It is impertinent.
* * * * *
_Baudelaire to Flaubert_
_Tuesday_, 25_th August_, 1857.
Dear friend, I wrote you a hasty little note before five o'clock
solely to prove to you my repentance at not having replied to your
affectionate sentiments. But if you knew in what an abyss of puerile
occupations I have been plunged! And the article on "Madame Bovary"
is again deferred for some days! What an interruption in life is a
ridiculous adventure!
The comedy is played on Thursday; it has lasted a long time.
Finally, three hundred francs fine, two hundred francs for the editors,
suppression of numbers 20, 30, 39, 80, 81 and 87. I will write to you
at length to-night.
Yours always, as you know.
_Baudelaire to Flaubert_
26_th June_, 1860.
MY DEAR FLAUBERT, I thank you very much for your excellent letter. I
was struck by your observation, and, having fallen very severely in
the memory of my dreams, I perceived that, all the time, I was beset
by the impossibility of rendering an account of certain actions or
sudden thoughts of man, without the hypothesis of the intervention of
an evil force outside himself. Here is a great confession for which the
whole confederated nineteenth century shall not make me blush. Mark
well that I do not renounce the pleasure of changing my opinion or of
contradicting myself.
One of these days, if you permit it, in going to Honfleur I shall stop
at Rouen; but, as I presume that you are like me and that you hate
surprises, I shall warn you some time beforehand.
You tell me that I work well. Is it a cruel mockery? Many people, not
counting myself, think that I do not do anything very great.
To work: that is to work without ceasing; that is to have no more
feeling, no more dreaming; and it is to be pure volition always in
action. I shall perhaps attain to it.
Always your very devoted friend.
I have always dreamed of reading (in its entirety) the "Tentation"
and another strange book of which you have published no fragment
(Novembre). And how goes Carthage?
_Baudelaire to Flaubert_
_End of January_, 1862.
MY DEAR FLAUBERT, I have committed an act of desperation, a madness,
that I am changing into an act of wisdom by my persistence. If I had
time enough (it would take very long) I would amuse you greatly by
recounting my academical visits to you.
I am told that you are closely connected with Sandeau (who said, some
time ago, to a friend of mine: "Oh, does M. Baudelaire write prose?").
I should be very much obliged if you would write to him what you think
of me. I shall go and see him and will explain the meaning of this
candidature which has surprised some of these gentlemen so much.
For a very long time I have wished to send you a brochure on Wagner,
beyond which I do not know what to send. But, what is very absurd for
a candidate, I have not one of my books with me at home.
On Monday last, in the "Constitutionnel" Sainte-Beuve wrote a masterly
article, a pamphlet, enough to make one die with laughing, on the
subject of candidates.
Always yours devotedly.
_Baudelaire to Flaubert_