In his essay called "Pen, Pencil, and Poison" Oscar Wilde remarks:
"But had the man worn a costume and spoken a language different from
our own, had he lived in Imperial Rome, or at the time of the Italian
Renaissance, or in Spain in the seventeenth century, or in any land
or in any century but this century and this land, we should be quite
able to arrive at a perfectly unprejudiced estimate of his position and
value"; and he also says: "Of course, he is far too close to our own
time for us to be able to form any purely artistic judgment about him."
It was only a year after the death of Charles Baudelaire that Gautier
wrote the magnificent life-study of the poet, the English translation
of which forms part of this volume, and the monograph seems to give
the lie direct to Wilde's assertion. There is nothing finer in French
literature, more delicately critical, more vivid in its personal
pictures, more perfect in its prose. It is the triumph of a luminous
brain, full of rays and ideas "whence images buzz forth like golden
bees."
Yet it is just because there is some truth in Wilde's plea, that there
is still something to be said to-day of Baudelaire. The attempt to
say it may seem presumptuous, and I am certain that no single word
of Gautier could be altered or improved upon. Everything fitted the
biographer for his task. He knew Charles Baudelaire intimately. He
possessed an ear for rhythm unequalled in its kind; his fervent and
romantic fancy rendered him peculiarly able to appreciate the most
delicate of Baudelaire's thoughts and tones of his music. Finally--a
fact which has hitherto escaped notice in this connection--the
"Mademoiselle de Maupin" of Gautier published in 1835 created much the
same scandal and alarm as Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" did in 1857.
Although Théophile Gautier himself escaped the fate of being publicly
prosecuted for an offence against public morals, he knew what it was to
suffer a literary martyrdom, and could feel for his younger friend when
the author of "Une Charogne" was brought before the Court. Indeed, it
was in the very year that "Les Fleurs du Mal" was issued that Flaubert
was prosecuted on account of "Madame Bovary" and Gautier became in
consequence the great novelist's staunch friend and champion.
Gautier, above all his contemporaries, was of precisely the temper of
mind to appreciate Charles Baudelaire. Nothing was lacking in the man,
his temperament or his opportunities, to produce a masterpiece which,
ranking with the "Voltaire" of Lord Morley, or Walter Pater's "Leonardo
da Vinci" is almost unknown by the general English reader.
Yet there is much to be said of Baudelaire that Gautier could not say.
Gautier died in 1872. At that time Baudelaire's work was only known to
a distinguished literary coterie. In England it had hardly been heard
of. Swinburne, in 1866, when "Poems and Ballads" appeared, was almost
certainly the only English man of letters who understood the French
poet.
Recently a certain amount has been written about Baudelaire in England.
Oscar Wilde constantly refers to his poems; there have been some review
articles for the making of which the writers have drawn largely upon
Gautier and Asselineau's "Charles Baudelaire; sa vie et son œuvre." Mr.
F. P. Sturm (in 1905) made a fine study of the poet as an introduction
to an English verse translation of "Les Fleurs du Mal," published
in the "Canterbury Poets" series. It is because I believe I have
something new to say that I have dared to include a short study with my
translations of Gautier's jewelled prose and of Baudelaire's poems.
Only a very few years ago in England, it was thought, though quite
wrongly thought, that the more eclectic literary artists of England
and France would, and must always, remain the peculiar property of
the leisured and cultured classes. It was not only because the books
of such writers were difficult of access and costly in price. Men and
women privileged to enjoy and appreciate the work of Baudelaire or
Verlaine in France, Walter Pater or Oscar Wilde in England, honestly
believed that the vast mass of readers were temperamentally and by
training unable to understand these and other artists.
The fact of compulsory education created a proletariat able and willing
to read. Astute exploiters of popular necessity arose and began to
supply cheap "reading matter" with all the aplomb and success that
would have attended their efforts if they had been directed towards any
other newly risen want. This happened a generation ago. Millions still
feed upon the literary hogwash provided for them, but from among those
millions a new class has arisen that asks for better fare, and does not
ask in vain.
To take a single instance. Ruskin's works, in the "Everyman" library,
are supplied at a shilling a volume. The demand has been enormous.
Again, a paper like "T.P.'s Weekly," costing a penny and dealing with
the best things of literature, has an enormous circulation and a
personal influence over hardworking middle-class men and women with
little leisure for self-culture, that it is impossible to overrate.
Moreover, the issue of Oscar Wilde's finest work at a trifling price
has been attended with a success that has startled no one more greatly
than the adventurous publishers themselves.
Now these things are signs of the times. If they show anything at all,
they show that the work of writers which has been hitherto thought
to be far above the head of the ordinary reader is really not so in
the least. And because I am persuaded that opportunity alone has been
wanting, I have ventured upon this book.
Gautier's immortal essay takes the first place. We have here a piece
of criticism and explanation which, while never digressing from its
subject--the personality and life of Charles Baudelaire--nevertheless
takes it as the _motif_ of a work of art in a way no less perfect than
those of which it deals. Let me endeavour to resume the theme so that
we may see the difference that more than forty years have made.
Writers and readers of to-day must necessarily look at Baudelaire with
very different eyes from those of Gautier. How, why, and in what degree?
In 1857 Baudelaire published his greatest work, the volume of poems
called "Les Fleurs du Mal." The book stirred literary France to its
depths, and shook bourgeoisie France with horror. To many people it
seemed that a veritable apostle of Satan had risen up in their midst.
In 1866 Charles Algernon Swinburne published "Poems and Ballads" and
shocked literary England in precisely the same fashion, the middle
classes remaining quite undisturbed and never hearing of this young
man's _succès de scandale_.
The great and enduring beauty of the "Poems and Ballads," the
perfection of form, incomparable music, colour-of-dreams, and of
dreams alone--all these were natural products of the greatest master
of metrical music since Shelley. But the _ideas_ behind expression,
attitude, and outlook--haunted visions of sin, swayings towards the
Satanic--all these were simply drawn from Baudelaire; as Baudelaire in
his fashion had distilled them from Edgar Allan Poe.
And this brings me to the point I wish to make. It is, to point out the
immense influence of Baudelaire upon the literature, thought, and life
of England at this very moment.
This opium-taker, the eater of hashish; the rhapsodist of emotional
life divorced from any moral or unmoral impulse; the man of good birth
and fine social chances who died a general paralytic; the apologist of
cosmetics, the lover of panther-women and the ultimate corruption of
the grave, has made a definite change in English life.
All great events happen within the mind. "Waterloo," it used to be
said, was "won upon the playing-fields of Eton"--just as Spion Kop was
undoubtedly lost there.
An English critic of Baudelaire has said:
"The writing of a great book is the casting of a pebble into the pool
of human thought; it gives rise to ever-widening circles that will
reach we know not whither, and begins a chain of circumstances that may
end in the destruction of kingdoms and religions and the awakening of
new gods. The change wrought, directly or indirectly, by 'The Flowers
of Evil' alone is almost too great to be properly understood. There is
perhaps not a man in Europe to-day whose outlook on life would not have
been different had 'The Flowers of Evil' never been written.
"The first thing that happens after the publication of such a book is
the theft of its ideas and the imitation of its style by the lesser
writers who labour for the multitude, and so its teaching goes from
book to book, from the greater to the lesser, as the divine hierarchies
emanate from Divinity, until ideas that were once paradoxical, or even
blasphemous and unholy, have become mere newspaper commonplaces adopted
by the numberless thousands who do not think for themselves, and the
world's thought is changed completely, though by infinitely slow
degrees.
"The immediate result of Baudelaire's work was the Decadent School in
French literature. Then the influence spread across the Channel, and
the English Æsthetes arose to preach the gospel of imagination to the
unimaginative."
These passages are illuminating. They do not enunciate a new truth,
but they insist upon one which is not sufficiently recognised. Gautier
has pointed out how immensely Baudelaire was influenced by Thomas de
Quincey, and, especially, by Edgar Allan Poe. To continue that line of
thought is my purpose.
It is impossible to mention all those French writers who are literal
creations of Baudelaire, who would never have written a line had he not
shown the way. Their name is Legion, and many of them do not merit the
slightest attention. One great writer, however, who would never have
been what he was save for Charles Baudelaire, is Verlaine.
In England, although the imitators of Baudelaire and those who have
drawn inspiration from him, are far fewer in number, their influence
upon English thought can hardly be over-estimated.
I do not propose to do more than outline the influence. It will be
sufficient for my purpose if I take but four names; those of Algernon
Charles Swinburne, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and the minor poet
Ernest Dowson--who produced only one small volume of verses, but who,
nevertheless, belongs directly to the school of Baudelaire, and whose
work is tinging the attitude towards life of the present generation in
a way very little suspected by most people.
Baudelaire, when he wrote of love, invariably did so with the despair
of satiety. It was always a vanished emotion that he recaptured and
made beautiful in melodious verse; always the bitter taste left upon
the lips of those who have kissed overmuch and overlong. The attitude
is always that of the man who scourges himself, uses the rod of
passion, the whip of lust, or the knout of unfulfilled desire to make
some almost perfect madrigal.
It must be remembered that we are dealing with a strange and esoteric
personality. I have made it my method here to be concerned with facts
alone, and those who would understand the poet must be content to draw
their own deductions from these facts. It is no province of mine to
pass any judgment, other than the pure æsthetic. Music has come from
the experiments and agonies of genius. I analyse, that is all.
The best and simplest way to make it clear how much Swinburne owed to
Baudelaire is by means of parallel quotation.