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"Baudelaire went even further... Near the borders of confusion, disease, mysterious tetanus, absurd fever, typhoid fever and vomiting of sin, he discovered terrible menopause of emotions and thoughts, and was growing under the lifeless bell... He gradually saw that he had a dislike of old passion and mature love... In a time when literature blames the pain of life almost exclusively on the misfortunes of misunderstood love, or the jealousy of adultery, he ignores these childish faults and thinks of the more untreatable, more active, deeper wounds that are dug out of the ruined minds of weariness, disillusionment, and contempt, which are tormented by the present, the disgust of the past, the intimidation of the future, and the despair. ”
John, the last heir of the Descente family, spent his life in decadence, obsessed with material things and dreams. Tired of his extravagant and lavish life, Desicent went into seclusion in the countryside, but he never got rid of his original heart and desires. Back in Paris, DeSesecent revisits his book collection and soaks in the warmth and fullness of his memories. All of these books are particularly precious and legendary, and some of them are privately hand-printed, using special formats of straight-grained paper, pretentious fabrics, silk, and so on. In the collection, Desicent's favorite type is mysterious, magical, and deep in the soul, which he calls "the next layer of the soul and light," the "vein," the "layering of the mind," as Balzac presents, either by paranoid passions or by the stupidity of his fathers.
Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was one of Descente's favorite writers. Baudelaire of Desiescent, or Baudelaire of Joris-Carl Hussmann, succeeded in expressing in a muscular language what could not be said, the most elusive and frightening state of life. Published in 1884, CounterCurrent is almost an autobiographical and guide to de Vicente's autobiography and tracking, and a projection of the spiritual portrayal of 19th-century Parisian high society. Yusman had previously belonged to the Meitang Group, but later became increasingly alienated from the original group of writers because of "countercurrent". This "countercurrent" was later defined as decadent through Anatole Bajou's magazine Le Décadent, which was meant to be an uneasy factor in the tillering of high society. In the long history of the second half of the 19th century to the present, decadence has gone from Edmond de Goncourt's "beautiful neurosis" to the popular, or at least the universal imagination of the bourgeoisie. And one of its beginnings was Baudelaire.
Descente, who practices the Baudelaire way of life, loves the inner rages that have been stripped away by simple naturalism, longs for satanic religion, and recites ancient poetry in a ruined reality, which contains amazing energy and determination to break boundaries. This Baudelaire, or Descente, is Yusman's imagination and glorification of the youth of his time, in which tension comes from the tension between it and the rapidly changing reality. Twenty years after its publication, Hussmann writes, "Today I am no more obsessed with the classic Latin of Marlowe and chickpeas than I did in 1884; as in the time of CounterCurrent, I liked the Language of the Latin Bible more than the language of Augustus's century, and even more than the language of literature of the Period of Decline... I'm going to innovate at all costs..."
Now, let's officially talk about Baudelaire. In today's China, Baudelaire is considered to be symbolist, decadent, and romantic, but he does not particularly belong to these trends and narratives that are either rising or backward, Baudelaire is the absorber, and many currents are spread through his fork again. Throughout his life, Baudelaire traveled throughout the world of Parisian literature and art at its final peak, and carefully maintained the necessary contacts with celebrities such as Victor Hugo, Eugène de la Croix, and he also maintained long and short organic ties with many presses, the art world, revolutionaries, and the poor. Another typical statement is that Baudelaire is a prodigal son, which is very wrong. In terms of life, Baudelaire had no intention of wandering, nor did he despise wandering, and later he could not wander, he was just a less typical romantic aristocrat. In terms of literature and art, Baudelaire is less bound by the so-called wandering, but more explores the real doom that history has given him and them, and the inner imagination that later became a universal feeling, and Baudelaire's method is almost necessarily classical.
A bourgeois baby living in modern Paris
"Paris is changing! But in my melancholy heart
But nothing has changed! Scaffolding, stones, new royal palace,
The old suburbs, everything has become a metaphor for me,
My fond memories are heavier than rocks. ”
Baudelaire's life spanned the Bourbon dynasty, the July dynasty, and the Second French Republic. During the same period, Paris was constantly dressed up in the chants of French poets, first as a sexy woman, then as a powerful warrior in the Revolution, and then in a general disappointment and decline, evolving into a prostitute image. Paris, which existed as a prostitute, almost coincided with baudelaire's poetic heyday. And in this "Swan" dedicated to Hugo, ancient Paris is indeed an eternal utopia, which has not changed for thousands of years and is still as beautiful as it was in the beginning. Two different images of utopia and prostitute are thus gathered in Paris, the former representing the detached side, and the latter meaning that reality is often not so beautiful. No wonder Dostoevsky, who visited Paris, exclaimed, "This is a biblical scene about Babylon, and some kind of prophecy in the book of Revelation becomes a reality before your eyes." You will feel that it takes a great deal of eternal spiritual resistance not to succumb to this impression, not to surrender to this fact, not to idolize the evil god, not to accept him as your ideal. ”
Baudelaire in his youth
Parisian utopia is not flashy, or monotonous, it is full of failure and pain, especially for Baudelaire. Baudelaire's swan clearly has an ancient and beautiful past, it is enchanting and beautiful, but it cannot fly in such an environment. The swan made the gesture of Ovid's poem, but seemed to be condemning the sky, "Rain, when will you land?" Ray, when are you sounding? Equally unfortunate are Baudelaire's associations of the weeping, sucking, and emaciated people, as well as the prisoners, the losers. This poem, written in his later years, is Baudelaire's last photographic image, he feels the presence of the cage, and his body and spirit become more and more weak and weak, and even the café he loves does not have the energy to go. Baudelaire laments the disappearance of ancient Paris, while lamenting the modern Paris in which he finds himself.
"As I walked through the newly built Chongwu Square, / suddenly evoked my rich memories / Old Paris has changed beyond recognition (it is sad that the city looks/faster than the human heart); // Those plank houses, the piles of rough / stigmas and columns, the weeds, the boulders that are waterlogged/soaked with moss, the messy old goods reflected in the glass windows, I can only imagine. ”
Not only Baudelaire, but many people of insight have made rigorous criticisms of Paris in the second half of the 19th century, pointing directly at Haussmann's Paris modernization project. In 1853, the modernization of Paris was officially launched, half of the buildings in the old city were demolished, the streets were widened, the "fragrant" and "smelly" partitions were deepened, and the transportation, water supply, and leisure of the modern city were implemented in just ten years. Based on this, people have pointed out that "centralization and arrogance have made Paris an artificial city." Parisians feel most strongly that they don't want to live in their own homes; at the same time, they leave Paris whenever possible. Going on vacation has become a new demand for Parisians... Parisians, in a city that has become an international crossroads, are more like wanderers with no place to live. "In a very short period of time, the exemplary image of Paris as a modern European city was established, and at the same time, the losses it suffered entered the imaginary world of literary masters. Edmund Goncourt described the Haussmann paris roads as "a straight and vertical avenue," reminiscent of "the future of American Babylon," mixed with the worries of writers and a sudden sense of alienation.
In a series of revolutionary waves, the modernization of Paris appeared urgent and exaggerated. Soaring land prices, industrial and commercial expansion, the apartmentization of housing, the proliferation of large shopping malls and handicraft workshops, and the migration of the poor and workers to the periphery of the city are all tensely intertwined, and these changes are recorded in the works of Zola and Balzac. In the 20 years from 1850 to 1870, the total industrial output of France increased from 6 billion francs to 12 billion francs. Paris is not alone. Throughout the third 25 years of the 19th century, cities around the world were expanding rapidly, with the real estate and construction sectors expanding, driven by joint-stock banks or private entrepreneurs. "This half of the world is constantly searching for suitable family homes, and the other half of the world ... Watch closely on investing money in this area," The Builder magazine wrote in an article in 1848. In France, joint-stock banks, rather than private entrepreneurs, play an important role, with the Perel family deeply involved in the construction of municipal projects in Paris through their own financial innovations.
Marx was clearly very dissatisfied with the development of capitalism in this period, believing that the bourgeoisie was becoming conservative, content to profit themselves and throw contradictions and filth to the bottom. This perspective used to have a naïve discriminating effect, but it quickly became useless. Baudelaire's imagination is more accurate and legitimate than this. The Ottoman Paris was too violent for Marx, and Baudelaire played in it, although he was not satisfied with it. Paris, as a model and a technological necessity, became a new abstract and ambiguous spirit in Baudelaire's pen. Slums, mortality, migration/displacement are all very pressing issues facing Paris, and this is what Baudelaire strives to put himself in. For Baudelaire, the city of this period, or paris of this period, was mixed but dynamic. All in all, Paris is full of paradoxes.
They shouted and shouted. It's a mixture of shouts, the roar of brass instruments, and fireworks explosions. The clowns and nerds twitched constantly with the muscles of their faces, which had been darkened and thickened by the wind and the sun; they showed the composure of comedians who were confident in the effectiveness of their performances, saying funny and witty things, solemn and vulgar, as if they were molières' comedies... Everything is nothing but light, dust, shouting, joy and clamor; some are spending money, some are making money, and everyone is rejoicing. The children grabbed their mother's dress in order to ask for a piece of lollipop, or climbed onto their father's shoulder to see more clearly a magician who was as deceitful as a god. ”
Baudelaire did not go deep into the underlying reality, but he was dragged into it, and Baudelaire was often seen as a wanderer, with the mentality of today's tourists. As Benjamin reminds us, Baudelaire tries to open our eyes to the ruins of the bourgeoisie, which were discovered by the masters of his time, but Benjamin will argue that the starting point for interpreting the ruins is the Surreal period, which I think dates back to Baudelaire. "Every age not only dreams of the next, but also urges its awakening in its dreams." Benjamin's Baudelaire went beyond the montage collage and reproduction that prevailed at the same time to a dialectical thinking of historical liberation that was both a monument and a ruin. That's why Baudelaire's street performers are so different and so vicissitudes.
On the boulevards of Paris, Baudelaire dressed up in disguise, ready to hear a sudden incident, another witty remark, another rumor. Modeled on the "micro-costumes" that had become popular in Paris since the 17th century, Baudelaire' aristocrats dressed in civilian clothes, disguises, cloaks and masks, and entered public spaces, avoiding making themselves part of the landscape. Like Peter the Great, Baudelaire casually boarded the transport, touching the skin and guts of Paris, admiring its scenery and cityscape. Baudelaire's comedy is to re-examine oneself and modify oneself as if he were revising a poem. He crossed the boulevard and was taken into the underground casino by a mysterious man, "where the atmosphere was so delicious, though a little intoxicating, that it almost instantly made one forget all the abominable horrors of the floating life", where Baudelaire left behind a shock which he deeply felt, which continues to this day, "where breath is a complete blessing, like the feelings of those who eat the fruit of forgetfulness... I have never seen any eyes glow more intensely with the fear of boredom and the eternal desire for a sense of survival. ”
Like modern Paris, which inevitably abandons the proletarians, Baudelaire has left himself on the brink of the modern situation, consciously becoming a bourgeois baby. At the age of 23, Baudelaire was forced to accept a legal guardian whose property was in his custody and disposal, and in just two years before that Baudelaire had spent half of his inheritance, Baudelaire was completely reduced to a bourgeois infant, who never enjoyed real bourgeois freedom, even limited freedom. From the present point of view, such a choice by Baudelaire was almost voluntary and spontaneous, and he never fought too much about it, although he repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction with his guardians. It was during the same period that Baudelaire was excluded from their dignity, norms, and wealth by the Family of General Obic, and reduced to poets. Baudelaire never stopped longing for money, but Baudelaire longed for more romance than money. It was in such a situation that Baudelaire accepted begging, allowing himself to take it from his friends and borrow from others. During his lifetime, Baudelaire borrowed about 20,473 francs from Madame Obic, his mother. As we see today, this bourgeois infant walked out of the desperate situation and shortcut of poetry, which all poets aspire to, and behind their romance and power is such a bourgeois infant image. Soon after becoming a bourgeois infant, Baudelaire was soon thrust into a freer world.
Portrait of Baudelaire
Paris, at this time, was immersed in the prosperity of architecture, fashion, and media, and it was worried about the wave of reform while creating more and more upstarts, and the upstart (parvenue) or the new rich (nouveau riche) was not a positive word. Whether it is the modernization of Paris promoted by Louis XIV or the modernization of Paris in the middle of the 19th century, the narrative of assets can hardly have a well-established positive and good intention, but necessarily contains a kind of shame and criticism, although this criticism was reduced to a human comedy story at the end of the 19th century. It was in this context that Paris became the center of world literature, and the French-speaking world became the suzerainty of world literature. Another great poet of the 19th century, Hugo, the devotee of The Swan, understood the modernization that took place. "You are twofold, you are made up of two creatures, one perishable and the other immortal; one fleshly and the other ethereal; one bound by desires and needs and passions, and the other born on the wings of passion and reverie; one always bowing to the earth, its mother, and the other always leaping to heaven, its homeland." This is Hugo's simplified classicism, the classicism of the god of nature, not the classicism of Satan's god, which was owned by another great poet of the 19th century, Baudelaire. More importantly, "The Swan" also embodies a certain paradigm shift in world poetry, from Hugo to Baudelaire, a shift from aristocratic fashion to commoner fashion, where Androma, the swan, and the African woman meet into one face, and the poetry returns to its established track.
One night, the sleepless Baudelaire walked out of his apartment and onto the empty Rue de Paris, where several tired rental carriages passed by. The world became so silent that loneliness returned to Baudelaire's mind. Returning from the stroll, Baudelaire locked himself indoors, decorating his loneliness with darkness. Soon he wrote a lonely hymn, and Baudelaire's verses are still so fresh before our eyes today. "O souls of the people whom I have loved, O souls of the people whom I have sung, make me strong, support me, and let all the stench and lies of the world depart from me; and you, my God! Be merciful and let me write some beautiful verses in order to prove to myself that I am not the worst person, and that I am not inferior to the person I despise. ”
Baudelaire's melancholy
In 2018, a suicide letter sold for 234,000 euros. The letter was sent by Baudelaire to Jeanne Duval. On June 30, 1845, an attempted suicide occurred. Duvall, the eldest heir to Baudelaire's will in this attempted suicide, granted Duval almost everything he owned, including his portrait. In another letter sent to Baudelaire's guardian, Baudelaire detailed the distribution and inheritance of the estate, the debts he owed, and his situation at the time. Baudelaire confessed that he had fallen into a terriblely gloomy, dreary state and needed absolute loneliness to regain himself and regain his strength.
"I committed suicide — there was no sadness — and I didn't feel any psychological disturbance known as sadness. One by one, those debts of mine never made me feel sad. It's too easy to control those things. I killed myself because I couldn't live anymore, and the exhaustion of waking up and the exhaustion of sleeping had made me feel unbearable. I killed myself because I was useless to others and dangerous to myself. I killed myself because I thought I was immortal, and I really wanted to. ”
In Baudelaire's autobiography and letters, melancholy is a very frequent word, not necessarily in a physiological sense, but with what we now call melancholy. Baudelaire suffered from depression all his life, and his world was almost full of traces of melancholy, which is a well-known fact, and a fact that the writers of his time almost ignored. As early as 1841 and 1842, on the ship to Ceylon, Baudelaire had become a melancholy man. The captain in charge of Baudelaire took notes. After encountering a huge storm, Baudelaire became disgusted with the voyage, and he remained sullen, moving lonely on the deck and cabin. The trip had to be interrupted upon arrival in Reunion Island. Since then, Baudelaire has rarely traveled again.
In 1859, Baudelaire left France on a rare occasion, expecting exotic scenery to cleanse his heart. In a poem called Travel, Baudelaire praises travel, but soon he shifts to the theme of melancholy. Baudelaire took it for granted that true travelers were people who traveled for the sake of travel, who chased their own destiny, chased the unknown and infinite pleasures. On this trip, Baudelaire seemed to have gained a lot, and he poured this satisfaction into the stars, the beaches, the sun, the city in the poem. But pleasure, for us poets, is really too bitter, he is not even willing to truly immerse himself in simple enjoyment, and in the blink of an eye he denounces the arrogance of women, the greed of men, the stupidity of the Lord. At the end of the poem, Baudelaire gladly grasps his melancholy and invites him to sail out, "Please pour us poisoned wine and give us encouragement!" / While our heads are hot, we have to be desperate, / Jump into the depths of the abyss, call him heaven and hell, / Jump into the depths of the unknown to hunt for novelty! ”
Baudelaire discovered melancholy and named it melancholy, which he directly used as a theme in his prose poems and poems. Spleen, whose basic meaning is spleen, is in charge of spirit, courage, anger, etc. Unlike the melancholy of modern psychology and the melancholy of the bourgeoisie in cultural studies, Baudelaire's melancholy is mainly a spiritual aesthetic and emotional impulse, which is extremely deformable and bursts at any time.
"I found a definition of beauty, my own, which is a rather warm sadness, and somewhat vague, which can be guessed... Mystery, regret, but also the characteristics of beauty... Melancholy is a wonderful companion to beauty, and it is hard for me to imagine that there is any typical example of beauty that is not accompanied by misfortune... The most complete example of masculine beauty is similar to Milton's depiction of Satan. Baudelaire was so honest about his melancholy aesthetic.
In the rainy weather, Paris shrouded in sorrow, the wet and cold air permeating the house, the ghosts of the distant suburbs seemed to be resurrected on the messy playing cards, Baudelaire mourned, imagining the misery of a distant world, his cat sore and wagging his tail. This is the picture from one of the poems titled "Melancholy". Lyrical songs, death, boredom, deserts, clowns, bats... These are the poems that are often mentioned in the poems named Melancholy. They are filled with mysterious vanishing worlds, rich and chaotic realities, and imaginative future worlds. In "To a Girl Who Is Too Happy" dedicated to Madame Sabatier, melancholy appears in the good. "And then, it's incredibly luscious! / Through your extraordinarily sparkling, / Extra beautiful new lips / Infuse my venom, my sister! The "venom" here is melancholy, but it was once interpreted as syphilis.
The Melancholy of Paris
Melancholy, for Baudelaire, almost refers to the occurrence of beauty, the resurrection of life, and the workings of the world. It is melancholy that controls the amazing power that drives the metabolism and boom-bust of the whole world. It is in this sense that Baudelaire says he has more than a thousand years of memories, and melancholy occupies the core of more than a thousand years of memories.
In the common interpretation, melancholy is often considered to be bourgeois uneasiness, pain, self-denial, a vein that extends from romanticism to the present. In the classical discourse of modernity, melancholy is concentrated in anxiety, division, hysteria, trauma, it cannot really emerge, but it is considered universal. Baudelaire's melancholy is different. In response to the absurdity of the bourgeoisie, Flaubert's approach was to preserve himself as a bourgeois side and to live regularly in order to nourish the work and give it violence and originality. In a superficial sense, Baudelaire did the opposite, never living an orderly life, never showing anxiety about law and order. But in terms of resistance to the simple imagination of the bourgeoisie, the two are indeed the same. In fact, simple and externalized melancholy is a road of no return, although it is very human, very common.
But the melancholy image, abstract to the point of minimalism, also seems to be one of the most recognized images of Baudelaire, but it is far from the real Baudelaire. Jean-Paul Sartre imagined Baudelaire, but sartre, who also lacked his father,d'étating, could hardly imagine another Baudelaire image. In Sartre's view, Baudelaire's life was a slow disintegration, collapse, and painful process, from his youth to his eventual death, Baudelaire became more depressed, and all his talents were left with only memories. Sartre compares Baudelaire to Monculuz, a faust of Faust who lives in a closed flask. Baudelaire, once again suffering from a great misunderstanding, he was seen as a stagnant, with his back to the future, he closed himself off, kept a stingy posture, did not want to work, and could not work. Baudelaire's Platonism or his mysticism is often spoken of, as if he longed to break free from the bondage of his flesh in order to face pure ideas or absolute beauty, as described in The Drinking Chamber. In fact, we find in Baudelaire the slightest trace of the kind of effort peculiar to the mystic. For that kind of effort must go hand in hand with the complete abandonment of the world and impersonalization. If he says that his works are full of thoughts, dissatisfactions, and transcendences of reality, he is always complaining about himself within this reality. For him, transcendence begins with all that surrounds him, points out his own traces, draws his own prototype; even all things must stay there so that he can have the pleasure of transcending them. ”
Sartre apparently could not comprehend the way poetry existed, revived by annihilation and high-pitched by silence. As Baudelaire expresses in The Irreparable, "The heart that becomes its own mirror, / This is the opposite of light and darkness!" / The well of truth that sways with pale starlight/ / Bright and dark, / / The ironic lighthouse of hell, / The torch of the grace of the devil, / The only comfort and glory, / - This is the consciousness in 'evil'! "The melancholy of poetry is different from the melancholy of the mirror in reality, and it is also different from the melancholy of the face and body. If the melancholy of the face is only a superficial appearance, it is reduced to the scraps of cultural research, then the melancholy in the mirror is the shadow, and its mechanism of occurrence is that darkness comes and the shadow appears on its own. The melancholy of poetry, as Jean Starobinsky put it, is composed of infinite flickering and glowing in nothingness.
In Baudelaire's lyrics, the beauty lies in the form of the grammaid and the vibration of language. The objects of his depictions no longer fit into the old concept of beauty. Baudelaire uses an inverted, paradoxical complement that gives beauty an aggressive stimulus and a flavor of alienation. In order to protect this beauty from mediocrity, to provoke the taste of mediocrity, this beauty should be weird. The alienation and provocation pointed out by Hugo Friedrich are the basis for the reader's reproduction of the situation in which Baudelaire's melancholy stemmed. The alienation created by Baudelaire is dual, one depending on the interpretation of the story and the other on the fusion of the laws. In a large sense, it is a supplementary elaboration to Schlegel's "transcendental humor", Hugo's grotesque theory, and Edgar Allan Poe's suspenseful mysterious metaphysics. Absurdity, dreams, or pastimes are all pressed into Baudelaire's lines of poetry, and the effect that we are familiar with at the end is melancholy.
On its own, Baudelaire's melancholy could not really fit into the tide of modernization, and it was very different from the more pervasive melancholy developed by later generations. The melancholy that later prevailed in the literary imagination focused more on the disillusionment, the mood of the end times, and the self-sentimentality that stayed at the historical level that modernization inevitably accompanied. In the sonnet "The Sunset of the Romantics," Baudelaire rejects the universal romantic imagination, and thus rejects any tendency to generalize himself. In other words, Baudelaire did not belong to the Romantics, he did not belong to the Fortress, the Natural, the Futuristic, or any other such faction. Baudelaire's answer is still dubious, but he has never run away. Baudelaire writes, "But I chase in vain the retreating sun god; / The night of the irreversible is building its gloomy, dark, damp, trembling kingdom; // The smell of graves wafting in the darkness, / My timid feet trampling on the edge of the moor / Unexpected toads and cold snails." In this poem, The Night of Majeure refers to the current state of literature, while the unexpected toads and cold snails represent writers who are too easy to classify.
Baudelaire's collection and Guo Hong'an's "On the > of the Flower of < Evil"
One of Baudelaire's most frequently quoted quotes about modernity is, "Modernity is the transition that is short, accidental, half of art, and the other half is eternal and unchanging." This passage came from one of his group essays. As far as the phenomenon of modern painting confusion is concerned, Baudelaire emphasizes the coordination of the people and clothes in the painting, "because the clothing hairstyle, mannerism, gaze, and smile constitute the whole of all vitality." But Baudelaire served not so much the so-called question of modernity as the question of eternity, or of classicism. "As far as Baudelaire himself is concerned, images of large cities full of dissonant harmonies are highly aggregated." Friedrich explains Baudelaire's aesthetic of modernity, more precisely based on the aesthetics of modern classicism, "these images connect gas lamps with the night sky, juxtaposing the fragrance of flowers with the smell of tar, overflowing with pleasure and lament..." Yet Friedrich remained in the representation of modernity, without trying to understand the malleability of melancholy and the dynamism of it.
Baudelaire's melancholy is also, in a sense, the result of the collision of eternity and modernity, classicism and modernity. If eternity and classicism are concerned with immutable beauty, creation under the precepts, it can reach the reader directly and bring him to tears. Modernity and modernity, then, are concerned with the repression of change and passion, and the reality that is fixed under the intoxication. On this, Baudelaire writes, "It is this admirable, unchanging instinct for beauty that leads us to regard the human world and its sentient beings as a corner of heaven, as the harmony of heaven." Our insatiable desire for everything on the other side of life's revelation is the most vivid evidence of our immortality. It is precisely because of poetry, but also through poetry, and because and at the same time through music, that the soul glimpses the brilliance behind the grave; a wonderful poem brings tears to one's eyes, which is not evidence of extreme pleasure, but indicates an aroused melancholy, a request of the nerves, a nature that dwells in imperfection, which wants to immediately attain a heaven on earth to be revealed. Thus the essence of poetry is nothing but, and only, the yearning for a supreme beauty, which is expressed in enthusiasm, in the hijacking of the soul; this passion is completely independent of passion, which is a kind of intoxication of the mind, and it is also completely independent of the real, the material of reason. For passion is a natural thing, even too natural, to fail to bring an uncomfortable, irreconcilable hue to the realm of beauty; it is also too intimate, too violent, not to corrupt the pure desire, the moving melancholy, and the noble despair that inhabit the supernatural realm of poetry. ”
Poet of the World of Evil
In July 1857, a month after its publication, The Flower of Evil came to an official trial. As a result of the trial, six poems were deleted and both Baudelaire and his publisher were fined a sum of money. On 20 August, the Sixth Criminal Court declared that "with regard to crimes against religious morality, no good reasons have been given; but on the basis of public morals and generally accepted standards ... There are grounds for conviction because the book contains obscene and immoral paragraphs or expressions. Gustav Flaubert, who also suffered an official trial but was spared punishment, wrote to Baudelaire, "You don't need to judge others. You find a way to breathe new life into Romanticism. But you're not like anyone else. You are as resistant as marble, as penetrating as the fog of England. Flaubert was right.
The first edition of The Flower of Evil, with Baudelaire's handwriting
Baudelaire was punished, but gained the recognition of his French counterparts and even the recognition of the world of Continental literature. Especially considering that the French authorities have tried several literary figures in succession, including Eugène Sue and others. But the trial was almost a curse on Baudelaire himself, and it put him in a worrying position. In a letter to Hugo, Baudelaire wrote, "I remember that when The Flower of Evil was published, you wrote to me to express strange congratulations on the humiliation I had suffered, calling it a decoration. I didn't understand that because I was still in the midst of anger over the loss of time and money. But today, sir, I fully understand. I felt at ease with my shame and knew that I would henceforth be a monster and a werewolf in whatever type of literature I worked on. Needless to say, Baudelaire once again hit himself. As Theophil Gautier said, "Baudelaire himself is an extravagant and lascivious cat, a cat who is accustomed to picking flowers and weeds, and also has the gentle and smooth manners of a cat, the mysterious seductiveness, the instinct of softness and rigidity; when looking at people, the gaze is also so focused and deep, full of uneasiness and obedience, it is irresistible, but it is loyal and undeceived." ”
However, neither of them expected that Baudelaire, who was so mysterious and so depraved, would soon enter the stage of world literature and become one of the most important writers in the entire history of world literature. Especially in later history, Baudelaire almost became a cultural symbol, one of the few symbols exported from the cultural world to the future world. If Shakespeare is a kind of speech, then Baudelaire is a kind of decoration, as Hugo said.
Most critics see Baudelaire as a modernist. As Theophil Gautier put it, "In Baudelaire the language has taken on the jerky phenomenon of disintegration, with the flavors of the Eastern Roman Empire, and with the intricate and elaborate style of the Byzantine school, which was the last form of the Decline of Greek art, but all this is a necessary and historically predestined language style for the survival of the nation and the development of civilization, because at this time man-made life has replaced natural life, and it has developed in a man who does not know what he really needs." Or, as T.S. Eliot put it, "The beauty of the forms, the perfection of the wording, and the coherence of the surface make the poems seem to express a definite state of mind, when in fact they seem to me to be only external to classical art, rather than to the inner form." One might even venture to speculate that the pursuit of perfect form by some of the Romantic poets of the 19th century was an effort to support or disguise inner chaos. ”
But from the imagination of poetry in the whole world, Baudelaire was actually a classicist. Baudelaire deeply believed in rhythm, "Form plays a binding role, and ideas become more and more powerfully gushing out." Everything is appropriate for the sonnet: gags, heroic acts, passion, reverie, philosophical contemplation. Unlike the rigid classicists, Baudelaire's experimentations and changes in rhythm are numerous. Similarly, Baudelaire was almost classical in his posture, on the one hand he had a strong aristocratic tendency, and on the other hand his expression and poetics were all permeated with traces of classicism, which was often an excessive and overflowing spirit of classicism. As a set of comparisons, the difference between Baudelaire and Rimbaud is far greater than the difference between Baudelaire and Dante. Of course, Baudelaire's world is far from the classicism of the ancient period, but the classicism of the modern period, and his cats, Jewish women, and corpses must all be revived with the help of the classical system of interpretation. The Romantic or modernist interpretation of Baudelaire's modernization is rather a pretense, or perhaps another resurrection of the classical in the later world.
Such a classical, worldly poet thus broke into the chaotic 19th century. It was then that Gautier met Baudelaire for the first time, and he was attracted to the well-decorated and high-spirited poet. "His mouth is half-hidden under the silky beard, his teeth are white and neat, and his lips curve is as charming as the smile in Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting Mona Lisa, with a sense of irony... His neck was almost as elegant and white as a woman's, and could be seen clearly when the collar of his shirt was turned down, which was tied with an Indian Madeiras lace-striped bow tie. Gautier described. Later people dressed Baudelaire in disguise as a modern archetype, which was almost the greatest boon that a classical poet could enjoy in the long "degradation of poetry".
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