The Arcades Project - Operi

J
[Baudelaire]
For it pleases me, all for your sake, to row
My own oars here on my own sea,
And to soar heavenward by a strange avenue,
Singing you the unsung praises of Death.
-PielTe Ronsard, "Hynme de 1a Mort," A Louys des Masures 1
I.r.Baudelaire s problem . .. must have . .. posed itself in these terms: 'How to he a
great poet, but neither a Lamartine nor a Hugo nor a Musset.' I do not say that
these words were consciously formulated, but they must have heen latent in
Baudelaire's mind; they even constituted what was the essential Baudelaire. They
were his raison d'etat . ... Baudelaire considered Victor Hugo; and it is not impossible
to imagine what he thought of him . ... Everything that might scandalize, and
thereby instruct and guide a pitiless young observer in the way of his own future
art, . .. Baudelaire must have recorded in his mind, distinguishing the admiration
forced upon him by Hugo's wonderful gifts from the impurities, the imprudences,
... that is to say, the chances for life and fame that so great an artist left
hehind him to he gleaned." Paul Valery, Introduction (Charles Baudelaire, Les
Fleurs dumal, with an introduction by Paul Valery [Paris