The Arcades Project - Operi

the poet when he has to describe . .. a mingling of glory and light. And if the lyric
poet has occasion to speak of himself, he will not depict himself bent over a
table, ... wrestling with intractable phrases, ... any more than he will show
himself in a pOOl; wretched, or disorderly room; nor, if he wishes to appear dead,
will he show himself rotting heneath a linen shroud in a wooden casket. That
would be lying;' Baudelaire, L'Art romantique (paris), pp. 370-371.26 [J4a,2]
In his essay on Banville Baudelaire mentions mythology together with allegory,
and then continues: " Mythology is a dictionary of living hieroglyphics." Baudelaire
L'Art romantiqu€ (Paris) p. 370.27 [J4a,3]
Conjunction of the modern and the demonic: "Modern poetry is related at oue
and the same time to painting, music, sculpture, decorative art, satiric philosophy,
and the analytic spirit. ... Some could perhaps see in this symptoms of depravity
of taste. But that is a question which I do not wish to discuss here." Nevertheless,
a page later, after a reference to Beethoven, Maturin, Byron, and Poe, one reads:
"1 mean that modem art has an essentially demoniacal tendency. And it seems
that this satanic side of man . .. increases every day, as if the devil, like one who
fattens geese, enjoyed enlarging it by artificial means, patiently force-feeding the
human race in his poultry yard in order to prepare himself a more succulent
dish;' Baudelaire, L'Art romantique (paris) , pp. 373-374.28 The concept of the
demonic comes into play where the concept of modernity converges with
Catllolicism. [J4a,4]
Regarding Leconte de Lisle: "My natural predilection for Rome prevents me
from feeling all the enjoyment that I should in the reading of his Greek poems;'
Baudelaire, L'Art romantique (paris), pp. 389-390." Chthonic view of the world.
Catholicism. [J4a,S]
It is very important that the modern, with Baudelaire, appear not only as the
signature of an epoch but as an energy by which this epoch in1mediately transforms
and appropriates antiquity. Among all tlle relations into which modernity
enters, its relation to antiquity is critical. Thus, Baudelaire sees confirmed in
Hugo "the fatality which led him . . . partially to transform ancient ode and
ancient tragedy into the poems and dramas that we know." Baudelaire, L'Art
romantique (Paris), p. 401 (aLes Miserables ''):'' This is also, for Baudelaire, the
fimction of Wagner. [JS,!]
The gesture with which the angel chastises the miscreant: "Is it not useful for the
poet the philosopher, to take egoistic Happiness by the hair from time to time and
say to it while ruhhing its nose in blood and dung: "See your handiwork and
swallow it'?" Charles Baudelaire, L'A,.t romantique (Paris), p. 406 ('Les
Miserables"J.'" [J5,2]
( ,"The Church, . .. that Pharmacy where no one has the right to slumber!" Baudelaire,
L'Art romantique (Paris), p. 420 (" Madame Bovary"). :12 [JS,3]