The Arcades Project - Operi

mistress betrays you, of being able to console yourself only with pockmarked
women. For certain spirits, more precious and more jaded, delight in ugliness
proceeds from an obscurer sentiment still-the thirst for the unknown and the
taste for the horrible. It is this sentiment . .. which drives certain poets into the
dissecting room or the clinie, and women to public executions. I am sincerely sorry
for the man who cannot understand this-he is a harp who laeks a hass string!"
Baudelaire, Oeuvres, vol. 2, ed. y'-G. Le Dantec, p. 621.70 (Jll,7]
The idea of "correspondences" surfaces already in the "Salon de 1846;' where a
passage of Kreisleriana is cited. (See the note by Le Dantec, Oeuvres, vol. 1,
p.585.)" [Jll,8]
In considering the aggressive Catholicism displayed in Baudelaire's later work,
one must bear in mind that his writing had met with scant success during his
lifetime. This could have led Baudelaire, in rather unusual fashion, to align
himself or rather to identify himself with the completed works. His particular
sensuality found its theoretical equivalents only in the process of poetic composi­
tion; these equivalents, however, the poet appropriated to himself as such, uncon­
ditionally and without any sort of revision. They bear the trace of this origin
precisely in their aggressiveness. [Jlla,l]
'He has on a blood-red cravat and rose gloves. Yes, it is 1840. Some years,
even green gloves were worn. Color disappeared from outfits only reluetantly. For
Baudelaire was not alone in sporting that purple or brick-colored cravat. Not
alone in wearing pink gloves. His trademark is in the combination of the two
effects with the black outfit." Eugene Marsan, Les Cannes de M. Paul Bourget et le
bon choix de Philinte (Paris, 1923), 1'1'. 236-237. [Jlla,2]
'''His utterances, Gautier thought, were full of 'capital letters and italics.' He
appeared . .. surprised at what he himself said, as if he heard in his own voice t.he
words of a stranger. But it must be admitted that his women and his sky, his
perfumes, his nostalgia, his Christianity and his demon, his oceans and his tropics,
made for a suh,iect matter of stunning novelty . ... I do not even criticize his
jerky gait, . .. which made people compare him to a spider. It was the beginning of'
that angular gesticulation which, little hy little, would displace the rounded graces
of the old world. Here, too, he is a precursor." Eugene Marsan, Les Cannes de
M. Paul Bow"et et Ie bon choix de Philinte (Paris, 1923), PI'. 239-240. [Jlla,3]
!.!.His gestures were nohle, slow, kept in close to the body. His politeness seemed
affected hecause it was a legacy of the eighteenth century, Baudelaire being the son
of an old man who had known the salons." Eugene Marsan, Les Cannes de M. Paul
Bom"et et Ie bon choix de Philinte (Paris, 1923), p. 239. [Jlla,4]
There are two different versions of Baudelaire's dehut in Brussels.i2 Georges
Rency, who reproduces hoth, prefers the one hy the chronicler Tardieu, "'In a