The Arcades Project - Operi

horrible funk" writes the latter Baudelaire read and stammered and trembled,
his teeth chattering his nose huried in his manuscript. It was a disaster." Camille
Lemonnier, on the other hand, came away with the "impression of a magnificent
talker." Georges Rency, Physionomies litteraires (Brussels, 1907), pp. 267, 268
("Charles Baudelaire"). [J12,1]
"He . . . never made a serious effort to understand what was external to him."
Georges Rency, Physionomies litteraires (Brussels, 1907), p. 274 ("Charles
Baudelaire"). [J12,2]
Baudelaire is as incapahle of love as of labor. He loves as he writes, by fits and
starts, and then relapses into the dissolute egoism of a fla.neur. Never does he show
the slightest curiosity about human affairs or the slightest consciousness of human
evolution . ... His art could therefore be said ... to sin by reason of its narrowness
and singularity; these, indeed, are defects which put off sane and upright
minds such as love clear works of universal import." Georges Rency, Physionomies
litternires (Brussels, 1907), p. 288 ("Charles Baudelaire"). [J12,3]
"Like many another author of his day, he was not a writer but a stylist. His images
are almost always inappropriate. He will say of a look that it is 'gimlet-sharp.' ...
He will call repentance 'the last hostelry. ' . .. Baudelaire is a still worse writer in
prose than in verse . ... He does not even know grammar. 'No French writer,' he
says, 'ardent for the glory of the nation, can, without pride and without regrets,
divert his gaze . . .' The solecism here is not only flagrant; it is foolish. ' Edmond
Scherer, Etudes sur la litterature contemporaine, vol. 4 (Paris, 1886), pp. 288-
289 ("Baudelaire"). [J12,4]
"Baudelaire is a sign not of decadence in letters but of the general lowering of
intelligence." Edmond Scherer, Etudes sur la litterature contemporaine, vol. 4
(Paris, 1886), p. 291 ("Charles Baudelaire"). [J12,5]
Brunetiere recognizes, with Gautier, that Baudelaire has opened new territory for
poetry. Among the criticisms registered against him by the literary historian is
this: "Moreover, he was a poet who lacked more than one element of his art-notably
(according to people who knew him) the gift of thinking directly in verse."
F Brunetiere, L 'Evolution de la poesie lyrique en France au XIXe
siRele, vol. 2 (Paris, 1894), p. 232 ("Le Symbolisme"). [J12,6]
Brunetiere (L 'Evolution de Ia poesi,e lyrique en France au XIX" siecle, vol. 2
[Paris, 1894]) distinguishes Baudelaire on one side from the school of E-usldn, and
on the other from the Russian novelists. In both these movements he sees currents
which ? with good reason, resist the decadence proclaimed by Baudelaire, opposing
to everything hypercultivated the primitive simplicity and innocence of natural
man. A synthesis of these antithetical tendencies would he represented by Wag-
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