The Arcades Project - Operi

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ner.-Brunetiere arrived at this relatively positive estimation of Baudelaire only
helatedly (1892). [JIZa,l]
On Baudelaire in relation to Hugo and Gautier: '''He treats the great masters he
learned from as he treats women: he adores and vilifies them." U.-V. Chatelain,
Baudelaire, l'homme et Ie poete (Paris), p. 21. [JIZa,Z]
Baudelaire on Hugo: "Not only does he express precisely and translate literally
what is dearly and distinctly visible, but he expresses with indispensable obscurity
what is obscure and vaguely revealed!' Citing this sentence in Baudelaire,
l'homme et Ie poete (Paris), p. 22, Chatelain rightly says that Baudelaire is perhaps
the only man of his time to have understood the "secret Mallarmeism" of Hugo.
[JIZa,3]
"Barely sixty people followed the hearse in the sweltering heat; Banville and
Asselineau, under a gathering storm, made beautiful speeches that nobody could
hear. With the exception of Veuillot in L'Univers, the press was cruel. Everything
bore down on his remains. A gale dispersed his friends; his enemies ... called
him 'mad. m U .-V. Chatelain, Baudelaire, l'homme et le poete (Paris), p. 16.
[JIZa,4]
For the experience of the co, . ,-espondances, Baudelaire refers
Swedenborg, and also to hashish.
occasionally to
[JIZa,5]
Baudelaire at a concert: ·'Two piercing black eyes, gleaming with a peculiar vividness,
alone animated the figure that seemed frozen in its shell." Lorcdan Larchey,
F, . agments de souvenirs (Paris , 1901), p. 6 ("Le Boa de Baudelaire-L'Impeccahie
Banville"). [JIZa,6]
Larchey is an eyewitness to Baudelaire's first visit to an Academician-a call paid
to Jules Sandeau. Larchey finds himself in the entrance hall soon after Baudelaire.
"When I arrived, . .. at the appointed hour, a hizarre spectacle informed me I had
been preceded. All around the hat-pegs of the antechamber was coiled a long
scarlet hoa, one of those boas in chenille of' which young working-class women are
particularly fond." L. L, p. 7. [JIZa,7]
Tableau of decadence: "Behold our great cities under the fog of tobacco smoke
that envelops them, thoroughly sodden by alcohol, infused with morphine: it is
there that humanity comes unhinged. Rest assured that this source hreeds more
epileptics, idiots, and assassins than poets." Maurice Barres, La Folie de Charles
Baudelaire (Paris