The Arcades Project - Operi

Gide, Preface to Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, ed. Edouard Pelletan
(Paris, 1917), pp. xiii-xiv. 711 [J14a,3]
"'Tlris book has not been written for my wives, my daughters, or my sisters,' he
says, speaking of Les Fleurs du maL Why warn us? Why this sentence? Oh, simply
for the pleasure of affronting bourgeois morals, with the words 'my wives' slipped
in, as if carelessly. He values them, however, since we find in his private journal:
'This cannot shock my wives, my daughters, or my sisters. , " Andre Gide, Preface
to Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, ed. Edouard Pelletan (Paris, 1917),
p. xiv 7" [J14a,4]
"Without doubt, Baudelaire is the artist about whom the most nonsense has been
written." Andre Gide, Preface to Ch B, Les Fleurs du mal, eeL
Edouanl Pelletan (Paris, 1917), p. xii. liB [J14a,5]
"Les Fleurs du mal is dedicated to what Gautier claimed to be: magician of French
letters, pure artist, impeccable writer-and this was a way of saying: Do not be
deceived; what I venerate is the art and not the thought; my poems will have merit
not because of their movement, passion, or thought, but because of their form. "
Andre Gide, Preface to Ch. B., Les Fleurs du mal, ed. Edouard Pelletan (Paris,
1917), pp. xi-xii.'" [J14a,6]
"Now he quietly converses with each one of us." Andre Gide, Preface to Ch. B.,
Les Fleurs du mal, ed. E. Pelletan (Paris, 1917), p. xv.l" [J14a,7]
Lemaitrc in his article "Baudelaire," published originally in the "Feuilleton
Dramatique" section of Le Journal des debats, and written on the occasion of
Crepet's edition of the Oeuvres posthumes et Correspondances inedites: "'Worst of
all, I sense that. t.he unhappy man is perfectly incapable of developing these sibylline
notes. The pensees of Baudelaire are most often only a sort of painful and
pretentious stammering . ... One cannot imagine a less philosophical mind." Jules
Lemaitre, Les Contemporains, 4th series (Paris, 1895), p. 21 (""Baudelaire").
Brooding! . [J15,1]
After Calcutta. "On his return, he enters into possession of his patrimony, seventy
thousand francs. Within two years, he has spent. half of it. ... For the next twenty
years, he lives on the income provided by t.he remaining t.hirty-five t.housand
francs . ... Now, during t.hese twenty years, he runs up no more than ten thousand
francs in new debts. Under these conditions, as you can imagine, he couldn't have
indulged very often in Neronian orgies!" Jules 'Lemaitre, Les Contempo, . ains 4th
scries (Paris, 1895), p. 27. [.J15,2]
Bourget draws a comparison between Leonardo and Baudelaire: ·"We are drawn
irresistillly to prolonged medit.at.ion on the enigma of this painter, of this poet. On