The Arcades Project - Operi

Lemaitre observes that Baudelaire really did create a poncif, a cliche, as he set out
to do. [JISa,2]
The bloody apparatus of destruction"-where is this phrase in Baudelaire? In
'La Destruction. "BS [J15a)3]
'You could put him down as the perfect embodiment of the Parisian pessimist,'
two words which earlier would have jarred on being coupled." Paul Bourget,
Essais de psychologie contemporaine, vol. 1 (Paris, 1901), p. 14. [J15a,4]
Baudelaire had briefly considered reproducing, as the frontispiece to the second
edition of Les Fleurs, a dance of death by H. Langlois. [JISa,S]
"Three different men inhabit this man at one and the same time . ... These three
men are all quite modern, and more modern still is their synthesis. The crisis of
religious faith, the city life of Paris, and the scientific spirit of the age . .. are so
thoroughly allied here as to appear inseparable . ... Faith has died out, whereas
mysticism, though intellectually discredited, still permeates the sensibility . ... We
could note . .. the use of liturgical terminology to celebrate sensual pleasure . .. or
that curious work of 'prose' in decadent Latin style which he entitled 'Franciscae
meae laudes.' . .. On the other hand, his lihertine tastes came from Paris. Everywhere
in his ... poems is a backdrop of Parisian vice, as well as a backdrop of
Catholic ritual. He has obviously penetrated-and with hair-raising experiences,
we may be sure-the most wretched strata of this unchaste city. He has eaten at
common dinner tables beside painted women whose mouths drip blood through
masks of ceruse. He has slept in brothels, and has known the rancor of broad
daylight illuminating, along with the faded curtains, the still more faded face of the
woman-for-hire. He has sought out . .. the unthinking spasm that ... cures the
mal de pense,. . And, at the same time, he has stopped and chatted at every streetcorner
in town . ... He has led the life of the literary man, ... and he has ...
whetted the blade of his spirit where that of others would have been dulled." Paul
Bourget, Essais de psychologie contemporaine, vol. 1 (Paris, 1901), pp. 7-9
("Baudelaire"). [J16,1]
Riviere provides a sequence of felicitous glosses on Baudelaire's poetic proce­
dure: ((Strange procession of words! Sometimes like a weariness of the voice, ...
au utterauce full of frailty: 'I dream of new flowers, but who cau tell / if this
sordid swamp of mine affords / the mystic nourislnnent on which they thrive [qui
.forait leur vigueurJ.' Or: 'a favoring Goddess makes the desert bloom [CyMle, qui
les aime, augmente ses verdures] . .. : Like those who feel themselves completely
in command of what they waut to say, he seeks at first the most remote of terms;
he then invites their approach, conciliates them, and infuses them with a quality
you would not have thought could be theirs . . . . Such poetry cannot be the
product of inspiration . . . . And just as the unfolding thought ... slowly breaks
free of the obscurity in which it began, so the poetic trajectory retains a certain