The Arcades Project - Operi

Ours is an age of gaiety and distrust, one that never long suspends the recital of
nightmares or the spectacle of ecstasies. It has now become clear that no one else
had enough foresight to undertake such a campaign at the period when Bandelaire
began his" (pp. 190-191). "Why didn't he become a professor of rhetoric or
a dealer in scapulars, this didactician who imitated the blasted and downtrodden,
this classicist who wanted to shock Prudhomme, but who, as Dusolier has said,
was only a hysterical Boileau who went to play Dante among the cafes" (p. 192).
Notwithstanding the resounding error in its appreciation of the importance of
Baudelaire's work, the obituary contains some perceptive passages, particularly
those concerned with the habitus ofBandelaire: "He had in him something of the
priest, the old lady, and the ham actor. Above all, the hanl actor" (p. 189). The
piece is reprinted in Andre Billy, Les Ecrivains de combat (paris, 1931); originally
appeared in La Situation. [J21,6]
Key passages on the stars in Baudelaire (ed. Le Dantec) : "Night! you'd please me
more without these stars / which speak a language I know all too well- / I long
for darkness, silence, nothing there .. :' ("Obsession;' p. 88).-Ending of
"Les Promesses d'un visage" «vol. 1,) p. 170) : the "enortnous head of hair- /
. . . which in darkness rivals you, 0 Night, / deep and spreading starless
Nightl"-"Yet neither sun nor moon appeared, / and no horizon paled" ("Rve
parisien;'