The Arcades Project - Operi

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The unique importance of Baudelaire resides in his being the first and the most
unflinching to have taken the measure of the self-estranged human being, in the
double sense of acknowledging this being and fortifYing it with armor against the
reified world.272 [J5Ia,6]
Nothing comes closer to the task of the ancient hero in Baudelaire's sense-and
in his century-than to give a form to modernity. [J5Ia,7]
In the "Salon de 1846" (Oeuvres, vol. 2, p. 134), Baudelaire has described his
social class through the clothes they wear. From this description it emerges that
heroism is a quality of the one who describes, and not at all a quality of his
subject. The "heroism of modern life" is a subterfuge or, if you prefer, a euphe­
mism. The idea of death, from which Baudelaire never broke loose, is the hollow
matrix readied for a knowledge that was not his. Baudelaire's concept of heroic
modernity, it would seem, was first of all this : a monstrous provocation. Analogy
with Daumier. [J52,1]
Baudelaire's truest posture is ultimately not that of Hercules at rest but that of the
mime who has taken off his makeup. This gestus is found again in the "ebbings"
of his prosodic construction-something that, for several commentators, is the
most precious element of his ars poetica. [J52,2]
J auuary 15, 1866, on Le Spleen de Paris: "Finally, I am hopeful that one of these
days I'll be able to show a new Joseph Delorme linking his rhapsodic meditation to
every chance event in his flilnerie." Ch B, Lettres (Paris , 1915),
p. 493.'" [J52,3]
January 15, 1866, to Sainte-Beuve: '!.In certain places in Joseph Delorme I find a
few too many lutes, lyres, harps, and Jehovahs. This clashes with the Parisian
poems. Moreover, you'd come with the aim of destroying all that." eh. B., Lettres
(Paris, 1915), p. 495.27" [J52,4]
An image that Baudelaire summons to explain his theory of the short poem,
particularly the sonnet, in a letter to Armand Fraisse of February 19, 1860, serves
better than any other description to suggest the way the sky looks in Meryon:
"Have you ever noticed that a section of the sky seen through a vent or between
two chimneys or two rocks, or through an arcade, gives a more profound idea of
the infinite than a great panorama seen from a mountaintop?" eh. B., Lettres
(paris, 1915), pp_ 238-239.275 [J52,5]
Apropos of Pinelli, in " Quelques caricaturistes etrangers": 1."1 wish that someone
would invent a neologism, that someone would manufacture a word destined to
destroy once and for all this species of poncif-the poncifin conduct and behavior