The Arcades Project - Operi

ated from the antique world, as from the Christian, no more dmn he needed to
set going in his poetry that primordial experience-which had a substrate entirely
sui generis. [J53a,1]
TI,e passion for ships and for self-propelled toys is, widl Baudelaire, perhaps only
another expression of the discredit into which, in his view, the world of the
organic has fallen. A sadistic inspiration is palpable here. [J53a,2]
"All the miscreants of melodrama-accursed, damned and fatally marked with a
grin which ruus from ear to ear-are in the pure orthodoxy of laughter. . . .
Laughter is satanic; it is thus profoundly human." Ch. B., Oeuvres, vol. 2, p. 171
CDe l'Essence du rire" ). 2!H [J53a,3]
It is a shock that brings someone engrossed in reverie up from the depths.
Medieval legends invoke the state of shock peculiar to the researcher whose
longing for more-than-human wisdom has led hinl to magic; the experience of
shock is cited here as the "derisive laughter of hell:' "Here ... the muteness of
matter is overcome. In laughter, above all, matter takes on an abundance of spirit,
in highly eccentric disguise. Indeed, it becomes so spiritual that it far outstrips
language. Ainling still higher, it ends in shriIl laughter" (Ursprung des deutschen
Trauerspiels, p. 227).28 5 Not only was such strident laughter characteristic of
Baudelaire; it reechoed in his ear and gave him much to think about. [J53a,4]
Laughter is shattered articulation. [J54,1]
On the flight of inlages and the theory of surprise, which Baudelaire shared with
Poe: "Allegories become dated because it is part of their nature to shock:'286 The
succession of allegorical publications in the Baroque represents a sort of flight of
inlages. [J54,2]
On petrified unrest and the flight of inlages: "The same tendency is characteristic
of Baroque lyric. The poems have 'no forward movement, but they swell up Ii'om
within.' If it is to hold its own against the tendency toward absorption, the
allegorical must constantly unfold in new and surprising ways:' Ursprung, p. 182
(citing Fritz Strich) .287 [J54,3]
Once the scheme of allegory has been metaphysically determined according to its
threefold illusionary nature, as "illusion of freedom-in the exploration of what is
forbidden; . .. illusion of independence-in the secession from the community of
the pious ; . .. illusion of infinity-in the empty abyss of evi!" (Ursprung, p. 230),288
then nothing is easier than to assimilate whole groups of Baudelairean poems to
dus desigu. The first part can be represented by the cycle "Fleurs du mal"; the
second part, by the cycle "Revolte"; while the third could be elaborated without
difficulty from "Spleen et ideal." [J54,4]