The Arcades Project - Operi

The image of petrified unrest, iu the Baroque, is "the bleak confusion of Gol­
gotha, which can be recognized as the schema underlying the allegorical figures
iu hundreds of the engravings and descriptions of the period" (Ursprung,
p. 232) .289 [J54,5]
The extent of Baudelaire's impatience can be gauged from these liues iu "Sonnet
d'automne" : "My heart, on which everythiug jars / except the candor of the
primitive animal."290
[J54,6]
Experiences emptied ont and deprived of their substance: ""Last ... we / [of' the]
Muse's priesthood . . . / have drunk without thirst and eaten without hunger!"
("L 'Examen de minuit"). 291 [J54,7)
Art appears truly bare and austere in the light of an allegorical consideration:
And on that last and terrible day,
To escape the vengeance from above,
He must show barns whose uttennost
Recesses swell with ripened grain,
And blooms whose shapes and hues will gain
The suffrage of the Heavenly HOSt.292
"La Ralll:;on!' Compare "Le Squelette Iaboureur." [J54,8]
Concerning the "strange sectioning of time ," the final stanza of 'l/Avertisseur" :
Despite what he may hope or plan,
There is no moment left when man
Is not subject to the constant
Warnings of this odious Serpent.293
To be compared with 'I.OL Horloge' and 'IORSve parisien." [J54a,1]
About laughter: "Beguiled by ghostly laughter in the air I his reason falters,
grasps at phantom straws. ' ("'Sur Le Tasse en prison d'Eugene Delaeroix.")
His mirth is the reverse of Melmoth's sneer
Or the snickering of Mephistopheles,
licked by the lurid light of a Fury's torch
that burns them to a crisp but leaves us cold.
"Vel'S pour Ie portrait de M. Honore Daumier. '294
The derisive laughter from the clouds in "La Beatrice."
For I-am I not a dissonance
in the divine accord,
[J54a,2]