The Arcades Project - Operi

to mention the transfiguration of Paris in "Paysage" ] . What is most
appalling is the defilement of the clouds ("La Beatrice"). [J57,4]
From the perspective of spleen, the buried man is the "1ranscendental subject of
history." "''' [J57,5]
Baudelaire's financial misery is a moment of his personal Golgotha. It has fur­
nished, together with his erotic misery, the defining features of the image of the
poet handed down by tradition. The Passion of Baudelaire: understood as a
redemption. [J57,6]
Let us emphasize the solitude of Baudelaire as a counterpart to that of Blanqui.
The latter, too, had a II destiny eternally solitary" ("Mon Coeur mis a nu;' no.
1
[JQn
On the image of the crowd in Poe: How well can the image of the big city turn
out when the register of its physical dangers-to say nothing of the danger to
which it itself is exposed-is as incomplete as it is at the time of Poe or Baudelaire?
In the crowd, we see a presentiment of these dangers. [J57,8]
Baudelaire's readers are men. It is Inen who have made him fanl0us; it is then1 he
has redeemed.''''; [J57,9]
Baudelaire would never have written poems, if he had had merely the motives
for doing so that poets usually have. [J57a,l]
On impotence. Baudelaire is a "maniac, in revolt against his own impotence."
Incapable of satisfying the sexual needs of a woman, he made a virtue of neces­
sity in sabotaging the spiritual needs of his contemporaries. He himself did not
fail to notice the connection, and his consciousness of this COIDlcction is seen
most clearly in his style of humor. It is the cheerless humor of the rebel, not for a
moment to be confused with the geniality of scoundrels, which at that time was
already on the rise. This type of reaction is something very French; its nanle, la
rogne, is not easily rendered into other languages."" [J57a,2]
It is in its transitoriness that modernity shows itself to be ultimately and most
intimately akin to antiquity. The unintenupted resonance which Les Fleurs du
mal has found up through the present day is linked to a certain aspect of the
urban scene, one that carne to light only with the city's entry into poetry. It is the
aspect least of all expected. What makes itself felt through the evocation of Paris
in Baudelaire's verse is the infirmity and decrepitude of a great city. Nowhere,
perhaps, has this been given more perfect expression than in the poem "Crepus­
cule du matin;' which is the awakening sob of the sleeper, reproduced in the
materials of urban life. This aspect, however, is more or less common to the
whole cycle of "Tableaux parisiens;" it is present in the transparence of the city, as