The Arcades Project - Operi

"On solemn eves of Heavenly harvesting" ("lJlmprevu")379-an autumnal Ascen­
SlOn. [J70a,5]
"\CybCle, qui les aime, augrnente ses verdures"3HO-in Brecht's beautiful transla­
tion: "Cybele, die sie liebt, legt mehr Crun vor" ("Cybele, who loves them,
shows more green"). A mutation of the organic is implicit here. [J70a,6]
"Le Gouffre" is the Baudelairean equivalent of Blanqui's "vision;' [J70a,7]
"0 worms, black cronies without eyes or ears"381-here is something like sympa­
thy for parasites. [J70a,8]
Comparison of eyes to illuminated shopwindows: 'Your eyes, lit up like shops to
lure their trade / or fireworks in the park on holidays, / insolently make use of
borrowed power" ("'Tu mettrais l'univers"). 38 2 [J70a,9J
Concerning "La Servante au grand coeur": the words, "of whom you were so
jealous, "383 in the first line, do not bear precisely the accent one would expect. The
voice, as it were, draws back from ja/ouse. Ths ebbing of the voice is something
extremely characteristic. (Remark of Pierre Leyris.) [.J70a,!O]
The sadistic imagination tends toward mechanical constmctions. It may be that,
when he speaks of the "nameless elegance of the human armature;' Baudelaire
sees in the skeleton a kind of machinery. The point is made more clearly in "Le
Yin de I'assassin": "That bunch! They feel about as much / as plowshares break­
ing ground- / plow or harrow! Which of them / has ever known Tm e Love:'
And, unequivocally: "Blind and deaf machine, fertile in cmelties" ("Tu mettrais
l'univers").38' [J71,!]
"Old-fashioned" and "immemorial" are still united in Baudelaire. The
that have gone out of fashion have beCOlne inexhaustible containers of memo­
lies. It is thus the old women appear in Baudelaire's poetry ("Les Petites
Vieilles"); thus the departed years ("Recueillement"); it is thus the poet compares
himself to a "stale boudoir where old-fashioned clothes / lie scattered among
wilted fern and rose" ("Spleen II").'8' [J71,2]
Sadism and fetishism intertwine in those imaginations that seek to atmex all
organic life to the sphere of the inorganic. "0 living matter, henceforth you're no
more / Than a cold stone encompassed by vague fear / And by the desert, and
the mist and sun" ("Spleen II")."86 The assimilation of the living to dead matter
was likewise a preoccupation of F1aubert's. The visions of his Saint Anthony are
a triumph of fetishism, and worthy of those celebrated by Bosch on the Lisbon
al_ [.J71,3]