The Arcades Project - Operi

ined with this passage from Marx, provides the key to the character and dura­
tion of the political influence which Lamartine derived from his poetry. Com­
pare, in this connection, his negotiations with the Russian ambassador, as
reported by Pokrovski . [J73a,4]
Ambiguity of the heroic in the figure of the poet: the poet has about him something
of the destitute soldier, something of the marauder. His fencing
often recalls the meaning of this word'" in the argot of vagabonds. [J73a,5]
M:arx on the parasitic creatures of the Second Empire: 'Lest they make a mistake
in the years, they count the minutes. ?? Marx, Del" achtzehnte Brumaire, p. 126.414
[J73a,6]
Ambiguity of that conception of the heroic which is hidden in the Baudelairean
image of the poet. "The cuhrrinating point of the idees napolioniennes is the pre­
ponderance of the army. The army was the point d'honneur of the small-holding
peasants; it was they themselves transformed into heroes .... But the enemies
against whom the French peasant has now to defend his property are ... the tax
collectors. The small holding lies no longer in the so-called fatherland, but in the
register of mortgages. The army itself is no longer the flower of the peasant
youth; it is the swamp-flower of the peasant lumpenproletariat. It consists in large
measure of remplw;ants, of substitutes, just as the second Bonaparte is himself
only a remplafant, the substitute for Napoleon . ... One see that ALL idees
napolioniennes are ideas of the undeveloped small holding in the freshness of its
youth; for the small holding that has outlived its day, they are an absurdity:'
Marx, Der achtzehnte Brumaire, ed. Rjazanov, pp. 122-123."" [J74,1]
On Satanism: "When the puritans at the Council of Constance complained of the
dissolute lives of the popes ... ? Cardinal Pierre d? Ailly thundered at them: Only
the devil in person can still save the Catholic church, and you ask for angels.' In
like manner, after the coup d'etat, the French bourgeoisie cried: Only the chief of
the Society of December 10 can still save bourgeois society! Only theft can still save
property! Only perjury can save religion! Only bastardy can save the family! Only
disorder can save order!" Marx, Der achtzehnte Brumaire, ed. Rjazanov,
p. 124. 416 [J74,2]
""One can visualize clearly this upper stratum of the Society of December 10, if one
reflects that Veron-Crevel is its preacher of morals and Granier de Cassagnac its
thinker." Marx, De,. achtzehnte Bru.maire, ed. Rjazanov, p. 127, '1l7 [J74,3]
The "magic cobbles piled for barricades;' in Baudelaire's draft of an epilogue;'"
define the limit which his poetry encounters in its immediate confrontation with
social subjects. The poet says nothing of the hands which move these cobble­
stones. In "Le Yin des chiffoillliers," he was able to pass beyond this linlit.
[J74,4]