The Arcades Project - Operi

No more hees sipping dewdrop and thyme,
But always the hlue sky above.
Victor Hugo, Les Contemplations C'Cerigo"). [J86a,l]
The theory of poetry as faculty of expression-"Where other men must suffer
grief in silence, / A god gave me the power to speak my pain"473-is formulated
with particular decisiveness by Lamartine in the "first" (it is actually the second)
preface to his Miditations of 1849. The "striving for originality at all costs;' to say
nothing of an authentic reflection on original possibilities, preserves the poet­
Baudelaire above all-frOlll a poetics of mere expression. Lamartine writes: "1
imitated no one; I expressed myself for myself. There was no art in this, but only
an easing of my own heart. . . . I took no thought of anyone in putting down
these lines here and there, unless it was of a ghost and of God:' Les Grands
Ecrivains de fa France, vol. 2, "Lamartine" (paris, 1915), p. 365. [J86a,2]
Apropos of Lafargue's remark about the "crude comparisons" in Baudelaire
(J9,4), Ruff observes: "The originality of these comparisons is not so much in
their 'crudity' as in the artificial character-which is to say, human character-of
dle iroages: wall, lid, the wings of a stage. The 'correspondence' is understood in
a sense opposite to that customarily proposed by the poets, who lead us back to
nature. Baudelaire, by an invincible propensity, recalls us to the idea of the
human. Even on the human plane, if he wishes to magnify his description by an
image, he will often look for some oilier manifestation of humanity railier than
having recourse to nature: 'the chimney-pots and steeples, the city's masts. "'474
Marcel A. Ruff, "Sur l'Architecture des Neurs du mal," Revue d 'his to ire litteraire
de fa France, 37, no. 3 (July-September 1930), p. 398. Compare the phrase
"whose fingers point to heaven;' in ilie paragraph on Meryon 2,l>.-The same
motif, rendered innocuous and put into psychological terms, in Rattier's conversion
of ilie fliineur to industrial activity. [J86a,3]
In Barbier's poem " Les Mineurs de Newcastle," the eighth stanza concludes this
way: '''And many a one who dreams, within his secret soul, / Of domestic comforts,
and his wife's hlue eyes, I Discovers in the pies emhrace an everlasting tomb."
Auguste Barhier, Iambes et poemes (Paris, 184,1), pp. 24.0-241; from the collection
Lazare, which is dated 1837, and which records his impressions of England. Compare
these lines to the last two lines of " Le Crepuscule du soir." [J87,1]
Professional conspirator and dandy meet in ilie concept of ilie modern hero.
This hero represents for himself, in his own person, a whole secret society.
[J87,2]
On the generation of Valles: " It is that generation which, under the starless sky of
the Second Empire, grew up in the face of a . .. future -w-ithoutf'aith or greatness."