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Mystic Fusion: Baudelaire and le sentiment du beau
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2020
Extract
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE'S magnificent poetry has aroused constant speculation on his esthetic theory. Critics have felt that an understanding of his esthetics would give a clearer understanding of his poetic technique; this in turn would lead to a more complete appreciation of the beauty of his poetry. He has also left sufficient remarks, if unsystematized and indeed often contradictory, to pique the curiosity of the critic and to suggest various interpretations of his philosophy. His poetry, a consistent interpretation of his theoretical explanations, and the literary climate in which he lived all lead me to believe that his esthetic doctrine is built upon le sentiment du beau. His “définition du Beau,” his “théorie rationnelle et historique du beau,” his “Beau bizzare” all need le sentiment du beau to resolve their contradictions and their ambiguities. More important, this esthetic doctrine is applicable to all of his poetry: it permits a finer appreciation of both the Christian and the Satanic poems and also of the poems that are neither. It maintains the essential esthetic value absent in the many psychological interpretations. It affords more insight into his poetry than a doctrine of metaphor; it permits a more complete interpretation than the theory that his art is based on a fusion of the spiritual and the material. And there is evidence that Baudelaire's theory of the esthetic feeling not only was a logical development of early nineteenth-century esthetics but was under open discussion among the younger poets of the middle of the century. For Baudelaire did know to his satisfaction what this sentiment du beau is: he understood it to be a perfect fusion of the three modes of the human personality—sensation, feeling, and thought. “Il me serait trop facile de disserter subtilement sur la composition symétrique ou équilibrée, sur la pondération des tons, sur le ton chaud et le ton froid, etc. ? vanité! Je préfère parler au nom du sentiment, de la morale et du plaisir.”1
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1973
References
1 Charles Baudelaire, Œuvres (Paris: Gallimard, 1956), p. 692. All references to Baudelaire's writings will be to this edition and the page numbers are incorporated in the text.
2 The Sense of Beauty (New York: Scribners, 1896), p. 269.
3 See Andrew G. Lehmann, The Symbolist Aesthetic in France, 1885–95 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1950), p. 196. Lehmann calls this a “curious division of the faculties of the mind.” He is discussing the theories of Téodor de Wyzéwa who sees all experience in terms of sensation, emotion, and intellection. Lehmann quotes from Wyzéwa's article on “L'Art wagnérien, la peinture” published in the Revue Wagnérienne of 1886: “Or la vie est dans l'union de ces trois modes.” Unlike Lehmann I find Wyzéwa's analysis important because it is additional supportive evidence that this theory was under discussion in Baudelaire's artistic circles.
4 L'Univers poétique de Baudelaire (Paris: Mercure de France, 1956), p. 135. Austin does not pursue an analysis of this unity of the human mind. He is interested in establishing his thesis that Baudelaire's esthetics rests on his doctrine of correspondances and on bis theory of the imagination.
5 See Katharine Everett Gilbert and Helmut Kuhn, A History of Esthetics, rev. and enl. ed. (Bloomington: Univ. of Indiana Press, 1953), pp. 296, 364.
6 21= éd. (Paris: Didier, 1879), p. 166.
7 For another recent reading of the dedication see Emmanuel J. Mickel, Jr., The Artificial Paradises in French Literature, v. The Influence of Opium and Hashish on the Literature of French Romanticism and Les Fleurs du mal, Univ. of North Carolina Studies in Romance Langs. [Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1969), p. 138. He suggests that Gautier introduced Baudelaire to hashish and that this explains Baudelaire's extravagant wording. I do not feel that this interpretation takes into sufficient account the phrase, “parfait magicien ès lettres françaises.”
8 Théophile Gautier, Emaux et camées (Paris : Garnier, 1954). AU page references are to this edition.
9 Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin (Paris: Garnier, 1966), p. 24.
10 Martin Turnell, Baudelaire: A Study of His Poetry (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1953), p. 77.
11 Robert Vivier, L'Originalité de Baudelaire (Bruxelles: Gimbloux, 1952).
12 Michel Butor, Histoire extraordinaire, essai sur un rêve de Baudelaire (Paris: Gallimard, 1961), p. 64.