Post on 12-Jan-2023
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ENNUI, SPLEEN, AND NOTHINGNESS – A CONCISE LOOK INTO
BAUDELAIRE’S THE FLOWERS OF EVIL
David Cameira Gomes
Art for Art’s Sake
Spring 2013
English Studies
University of Copenhagen
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[…]
One creature only is most foul and false!
Though making no grand gestures, nor great cries,
He willingly would devastate the earth
And in one yawning swallow all the world;
He is Ennui! – with tear-filled eye he dreams
Of scaffolds, as he puffs his water-pipe.
Reader, you know this dainty monster too;
- Hypocrite reader, - fellowman, - my twin!]
(Charles Baudelaire, “To the Reader”)
The idea for this essay came from my desire to understand the nothingness that
pervades so many poems from The Flowers of Evil. It is a profound philosophical concept
that has spawned many debates over time and still an unsettling matter, like so many other
existentialist questions. Nevertheless, Baudelaire seems to have a firm grasp on this
concept, or at least he shows us through several different poetic voices how he handles
such an unsettling notion. The repeated use of the terms “ennui” and “spleen”, which could
easily be considered synonyms, strongly evocate the motif of nothingness. Spleen is a word
that in medieval psychology designated an organ of the four ‘humours’ which were thought
to control human behaviour. As such, in the 18th century it became associated with anxiety
and deep suicidal depression, which must have led Baudelaire to associating it with ‘ennui’,
the French word that expresses a “soul-deadening spiritual condition.” 1
The purpose of this essay is then to understand some selected poems which I deem
relevant for this discussion, and to consider how Baudelaire treats the concept of
nothingness and what implications and consequences he sees as emanating from the
experience of nothingness. To that end, my focus will be set on the following selected
poems: “Au lecteur” [To the reader], “Lethe,” and “Spleen (IV)”, which I believe bear
prominent relevance to this work. The theme of nothingness permeates each of these
1 Baudelaire, Charles (1993), The Flowers of Evil, Trans. James McGowan, Oxford, Oxford University Press. p.
351
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poems, but it’s manifested in many different ways: social alienation, fear of death,
existential dread, and others. All of these and more are the materialization of the abstract
concept of nothingness and are key to better understanding Baudelaire’s work, which is why
I will not only draw on the poems themselves and some of the existing criticism relating to
them, but have also included in this paper different comments, definitions and discussions
taken from an Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which I believe bring great insight into some key
concepts to be discussed here, and also different letters written by Baudelaire in his
personal life.
I want to start by defining the idea of nothingness and how Baudelaire repeatedly
addressed this matter in letters to his mother and in his personal diaries. Afterwards, I will
present the ways in which nothingness appears in each of the selected poems. I will then
discuss its meaning and implication in each of the poems, and finally how the poems
themselves relate to each other and to Baudelaire’s life in terms of this theme.
Existentialism
Nothingness as it appears in Baudelaire’s work is a concept that deeply resonates
with existentialism, which first emerged as a philosophical problem in the 19th century with
Kierkegaard. Even though he never used the term “existentialism”, his work thoroughly
explores the implications of concepts such as “authentic existence” and “the single
individual”2, both of which can be considered pillars of existentialism. Still, the definition of
this movement is a strenuous one, because it is defined not only by the purely philosophical
texts that it spawned, but also by its fictional works, which were arguably more influential to
the establishing of the movement than their counterpart. Steven Crowell argues that
existentialism is indeed better understood as a movement rejecting other select systematic
philosophies rather than as a systematic philosophy itself3. He also states that existentialism
“may be defined as the philosophical theory which holds that a further set of categories,
governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to grasp human existence.” 4 Anyhow,
2 McDonald, William, (2012) "Søren Kierkegaard", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2012/entries/kierkegaard/>. 3 Crowell, Steven, (2010) "Existentialism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/existentialism/>. 4 Ibid.
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existentialism does have a prominent “quasi manifesto5”, Existentialism and Humanism6 by
the self-proclaimed existentialist Jean Paul Sartre. In it, he states that “man first of all exists,
encounters himself, surges up in the world - and defines himself afterwards”, thus denying
God’s existence. He then goes on writing that men must take responsibility for their own
behaviour, and that anguish arises from the realization that our actions are responsible for
all humanity and not only ourselves. Additionally, he describes abandonment as the
realisation that God does not exist, so “we can only rely on what depends on our will, or the
set of probabilities that make our work possible.”7 Summarily, existentialism shows how life
in inherently meaningless, and how each person is responsible for giving meaning to their
own lives by overcoming feelings of angst and despair and imposing individual value
systems on themselves and their actions.
Existential dread
We can relate these concepts to how Baudelaire conducted his personal life and how
Flowers of Evil can be better understood through this scope. One of the key personalities of
dandyism, Baudelaire expressed his strong views on the matter, writing that a dandy should
have “no profession other than elegance... no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of
beauty in their own persons... The dandy must aspire to be sublime without interruption; he
must live and sleep before a mirror.”8 It could be argued that he may have indeed lived his
life in such a way, both physically and morally. We can see how great care has been put into
practically every existing portrait or painting of the poet, which hints at a personality who
was exceptionally careful with his physical look. But more importantly, it is his literary legacy
that really shows how Baudelaire was tirelessly analysing himself and the world around him
and reacting to it. Albert Camus wrote that man has always turned to God when defining
itself, but that the dandy, who is by occupation always in opposition and only exists through
defiance, by severing himself from religion, finds himself “delivered over to the fleeting
5 Flynn, Thomas (2013), Edition "Jean-Paul Sartre", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/sartre/>. 6 From the French: L’existentialisme est un humanisme. 7 Sartre, Paul, “Existentialism is a Humanism”, translated by Adam Norman. Available at: http://archive.org/details/ExistentialismIsAHumanism 8 Baudelaire, My Heart Laid Bare.
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moment, to the passing days, and to wasted sensibility.”9 So, Camus continues, the dandy,
“like all people without a rule of life”, is only coherent as an actor, and:
“he can only be sure of his own existence by finding it in the expression of others'
faces. Other people are his mirror. A mirror that quickly becomes clouded, it's true,
since human capacity for attention is limited. It must be ceaselessly stimulated,
spurred on by provocation. The dandy, therefore, is always compelled to astonish.
Singularity is his vocation, excess his way to perfection. Perpetually incomplete,
always on the fringe of things, he compels others to create him, while denying their
values. He plays at life because he is unable to live it.”10
These affirmations can to some degree define Baudelaire and his Flowers of Evil, a work
which I feel great reluctance in separating from the artist. Still, Camus’s words shine an
interesting light on a poet who was constantly struggling with the idea of death and despair.
He defends that Baudelaire was living and defining himself through others because he was
unable to do so by himself, but I reckon we can also find a writer and a thinker in deep
introspection on the subject of life, death, and nothingness in many of his poems and
personal letters, and for whom the main purpose of the mirror was to find by himself a
meaning to his own life. Some poems are indeed psychologically astonishing (for example
“Une charogne”, [A Carcass]), and his life was undeniably marked by excess – the abuse of
laudanum, the frequent visits to prostitutes - but, as Erich Auerbach defends, “his dandyism
and his poses were merely a deformation imposed by the desperate struggle,” and that
“anyone who reads him feels after the very first lines that his aesthetic dandyism has
nothing in common with the pre-Parnassian and Parnassian aesthetes, with Gautier or
Leconte de Lisle.”11 Contrarily to Camus, Eirich Auerbach defends that Baudelaire only
assumed the role of the dandy because that was just another part of his struggle of looking
for meaning. This distinct approach to life is what helped define Baudelaire as the founder
of modern poetry. His social existence consisting in a greater part of fleeing creditors,
frequenting prostitutes, living in cheap hotel rooms and struggling to sell articles to journals,
9 Alber Camus, The Rebel. 10 Ibid. 11
Peyre, Henri (1962) Baudelaire, A Collection of Critical Essays, “The Aesthetic Dignity of Fleurs du mal”, Eirich Auerbach, p. 167. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
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contributed to a transformation of the idea of the poet in society. As McGowan states, he is
no longer seen as a “seer or a public spokesman, like Victor Hugo, Wordsworth, or Pope, but
a poète maudit, cursed and ostracized because of his commitment to poetry.” (The Flowers
of Evil, p. XXV) Moreover, T. S. Elliot goes so far as to describe Baudelaire as being “indeed
the greatest exemplar in modern poetry in any language, for his verse and language is the
nearest thing to a complete renovation that we have experienced. But his renovation of an
attitude towards life is no less radical and no less important.” (A Collection of Critical Essays,
p. 167)
l’Ennui
That distinguished new approach to life is also closely related to the fact that
Baudelaire as a poet was the personification of nothingness itself. It could be said that his
choice of embodying the figure of the decadent poet is not so much a legitimate personal
choice, but probably an inevitable consequence of his philosophical nature which was so
prone to slip into lapses of boredom, anxiety and sadness. We are constantly reminded of
his companionship with laziness and idleness, but, and as Charles du Bos also argues, the
poet could never find repose in them, because his “disposition could never bear the very
repose he longed for, whence the all-powerful nostalgia of the Fleurs du mal and its wide
archangel wings.”12 When he was only eighteen, the poet wrote to his mother:
“I am worse than I was at school. There I did little in class, but at least I did
something, and later, when I was dismissed, that shook me, and I still did a
little something for you – but now nothing, nothing at all, and it is no
pleasant indolence, nor poetic, no indeed, but sulky and silly… At school I
worked now and then, read, wept, sometimes got angry, but at least I lived.
Now not at all. As abject as can be, swarming with faults and no longer with
pleasing faults. If only at least this painful sight drove me to change violently,
but it doesn’t, and of all that spirit of activity that drove me now toward good
12
Peyre, Henri (1962) Baudelaire, A Collection of Critical Essays, “Meditation on the Life of Baudelaire”, Charles du Bos, p. 41. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
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and now toward evil, I have nothing left, nothing but indolence, sulks and
boredom.” (A Collection of Critical Essays, p. 41)
We can see how even as a young man, Baudelaire recognized the feeling that was to take
over his life and his work. Even though he does not call it “ennui” or “spleen”, his
description of the feeling is in concordance with the definition of nothingness. The lack of
will to produce, even to live, the constant procrastination and wallowing plagued his life and
branded his Fleurs du mal with a poetic voice that is in a constant struggle. Charles du Bos
points out that “Baudelaire never begins by working; it takes the excess of his crisis to fling
him into work,” and that “no one ever listened more to the “fiend of procrastination.”13
Baudelaire nurtured this destructive relation with Les Fleurs du mal which could be taken as
an interesting metaphor for the title of the book: a plagued flower which is both his source
of inspiration and damnation. The poet even addressed himself the problem of the
procrastinator in him:
“Then add to this suffering one which you perhaps will not understand: when
a man’s nerves are harassed by anxieties and suffering, then the devil, in
spite of every resolve, slips into his head every morning in the shape of this
thought: Why not rest for one day in forgetfulness? Tonight, at one stroke, I
will do all I have to do – And then night comes, and the mind is overwhelmed
by the mass of things overdue; sadness crushes one’s strength, and on the
morrow the same comedy is played again, in good faith, with the same
confidence and the same conscience.” (A Collection of Critical Essays, p. 48)
The question “Why not rest for one day in forgetfulness?” defines the existentialist problem
as a whole, and is a question that appears as a theme in some poems in Fleurs du mal:
“C’est l’Ennui! – l’oeil chargé d’un pleur involontaire,
Il rêve d’échafauds en fumant son houka.”
13
Peyre, Henri (1962) Baudelaire, A Collection of Critical Essays, “Meditation on the Life of Baudelaire”, Charles du Bos, p. 48. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
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[He is Ennui! – with tear-filled eyes he dreams
Of scaffolds, as he puffs his water-pipe.] (The Flowers of Evil, p. 6)
Ennui is here personified as a figure smoking a hookah, which is a symbol of ease and luxury,
whilst dreaming of a stage, probably of a renowned life, but the tears in his eyes show his
regret in living a complacent life and not having the strength to change it.
We are fortunate enough to have been left with many personal letters from
Baudelaire in which he addresses his personal beliefs and what his own work meant to him.
In one particularly emotional letter to his mother, the poet explains what nothingness
(ennui) means to him:
“I have fallen into a ceaseless nervous terror, with frightful sleep, frightful
awakenings, and can do nothing. My copies lay a whole month on the table
before I found the courage to put them in envelopes… How hard it is, not to
think a book, but to write it without weariness. […] I feel an immense
discouragement, a feeling of unbearable isolation, an entire distrust of my
strength, a total lack of desires, inability to find any amusement whatsoever.
The odd success of my book and the quarrels it has stirred up interested me
for a while, and then I relapsed… I constantly ask myself, What use is this?
What use is that? This is the true spirit of spleen.”14
In this letter the fear of death is finally alluded to. Up until now I have only referred to the
idleness prompted by nothingness, but as the existentialist movement argues, ultimately,
nothingness rests on the concept of death. So much so, that Les Fleurs du mal has an entire
section consisting of six poems under the title La Mort [Death]. Idleness, anxiety, indolence,
boredom, are only secondary symptoms originating from the “original” existential dread.
Baudelaire wrote to his mother about his own experience of spleen in a way that is very
reminiscent of what Kierkegaard writes in his The Concept of Anxiety. In it, as Sorensen Roy
shows us, he claims that:
14 (Letters to His Mother, p. 150, dated December 30, 1857, six months after the Fleurs du mal were published.)”
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“nothingness wells up into our awareness through moods and emotions.
Emotions are intentional states; they are directed toward something. If
angered, I am angry at something. If amused, there is something I find
amusing. Free floating anxiety is often cited as a counterexample. But
Kierkegaard says that in this case the emotion is directed at nothingness.15 As
Sorensen Roy further explains, according to Heidegger, man “has several
motives to shy away from the significance of our emotional encounters with
nothingness. They are premonitions of the nothingness of death. They echo
the groundlessness of human existence.”16
Baudelaire and Religion
The next logical question would be directed at Baudelaire’s relation with religion. Surely the
ideas of nothingness, existential dread, and anxiety should directly clash with a religious
belief, namely Christianity. Still, Eirich Auerbach argues that we owe “the central trend” of
Les Fleurs du mal to the Christian tradition, but that the book is at the same time
fundamentally different and incompatible with that tradition. 17 According to Sartre, man
realizes the idea of nothingness within himself as soon as he realizes that there is no God to
justify our actions, but as we can see in Les Fleurs du mal, there is a constant allusion to the
concept of heaven and god, hell and the devil. So what exactly is the relation between Les
Fleurs du mal, and Christianity? Eirich Auerbach wrote a comprehensive list on this subject
which effectively solidifies the argument sought in this essay: First, what the poet in Les
Fleurs du mal is seeking isn’t grace or eternal beatitude, but nothingness, le Néant, or “a
kind of sensory fulfilment, the vision of a sterile, but sensuous artificiality. His
spiritualization of memory and his synesthetic symbolism are also sensory, and behind them
stands not any hope of redemption through God’s grace, but nothingness, the absolute
Somewhere-Else.”18 Secondly, “in any Christian interpretation of life, redemption by the
Incarnation and Passion of Christ is the cardinal point of universal history and the source of 15 Sorensen, Roy, (2012) "Nothingness", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/nothingness/>. 16 Ibid. 17 Peyre, Henri (1962) Baudelaire, A Collection of Critical Essays, “The Aesthetic Dignity of Fleurs du mal”, Eirich Auerbach, p. 167. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 18
Ibid.
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all hope.”19 But we do not really see the appearance of Christ in Les Fleurs du mal, excepting
the poem “Le Reniement de Saint-Pierre” [St Peter’s Denial], where he is in disagreement
with God. Thirdly, there is a distinct difference on what the corruption of the flesh means
within Les Fleurs du mal and Christianity. In Les Fleurs du mal, the condemnation of desire is
often one directed at what is physically corrupt or misshapen, and the enjoyment of young
and healthy flesh is never taken as a sin. Also, “the poet of Les Fleurs du mal knows youth,
vitality, health, only as objects of yearning and admiration – or else malignant envy.
Sometimes he wants to destroy them, but in the main he tends to spiritualize, admire, and
worship them.”20 Lastly, Auerbach concludes that “in Les Fleurs du mal, Baudelaire is not
striving for humility, but for pride. To be sure, he degrades himself and all earthly life, but in
the midst of his degradation he does his best to sustain his pride.”21 James McGowan
further extends these points, writing that “Baudelaire explained in a note that, like an actor,
he was simply taking on the role of spiritual rebel in order to depict this reprehensible and
blasphemous attitude in the poems of the ‘Revolt’ section of the Flowers.” (The Flowers of
Evil, p. 376)
Fleurs du mal is undeniably filled with spirituality, but it is a spirituality that is more
concerned with existentialist issues rather than faith. Nevertheless, even in his personal life
Baudelaire couldn’t remove himself from the influence that Christianity exerted over
society, and we find him praying even when in disbelief:
“In this horrible state of mind, helpless and desperate, I was again tempted
by suicide (I can tell you now that it has passed) and at all hours of the day
this temptation dogged me. That way absolute escape seemed to lie, escape
from everything. This lasted three months, and at the same time, by a
contradiction that only seems strange, I was praying constantly (to whom, to
what definite being, I absolutely do not know)… And God, you will say. I long
with all my heart (and with that sincerity only I can know) to believe that
19 Ibid. 20
Ibid. 21
Ibid.
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someone, invisible and outside me, takes an interest in my fate; but what to
do to believe this?”22
We can sense his anguish in this letter to his mother. Assailed by nothingness, a despair
nurtured by existential dread, Baudelaire turns to prayer seeking for solace. This letter
perfectly illustrates how Sartre’s theory of Existentialism can indeed materialize itself in
man. Baudelaire wishes “with all his heart” that there is indeed something as opposed to
nothing, but he cannot find it in himself the faith to believe. However, Charles du Bos also
argues that loss of faith can in some cases deepen the original belief, since that loss is not
always accompanied by the loss of conviction of sin, which, without its antidote of belief,
and above all, Christian exercise, will consume the soul.23
Baudelaire was a poet torn between the will to believe and an inescapable ennui
that overwhelms any Christian doctrine. In Mon cœur mis à nu [My hear laid bare],
Baudelaire’s personal journal, he summarizes this dualism and writes: “When a child, I felt in
my heart two contradictory feelings: the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.”24In the end,
we can really only say that Baudelaire possessed a great religious sensibility, but probably
due to his philosophical nature – he once wrote to his editor: “Philosophy is everything”25 -
he seemed to be devoid of the faith necessary to accept it without questioning.
Au lecteur [To the Reader]
The first poem in Les Fleurs du mal, “Au lecteur” [To the Reader] is, as the title
suggests, a poem addressed directly to its reader. It serves as a prologue where the poet
states his fundamental views on life and gives us a glimpse of some of the principal themes
that are to come. It is a poem about the sins and vices of humankind:
“Nos péchés sont têtus, nos repentirs sont lâches;
Nous nous faisons payer grassement nos aveux,
22 Peyre, Henri (1962) Baudelaire, A Collection of Critical Essays, “Meditation on the Life of Baudelaire”, Charles du Bos, p. 53. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 23 Id. Libid. 24 Ibid. 25
Peyre, Henri (1962) Baudelaire, A Collection of Critical Essays, “Introduction”, p. 4. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
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Et nous rentrons gaiement dans le chemin bourbeux,
Croyant par de vils pleurs laver toutes nos taches.
Sur l'oreiller du mal c'est Satan Trismégiste
Qui berce longuement notre esprit enchanté,
Et le riche métal de notre volonté
Est tout vaporisé par ce savant chimiste.”
[Our sins are stubborn, our contrition lax;
We offer lavishly our vows of faith
And turn back gladly to the path of filth,
Thinking mean tears will wash away our stains.
On evil’s pillow lies the alchemist
Satan Thrice-Great, who lulls our captive souls,
And all the richest metal of our will
Is vaporized by his hermetic arts.]26
In the first stanza, Baudelaire effectively sums up the human correlation with sin. It unmasks
the hypocritical state of the human faith, which is justified through the existence of a Devil
who appears on the next stanza, makes sin and vice seductive, and is the one responsible
for the sinful state of the human kind. That second stanza masterfully evocates a soothing
and indulging atmosphere, emulating the Devil who lulls the reader onto a false sense of
security, only to afterwards show us how man can easily be extinguished. Martin Turnell
acutely writes that “the hiss of the s’s makes us feel hat not merely will, but the whole man
is disintegrating in a wisp of steam.”27 The poem continues to blame the Devil for the
passion humans find in the most repugnant objects, and how we get closer to Hell by
unrelentingly seeking those passions. In the eight verse there is a catalogue of monsters
which, as Martin Turnell argues, are in a number that “can hardly be fortuitous,” either
26 Baudelaire, Charles (1993), The Flowers of Evil, “Au lecteur”. Trans. James McGowan, Oxford, Oxford University Press. p. 5 27
Turnell, Martin (1953), Baudelaire, A Study of his Poetry, London, Hamish Hamilton. p. 98
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representing the Seven Deadly Sins or, “as one writer suggests, seven of the meaner sins
which to Baudelaire seemed no less deadly.”28 In the end, despite all those creatures in their
“la ménagerie infâme de nos vices” [The infamous menagerie of vice,]29 there is one
creature who is the most foul and false – ennui.
“II en est un plus laid, plus méchant, plus immonde!
Quoiqu'il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris,
Il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris
Et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde;
C'est l'Ennui! L'oeil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,
II rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
— Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!”
[One creature only is most foul and false!
Though making no grand gestures, nor great cries,
He willingly would devastate the earth
And in one yawning swallow all the world;
He is Ennui! – with tear-filled eye he dreams
Of scaffolds, as he puffs his water-pipe.
Reader, you know this dainty monster too;
- Hypocrite reader, - fellowman, - my twin!] (The Flowers of Evil, p. 7)
These two stanzas show how l’Ennui, one of the many faces of nothingness, is constituted as
probably the main theme in Les Fleurs du mal. It is the one thing capable of taking over the
world. As I have written before, ennui is here embodied by a figure smoking its water-pipe
and dreaming of greatness. It could be argued that Baudelaire, who was so deeply absorbed
28 Id. Libid. 29
Baudelaire, Charles (1993), The Flowers of Evil, “Au lecteur”. Trans. James McGowan, Oxford, Oxford University Press. p. 6
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in his own nothingness, was trying to exteriorize his infirmity and show us – the reader –
that we too are affected by what is so deeply affecting him. Turnell argues that the poet is
“trying to break down our complacency, to shock us out of our convention habits, and make
us admit that we are fellow-sufferers so that we shall be ‘on his side’ in the next phase of
the attack,” (A Study of his Poetry, p. 100) but I feel that more than trying to empathize with
the reader, Baudelaire is establishing nothingness as a condition which inevitably also
affects his reader, thus, all humankind.
Spleen et idéal
We are next introduced to the “Spleen et idéal” [Spleen and the Ideal] section of Les
Fleurs du mal. It is the first and longest chapter of the book, and as suggested by the title,
comprises a set of poems which illustrate a duality within the modern man. In a review of
Asselineau’s La Double vie, Baudelaire asked: “Who among us is not a homo duplex? I mean
those whose minds have since infancy been touched with pensiveness; always double,
action and intention, dream and reality; one always harming the other, one usurping the
part of the other.” (A Study of his Poetry, p. 101) We can see how Fleurs du mal achieves the
status of being an idiosyncratic autobiography of not only Baudelaire himself, but also of the
modern man, who is so inescapably torn between ‘action and intention, dream and reality.’
I have written in the introduction that the words “spleen” and “ennui” are used throughout
Fleurs du mal as synonym terms, even more so in this first section of the book. But as
Turnell points out, “spleen seems to be a physical and ennui a moral malady.” (A Study of his
Poetry, p. 95) This polarity is obviously greyed out by the fact that a physical malady is often
manifested through its moral implications, even more so when ennui is the “sickness”.
In this section, Baudelaire fully explores what are the implications of this malady,
and also attempts to find what are the existing remedies that can protect us from it. There is
a constant tension between several dualistic conflicting impulses. At one point, “the poet is
reaching-out to something beyond the present horror, which may be called ‘God’ or
‘spirituality’ or the ‘Ideal’” (A Study of his Poetry, p. 102), but on the other hand, he is
constantly battling against the sensation of being “continually sucked back into it by spleen,
ennui, or animalité.” (A Study of his Poetry, p. 102) Baudelaire is continuously oscillating
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between two opposite ideals, but in the end, nothingness emerges victorious from that
never-ending strife.
Le Léthé, [Lethe]
The next poem to be looked at here is one which summons with true might the
obliteration of consciousness into nothingness. The title itself refers to one of the five rivers
of Hades, as described by Plato and Virgil (The Flowers of Evil, p. 360), where all who drank
from it completely forget their spiritual existence and are thus ready to be born again into
earthly bodies. The poet suggests that true forgetfulness can be achieved from within a
violent orgasm. The first two stanzas vividly evoke the feminine and masculine genitals, and
show the poet craving for a violent bodily passion: the greater the orgasm, the more
consummate the forgetfulness. It is suggested that nothingness can be temporarily avoided
by plunging into the instinctual life:
“Je veux dormir! dormir plutôt que vivre!
Dans un sommeil aussi doux que la mort,
J'étalerai mes baisers sans remords
Sur ton beau corps poli comme le cuivre.
Pour engloutir mes sanglots apaisés
Rien ne me vaut l'abîme de ta couche;
L'oubli puissant habite sur ta bouche,
Et le Léthé coule dans tes baisers.”
[I want to sleep! To sleep and not to live!
And in a sleep as sweet as death, to dream
Of spreading out my kisses without shame
On your smooth body, bright with copper sheen.
If I would swallow down my softened sobs
It must be in your bed’s profound abyss –
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Forgetfulness is moistening your breath,
Lethe itself runs smoothly in your kiss.] (The Flowers of Evil, p. 67)
The poet wishes for a double state of forgetfulness, to not sleep, and in that sleeplessness
to not be alive. But within that doubled state of nothingness, he dreams of kissing without
shame, so what in fact is strived for here is a total abandonment of rationality and self. He
longs to wallow in primal sexual instincts and find some kind of peace through them. It is
interesting to see how the word “abîme” [abyss] is here used as a place of refuge, seeing
that it appears in other poems as a symbol of negation and frustration. In the final stanza,
Baudelaire accentuates that it is nothing but carnal satisfaction that can be looked for:
“Je sucerai, pour noyer ma rancoeur,
Le népenthès et la bonne ciguë
Aux bouts charmants de cette gorge aiguë
Qui n'a jamais emprisonné de coeur.”
[My lips will suck the cure for bitterness:
Oblivion, nepenthe has its start
In the bewitching teats of those hard breasts,
That never have been harbour of a heart.]
Nothing but nepenthe, “a legendary drug to bring oblivion as a remedy for grief” (The
Flowers of Evil, p. 360) can be withdrawn from the oblivion which he compares to a woman.
“Spleen (IV)”
Afterwards, looking at the poem “Spleen – Quand le ciel bas et lourd…”, which is the final
part of a series of four poems under the same name, it can be seen as a resolution of that
small cycle. The first Spleen shows how the poet constructs a mood of loneliness which rises
from a disappointed love; the second describes how past emotions are dragged onto the
present and show the poet trapped under their weight; the third talks about the conflicting
feelings of richness and sterility which crystalize in the image of the prematurely aged
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monarch, and finally we get to the fourth instance of Spleen, which ends the cycle in the
darker tone of suicide:
“Quand le ciel bas et lourd pèse comme un couvercle
Sur l'esprit gémissant en proie aux longs ennuis,
Et que de l'horizon embrassant tout le cercle
II nous verse un jour noir plus triste que les nuits;
Quand la terre est changée en un cachot humide,
Où l'Espérance, comme une chauve-souris,
S'en va battant les murs de son aile timide
Et se cognant la tête à des plafonds pourris;
Quand la pluie étalant ses immenses traînées
D'une vaste prison imite les barreaux,
Et qu'un peuple muet d'infâmes araignées
Vient tendre ses filets au fond de nos cerveaux,
Des cloches tout à coup sautent avec furie
Et lancent vers le ciel un affreux hurlement,
Ainsi que des esprits errants et sans patrie
Qui se mettent à geindre opiniâtrement.
— Et de longs corbillards, sans tambours ni musique,
Défilent lentement dans mon âme; l'Espoir,
Vaincu, pleure, et l'Angoisse atroce, despotique,
Sur mon crâne incliné plante son drapeau noir.”
[When low and heavy sky weighs like a lid
Upon the spirit moaning in ennui,
And when, spanning the circle of the world,
It pours a black day sadder than our nights;
When earth is changed into a sweaty cell,
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In which Hope, capture, like a frantic bat,
Batters the wals with her enfeebled wing,
Striking her head against the rotting beams;
When the steady rain trailing its giant train
Descends on us like heavy prison bars,
And when a silent multitude of spiders
Spins its disgusting threads deep in our brains,
Bells all at once jump out with all their force,
And hurl about a mad cacophony
As if they were those lost and homeless souls
Who send a dogged whining to the skies.
- And long cortèges minus drum or tone
Deploy morosely through my being: Hope
The conquered, moans, and tyrant Anguish gloats –
In my bowed skull he fixed his black flag.] (The Flowers of Evil, p. 149 & 151)
It is a poem possessing an antithesis between symbolism and realism, and a contradiction
between its exalted tone and the undignified nature of the subject there handled. As
Auerbach states, “the alexandrine meter makes it clear that this is a serious poem, to be
spoken slowly and gravely”30, and the repetition of the word “quand” [when] in the first
three stanzas establishes a solemn rhythm which unfolds in the last two stanzas. The
recurrence of allegorical figures written in capital letters, Esperérance [hope], Espoir [hope],
and Agoisse [Anguish], and the “syntactical unity and rhetorical figures in the classical style
combine to lend the poem an atmosphere of somber sublimity, which is perfectly consonant
with the deep despair it expresses.”31 The physical spaces here described are all figures
symbolizing a dull, deepening and inescapable despair. They evoke metaphors which are
almost threatening: In the first stanza, a low and heavy sky is described, so heavy in fact that
30
Ibid. p. 5 31
Ibid. p.5
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it resembles a lid “Upon the spirit moaning in ennui.” The sky itself assumes the form of the
lid to a coffin to those who are laden with ennui, and who is he that who is able to escape
the sky? The second stanza summons an earthly cell, maybe covered by the lid described in
the first stanza, and probably incarcerated by the rain which “Descends on us like heavy
prison bars,” described in the third stanza, which also conjures “a silent multitude of
spiders” which “Spins its disgusting threads deep in our brains.” Escape is impossible
because every hypothetical exit is barred, both physically and psychologically. Even Hope,
embodied by the captured frantic bat has no means of escaping. In this way the repetition
of “quand” starts to lose its temporal meaning and becomes more and more the
overshadowing state that will forever hunt us. Auerbach writes that hopeless horror does
have its traditional place in literature, that it even achieves a special form of the sublime
and can lay claim to the highest dignity – as we can find in Dante, for example.32 But in
“Spleen (IV)”, the evocation of images such as the lid of the coffin in the first stanza is
incompatible with the dignity of the sublime. Even the image of spiders in the brain which is
unrealistic and symbolic is denying the poet the inward dignity of using words such as âme
or pensée, for the despairing poet’s head is occupied by spiders.33 Afterwards, in the fourth
stanza, we suddenly hear the bells furiously clanging in a “mad cacophony” and completely
disrupting the solemnity previously installed. It comes as a shock and hits the reader with an
almost tangible force; it is a combination that offends against any customary notion of
dignity and sublime. It evokes a multiplicity of images which further contribute to ascertain
the grandiosity of nothingness, like the last cry of the desperate soul who is “lost and
homeless”, the last cry before it is finally conquered once and for all eternity, as we are
shown at the end of the poem. The next and final stanza suddenly imposes back the
sepulchral silence achieved in the first three stanzas, and it is ingeniously juxtaposed against
the near deafening sounds of the previous one. We are again thrown into a perpetually
silent procession of the only possible victor: Anguish. The only thing that remains of the
poet is a bowed skull impaled by a black flag. Everything is lost, the poet has no dignity, no
hope, no God, and all is Dread. Eric Auerbach exposes his own views on the poem and
discusses its antithesis between symbolism and realism. It is obvious enough that it is not
the poet’s aim to give a realistic description of elements such as rain, bats and spiders, the
32
Ibid. p. 5 33
Ibid. p. 5
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ringing of bells, the procession, and a bowed human skull. These are all elements that
contribute to inventing a world of despair. He even argues that “the data are of so little
importance that the symbols can be changed without loss; Hope first appears as a bat, but
the end, where she weeps in defeat, suggests the image of an infant or child, certainly not a
bat.”34 Through this scope, “Spleen (IV)” can hardly be called realistic, if by realism it is
meant an attempt at reproducing outward reality. Auerbach continues:
“But since in the nineteenth century the word “realism” was associated
chiefly with the crass representation of ugly, sordid, and horrifying aspects of
life; since this was what constituted the novelty and significance of realism,
the word was applicable to ugly, gruesome images, regardless of whether
they were intended as concrete description or as symbolic metaphors. What
matters was the vividness of the evocation, and in this respect Baudelaire’s
poem is extremely realistic”35
Ultimately, this poem’s value resides on the fact that it can effectively evoke the feeling of
inescapable despair which seemed to have tormented Baudelaire himself throughout his
whole life. I believe this is the poem where the reader can get the closest to understanding,
even if only a little, what the poet may have felt. It is a climax in itself within Les Fleurs du
mal which distinctly demonstrates the burden of nothingness.
Conclusion
In the end, there are no easy abstractions to be made about a poet who expressed
himself so intensely and thought so profoundly. All the themes dear to Baudelaire are
difficult to treat because of the way in which he lived them, always in such an intense way
as to take them to intellectually vertiginous heights. We as readers are fortunate enough to
have been left with the masterpiece of modern literature gathered in Les Fleurs du mal, but
it is a book which has undeniably brought great suffering to the poet’s life. What we will
34 Peyre, Henri (1962) Baudelaire, A Collection of Critical Essays, “The Aesthetic Dignity of Fleurs du mal”, Eirich Auerbach, p. 153. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 35
Ibid.
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never know, but can educatedly guess, is if the book in the end proved to be just another
way the poet has found to deal with nothingness in his own life. That Baudelaire could
handle such and intimidating concept with such audacity but also so poetically shows how
devoted he was to exteriorizing his own grief. But also reveals his commitment as an artist,
since he also worked tirelessly on Fleurs du mal even for years after it was published. These
are poems that handle the human condition which is always so vulnerable to feelings of
anxiety and despair, to nothingness. Ultimately, they demonstrate how nothingness is a
condition the human being is born with. Baudelaire was able to effectively deconstruct the
human nature and reveal it under a new and shocking modern light that is both rich and
beautiful. And luckily, Baudelaire has also left us with many a poem which can certainly help
in dealing with the disconcerting nothingness he has so vividly evoked: “Il faut être toujours
ivre. Tout est là: c'est l'unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l'horrible fardeau du Temps qui
brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve. Mais de quoi?
De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise. Mais enivrez-vous.”
[Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel
the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be
drunken continually. Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken.]36
36 Baudelaire, Charles (1864), Paris Spleen, Arthur Symons (1865-1945) translation, as
quoted by Eugene O’Neill in Long Day’s Journey into Night.
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Bibliography
Baudelaire, Charles (1993), The Flowers of Evil, Trans. James McGowan, Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
Crowell, Steven, (2010) "Existentialism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/existentialism/>.
Flynn, Thomas (2013), Edition "Jean-Paul Sartre", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/sartre/>.
McDonald, William, (2012) "Søren Kierkegaard", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2012/entries/kierkegaard/>.
Peyre, Henri (1962) Baudelaire, A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.
Sartre, Paul, “Existentialism is a Humanism”, translated by Adam Norman. Available at:
http://archive.org/details/ExistentialismIsAHumanism
Turnell, Martin (1953), Baudelaire, A Study of his Poetry, London, Hamish Hamilton.
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23
Pensum List
Total number of pages: 1224
Baudelaire, Charles (1993), The Flowers of Evil, Trans. James McGowan, Oxford, Oxford
University Press. 370 Pages.
Crowell, Steven, (2010) "Existentialism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2010/entries/existentialism/>. 28 Pages.
Flynn, Thomas (2013), Edition "Jean-Paul Sartre", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/sartre/>. 17 Pages.
Hiddleston, J. A. (1999), Baudelaire and the Art of Memory, Oxford, Clarendon Press. 288
Pages.
McDonald, William, (2012) "Søren Kierkegaard", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2012/entries/kierkegaard/>. 15 Pages.
Peyre, Henri (1962) Baudelaire, A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood
Cliffs, N.J. 177 Pages.
Sartre, Paul, “Existentialism is a Humanism”, translated by Adam Norman. Available at:
http://archive.org/details/ExistentialismIsAHumanism 24 Pages.
Turnell, Martin (1953), Baudelaire, A Study of his Poetry, London, Hamish Hamilton. 305
Pages.