Negotiating Canonicity Through Adaptations of Baudelaire

Abbott, H 2019 Collective Creativity: Negotiating Canonicity Through Adaptations of Baudelaire. Modern Languages Open, 2019(1): 16 pp. 1–20. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.229 ARTICLES – FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE Collective Creativity: Negotiating Canonicity Through Adaptations of Baudelaire Helen Abbott University of Birmingham, Birmingham, GB [email protected] Baudelaire was ‘canonised’ in the Pléiade editions published by Gallimard in 1931. This important step in the reception history of a major nineteenth-century French poet was part of an ongoing process of interaction with Baudelaire’s work. As this article contends, musical adaptations play a significant part in Baudelaire’s global reception history, from the 1860s onwards. The article argues that as the adaptive process moves beyond the ‘one author, one adapter’ model, into a more collective creative process, it both alters the poetry for good and contributes directly to the ongoing canonisation of the poet’s work. The interplay of different artists using combinations of media formats (word, music, and moving image), crossing into different languages and updating for contemporary audiences, brings about collective responses which radically nuance understanding of (male) authorial privilege. A detailed analysis of two songs with moving image created by the Chicago-based theatre collective Theater Oobleck in their seven-year-long Baudelaire in a Box project (2010–17) reveals the importance of gendered individuation in collective works, and how this operates to break down the dominant position of the male author. The article concludes with a critique of how live music performance genres have typically masked the diverse makeup of a collective creative process (which individuates) in favour of an overarching collaborative vision (which generalises). It contends that the reuse of an established literary source continues to complicate the non-hierarchical vision of a collective creative response, giving rise to a genius paradox. On the one hand, the ‘ethic of rarity’ (Heinich 1996: 11) dictates that the modern artist is hailed as a unique figure. On the other, the collective inputs that have shaped the work remain an essential part of the creative process. Casting light on collective musical adaptations of Baudelaire thus invites a reconsideration of the value premiums we place on canonical works and their authors. Authors enter or leave the canon, depending on the vicissitudes of taste. Yet there are some authors whose place in the canon is firmly established. In the modern French context, an author is deemed to have entered the literary canon once they have secured a place in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade collection (Compagnon 1995: 1,188). The Pléiade editions began in 1931 with the publication of the complete works of Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) (Pichois 2006: 214). Baudelaire’s place in the literary canon was not, however, a given. This article sets Art. 16, page 2 of 20 Abbott: Collective Creativity out to explore how engagement with Baudelaire’s work beyond the literary domain contrib- uted to his status as a canonical literary figure, and how that status continues to be enhanced today. It suggests that the repeated take-up of Baudelaire’s work by others – at different points in time, through other media formats, and beyond the borders of France – is one of the key markers of aesthetic value that led to, and continues to fuel, the status of Baudelaire’s poetry as canonical. The cultural products of the French nineteenth century have long inspired reinventions across time, media, and nation (Griffiths 2013: 1–3). Victor Hugo’s novels have been reim- agined as musical theatre and film. Émile Zola’s novels have been recast as serialised radio dramas. In the case of Charles Baudelaire, both his verse and his prose poems have been redesigned as songs over 1,700 times.1 The use of an established literary source to create a new work shines light on a creative process that is often more complicated than a one-to-one relationship between author and adapter (Brackett 1999: 127). This article will examine how collective creativity underpins the adaptive process. It begins by charting the uneven land- scape of literary celebrity in the French nineteenth century, and how the vacillation between individual artists and collective endeavour affected an author such as Baudelaire. This leads, in turn, to a consideration of how composers/songwriters have responded to Baudelaire over the course of a 150-year period. The analysis will pay close attention to how the relationship between author and adapter incorporates more collective interactions, which cast light on the role of gendered individuation (Chatterjee 2015: 17). A detailed analysis of two songs produced during a large-scale collective multimedia reworking of all of Baudelaire’s verse poetry then follows, using the example of Baudelaire in a Box developed by theatre collective Theater Oobleck. It suggests that Theater Oobleck’s intervention, which spans 165 song settings of 130 Baudelaire poems, is invested in collectively lifting the lid on Baudelaire’s poetry through the transient form of song combined with moving image. Acknowledging that ‘the complexities of the new media also mean that adaptation […] is a collective process’ (Hutcheon 2006: 80), the article concludes with a series of reflections on how collective creativity can be understood as a set of interventions that bridge time, media, and languages by shining a brighter light on the diverse individuals involved. Constructing literary celebrity in nineteenth-century France: Baudelaire and the canon A writer’s rise to prominence in nineteenth-century France was not straightforward. An emerging literary marketplace, fuelled by improved literacy rates and the development of the serialised novel, formed ‘a battleground of cultural and economic value’ (O’Neil-Henry 2017: 2). The competition for readers’ attention meant that authors needed to work collectively with others to garner critical acclaim: l’écrivain, au vu de l’avènement du marché libre des valeurs littéraires et du monde concurrentiel auquel il doit faire face est contraint d’entretenir et de développer des contacts avec ses pairs, mais aussi avec le personnel qui peut assurer la mise en cir- culation de ses écrits (des médiateurs qui vont du directeur de journal à l’éditeur, en passant par l’imprimeur), voire avec des artistes issus d’univers voisins et avec des individus susceptibles de parler de lui. (Dessy, Fäcker, Saint-Amand 2017: 1). (The writer, given the advent of the free market of literary value and of the competi- tive marketplace they would have to face, was obliged to nurture and develop contacts 1 For musical responses to Baudelaire, see the Baudelaire Song Project www.baudelairesong.org. This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant number AH/M008940]. Abbott: Collective Creativity Art. 16, page 3 of 20 with their peers, and also with the professionals who could ensure the entry into cir- culation of their writings (intermediaries including the journal director and editor, as well as the printer), and indeed with artists from related spheres and with people who might be likely talk about them).2 Collective efforts to promote a writer’s work sit uneasily with the ideology of literary value, however. As the path to literary acclaim became ever more performative, it also revealed itself to be unreliable. Baudelaire’s literary criticism provides useful insight into the precarious nature of the mid-nineteenth-century literary world, showing us ‘reputations being made or unmade’ (Lloyd 2006: 174). Baudelaire writes, for example, of how Pierre Dupont ‘a été une grande gloire’ (was a huge celebrity) in the wake of the 1848 revolutions, but how, by 1861 the poet-chansonnier ‘est négligé plus qu’il ne convient’ (is more overlooked than he ought to be) (1975–6: 169; vol. 2). In his commentary on Victor Hugo, meanwhile, Baudelaire reflects with some suspicion on the extent of Hugo’s literary celebrity. In claiming that Hugo’s genius is ‘vraiment prodigieux’ (truly prodigious), he draws attention to the overblown techniques used by the author: ‘L’excessif, l’immense, sont le domaine naturel de Victor Hugo’ (The exces- sive, the immense, are the natural domain of Victor Hugo) (1975–6: 137; vol. 2). In this view, Hugo’s celebrity seems to emerge from a deliberate strategy of self-aggrandisement on the author’s part. As Anthony Glinoer has noted, Romantic authors such as Hugo or Vigny were deeply concerned with ‘constructing the myth of their original singularity’ (Glinoer 2009: 37). Indeed, it seems that persistently talking about one’s own literary greatness can serve to lodge that claim in perpetuity, as Bradley Stephens has argued: ‘There can be no denying that posterity was at the forefront of Hugo’s mind […] or that such a desire has encouraged his categorization as a “great” writer’ (2016: 233). Yet, as Baudelaire recognises, the label of greatness can also be attributed prematurely. In the case of Théodore de Banville, a coterie of professional taste-makers sought to promote the idea of the poet as youthful prodigy: Théodore de Banville fut célèbre tout jeune. […] Dans ce temps-là le tout Paris se composait de cette élite d’hommes chargés de façonner l’opinion des autres […]. Ceux-là saluèrent naturellement l’auteur des Cariatides comme un homme qui avait une longue carrière à fournir. (Baudelaire 1975–6: 162; vol. 2) (Théodore de Banville became famous very young. […] At that time, Parisian society was made up of an elite group of men tasked with shaping the opinions of others […]. They naturally hailed the author of the Cariatides as a man who was set to have a long career.) Baudelaire’s critique is not levelled at these critics’ overall judgement of Banville, but rather at how the ebullient literary marketplace was prompting collective opinion-makers to make a judgement so early on in a career.

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