Intratextual Baudelaire

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The Sequential Fabric of the Fleurs du mal and Spleen de Paris

Randolph Paul Runyon

T h e O h i o S t a t e U n i v e r s i t y P r e ss C o l u m b us

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Runyon, Randolph, 1947– Intratextual Baudelaire : the sequential fabric of the Fleurs du mal and Spleen de Paris / Randolph Paul Runyon. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-1118-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8142-1118-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-9216-7 (cd-rom) 1. Baudelaire, Charles, 1821–1867. Fleurs du mal—Criticism, Textual. 2. Baudelaire, Charles, 1821–1867. Spleen de Paris—Criticism, Textual. I. Title. PQ2191.Z5R86 2010 841'.8—dc22 2009029578 This book is available in the following editions: Cloth (ISBN 978-0-8142-1118-2) CD-ROM (ISBN 978-0-8142-9216-7)

Cover design by Becky Kulka and Jeff Smith. Type set in Adobe Galliard. Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992.

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Introduction 1

Chapter 1 The Fabric of the First Edition: The Fleurs of 1857 17

Chapter 2 The Sequence Rebuilt: The Fleurs of 1861 120

Chapter 3 The “serpent tout entier”: Le Spleen de Paris 189

Appendix A The Order of the Poems in the 1857 and 1861 Editions 263 Appendix B The Order of the Poems in Le Spleen de Paris 269 Works Cited 271 Index to Baudelaire's Works 277 General Index 281

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Baudelaire asserted more than once that the order in which he arranged his poems was meaningful. Even before the Fleurs du mal first appeared in 1857, at a time when he was negotiating for the publication of some poems in the Revue des deux mondes, he wrote to the editor: “je tiens vivement, quels que soient les morceaux que vous choisirez, à les mettre en ordre avec vous, de manière qu’ils se fassent, pour ainsi dire, suite” [I am very anxious, whatever pieces you choose, to put them in order with you, so that they form, so to speak, a sequence]. He was at the editor’s mercy as to which poems would appear, yet he hoped to play a role in determining the order of those that did. That order did not exist before the editor’s selection but would depend on the poems he chose. Baudelaire would then engage in some bricolage in the Lévi-Straussian sense, to create something—in this case, a meaningful sequence—out of the materials on hand. “The ‘bricoleur,’” Lévi-Strauss writes, “is adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks; but, unlike the engineer, he does not sub- ordinate each of them to obtaining the raw materials and tools conceived and procured for the purpose of the project. His universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are always to make do with ‘whatever is at hand.’” Commenting on this letter, F. W. Leakey writes, “the principle

1. regarding italics in this book, I have used two different approaches. In quotations from Baudelaire’s poetic works, italics have been added for emphasis unless indicated to be present in Baudelaire’s original. For all other sources, italics can be presumed to be original unless otherwise noted. 2. in a letter to Victor de Mars on April 7, 1855. Charles Baudelaire, Correspondance, 2 vols., ed. Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler (Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1973), I: 312 (hereafter cited in text as Corr. I or II; translations are my own unless otherwise noted). Eventu- ally eighteen poems were published in the Revue des deux mondes on June 1, 1855. 3. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weight-

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Baudelaire sought to adopt in the arrangement of these poems—that of sequence, with one poem leading smoothly into the next . . . is one that he was able eventually to follow in his own distribution of his poems in the complete editions of 1857 and 1861.” baudelaire displayed the same concern for arrangement in the months preceding the publication of the Fleurs du mal, telling his publisher he hoped that together “Nous pourrons disposer ensemble l’ordre des matières des Fleurs du mal,—ensemble, entendez-vous, car la question est importante” [We will be able to arrange together the order of the material of the Fleurs du mal—together, you understand, for the question is important] (Corr. I: 364). When Baudelaire was subjected to prosecution in 1857, when the Fleurs du mal were deemed an offense to public morals, he prepared notes for his lawyer in which he called his book “ce parfait ensemble” [this perfect whole]. The prosecutor was threatening to have some of the poems removed—and eventually six were. Baudelaire wanted his lawyer to argue that the collection was itself a work of art that would be destroyed if any part of it were taken away. On Baudelaire’s invitation, and to some undetermined extent with his collusion, his friend Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly wrote a defense of the book:

If quoted, a poem would have only its individual value, and make no mistake, in Baudelaire’s book each poem has, in addition to the success of its details or the glory of its thought, a very important value with respect to the whole and to its location there [une valeur très importante densemble et de situation] that must not be lost by detaching it. Artists who can see the lines beneath the luxurious efflorescence of color will clearly see that there is a secret architecture [une architecture secrète] here, a plan calculated by the poet, premeditated and intentional. Les Fleurs du mal are not lined up one after the other like just so many lyrical pieces, produced by inspiration, and gathered into a collection for no other reason than to bring them together. They are not so much poems as a poetic work of the strongest unity. From the standpoint of Art and aesthetic perception they would therefore lose a great deal by not being read in the order in which the poet,

man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 17; corresponds to p. 27 of La Pensée sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1962). Margery Evans, in Baudelaire and Intertextuality: Poetry at the Crossroads (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), suggests the relevance of the concept of bricolage to the structure of Le Spleen de Paris (p. 3); I will argue that it is equally pertinent to that of Les Fleurs du mal. 4. F. W. Leakey, Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du Mal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 5, hereafter cited in text as FM Leakey. 5. Charles Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes, 2 vols., ed. Claude Pichois (Paris: Gallimard/ Pléiade, 1975–76), I: 194; hereafter cited in text as OC I or II.

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who well knows what he is doing, has arranged them. But they would lose even more from the point of view of the moral effect of which we earlier spoke. (OC I: 1196)

How much of Barbey’s statement reflected Baudelaire’s own thoughts cannot be determined. But we know that the poet approved of it enough to include it among the Articles justitatifs of which he had two hundred copies printed before his trial. The italics, Marcel Françon suggests, may be Baudelaire’s own. And even though Barbey’s remarks, and Baudelaire’s approval of them, were motivated by the need to deflect the prosecution’s attack, what Barbey wrote about the value the poems have by virtue of their “situation,” about what they would lose by not being read in the order Baudelaire gave them, and his assertion that the Fleurs are not so much poems in the plural as a single poetic work are consonant with Baudelaire’s concern, before and long after the prosecution, for the order in which his poems appear. Four years later, when the second edition appeared, minus the six offending poems but containing thirty-five new poems and a significant rearrangement of those retained, Baudelaire sent a copy to Alfred de Vigny and wrote, “Le seul éloge que je sollicite pour ce livre est qu’on recon- naisse qu’il n’est pas un pur album et qu’il a un commencement et une fin. Tous les poèmes nouveaux ont été faits pour être adaptés au cadre singulier que j’avais choisi” [The only praise I solicit for this book is that one recognize that it is not a mere album, and that it has a beginning and an end. All the new poems were written to be adapted to the distinctive framework I had chosen] (Corr. II: 196). Leakey explains:

“Not a mere album” because, as in 1857, the poems had been carefully grouped, and their presentation meticulously planned in their relation one to another; “a beginning and an end,” because the book opens, in Bénédic- tion, with the narration of a generic poet’s birth, and closes, in Le Voyage, with the vision of a death . . . which yet promises rebirth into the new. And when Baudelaire goes on, in his second sentence, to say that the new poems have been written expressly to be adapted to the “distinctive framework” he has chosen, what he here has in mind, of course, is not some overall, collective “message” supposedly conveyed by the book as a whole (this is the “architectural” fallacy first propounded in 1857 by Barbey d’Aurevilly, though never by Baudelaire himself), but rather the careful groupings and sequences he is here modifying from the first edition. (FM Leakey, 13)

6. marcel Françon, “[L]unité des Fleurs du mal,” PMLA 60, no. 4 (December 1945): 1130n1.

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Leakey somehow understood Barbey’s saying the book had a “secret architecture” to mean that it conveyed a moral message. Barbey speaks elsewhere in the article of such a message: “punishment after the crime, illness after overindulgence, remorse, sadness, ennui, all the shames and pains that degrade and devour us for having transgressed against” the laws of divine Providence (OC I, 1192). The connection Leakey saw between architecture and message may lie in the way in which Barbey understood Baudelaire’s assertion (expressed in his notes for his lawyer and that he doubtless communicated to Barbey) that “À une blasphème, j’opposerai des élancements vers le Ciel, à une obscénité, des fleurs platoniques” [To a blasphemy I will oppose aspirations to heaven, to an obscenity platonic flowers] (OC I: 195). Perhaps the architecture Leakey thought Barbey had in mind consisted of such opposing forces, as a flying buttress counterbalances the Gothic cathedral’s vault. But Leakey also believed that Barbey “wrongly conflated two independent statements of the poet’s” in his assertion that “the book could only properly be understood in terms of its ‘secret architecture’—that is, from the supposed total message that emerges from a consecutive reading. . . . But this whole moral defence of Baudelaire’s was in any case soon to be discarded; we hear no more of it after 1857, though what does remain with him is his abiding concern for the presentation of his poems—for their careful grouping by themes and their sequential relation one with another” (FM Leakey, 11). It seems that Leakey may be the one conflating, if the two independent statements Baudelaire made were that aspirations to heaven will counterbalance blasphemies and that the book has a secret architecture—conflating Barbey’s saying there is a secret architecture with his saying, elsewhere in the article, that punishments counterbalance crimes. But it should be clear from the last sentence of the paragraph where Barbey speaks of a secret architecture—“But they would lose even more from the point of view of the moral effect of which we spoke at the beginning of this article”—that the “moral effect” is a consideration quite other than that of the order in which the poems appear. This is not the only passage in the article where Barbey speaks of architecture. A few pages earlier, noting that in his dedication to the Fleurs du mal Baudelaire salutes Gautier as a disciple saluting his master, Barbey places him in the latter’s Parnassian school, as “one of those refined and ambitious materialists who can conceive of only one kind of perfection— material perfection” (OC I: 1194). The language of the Fleurs is “more plastic even than poetic, crafted and chiseled like bronze and stone, and where the sentence has volutes and grooves—imagine something out of flowered Gothic or Moorish architecture [quelque chose du gothique fleuri

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ou de l’architecture moresque]” (OC I: 1194–95; italics added). No overall plan here (and no flying buttresses of the Moorish variety), just a focus on detail. And even when Barbey goes on to speak of “the lines beneath the luxurious efflorescence” and of “a secret architecture, a plan calculated by the poet, premeditated and intentional,” that plan may not necessarily be the “supposed total message that emerges from a consecutive reading,” as Leakey thought, but something else that becomes apparent from a careful consecutive reading: the plan behind “the presentation of his poems . . . their careful grouping by themes and their sequential relation one with another,” as Leakey—I think correctly—saw. like Leakey, Claude Pichois rejected the notion of an explanatory secret architecture (he said it would be like trying to explain Nerval by tarot cards), yet he seconded Barbey’s assertion that the Fleurs du mal was a highly unified work: “How can one not recognize with Barbey that the Fleurs are ‘not so much poems as a poetic work of the strongest unity’; a book and not a collection? A book . . . whose framework was as much secreted by the poems already composed as it was the source from which others arose. A book whose poems sometimes combine into ‘cycles,’ while others take on a situational value”—une valeur de situation, echoing Bar- bey’s phrase—“due to association or contrast, as well as to mere juxtapo- sition” (OC I: 799). The juxtapositions, mere as they may seem, are not haphazard but planned by the poet whom Barbey called “an artist of will, of reflection, and above all of combination [et de combinaison avant tout]” (OC I: 1193; italics added). It is how Baudelaire combines his poems that will be the focus of this study. baudelaire gives us a precious insight into what he valued in a poetic work in an essay on what might at first seem a wholly other topic, the operas of Richard Wagner. After quoting Franz Liszt saying “even if the music of this opera were deprived of its beautiful words, it would still be a production of the first rank,” he comments:

En effet, sans poésie, la musique de Wagner serait encore une œuvre poé- tique, étant douée de toutes les qualités qui constituent une poésie bien faite; explicative par elle-même, tant toutes choses y sont bien unies, conjointes, réciproquement adaptées, et, s’il est permis de faire un barbarisme pour exprimer le superlatif d’une qualité, prudemment concaténées.

[Indeed, without poetry, Wagner’s music would still be a poetic work, since it is endowed with all the qualities that constitute well-made poetry: self- explanatory, for all things there are so well united, conjoined, recipro-

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cally adapted, and—if it is permissible to create a barbarism to express the superlative of a quality—prudently concatenated.] (“Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris,” OC II: 803)

Bescherelle’s Dictionnaire universel, published in 1856 and thus contempo- rary with Baudelaire, defines “concaténation” (from the Latin cum [with] and catena [chain]) as “Enchaînement, liaison” [Chain, link] and as a rhe- torical figure “that consists in picking up some words from the first part to begin the second, and thus tie in succession all the parts together, up until the last.” Baudelaire is alluding to Wagner’s leitmotif compositional technique; elsewhere in the essay he alludes to “certaines phrases mélodiques dont le retour assidu, dans différents morceaux tirés de la même œuvre, avait vivement intrigué mon oreille” [certain melodic phrases whose persistent return, in different parts of the same work, had acutely intrigued my ear] (OC II: 801). Baudelaire quotes Liszt as saying that traditional opera is like a collection of poems in which there is no particular connection between one poem and the next: “une série de chants rarement apparentés entre eux” [a series of songs rarely related to each other] (OC II: 802), but Wagner makes greater demands on the listener’s ability to concentrate and remember: “forçant notre méditation et notre mémoire à un si constant exercice, [il] arrache, par cela seul, l’action de la musique au domaine des vagues attendrissements et ajoute à ses charmes quelques-uns des plaisirs de l’esprit” [compelling our meditation and memory to such constant exercise, by that alone he tears music’s effect away from the realm of vague sentiments and to its charms adds some of the pleasures of the mind] (Liszt, quoted in ibid.). i intend to show in this study of Baudelaire’s poetic collections, the Fleurs du mal and the Spleen de Paris, that he makes the same demands on his readers and offers them equivalent rewards. It is not the leitmotif technique itself, however, that distinguishes Baudelaire from other poets, for that finds a ready equivalent in the network of associations that are part of any poet’s personal language (such as the association between the sun and the father that Michel Quesnel finds in Baudelaire). Rather, it is something Baudelaire hints at in making a place for concatenation in his definition of a well-made poetic work. The poems in the Fleurs du mal and the Spleen de Paris are, as I intend to show, concatenated in the sense that

7. louis-Nicolas Bescherelle, Dictionnaire universel de la langue française (Paris: Gar- nier frères, 1856). All definitions from Bescherelle given in this book come from this edition and will hereafter not be cited. 8. michel Quesnel, Baudelaire solaire et clandestin (Paris: PUF, 1987), hereafter cited in text.

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they are connected as links in a chain. As Leakey insisted, one telling aspect of their presentation is “their sequential relation one with another.” That sequential relation is their concatenation. baudelaire applies the term to Poe as well: “Dans les livres d’Edgar Poe, le style est serré, concaténé; la mauvaise volonté du lecteur ou sa paresse ne pourront pas passer à travers les mailles de ce réseau tressé par la logique. Toutes les idées, comme des flèches obéissantes, volent au même but” [In the books of Edgar Poe, the style is closely woven, concatenated; neither the reader’s recalcitrant will nor his laziness can pass through the meshes of this net woven by logic. All the ideas, like obedient arrows, fly to the same target] (OC II: 283). Poe’s concatenation creates a net, but it also works by enchaînement, as Baudelaire points out in describing how Auguste Dupin solved the mystery of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”:

Entre une parole et une autre, entre deux idées tout à fait étrangères en apparence, il peut rétablir la lacune des idées non exprimées et presque inconscientes. Il a étudié profondément tous les possibles et tous les enchaînements probables des faits. Il remonte d’induction en induction, et arrive à démontrer péremptoirement que c’est un singe qui a fait le crime.

[Between one word and another, between two ideas that appear to have nothing in common, he can restore the lacuna of unexpressed and nearly unconscious ideas. He made a deep study of every possible and every likely chain of events deducible from the facts. He moves from induction to induction, and succeeds in irrefutably proving that it was an ape that committed the crime.] (OC II: 276; italics added)

Baudelaire invites the reader of the Fleurs du mal and the Spleen de Paris to do the same: to find connections between words, between two ideas that at first seem total strangers to each other, between one poem and the next in the chain he has prepared. So it is not the secret architecture—a term of which we have no proof that it was Baudelaire’s way of describing his work—but the hidden fabric we will see uncovered here. It has remained hidden simply because few have thought it worth pursuing. The hunt for a secret architecture, whether based on a hidden message or on Baudelaire’s having divided the Fleurs into chapters (“Spleen et Idéal,” “Tableaux parisiens,” “Le Vin,” “Fleurs du mal,” “Révolte,” “La Mort”) or into subgroups according to mistress, or because it roughly moves from birth to death, has proved more alluring. The term “fabric” is appropriate whether we focus on the text as textile—as does, for example, Barbara Wright: “the work was conceived

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as an integral whole, with interconnecting strands”—or the text as edifice, as Baudelaire hints at having done in the poem that completes his last organized sequence, where he writes “la maçonnerie est achevée” [the masonry is finished] (“Les Bons Chiens,” in Le Spleen de Paris, OC I: 362). We will be focusing on the masonry of what Baudelaire built, how the stones are put together, each to each. Lévi-Strauss’s distinction between bricolage and engineering is relevant here: Baudelaire did not design the Fleurs du mal from scratch, as would an engineer, but in many instances made use of poems he had written years before. In the second edition, he certainly worked for the most part with the material already at hand, the poems from 1857, rearranging and altering what was left after the six were removed and he added new ones. We will study those changes in detail, as well as those made to the texts that would go into the Spleen de Paris. What we will examine is Baudelaire as mason, not as architect; as bricoleur, not engineer. baudelaire built three such structures, the Fleurs du mal of 1857, the Fleurs du mal of 1861, and the Spleen de Paris, published posthumously in 1869 on the basis of a table of contents he drew up shortly before his death. The 1861 version of Fleurs has received the lion’s share of attention over the years, partly because of the memorable new poems it contains and partly because of a respect for the poet’s last complete expression. But the 1857 volume is a magnificent creation in its own right, and of the two it is the only one unsullied by external considerations, since Baudelaire was not able to reintegrate into the 1861 sequence the six poems the cen- sor removed. I will bypass the long-standing controversy of whether one sequence is more worth our attention than the other by paying thorough attention to both. I will try to show why Baudelaire arranged the first edition as he did, and I will consider every change he made in 1861, changes that go far beyond the deletion of old poems and the addition of new ones. Baudelaire made a myriad of textual changes in the poems carried over from 1857, altering them so that they would fit into the new sequence. I will examine those changes in detail. in his study of the 1861 Fleurs du mal James Lawler finds that the order is important, but instead of seeing each poem as an element in the sequence, he believes that Baudelaire arranged them in alternating groups of fives and threes, each group expressing a particular theme. Thus “L’Aube spirituelle,” “Harmonie du soir,” and “Le Flacon” (poems 46–48) form a group “devoted to memory”; Lawler states, “in response to the presence- in-absence of memory” in these three “we find the absence-in-presence

9. barbara Wright, “Baudelaire’s Poetic Journey in Les Fleurs du Mal,” in The Cam- bridge Companion to Baudelaire, ed. Rosemary Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 31.

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of imagination” in “Le Poison,” “Ciel brouillé,” “Le Chat,” “Le Beau Navire,” and “L’Invitation au voyage” (poems 49–53).10 But to place “Le Flacon” in one group and “Le Poison” in another is to miss seeing that the poison so prominent in the latter is related to the poison in the last two lines of the former, the “Cher poison . . . / Qui me ronge, ô la vie et la mort de mon cœur!” [Dear poison . . . / That eats at me, O life and death of my heart!] (ll. 27–28). As Antoine Adam remarks, “If we want to know why he calls [his love for Madame Sabatier] a poison” at the end of “Le Flacon,” “we only have to read the poem that immediately follows this one. For the connection between the two is evident, and the second comments on the last lines of the first.”11 J. A. Hiddleston suggests that in Lawler’s approach “there are moments when one feels that the patterning could have gone in a different direction, moments where there is more than a hint of procrustianism” that “can lead to reductionism, since ‘Le Serpent qui danse’ is not about coldness (though of course everyone knows that snakes are cold-blooded), but about light, sensuality, movement and much more.”12 Lawler does not explain why he thinks Baudelaire arranged the collection by fives and threes. Why not sixes and sevens—or why not, more simply, see each single poem as capable of interacting, as he argues that his groups interact, with the poem before and the poem after? mario Richter’s “lecture intégrale” of the 1861 Fleurs du mal comes closer than Lawler’s to anticipating my own. He reads the collection poem by poem, noting many of the connections linking each to each. “What interests me above all,” he writes, “is to follow the discourse that develops in the Fleurs du mal, the reason for which the poems have been arranged in the order that is theirs and not in another.”13 But it never seems to have occurred to Richter to consider why the poems were arranged in the order they were in the first place, which is to say, in the 1857 edition. For him it is as if the first edition never existed, and this leads him to the astounding error of asserting that the other person implied in the “Notre” [Our] in the line “Notre blanche maison, petite mais tranquille” [Our white house, small but tranquil] of the poem “Je n’ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville . . . ” must be the woman who figures in the immediately preceding poem “L’Amour du mensonge” (Richter, 1149). But that poem precedes it only in 1861; “L’Amour du mensonge” does not appear in the 1857 sequence, though

10. James Lawler, Poetry and Moral Dialectic: Baudelaire’s “Secret Architecture” (Madi- son, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997), 82, 84; hereafter cited in text as Lawler 1997. 11. Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, ed. Antoine Adam (Paris: Garnier, 1961), 333 (hereafter cited in text as FM Adam). 12. See Hiddleston’s review of Lawler’s book, in French Studies 54, no. 1 (2000): 99. 13. mario Richter, Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal: Lecture intégrale (Geneva: Slatkine, 2001), 13–14, hereafter cited in text.

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“Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ” does. How could the meaning of “Notre” change in the interim? i agree with Richter that the poems can best be understood with reference to poems immediately before and after them, but if we adopt that approach we must consider what they first meant when the poems on either side may have been different ones. I do not share his assumption, however, that a character in one poem must be identical to a similar or related character in the next. The poems are not continuous in the manner of succeeding paragraphs or chapters in a novel. Rather, each poem repeats elements of the poem before in what is almost always a completely different context. The poems play off each other in pairs by virtue of the resulting discrepancy, indeed quite often an ensuing opposition, between how the repeated element functions in one context and how it functions in the other. It is like the irony of a pun—or of the clever rhyming of two words with an interesting relation to each other. One interesting exception, however, to the rule that no character (apart from the same mistress to which two neighboring poems may allude) is identical in one poem and the next occurs in the conjunction of “Les Deux Bonnes Sœurs” (1857: 83; 1861: 11214) and “La Fontaine de sang” (1857: 84; 1861: 113): in the latter, “ces cruelles filles,” as both Adam and Pichois remark, can only be understood by imagining that the narrator is referring to the two sisters of the preceding poem. lawler does not quite neglect the 1857 order. He devotes three pages to it in an appendix, again finding fives and threes throughout, except for a stretch of threes only from “La Destruction” to “Les Litanies de Satan.” The two poems, however, that Baudelaire singled out in a letter to his mother as belonging together because both allude to their life together after the death of his father and before her remarriage—“La servante au grand cœur . . . ” (1857: 69; 1861: 100) and “Je n’ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville . . . ” (1857: 70; 1861: 99), which he kept together in the second edition even while reversing their order—fall in the same group of three in Lawler’s reading of the second edition (1997, 132) but not in his version of the first, in which “La servante au grand cœur . . . ” falls into the group characterized by “compassionate identification with figures of the city” and “Je n’ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville . . . ” into the group whose unifying theme is “regret” (183). This despite the nonurban setting of “La servante au grand cœur . . . ,” the same little white house outside of the city (“voisine de la ville”) where “Je n’ai pas oublié” takes place, and the regret that permeates both. Lawler admits, “It is not that any one of the pieces cannot be displaced—Baudelaire will move a good number of them

14. These numbers indicate the poem’s place in the order of the indicated edition.

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in the second edition—since clearly they can have more than one meaning and more than one context, while the wording will on occasion, especially in the tercets of the sonnets, be modified to fit the argument. However, by the positions they come to occupy, they receive individual colorings, particular emphases, dialectical functions” (ibid.) But doesn’t this come close to admitting that the meanings he (Lawler) assigns them come from the groups to which he also assigns them? In any event, Lawler’s system is based on common themes within his groups, while my approach is independent of themes. I do not focus on common themes between neighboring poems, and to the extent that they exist, I find them too weak to be of interest. I am interested in what is paradoxically the same between neighboring poems despite their having no common theme worth talking about. i will show that the fifty prose poems in the Spleen de Paris are organized the same way—that as Baudelaire on many occasions said, they form a “pendant” to the Fleurs du mal. I think he meant this in the sense in which Littré gives the word: “Il se dit de deux objets d’art à peu près pareils, et destinés à figurer ensemble en se correspondant” [It is said of two objects approximately alike, destined to appear together in a corresponding relation].15 Two circumstances have deterred most readers from seeing how true this is: (1) the absence of section headings like those in the Fleurs (“Spleen et Idéal,” “Tableaux parisiens”) and (2) the letter Baude- laire wrote Arsène Houssaye, who published the first twenty of the prose poems, in which he appears to give him carte blanche to cut the sequence at any point. I will address the letter, which was never intended by Baude- laire to serve as a preface to the book,16 in my chapter on the Spleen; as for the absence of section headings, while they may be relevant to an approach to the Fleurs based on claims of a “secret architecture” that involves clas- sifying the poems by theme, those headings are irrelevant to the sequential structure I uncover there, which continues without a break from the last poem of every section to the first poem of the next, and which is exactly the same kind of structure uniting the poems in prose. max Milner writes, “It would be futile . . . to seek in Le Spleen de Paris the type of architecture that characterizes Les Fleurs du mal. . . . Is that to

15. Émile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française (Paris: Hachette, 1877). Available at http://françois.gannez.free.fr./Littre. 16. max Milner reminds us that Baudelaire “left, with a view to their publication in a volume, a table of contents whose order . . . was scrupulously followed by Charles Asselin- eau and Théodore de Banville when they edited the prose poems’ first collective publication in 1869, two years after the poet’s death, except for the letter to Arsène Houssaye and an Épilogue, which they appear to have added on their own initiative.” Max Milner, “Introduction” to Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1979), 22, hereafter cited in text.

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say that it is forbidden to look there for some other type of unity?” (24). A. W. Raitt suggests that the absence of the headings found in the Fleurs

does not preclude the presence of other connections, less visible no doubt and, to use Baudelaire’s own term, more tortuous, but still with some possible structural significance. One may even wonder whether the Dédicace to Houssaye does not itself contain an enigmatic hint at what these connections may be. “Tout . . . y est à la fois tête et queue, alternativement et réciproquement” [Everything . . . there is at the same time head and tail, alternatively and reciprocally]: what does that mean if not that each poem is a tail to the one that precedes it and a head to the one that follows it?17

Raitt goes on to point out that Fritz Nies put forward that argument in 1964 in a detailed study of Le Spleen de Paris to which few scholars have paid any attention.18 According to Nies, there is “some element always linking each poem with the one before it and the one after it” (Raitt, 160). Raitt cites four instances from Nies, common elements linking poems 12 (“Les Foules”) with 13 (“Les Veuves”) (in 13, the narrator explicitly refers to what he was just saying in 12: “comme je l’insinuais tout à l’heure” [as I was insinuating a moment ago], 14 (“Le Vieux Saltimbanque”) with 15 (“Le Gâteau”) (poverty), 24 (“Les Projets”) with 25 (“La Belle Dorothée”) (a cabin by a tropical sea), and 34 (“Déjà!”) with 35 (“Les Fenêtres”) (the echoing phrases “qui ont vécu, qui vivent et qui vivront” [who have lived, who live, and who will live] and “vit la vie, rêve la vie, souffre la vie” [life lives, life dreams, life suffers]). In a reply to Raitt, J. A. Hiddleston objects, “But if Baudelaire had intended such patterning, it is very unlikely that he would have encouraged Houssaye to upset it.”19 Well, that is precisely the point. Such linkages as Nies brings to light put the lie to the notion that Baudelaire seriously meant that the reader (as distinguished from Houssaye, the editor he hoped would publish at least some of his poems) could cut up the collection and read its pieces in any order he pleased. As it happens, poems 34 and 35, one of the examples Hiddleston cites from Raitt, were not even among the poems Baudelaire sent Hous- saye. It is somewhat surprising that Hiddleston dismisses Nies’s approach on the basis alone of Raitt’s four examples without giving us an account what Nies himself wrote. But Nies succeeds in finding some expression or

17. a. W. Raitt, “On Le Spleen de Paris,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 18, nos. 1–2 (1989–90): 159, hereafter cited in text. 18. Fritz Nies, Poesie in prosaischer Welt. Untersuchungen zum Prosagedicht bei Aloysius Bertrand und Baudelaire (Heidelberg: Winter, 1964), hereafter cited in text. 19. J. A. Hiddleston, “Chacun son Spleen: Some Observations on Baudelaire’s Prose Poems,” Modern Language Review 86, no. 1 (January 1991): 68.

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motif at virtually every point in the sequence, for example, the perfumes that figure in both poems 7 “(Le Fou et la Vénus”) and 8 (“Le Chien et le flacon”), the “lac immobile” in 15 (“Le Gâteau”) and the “heure immobile” in 16 (“L’Horloge”), and the woman “bien éventée, fumant” [well fanned, smoking] in 24 (“Les Projets”) and the woman who takes pleasure “à fumer, à se faire éventer” [in smoking, in being fanned] in 25 (“La Belle Dorothée”) (Nies, 279–80). Recalling that Baudelaire once described the Spleen de Paris to Sainte-Beuve as a “flânerie” [stroll] (Corr. II: 583), Nies says of his list of connections that they “do not point to some overarching architecture with subdivisions, for they come about through the free movement of the poetic imagination, which will unexpectedly take up in its flânerie some word or sentence, some motif or subject that it met on its way in the preceding poem, around which it will begin a new intellectual flânerie, composing another poem” (Nies, 283). This is precisely what I intend to show, that each successive poem borrows some word, phrase, or motif from its immediate predecessor and gives it a new context, as if the second poem were composed around this borrowed element. edward K. Kaplan argues that the Spleen de Paris “is not a random assemblage of melodic rhapsodies, but a coherent ensemble,” and that it engages in a “textual exegesis based on a sequential reading.”20 While he does take up each poem in the order Baudelaire gave them, he does not always find connections between them. Yet he does find quite a few, and I often enter into conversation and debate with him in my chapter on the prose poems, as I do with Lawler and Richter in reading Les Fleurs du mal. In the conclusion to Poetry and Moral Dialectic Lawler analyzes the first ten of the prose poems, and in “The Prose Poem as Art of Anticlimax”21 he takes up the rest. “I would suggest,” he writes, “that the prose poems are not fortuitously placed but obey the simplest of patterns . . . abrupt twos in which one text plays directly off the other by a sudden turn of the screw or a twist of the kaleidoscope (the two images are Baudelaire’s). Tail answers head, head answers tail” (Lawler 1997, 176–77). But he does not read them as do Nies, Kaplan, or myself, seeing each as having something in common with its predecessor—2 with 1, 3 with 2, 4 with 3. Instead, he reads them in discrete pairs: 2 with 1, 4 with 3, 6 with 5, and so forth— seeing twenty-five pairs instead of forty-nine, and not noticing the remarkable ways in which every poem from the second to the forty-ninth is in a Janus-like double relation, looking both behind to the poem before and

20. edward K. Kaplan, Baudelaire’s Prose Poems: The Esthetic, the Ethical, and the Reli- gious in The Parisian Prowler (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), ix, xi (hereafter cited in text as Kaplan 1990). 21. James Lawler, “The Prose Poem as Art of Anticlimax: Baudelaire’s ‘Kaléidoscope.’” Australian Journal of French Studies 36, no. 3 (1999): 327–38.

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ahead to the one to follow. Each poem is thus both head and tail. my aim in this study is to demonstrate to a degree not yet seen the artfulness with which Baudelaire assembled his poems. I believe this aspect of his work is part of what he meant by the “rhétorique profonde” that he imagined some would already know or guess and that others would never understand:

Mon éditeur prétend qu’il y aurait quelque utilité . . . à expliquer pourquoi et comment j’ai fait ce livre, quels ont été mon but et mes moyens, mon dessein et ma méthode. Un tel travail de critique aurait sans doute quelques chances d’amuser les esprits amoureux de la rhétorique profonde. . . . Mais, à un meilleur examen, ne paraît-il pas évident que ce serait là une besogne tout à fait superflue, pour les uns comme pour les autres, puisque les uns savent ou devinent, et que les autres ne comprendront jamais?. . . . Mène- t-on la foule dans les ateliers de l’habilleuse et du décorateur, dans la loge de la comédienne? Montre-t-on au public affolé aujourd’hui, indifférent demain, le mécanisme des trucs? Lui explique-t-on les retouches et les variantes . . . ? Lui révèle-t-on toutes les loques, les fards, les poulies, les chaînes, les repentirs, les épreuves barbouillées, bref toutes les horreurs qui composent le sanctuaire de l’art?

[My editor claims that there might be some utility . . . in explaining why and how I made this book, what were my end and my means, my plan and my method. Such a critical endeavor would no doubt have some chance of amusing minds in love with deep rhetoric. . . . But, on closer examination, does it not appear evident that this would be a completely superfluous task, for some as well as others, since some will know or guess and the others will never understand? . . . Does one bring the crowd into the costumer’s and designer’s workshops, into the actress’s dressing room? Does one show the mechanics of illusion to the public thrilled today, indifferent tomorrow? Does one explain to them alterations and variants . . . ? Does one reveal to them all the rags, the makeup, the pulleys, the chains, the touch-ups, the marked-up proof sheets—in sum, all the horrors that compose the temple of art?] (“Projet de préface pour Les Fleurs du mal,” OC I : 185)

I present this visit behind the scenes in the hope that Baudelaire was wrong to think that those who did not already see would never understand. i call what Baudelaire does intratextual (as opposed to intertextual) because it takes place within his own text. It does, that is, if we consider the Fleurs du mal or the Spleen de Paris a single text, as opposed to merely a collection of different texts whose interrelationships could be characterized as intertextual. Collections—whether of poems, short stories, essays, or the

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letters of an epistolary novel—are potentially intratextual, and in fact quite a few live up to that potential, as I have elsewhere argued: Montaigne’s Essais, La Fontaine’s Fables and Contes, Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes, Robert Penn Warren’s poetic collections and his volume of short stories, and Raymond Carver’s short story and poetry collections.22 In my book on Carver I called intratextuality “what can happen when the texts in a text (poems or stories in an intelligently assembled sequence) begin to refer to each other in ways that seem to refer to their doing so.”23 That may have been too restrictive a definition, since we do not require that intertextuality always have that self-referential aspect. Yet intratextuality in Baudelaire does sometimes feature such mises en abyme: the recycling of debris as both motif and practice in “À une petite mendiante rousse” and “Le Cygne” and again in “Le Vin des chiffonniers”; the multiple images of the same thing in “Le Cygne” and “Les Sept Vieillards”; the enclosure-penetrating perfumes in “Harmonie du soir” and “Le Flacon”; the cadavres in the side-by-side poems “Le Vampire” and “Une nuit que j’étais . . . ,” alluded to in the latter in “Comme au long d’un cadavre un cadavre étendu”; the twins whose struggle over a piece of bread in “Le Gâteau” results in its disappearance (a mise en abyme of the way in which any two neighboring poems claim possession of the same words and motifs, resulting in the disappearance of the meaning we originally thought they had); the self-reflecting mirrors in “La Belle Dorothée” and “Les Yeux des pauvres”; or the emblem in “Le Thyrse”: “qui osera décider si les fleurs et les pampres ont été faits pour le bâton, ou si le bâton n’est que le prétexte pour montrer la beauté des pampres et des fleurs?” [who will dare decide if the flowers and the vines were made for the staff, or if the staff is but the pretext for showing the beauty of the vines and the flowers?]. Who can decide of two neighboring and interrelated poems which was made for the other?

22. i list these in the Works Cited. 23. randolph Paul Runyon, Reading Raymond Carver (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Uni- versity Press, 1992), 9.

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The Fabric of the First Edition i

The Fleurs of 1857

The last words of the Fleurs’ liminary “Au lecteur” [To the Reader]—

Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, —Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!

[You know him, reader, that subtle monster, —Hypocritical reader—my likeness, my brother!]

stick in the memory. For many or most readers they persist when the rest of the poem has been forgotten. But how many remember them—remember in particular the hypocrisy with which the reader is charged—when they read the following line in “Bénédiction”? “Avec hypocrisie ils jettent ce qu’il touche” [They hypocritically throw away what he touches] (l. 35). it is my contention that we should remember that hypocrisy when encountering this one because Baudelaire wants us to. We know that because, as I argued in my introduction, he approvingly quotes Liszt saying of Wagner’s music that it forces “notre méditation et notre mémoire à un si constant exercice” [our meditation and memory to such constant exercise] that the composer “arrache, par cela seul, l’action de la musique au domaine des vagues attendrissements et ajoute à ses charmes quelques-uns des plaisirs de l’esprit” [tears music’s effect away from the realm of vague sentiments and to its charms adds some of the pleasures of the mind] (OC II: 802), and he immediately goes on to cite Wagner’s music as a model

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for the poetic work. The ideal “œuvre poétique” would be like this music that makes demands on the listener’s memory for the sake of greater pleasures than that granted by the mere representation of sentiments, however touchingly conveyed. i invite you to read the Fleurs du mal and the Spleen de Paris as poetic works that force us to remember, and our minds to labor. I invite you to read their poems not for the sentiments that each may express (or appear to), for the world is full of commentaries that minister to that, but for pleasures from another domain. In the 1857 version of “Je te donne ces vers . . . ,” Baudelaire expressed the hope that he would at some future time “Fai[re] travailler un soir les cervelles humaines” (l. 4) (that in 1861 he would change “travailler” to “rêver” is one of many details I will invite you to join me in puzzling out). That time, I hope, is now.

“Au lecteur”/ “Bénédiction”

So why does Baudelaire immediately follow the hypocrisy of which he accuses his reader in the concluding lines of “Au lecteur” with another hypocrisy in “Bénédiction” [Blessing] (1857: 1)? It is a question even more worth asking when we realize that these are the only two instances of hypocrisy in the Fleurs du mal in either 1857 or 1861. Here is the passage again, at greater length: “Tous ceux qu’il veut aimer . . . / Avec hypocrisie . . . jettent ce qu’il touche, / Et s’accusent d’avoir mis leurs pieds dans ses pas” [All those he wants to love . . . / With hypocrisy . . . throw away all that he touches, / And accuse themselves of having stepped in his footsteps] (ll. 29, 35–36). Their hypocrisy is to pretend that he is so objectionable to them, so alien, that they must throw away whatever he has touched and are ashamed of having followed in his footsteps. But if they have followed in his steps, they are more like him than they want to admit. At this point their hypocrisy begins to resemble that of the reader in “Au lecteur”—if, as is likely, the reader’s hypocrisy is to pretend not to know “ce monstre,” Ennui: “Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, /—Hypocrite lecteur. . . . ” Especially if we exercise our memory once more and meditate on the detail that the Poet himself in “Bénédiction,” the man whom other men hypocritically pretend not to know (as Simon Peter pretended not to know Jesus—and elsewhere in the poem Baudelaire encourages us to think of the Poet as a sort of Jesus), is also called “ce monstre”: his mother, parodying Mary’s Magnificat, complains, “Puisque tu m’as choisie entre toutes les femmes / . . . / Et que je ne puis pas rejeter dans les flammes, / . . . ce monstre rabougri” [Because you have chosen me among all women / . . . / And I cannot cast into the flames, / . . . this stunted monster] (ll. 9, 11–12).

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So in both poems the hypocrisy is to claim not to know, not to have an intimate connection with, an entity called “ce monstre.” Yet with all this similarity the monsters themselves are not the same. One is Ennui; the other is the Poet. The two are not equivalent, nor should these two poems’ networks of similarities be read as suggesting they are. Neverthe- less, the parallels are there: what is going on? Why is it that such a network of associations—and there will be many more instances in the poems to come—passes from one poem to the next? It is as if the poems themselves were double-dealing hypocrites, pretending to be about one thing but in reality not, for each follows in the footsteps of its predecessor as the hypocrites in “Bénédiction” follow in those of the one they claim to reject. it is as if the poems were hypocrites in the original Greek sense of the word as well: actors in a play. In that play, in that context larger than their individual role, “Bénédiction” and “Au lecteur” act out an opposition between going down and going up, going to hell and going to heaven. In “Au lecteur” each day “vers l’Enfer nous descendons d’un pas” [toward Hell we descend a step] (l. 15); in “Bénédiction,” the Poet lifts his arms and his gaze “Vers le Ciel” [Toward Heaven] (l. 53), and near the end of the poem he knows he will attain it. And it is with parallel gaiety that both we and the Poet pursue our oppositely tending paths: in “Au lecteur,” we “rentrons gaîment dans le chemin bourbeux” [gaily return to the muddy path] (l. 7) that leads to hell; in “Bénédiction” the Poet, “gai comme un oiseau des bois” [gay as a forest bird] (l. 28), sings of the “chemin de la croix” [the path of the cross] (l. 26) as he makes his way “dans son pèleri- nage” [in his pilgrimage] (l. 27).

“Bénédiction”/ “Le Soleil”

In “Bénédiction,” the Poet “s’enivre de soleil” [is intoxicated with sun] (l. 22), and the heaven to which he aspires will offer him a diadem made entirely “de pure lumière, / Puisée au foyer saint des rayons primitifs” [of pure light, / Drawn from the holy source of the original rays] (ll. 73–74). His association with the sun persists in the poem that immediately followed this one in 1857, “Le Soleil” [The Sun] (1857: 2). The sun there is a “père nourricier” [nourishing father] (l. 9) who “remplit les cerveaux et les ruches de miel” [fills brains and hives with honey] (l. 12). As the Poet is made “gai” in “Bénédiction,” so too are those on whom the sun shines: he “rajeunit les porteurs de béquilles / Et les rend gais” [rejuvenates those who carry crutches / And makes them gay] (ll. 13–14). In contrast to Satan in “Au lecteur,” by whom “le riche métal de notre volonté / Est tout vaporisé” [the rich metal of our will / Is completely vaporized] (ll.

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11–12), the Sun “fait sévaporer les soucis vers le ciel” [makes cares evaporate toward the sky] (l. 11). Satan vaporizes our will in order to facilitate our descent “vers l’Enfer” [toward Hell] (l. 15), whereas God as the Sun draws the Poet in the other direction both in “Bénédiction” (“Vers le Ciel, où son œil voit un trône splendide, / Le Poète serein lève ses bras pieux” [Toward Heaven, where his eye sees a splendid throne, / The Poet, serene, lifts up his pious arms] [ll. 53–54]) and in “Le Soleil.” The Poet in “Béné- diction” becomes quasi-divine in becoming royal, receiving his “couronne mystique . . . ce beau diadème éblouissant et clair” [mystic crown . . . that beautiful diadem dazzling and bright] (ll. 67, 72); in “Le Soleil,” the solar divinity, conversely, becomes like a poet in behaving like a king: “Quand, ainsi qu’un poète, il descend dans les villes, / Il ennoblit le sort des choses les plus viles, / Et s’introduit en roi” [When, like a poet, he goes down to the cities, / He enobles the lot of the vilest things, / And enters as a king] (ll. 17–19).

“Le Soleil” / “Élévation”

The “nectar” of “Bénédiction” that became “miel” [honey] in “Le Soleil” becomes “une pure et divine liqueur” [a pure and divine liquor] (l. 12) in “Élévation” [Elevation] (1857: 3). Here the poet continues his ascent, going even “Par-delà le soleil” [beyond the sun] (l. 3) into what is called in “Bénédiction” the “foyer saint des rayons primitifs” [holy source of the original rays] (l. 74) and described in “Élévation” as “Le feu clair qui remplit les espaces limpides” [the bright fire that fills the limpid spaces] (l. 12). In “Le Soleil,” this nourishing and paternal Sun had the same filling effect when it “remplit les cerveaux et les ruches de miel” [fills brains and hives with honey] (l. 12). In “Élévation,” the Poet continues the ascent begun in “Bénédiction” and with the same gaiety: “Mon esprit, . . . / Tu sillonnes gaîment l’immensité profonde” [My mind , . . . / You gaily plow the deep immensity] (ll. 5, 7) of the upper reaches of the sky. It is worth recalling just how persistent a motif this has been: “nous rentrons gaî- ment dans le chemin bourbeux” [we gaily return to the muddy path] (l. 7) in “Au lecteur”; in “Bénédiction,” the Poet is “gai comme un oiseau” [gay as a bird] (l. 28); the Sun in “Le Soleil” makes the crippled “gais” [gay] (l. 14). As “soucis” [cares] in “Le Soleil” are made by the Sun to “s’évaporer . . . vers le ciel” [evaporate . . . toward the sky] (l. 11) in “Éléva- tion,” “les pensers, comme des alouettes, / Vers les cieux le matin prennent un libre essor” [thoughts, like larks, / Toward the sky in the morning take free flight] (ll. 17–18). That prepositional phrase has been nearly as persistent as the gaiety motif. In “Bénédiction” it was the Poet who made

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a pious gesture “Vers le Ciel” [toward Heaven] (l. 53), contrasting with those of us in “Au lecteur” who each day take a downward step “vers l’Enfer” [toward Hell] (l. 15).

“Élévation” / “Correspondances”

The last words of “Élévation”—“Heureux celui qui . . . comprend sans effort / Le langage des fleurs et des choses muettes!” [Happy he who . . . effortlessly understands / The language of flowers and mute things!] (ll. 15, 19–20)—are soon echoed in the “confuses paroles” [confused words] (l. 2) that emerge from nature’s living pillars at the beginning of “Correspondances” (1857: 4). Pichois, among others, acknowledges the connection, remarking that the language of flowers and mute things is itself the “correspondances” (OC I: 838n).

“Correspondances” / “J’aime le souvenir de ces époques nues . . . ”

Similarly, the end of “Correspondances” is what connects it to the next poem, “J’aime le souvenir de ces époques nues . . . ” [I love the memory of those naked epochs . . . ] (1857: 5). The tercets of “Correspondances” set up an opposition between two kinds of perfumes, those that are “frais comme des chairs d’enfants” [fresh like the flesh of children] (l. 9) and those that are “corrompus, riches et triomphants” [corrupt, rich, and tri- umphant] (l. 11). “J’aime le souvenir . . . ” sets up an opposition between humanity in its “sainte jeunesse” [holy youth] (l. 36), its “époques nues” [naked epochs] (l. 1), and the humanity of the nineteenth century that is so ugly and out of shape it has to wear clothes. There is a correspondence between these oppositions and those in “Correspondances.” At first glance that might seem unlikely, since Baudelaire so highly praises humanity’s youth and so damns its present, while condemning neither sort of perfume. Yet he has more to say about the present state of the human race:

Nous avons, il est vrai, nations corrompues, Aux peuples anciens des beautés inconnues: Des visages rongés par les chancres du cœur, Et comme qui dirait des beautés de langueur.

[It is true that we, corrupt nations, have Beauties unknown to the ancients:

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Faces eaten away by cankers of the heart, And what one might call beauties of languor.] (ll. 29–32)

Is he serious about this? Pichois thought not, saying, “this expression appears to be intended ironically” (OC I: 847). But F. W. Leakey argues that Baudelaire really did find “authentic beauty . . . in modern life.” In fact, Leakey finds this part of the poem so out of character with the rest that he suspects “these lines to have been intended originally for some quite separate poem,” and in his words, the result is “the signal inco- herence of the poem’s structure.” In the Salon de 1846, as he notes, Baudelaire wrote of “un élément nouveau, qui est la beauté moderne” [a new element, which is modern beauty] (OC II: 496). This comes at the end of a passage in which the poet finds other instances of modern beauty in the defiance of a government minister before his critics and in the courage of a condemned criminal before the guillotine. Pichois, who thinks Baudelaire was being ironic in praising modern beauty in the poem, did not think he was being ironic in the Salon, but in light of that apparent contradiction he argues that the poem must date from before 1846. The fact is, however, that the Fleurs du mal date from 1857 and are not, as Baudelaire emphasized in a letter to Alfred de Vigny, “un pur album” [merely an album] (Corr. II: 196). They are not just a collection of the poems he had written up until that date. Instead, the poems form “une ténébreuse et profonde unité” [a shadowy and deep unity]—to bor- row the language of “Correspondances” (l. 6)—of blending echoes. In “Correspondances” those echoes come “de loin” [from a distance] (l. 5). But in the Fleurs du mal they also come from right next door. The two kinds of perfumes, which, as Pichois aptly notes, form “a relationship of opposition between innocence and corruption” (OC I: 847), correspond with precision to the two ages of man, the “parfums frais comme des chairs d’enfants” [perfumes fresh as the flesh of children] to the fleshy childhood of the “époques nues” [naked epochs], to that innocent time when “sans mensonge et sans anxiété” [without lies and without anxiety] (l. 4) men and women were clothed only in their skin; and the other perfumes, “corrompus” [corrupted], correspond to the modern age of “nations corrompues” [corrupted nations] (l. 29), not simple but complex, not young but old. Pichois, without realizing it, put his finger on what unites the two poems, what makes one the mirror of the other (or at least the second the mirror of the tercets of the first), for the two

1. F. W. Leakey, Baudelaire and Nature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1969), 58–59. 2. richter likewise notes the connection between the “parfums . . . corrompus” and the “nations corrompues” (Baudelaire, 76).

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epochs, naked and clothed, are likewise to each other, as he says, in “a relationship of opposition between innocence and corruption.”

“J’aime le souvenir de ces époques nues . . . ” / “Les Phares”

Despite their different subjects—perfumes and human history—there is something that persists as we move forward from “Correspondances” and “J’aime le souvenir . . . ” The same phenomenon takes place within “Les Phares” [The Beacons] (1857: 6); in fact, it is the argument of the poem. From Rubens to da Vinci to Rembrandt to Michelangelo to Puget to Wat- teau to Goya to Delacroix, despite the varying subjects evoked by their artistic production (“malédictions, . . . blasphèmes, . . . plaintes, / . . . extases, . . . cris, . . . pleurs, . . . Te Deum” [curses, . . . blasphemies, . . . complaints, / . . . extasies, . . . cries, . . . tears, . . . Te Deums]), the narrator sees but a single “écho redit” [restated echo] (l. 35), a single “cri répété” [repeated cry] (l. 37), a single “ordre renvoyé” [order relayed] (l. 38), a single “long hurlement qui roule d’âge en âge” [long wail rolling from age to age] (l. 43). But at the same time as this assertion parallels the relationship of sameness-despite-difference that exists between “Correspondances” and “J’aime le souvenir . . . ” it is nevertheless the opposite of what takes place within the latter poem, for there is no continuity between the “époques nues” [naked epochs] and the corrupted present. Things were absolutely different then from what they are now. In other words, “Les Phares” and “J’aime le souvenir . . . ” are to each other as are the two ages in the latter: symmetrical opposites.

“Les Phares” / “La Muse malade”

But, continuing the sequence of oppositions, the narrator of “La Muse malade” [The Ailing Muse] (1857: 7) takes toward the two different ages of “J’aime le souvenir . . . ” an attitude akin to that expressed toward different yet continuous ages in “Les Phares,” expressing the wish that the pagan past and the sickly present could somehow coexist. In the tercets, he desires that, “exhalant l’odeur de la santé” [exhaling the odor of health], his Muse’s “sein de pensers forts fût toujours fréquenté” [breast be always frequented by strong thoughts] (ll. 10–11), that her

. . . sang chrétien coulât à flots rythmiques, Comme les sons nombreux des syllabes antiques,

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Où règnent tour à tour le père des chansons, Phoebus, et le grand Pan, le seigneur des moissons.

[. . . Christian blood flow in rhythmic waves, Like the measured sounds of ancient syllables, Where alternately reign the father of songs, Phebus, and the great god Pan, lord of harvests.] (ll. 11–14)

The idea of mixing the pagan with the Christian was already broached in “Les Phares” in the stanza devoted to Michelangelo: “lieu vague où l’on voit des Hercules / Se mêler à des Christs” [vague region where one sees Herculeses / Mix with Christs] (ll. 13–14). As Adam notes, both “La Muse malade” and “J’aime le souvenir . . . ” are based “on the opposition between a strong and healthy primitive epoch and the modern epoch, in which degenerate man falls into folly and horror. The modern muse is an ailing muse” (FM Adam, 283). Nevertheless, some of the details of the muse’s condition seem to come out of paintings described in “Les Phares”: in her coloration the narrator sees reflected

La folie et l’horreur, froides et taciturnes.

Le succube verdâtre et le rose lutin T’ont-ils versé la peur et l’amour de leurs urnes? Le cauchemar . . . T’a-t-il noyée . . . ?

Cold and taciturn madness and horror.

[The greenish succubus and the rosy elf, Have they poured your fear and love from their urns? The nightmare . . . Has it drowned you . . . ?] (ll. 4–7, 8)

The “cauchemar” recalls “Goya,—cauchemar” [Goya,—nightmare] (l. 25); the “folie” and the pouring recall Watteau, where “des lustres / . . . versent la folie à ce bal tournoyant” [chandeliers . . . pour madness onto this whirl- ing dance] (ll. 23, 24); the colors of “Le succube verdâtre et le rose lutin” [The greenish succubus and the rosy elf] (l. 5) recall colors prevalent in the stanza devoted to Delacroix: “lac de sang . . . / Ombragé par un bois de sapins toujours vert” [lake of blood . . . / Shaded by a forest of pines ever green] (ll. 29, 30). Commenting on these lines, Baudelaire drew out the

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importance of red and green as complementary colors (OC II: 595; noted by Pichois, OC I: 854n).

“La Muse malade” / “La Muse vénale”

While in “La Muse malade” the poet wants his muse to adapt her Chris- tian blood to pagan music, in “La Muse vénale” [The Venal Muse] (1857: 8) he acknowledges the latter’s obligation to sing Christian music: “Il te faut . . . / Chanter des Te Deum auxquels tu ne crois guères” [You have to . . . / Sing Te Deums in which you hardly believe] (ll. 9, 11). In a kind of chiasmus, Christian identity is combined in one poem with non- Christian (i.e., pagan) song, while in the other Christian song is combined with a non-Christian identity. The poems are opposed in that in “La Muse malade” the direction to be taken is from Christian to non-Christian, but in “La Muse vénale” it would be from non-Christian to Christian. apart from that, the two muses are remarkably similar. Both suffer or will suffer from the cold: the poet can see reflected in the skin (“ton teint” [your coloration] [l. 3]) of the ailing muse “froides” [cold] (l. 4) folly and horror; he asks the venal muse what she will do when January’s wind and snow arrive. He asks if the winter sky’s “nocturnes rayons” [nocturnal rays] (l. 6) can bring back to life her “épaules marbrées” [veined (like marble) shoulders] (l. 5), echoing the “visions nocturnes” [nocturnal visions] (l. 2) that gave the ailing muse her hollow-eyed look.

“La Muse vénale” / “Le Mauvais Moine”

Chilliness continues to be a problem in “Le Mauvais Moine” [The Bad Monk] (1857: 9), where ancient cloister walls “Étalaient en tableaux la sainte Vérité, / Dont l’effet rechauffant les pieuses entrailles / Tempé- raient la froideur de leur austérité” [Displayed in paintings the holy Truth, / Whose effect, warming pious entrails, / Tempered the coldness of their austerity] (ll. 2–4). That “rechauffant” recalls the “chauffer” of the preceding poem: “Auras-tu . . . / Un tison pour chauffer tes deux pieds violets?” [Will you have . . . / A log to warm your two violet feet?] (ll. 2, 4). In an intriguing inversion, what the cloister walls did when they “étalaient” [displayed] the holy Truth is what the poet sees his muse obliged to do: “étaler tes appas / Et ton rire trempé de pleurs qu’on ne voit pas” [display your charms / And your laughter soaked with tears they cannot see] (ll. 12–13), earning her living by amusing the vulgar. Thus, what is “étalé” [displayed]

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in “Le Mauvais Moine” is the holy Truth, but in “La Muse malade” it is a lie, whether it be the laughter with unseen tears that contradict it or the Te Deums in which the singer does not believe. belief versus nonbelief is at issue in “Le Mauvais Moine” as well, for the poet looks back to the age of belief, to “ces temps où du Christ floris- saient les semailles” [those times when what Christ sowed flourished] (l. 5), when a monk could be warmed by paintings that proclaimed a holy Truth. Alas, that was then and this is now. The poet is the bad monk of the title, unable to fulfill that role, his soul a tomb, an odious cloister where “Rien n’embellit les murs” [Nothing embellishes the walls] (l. 11). Apparently an unbelieving monk, since the paintings that are missing from his walls would be those depicting the holy Truth, he criticizes himself as well for being a “moine fainéant” [a do-nothing monk] (l. 12), and he asks himself when he will finally transform the spectacle of his misery into “Le travail de mes mains” [The work of my hands] (l. 14)—the work of poetic creation. Of course, he is doing that here, and each of these poems builds not only on the one that immediately precedes it but also on the one before that, and often on several before. As the Te Deums the venal muse must sing in the eighth poem (“La Muse vénale”) recall the Te Deums in the sixth (“Les Phares”)—“Ces extases, ses cris, ces pleurs, ces Te Deum, / Sont un écho” [These ecstasies, these cries, these tears, these Te Deums, / Are an echo] [ll. 34–35])—so too does the ninth poem (“Le Mauvais Moine”) repeat a theme essential to the seventh (“La Muse malade”), though it inverts it, too. It is the theme of an earlier, more vigorous age versus a sickly present (the theme as well of the fifth poem, “J’aime le souvenir . . . ”). The “Muse malade” lacks the “odeur de la santé” [fragrance of health] (l. 9) and the “pensers forts” [strong thoughts] (l. 10) of ancient pagan times, as the “mauvais cénobite” [bad cenobite] (l. 9) the poet is lacks the strong faith his predecessor monks had. The irony of it is that the muse’s weakness comes from her being too Christian (being afflicted with “sang chrétien”), whereas the poet’s comes from not being Chris- tian enough. Thanks to a consistent play of opposites from one poem to the next, it happens that every other poem in the sequence running from “J’aime le souvenir . . . ” to “Le Mauvais Moine” actually comes close to saying the same thing. In “J’aime le souvenir . . . ” (1857: 5), “La Muse malade” (1857: 7), and “Le Mauvais Moine” (1857: 9) there is a regret- table disparity between the healthy vigor of the past and the sickliness of the present. In “Les Phares” (1857: 6) and “La Muse vénale” (1857: 8) there is no such problem, either because the claim is made that artistic production from age to age has all been saying the same thing (in “Les Phares”) or because the past is simply not an issue (in “La Muse vénale”).

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“Le Mauvais Moine” / “L’Ennemi”

The theme is given a new formulation in “L’Ennemi” [The Enemy] (1857: 10), where vigor is to be found in the future, not the past. The poet asks if the new flowers of which he dreams “Trouveront dans ce sol lavé comme une grève / Le mystique aliment qui ferait leur vigueur” [Will find in this earth washed like a beach / The mystic food that would give them vigor] (ll. 10–11). The “fleurs nouvelles” are, of course, the Fleurs du mal, the poems that he hopes will grow in his storm-ravaged garden, once he has gone to work with “la pelle et les râteaux / Pour rassembler à neuf les terres inondées, / Où l’eau creuse des trous grands comme des tombeaux” [shovel and rakes, / To gather together anew the inundated grounds, / Where water hollows out holes as big as tombs] (ll. 6–8). In “Le Mauvais Moine” he found that “Mon âme est un tombeau” [My soul is a tomb] (l. 9). If he can fill in the tombs in the garden of his soul in “L’Ennemi,” and if he can find the mystical food that will nourish his dreamed-of new flowers, he will in effect achieve what seemed but a dubious hope in “Le Mau- vais Moine”: by the work of his hands (with shovel and rakes) to create the equivalent of what used to take place in those times when what Christ sowed flourished. These two poems trace the passage from the flowering of what Christ sowed to the flowers the poet dreams of writing.

“L’Ennemi” / “Le Guignon”

The “pelle” and “râteaux” [shovel and rakes] the poet must employ to make his garden grow, and those new flowers appear, are matched in “Le Guignon” [Rotten Luck] (1857: 11) by the “pioches” and “sondes” [picks and sounding lines (or drills)] (l. 11) that would have to be used to unearth “Maint joyeau” [Many a gem] that “dort enseveli / Dans les ténèbres et l’oubli” [sleeps buried / In shadows and oblivion] (ll. 9–10). Appropri- ately those gems in the first tercet are paralleled in the second by “Mainte fleur” that “épanche à regret / Son parfum doux . . . / Dans les solitudes profondes” [spreads, to its regret, / Its sweet perfume . . . / In deep solitudes] (ll. 12–14). Therefore, the “fleurs nouvelles” the poet dreams of producing by working the earth with shovel and rake in “L’Ennemi” are paralleled by the flowers that bloom unseen in the manner of jewels that can be brought to light by working with picks and sounding lines—or drills: “sondes” can mean either. In the word’s only other appearance, in “Le Balcon” [The Balcony] (1857: 34), it clearly means the former: “d’un gouffre interdit à nos sondes” [from an abyss forbidden to our sounding lines] (l. 27). To the extent that Baudelaire is reflecting his source,

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Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard,” the meaning is more likely to be the same as in “Le Balcon.” The relevant word in Gray’s poem is “unfathomed”: “Full many a gem of purest ray serene / The dark, unfathom’ed caves of ocean bear.” but that the gems may be buried under water is not without relevance to the garden in “L’Ennemi,” for it is under water, too, “les terres inon- dées . . . ce sol lavé comme une grève” [inundated terrain . . . earth washed like a beach] (ll. 7, 10). The work he must perform to restore the garden is enormous—Sisyphian, as he says in “Le Guignon,” where Art is long and Time is short. Time is short in “L’Ennemi,” too: “Le Temps mange la vie” [Time eats life] (l. 12), and Art and Time are thus at odds there as well, for if the “fleurs nouvelles” are to pass from dream to reality, there is work to be done. It is spadework in both poems, though in one garden dirt must be gathered together for the flowers to grow, while in the other the gems—that is, the flowers—must be dug up. The two poems offer competing versions of the origin of the Fleurs du mal: flowers cultivated versus flowers rescued from oblivion.

“Le Guignon” / “La Vie antérieure”

“La Vie antérieure “ [The Former Life] (1857: 12) offers a third origin. The flowers, which in “L’Ennemi” were something the poet could find a way to nourish in his rain-flooded garden, and which in “Le Guignon” were likened to gems awaiting discovery in an ocean cave, now become the poet himself, who inhabits a place he likens to an ocean cave:

J’ai longtemps habité sous de vastes portiques Que les soleils marins teignaient . . . Et que leurs grands piliers . . . Rendaient pareils, le soir, aux grottes basaltiques.

[I have long lived beneath vast porticoes That marine suns tinted . . . And made their tall pillars . . . Resemble, in the evening, basaltic grottoes.] (ll. 1–4)

And he is assisted by slaves “dont l’unique soin” [whose only task] is to “approfondir” [deepen] his “secret douloureux” [painful secret] (ll. 13, 14). Baudelaire’s word linkages underscore this conclusion: “d’approfondir / Le secret” in the second tercet of “La Vie antérieure” parallels “Son parfum doux comme un secret / Dans les solitudes profondes” [Its sweet

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perfume like a secret / In deep solitudes] (ll. 13–14) in the second tercet of “Le Guignon.” “Approfondir” means both to deepen and to get to the bottom of, to learn more about something by going deeper into it. In any case, the “secret” is deep, like the buried jewel, and like the flower’s perfume it is “secret.” The flowers and the gems in “Le Guignon” are far-off things the poet might come to possess by dint of hard work, whereas their equivalent in “La Vie antérieure” is within the poet himself.

“La Vie antérieure” / “Bohémiens en voyage”

“Bohémiens en voyage” [Traveling Gypsies] (1857: 13) offers yet another kind of flowering: “Cybèle . . . / Fait couler le rocher et fleurir le désert” [Cybele . . . / Makes water flow from the rock and the desert to flower] (ll. 11, 12) for the wandering tribe. The flowers in “Le Guignon” bloomed in a wilderness; similarly, flowers here spring up in a desert. The poet in “La Vie antérieure” had a past he recalled with sadness (“Le secret dolou- reux qui me faisait languir” [The painful secret that made me languish] [l. 14]); so too the Gypsy men, “Promenant sur le ciel des yeux appesantis / Par le morne regret des chimères absentes” [Gazing at the sky with eyes weighed down / By the doleful regret for absent chimera] (ll. 7–8). The parallel between their “regret” and the poet’s “secret” is corroborated by the rhyming linkage those words display in “Le Guignon”: “Mainte fleur épanche à regret / Son parfum doux comme un secret” [Many a flower spreads, to its regret, / Its sweet perfume like a secret] (ll. 12–13). The first thing we learn about the Gypsies—“La tribu prophétique aux prunelles ardentes” [The prophetic tribe with burning eyes] (l. 1)—is that they have fire in their eyes; so too did the poet in “La Vie antérieure,” where marine suns tinted the vast porticoes “de mille feux” [with a thousand fires] (l. 2) and those suns’ “couleurs” [colors] were reflected “par mes yeux” [by my eyes] (l. 8). The Gypsies stare at the sky (“Promenant sur le ciel des yeux appesantis”), paralleling the poet’s visual contact with the “couleurs du couchant” [colors of the setting sun] (l. 8). As his contemplation is given a musical accompaniment, “Les tout puissants accords” [The all-powerful harmonies] of the “riche musique” [rich music] (l. 7) of the ocean’s swell, so too is the travelers’ sky-gazing: “le grillon, / Les regardant passer, redouble sa chanson” [the cricket, / Seeing them pass, intensifies his song] (ll. 9–10). Nature smiles upon them, through the cricket and Cybele (who was similarly generous to the naked humanity of an earlier epoch in “J’aime le souvenir . . . ”). Baudelaire cannot count on receiving the same treat- ment, so the “fleurs nouvelles” he dreams of will have to come from his own toil.

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“Bohémiens en voyage” / “L’Homme et la mer”

“L’Homme et la mer” [The Man and the Sea] (1857: 14) combines elements from the two poems that precede it. As the poet did in “La Vie antérieure,” the protagonist here also stares at the sea; like the Gypsies, he is free, an “Homme libre” [free man], as the poem’s first words declare (its original title was “L’Homme libre et la mer” [The Free Man and the Sea]). Pichois calls freedom “a tie between” the two poems (OC I: 867n) and notes that Baudelaire “envies the freedom” that Gypsies enjoy (OC I: 864n). Like the poet in “La Vie antérieure,” the protagonist here (as well as the sea, of whom each is the other’s mirror reflection) has a secret: “Tant vous”—both the man and the sea—“êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!” [So jealous are you both to guard your secrets] (l. 12). Pichois is right to connect that line to the tercets of “Le Guignon” (OC I: 867n), where many a jewel lies buried (perhaps in a sea cave, as in Gray’s original) and many a flower spreads its sweet scent “comme un secret” [like a secret] in an unfrequented wilderness. “Homme, nul ne connaît le fond de tes abîmes; / O mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes” [Man, no one knows the depth of your abysses; / O sea, no one knows your intimate riches] (ll. 10–11)—though the poet, with the help of the naked slaves, seeks to get to the “fond” [depth] (in “approfondir” [l. 13]) of his secret.

“L’Homme et la mer” / “Don Juan aux enfers”

The theme of a musical accompaniment, appearing in “La Vie antérieure” as “Les tout puissants accords” of the ocean’s “riche musique” and in “Bohé- miens en voyage” as the cricket’s “chanson,” is transformed in “L’Homme et la mer” into an accompanying noise of complaint, the “bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage” [noise of that untamable wild complaint] (l. 8) produced, as in “La Vie antérieure,” by the ocean. In “Don Juan aux enfers” [Don Juan in Hell] (1857: 15) it returns as the “long mugisse- ment” [long moaning] that the seducer’s victims “Derrière lui traînaient” [Behind him were moaning] (l. 8) when Don Juan “descendit vers l’onde souterraine” [descended to the underground wave] (l. 1). His descent to the river that he will cross in Charon’s boat recombines the two elements of descent and water that were present in “L’Homme et la mer.” The sea there was a “gouffre” [abyss] (l. 4) into which, as the narrator says to his protagonist, “Tu te plais à plonger” [You love to plunge] (l. 5). The man in that poem goes down into the water; Don Juan goes down to the water. The man stares at the water: “La mer est ton miroir; tu contemples ton âme / Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame” [The sea is your mirror; you

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contemplate your soul / In the infinite unfolding of its wave] (ll. 2–3). Don Juan stares at the water, too, gazing down at the wake trailing the boat, paying no attention to anything else, to neither his victims displaying their breasts nor the dead wandering the shore, nor Sganarelle, nor Elvire: “le calme héros courbé sur sa rapière / Regardait le sillage et ne daignait rien voir” [the calm hero bent over his rapier / Gazed at the wake and did not deign to see anything] (ll. 19–20).

“Don Juan aux enfers” / “Châtiment de l’orgueil”

Those last two words of “Don Juan aux enfers” (“rien voir”) form a transition to “Chatiment de l’orgueil” [Punishment of Pride] (1857: 16), in which a theologian who loses his reason after boasting that he could have as easily attacked Jesus as exalted him wanders about “sans rien voir” [seeing nothing] (l. 23), oblivious to his surroundings. His obliviousness parallels Don Juan’s yet is its opposite, for the latter is aware of his fate and is intentionally oblivious: he deigns not to see. Both are punished, apparently by God’s hand. Their punishments are strangely similar: are their trans- gressions likewise? Lawler contends that both are guilty of the sin of pride (1997, 51). While this is obviously the case with the theologian, “trans- porté d’un orgueil satanique” [carried away by a Satanic pride] (l. 10), “Don Juan aux enfers” does not actually attribute pride to its protagonist. The only person so described is the “sombre mendiant, l’œil fier” [somber beggar with a prideful eye] (l. 3) who rows the boat, an allusion to the mendicant in Molière’s play, whom Don Juan tries to bribe into blasphem- ing God. The only descriptors attached to Don Juan are “fils audacieux” [brazen son] (l. 12), “époux perfide” [perfidious husband] (l. 14), and “calme héros” [calm hero] (l. 19). Molière’s Don Juan may be prideful, but we cannot say the same of Baudelaire’s. yet a closer look at the poems suggests another connection. What was the theologian saying when disaster struck?

« Jésus, petit Jésus! je t’ai porté bien haut! Mais si j’avais voulu t’attaquer au défaut De l’armure, ta honte égalerait ta gloire, Et tu ne serais plus qu’un fœtus dérisoire! » Immédiatement sa raison s’en alla.

[“Jesus, little Jesus! I carried you very high! But if I had wanted to attack you through the chink In your armor, your shame would equal your glory,

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And you would be nothing more than a pathetic fetus.” Immediately his reason left him.] (ll. 11–15)

The chink in the armor (in the manner of the one in the wall between Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream) provides an opening into the neighboring poem, for there too was armor: “Tout droit dans son armure, un grand homme de pierre / Se tenait à la barre” [Erect in his armor, a tall man of stone / Stood at the helm] (ll. 17–18). This is the Commander, who invited Don Juan to dinner and dragged him into hell. Thus the protagonist in both poems is brought to his downfall by someone wearing armor—the Commander in one poem, Jesus in the other. But of course Jesus did not really wear armor; he only does so in the theologian’s turn of phrase. But neither did he wear armor in Baudelaire’s probable source for this anecdote, the article by Saint-René Taillandier in the Revue des Deux Mondes of October 15, 1848, which Pichois quotes in its entirety (OC I: 870n). So it was Baudelaire who added it, evidently to make a connection to the immediately following “Don Juan aux enfers.” “Armure” can be found in no other poem in the Fleurs du mal. That he forges that link invites us to consider a possible analogy between one armor-clad character and the other. In attacking Jesus, the theologian was attacking God the Father, given the identity Christian theology posits between the two; Don Juan sinned against his father as well, who “avec un doigt tremblant / Montrait . . . / Le fils audacieux qui railla son front blanc” [with a trembling finger / Pointed out . . . / The brazen son who had mocked his white brow] (ll. 10–11, 12). The Commander is a father figure Don Juan does succeed in killing, though in the end the victim returns the favor. as Michel Quesnel writes in Baudelaire solaire et clandestin, “the Commander presents the figure of the punishing father who holds the tiller of Don Juan’s destiny” (135). Quesnel also notes, as we do, the close connection between these two poems: “‘Châtiment de l’orgueil’ follows close upon, is the consequence of, ‘Don Juan aux enfers,’ of the posthumous accusation made by Don Louis, of the silent menace of the Commander. The calm hero falls into a stupor, enveloped with solar grief: ‘Immédiatement sa raison s’en alla. / L’éclat de ce soleil d’un crêpe se voila’ [Immediately his reason left him. / The lustre of this sun veiled itself in crepe]” (Quesnel, 175–76). The “silent hero” is Don Juan; the man whose reason leaves him is the theologian: Quesnel sees, as we do, that it is the same protagonist. Like us, he sees the sun in Les Fleurs du mal as the father.

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“Châtiment de l’orgueil” / “La Beauté”

The woman personifying Beauty in “La Beauté” [Beauty] (1857: 17) asserts that her breast inspires in the poet “un amour / Éternel et muet ainsi que la matière” [a love / As eternal and mute as matter] (ll. 3–4). As Richter observes, this is in “contradiction with the normal nature of the ‘poet,’ which is that of expressing himself, of speaking” (168). If a poet is consigned to silence, does he cease to be a poet? While this apparent contradiction may remain a mystery as long as we confine our attention to this poem, by reading the Fleurs du mal as itself a poem, and thus enlarging our view to take in the immediately preceding “Châtiment de l’orgueil,” we can see that the poet’s fate, however strange, does parallel the theologian’s. For he too was consigned to silence: “Le silence et la nuit s’installèrent en lui” [Silence and night took up residence in him] (l. 20). The poet’s muteness was like that of matter; so too the theologian’s. He became like a thing: “Sale, inutile et laid comme une chose usée” [Dirty, useless, and ugly, like a used-up thing] (l. 25). enlarging our view a little more to take in the fate of Don Juan, that in its own way parallels the theologian’s, and recalling that the seducer’s downfall was the result of his confrontation with an “homme de pierre” [man of stone] (l. 17), we can see the relevance of Beauty’s self-description as “un rêve de pierre” [a dream of stone] (l. 1). A woman of stone, and with breasts of stone, she is to the poet as the man of stone is to Don Juan—and as a punishing God is to the theologian. Yet while she does to the poet what God does to the theologian to the extent that she transforms him into a mute thing, in doing so she is not exacting punishment but inspiring love. Baudelaire makes an interesting change to the poem in the 1861 edition that has the effect of creating an opposing symmetry between what happens to the theologian and what happens to the poet. In line 13 “les étoiles” become “toutes choses,” thereby setting up a resonance between the penultimate line in “La Beauté” and the penultimate line in “Châtiment de l’orgueil”: “Sale, inutile et laid comme une chose usée” [dirty, useless, and ugly, like a used- up thing]. To counter this “laid[e] . . . chose” [ugly . . . thing] (and perhaps God’s making it so), Beauty’s response is to make “toutes choses plus belles” [all things more beautiful] (l. 13). Most of the changes made in 1861 to poems surviving from the 1857 edition are intended, as we will see in the next chapter, to allow them to create new connections to new neighbors in the sequence; in this case, however, the change (from “qui font les étoiles plus belles” to “qui font toutes choses plus belles”) serves to add an additional connection to poems that were already side by side.

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“La Beauté” / “L’Idéal”

Beauty is thematic in both “La Beauté” and “L’Idéal” [The Ideal] (1857: 18), though it is approached in different ways. In “La Beauté” Beauty is depicted as a woman with certain characteristics: she is like a dream of stone; she unites “un cœur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes” [a heart of snow with the whiteness of swans] (l. 6); she hates “le mouvement qui déplace les lignes” [movement that displaces lines] (l. 7); her “grandes attitudes” [grand poses] are borrowed “aux plus fiers monuments” [from the proudest of monuments] (ll. 9, 10). In “L’Idéal” the poet speaks of those “beautés” [beauties] that are not to his taste, and then of those who are. Certain “beautés de vignettes” [vignette beauties] (l. 1) would never satisfy a heart like his, nor would certain anemic “beautés d’hôpital” [hospital beauties] (l. 6), roses too “pâles” [pale] (1. 7) to approach his “rouge idéal” [red ideal] (l. 8). But Lady Macbeth, “Rêve d’Eschyle éclos au climat des autans” [dream of Aeschylus born in a stormy clime] (l. 11) would, and so also “toi, grande Nuit, fille de Michel-Ange, / Qui tors paisiblement dans une pose étrange / Tes appas façonnés aux bouches des Titans!” [you, great Night, daughter of Michelangelo, / Who peacefully twist into a strange pose / Your charms shaped by Titans’ mouths!] (ll. 12–14). On the one hand, these two visions of beauty seem to be at odds. Baudelaire detests the whiteness—the pallor—of the hospital beauties, yet the Beauty he admires in the other poem is doubly white, combining snow with the whiteness of swans. As Richter observes, the Ideal in the second poem hardly “coincides with the image that Beauty has just given of herself” in the first (175), his “red ideal” being “certainly quite different” from her “cold white beauty” (179). but on the other hand, Beauty’s stony breasts are matched by Night’s. For Night, a statue in the Medici Chapel in Florence, really is made of stone, and Baudelaire draws our attention to her breasts. He calls them “appas” [charms], but then he says they were fashioned by (or for) the mouths of Titans. In Greek mythology, Night is the mother of the Titans. The latter, able to take their nourishment there, have better luck than the poets in “La Beauté,” who bruise themselves in vain against a stony breast. Michelangelo depicts Night asleep, giving new resonance to the “rêve de pierre” [dream of stone] in which Beauty is enveloped in “La Beauté,” for if Night is asleep she may indeed be dreaming. Yet the first two-thirds of the phrase “rêve de pierre” is evoked as well in the other feminine ideal, Lady Macbeth: “Rêve dEschyle” [dream of Aeschylus]. In no other poem of the Fleurs du mal does the phrase “rêve” (as a noun) + “de” appear. Thus do the two feminine ideals, Lady Macbeth and Night, seem to emerge from the “rêve de pierre” that in “La Beauté” Beauty proclaims herself to be.

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beauty’s assertion that she hates “le mouvement qui déplace les lignes” [movement that displaces lines] has proved puzzling to readers (e.g., does the “qui” introduce a restrictive or nonrestrictive clause?), but we may miss its full meaning if we neglect to consider how it resonates with Michelan- gelo’s statue. Twisted into a strange pose (“Qui tors paisiblement dans une pose étrange / Tes appas”), its lines are displaced from where they would have been in a more natural position. The body, despite its slumber, is under tension, movement frozen in stone.

“L’Idéal” / “La Géante”

At the end of “La Géante” [The Giantess] (1857: 19) Baudelaire effects an exact reversal of the situation with which “L’Idéal” concludes. There, we were told of giants—the Titans—at the breasts of a nongiant; but now the narrator wants to sleep beneath the breasts of a giantess: “Dormir non- chalamment à l’ombre de ses seins, / Comme un hameau paisible au pied d’une montagne” [To sleep nonchalantly in the shadow of her breasts, / Like a peaceful hamlet at the foot of a mountain] (ll. 13–14). Despite the reversal, the sleepers are peaceful in both poems: Night sleeps in a strange, twisting pose, but “paisiblement” so; the poet wishes he were a “hameau paisible” beneath those breasts. These are the only appearances of either word in either the 1857 or the 1861 edition. The other female figure in “La Géante,” Mother Nature, recalls the other feminine ideal, Lady Macbeth; both are “puissante” [powerful], a word that appears (in the feminine singular) only in these two poems: Lady Macbeth was “puissante au crime” [powerful in crime] (l. 10); in an earlier era Nature “en sa verve puissante” [in her powerful vigor] (l. 1) gave birth to monsters such as the giantess. In a perhaps ironic reversal, while in both poems there are two women, one a mother (Night, Mother Nature), the other not, it is the distinctly unmotherly Lady Macbeth who is linked by her “puissance” to the mother in “La Géante.”

“La Géante” / “Les Bijoux”

“Les Bijoux” [The Jewels] (1857: 20) followed “La Géante” in 1857, though readers today find it relegated to “Les Épaves,” together with other

3. my statements about word frequency in the 1861 edition are based on Robert T. Cargo’s A Concordance to Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965) and those about the 1857 edition by doing word searches on my computer of the transcribed text.

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poems Baudelaire was obliged to delete because of their alleged obscenity. Its third stanza could be read as a retelling of the last tercet of “La Géante” (or vice versa). In both passages, the poet is looking from below at a woman (the giantess, his jewel-bedecked mistress) who is herself lying down. He imagines that the heat of the sun makes the giantess “s’étendre à travers la campagne” [stretch out across the countryside] (l. 12), and that he can take shelter beneath her breasts like a hamlet “au pied d’une montagne” [at the foot of a mountain] (l. 14). In “Les Bijoux” the poet’s mistress is “couchée . . . / Et du haut du divan elle souriait d’aise / À mon amour profond et doux comme la mer / Qui vers elle montait comme vers sa falaise” [lying down . . . / And from the top of the couch she smiled with pleasure / At my love, deep and gentle as the sea / That toward her ascended as if toward its cliff] (ll. 9, 10–12). The giantess is a mountain; the mistress is a cliff. He is looking up at the giantess because her size makes her so much higher; in “Les Bijoux” he appears to be on the floor, gazing up at the woman stretched out on the couch. both the giantess and the woman on the couch are monstrous, though in different ways. Because of her gigantism, the former is one of Nature’s “enfants monstrueux” [monstrous children] (l. 2). The latter seems the product of some new arrangement, male from the waist up, female from the waist down: “Je croyais voir unis par un nouveau dessin / Les hanches de l’Antiope au buste d’un imberbe” [I believed I was seeing, by some new design, / The hips of an Antiope united with the chest of a beardless youth] (ll. 25–26). Her skin is of a “teint fauve et brun . . . couleur d’ambre” [tawny and brown tint . . . amber-colored] (ll. 28, 32), and consequently most scholars believe that the poem refers to Jeanne Duval, the poet’s mulatto mistress. But from the drawings he made of Duval, as well as the testimony of others (including Nadar, who had been her lover before Baudelaire), we know she was not flat-chested. Adam at one point cites the “buste d’un imberbe” as a reason for concluding that the poem is not about her (432)—though, strangely, elsewhere he says that it is (FM Adam, 304). Yet the poem is even in contradiction with itself this regard, for two stanzas earlier, she does have breasts: “son ventre et ses seins, ces grappes de ma vigne, // S’avançaient plus câlins que les anges du mal, / Pour troubler le repos où mon âme était mise” [her belly and her breasts, those grape-clusters of my vine, // Came forward, more tempting than the angels of evil, / To disturb the repose of my soul] (ll. 20–22). Although not therefore entirely in harmony with itself, “Les Bijoux” is by this very lack of harmony harmonizing with “La Géante.” For in both poems the

4. Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler, Baudelaire (Paris: Julliard, 1987), 181.

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woman who occupies the speaker’s attention is a monstrosity. In other words, “Les Bijoux” can really only be understood in the context of “La Géante.”

“Les Bijoux” / “Parfum exotique”

Jeanne Duval is generally thought to be the inspiration for “Parfum exotique” [Exotic Perfume] (1857: 21), as well as for the next several poems. But the kinds of interrelationships we are discovering here between poems are independent of any common referent. In “Parfum exotique” the narrator breathes in the scent of his mistress’s breast, and in his imagination he is transported to a tropical harbor. This poem and its predecessor are each the other’s complement in this sense: In “Parfum exotique” he imagines seeing what in “Les Bijoux” he actually does see. The inhabitants of his imagined island are “Des hommes dont le corps est mince et vigoureux, / Et des femmes dont l’œil par sa franchise étonne” [Men whose bodies are thin and vigorous, / And women whose eyes astonish by their frankness] (ll. 7–8). That male slenderness had already been glimpsed in the “buste d’un imberbe” [chest of a beardless youth] (l. 26) and that frankness in a woman’s eyes when he saw her “yeux fixés sur moi” [eyes fixed on me] (l. 13) with their “candeur unie à la lubricité” [candor combined with lust] (l. 15). “Parfum exotique” blends two sensory perceptions of which one is sound: “Pendant que le parfum des verts tamariniers . . . / Se mêle dans mon âme au chant des mariniers” [While the perfume of green tamarind trees . . . / Blends in my soul with the song the sailors sing] (ll. 12, 14); “Les Bijoux” also blends sound with another sense: “ses bijoux sonores” [her sonorous jewels] (l. 2) make a “bruit vif et moqueur . . . et j’aime avec fureur / Les choses où le son se mêle à la lumière” [a lively and mocking noise . . . and I passionately love / Things in which sound blends with light] (ll. 5, 7–8). The expression “se mêle” is rare in the Fleurs du mal, linking two senses only in these two poems. When the narrator in “Parfum exotique” shuts his eyes and inhales her odor, he tells us, “Je vois se dérouler des rivages heureux” [I see happy shores glide past] (l. 3), with their fruited trees, slender men, and candid feminine eyes. In “Les Bijoux” images also pass before his eyes, but they are images of the woman herself: “son bras et sa jambe, et sa cuisse et ses reins . . . / Passaient devant mes yeux” [her arm and her leg, her thigh and her loins . . . / Passed before my eyes] (ll. 17, 19). Although in both poems the images simply unfold, the situations are opposed, for in one his eyes are open and in the other closed.

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“Parfum exotique” / “Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne . . . ”

In “Parfum exotique” the poet travels great distances, all the way to a tropical isle, transported by the scent of his mistress’s breast: “Guidé par ton odeur vers de charmants climats” [Guided by your odor toward charming climates] (l. 9). But in “Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne . . . ” [I adore you as much as the nocturnal vault] (1857: 22) just the opposite happens: he wants to travel great distances but cannot, and his mistress is far away. In “Parfum exotique” he is lying by her side, accompanied by her scent in his imaginary voyage; but in “Je t’adore . . . ” she flees, increasing the distance between herself and him:

. . . tu me fuis, Et . . . tu me parais, ornement de mes nuits, . . . ironiquement accumuler les lieues Qui séparent mes bras des immensités bleues.”

[ . . . you flee me, And . . . you seem, O ornament of my nights, . . . ironically to accumulate the leagues That separate my arms from the blue immensities.] (ll. 3–6)

“Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne . . . ” / “Tu mettrais l’univers entier dans ta ruelle . . . ”

In both “Je t’adore . . . ” and “Tu mettrais l’univers entier dans ta ruelle . . . ” [You would put the whole universe in your bedroom] (1857: 23) the speaker complains that his mistress puts vast distances between herself and him. In “Je t’adore . . . ” she piles up leagues separating him on earth from the blue immensities of the nocturnal vault where she is found; in “Tu mettrais l’univers . . . ” she puts the entire universe between the two of them. By “l’univers entier” he means the whole earthly world of men, rivals for his place in her bed. But the term “universe” clearly also evokes the astronomical context of the preceding poem, with its nocturnal vault and blue immensities. Pichois argues that the “ornement de mes nuits” [ornament of my nights] (l. 4) in “Je t’adore . . . ” is the moon (OC I: 882n). Since the moon borrows its light from the sun, this would seem to be echoed in the criticism the speaker levels at his mistress in “Tu mettrais l’univers . . . ” that “Tes yeux illuminés . . . / Usent insolemment d’un pouvoir emprunté”

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[Your luminous eyes . . . / Insolently use a borrowed power] (ll. 5, 7). The two poems are opposed in an ironic way. In “Je t’adore . . . ” the narrator loves her because she is cruel: “je chéris, ô bête implacable et cruelle, / Jusqu’à cette froideur par où tu m’es plus belle!” [I cher- ish, O implacable and cruel beast, / Even this coldness by which are you more beautiful!] (ll. 9–10). In the other poem, her cruelty is what he does not like about her: “Femme impure! L’ennui rend ton âme cruelle. . . . / Machine aveugle et sourde en cruautés féconde!” [Impure woman! Ennui makes your soul cruel. . . . / Blind and deaf machine abounding in cruel- ties] (ll. 2, 9). The poems are precisely opposed in another way, too: in “Je t’adore . . . ” the speaker devours her—“je grimpe aux assauts, / Comme après un cadavre un choeur de vermisseaux” [I climb to the attack, / Like a choir of worms on a corpse] (ll. 7–8)—but in “Tu mettrais l’univers . . . ” she devours him: “Pour exercer tes dents à ce jeu singulier, / Il te faut chaque jour un cœur au ratelier” [To exercise your teeth at this singular game, / You need each day a heart on the rack] (ll. 3–4).

“Tu mettrais l’univers entier dans ta ruelle . . . ” / “Sed non satiata”

The woman addressed in “Sed non satiata” [Yet Not Sated] (1857: 24) is insatiable, but so is the woman in “Tu mettrais l’univers . . . ” who would welcome the universe to her bed and needs a new heart to consume daily. An obvious topical continuity like that is of less interest, however, than that provided by a fire-in-the-eyes motif. The passage “Tes yeux illuminés ainsi que des boutiques / Et des ifs flamboyants dans les fêtes publiques” [Your eyes lit up like shop windows / And flaming trees in public festivals] (ll. 5– 6) in “Tu mettrais l’univers . . . ” caught our attention because the narrator goes on to remark that those eyes shine with a borrowed power, which constitutes a parallel to the moon (as the “ornement de mes nuits”) to which the woman in “Je t’adore . . . ” is likened. But this passage is itself echoed in “Sed non satiata”: “Par ces deux grands yeux noirs, soupiraux de mon âme, / Ô démon sans pitié, verse-moi moins de flamme” [Through those two big black eyes, cellar windows of my soul, / O pitiless demon, pour for me less flame ] (ll. 9–10). Note in particular how “flamboyants” returns as “flamme.” Note as well that “Tes yeux” in “Tu mettrais l’univers . . . ” is also matched in “Sed non satiata,” but at a moment when Baudelaire is saying just the opposite, not that her eyes are fire but that they are water: “Tes yeux sont la citerne où boivent mes ennuis” [Your eyes are the well where my ennuis drink] (l. 8). It is in the very next line that he asks for less flame from those eyes. To the contradiction between her eyes as water and as

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fire must be added the contradiction between the fact that in “Tu mettrais l’univers . . . ” their fire is borrowed, but the flame in “Sed non satiata” is native to her identity as a creature of hell. She is a “démon” (l. 10), the speaker alludes to “l’enfer de ton lit” [the hell of your bed] (l. 14), and he complains that he cannot be expected to play the River Styx to her hell: “Je ne suis pas le Styx pour t’embrasser neuf fois” [I am not the Styx who can embrace you nine times] (l. 11). Fire is second nature to her, which was hardly the case with the woman whose eyes burn with a power not her own. From the way in which these two poems are at odds with each other, we should conclude that they refer to no reality beyond themselves, despite whatever role Jeanne Duval may have played in their inspiration. Never- theless, it is apparent that they do refer not just each to itself but each to the other, “Tes yeux . . . flamboyants” to “Tes yeux . . . de flamme.” The reality beyond themselves has less to do with Jeanne Duval than with the intratextual connections of the whole volume. As Pichois remarks in a note to “Tu mettrais l’univers . . . ,” “to want at any cost that a poem situated between two inspired by Jeanne should of necessity have been inspired by her is to forget that she is but a pretext and that the poet has the absolute right to organize his poems according to a thematic order or according to the needs of linkage [les besoins de l’enchaînement]—whether consecutiveness [consécution] (as here) or contrast” (OC I: 883–84n). It is becoming increasingly evident that in the Fleurs’ enchaînement consecutiveness and contrast are constantly present.

“Sed non satiata” / “Avec ses vêtements ondoyants et nacrés . . . ”

The same conclusion (that the poems are more about intratext than pretext) can be drawn from what Baudelaire does to the River Styx image when it returns, transformed, in “Avec ses vêtements ondoyants et nacrés . . . ” [With her undulating, pearly garments . . . ] (1857: 25). In “Avec ses vête- ments . . . ” the river repeatedly encircles hell, like the serpents looping around a pole in “Avec ses vêtements . . . ”: “ces longs serpents que les jongleurs sacrés / Au bout de leurs bâtons agitent en cadence” [those long serpents that sacred jugglers / Shake in rhythm at the end of their poles] (ll. 3–4). But who is doing the encircling is just the opposite in one poem from who it is in the other. Even though he refuses to behave like the Styx—“Je ne suis pas le Styx pour t’embrasser neuf fois” [I am not the Styx who can embrace you nine times] (l. 11)—to do so at this juncture is to play the masculine role, as Pichois explains: the line alludes to a passage in Ovid’s Amores about satisfying a woman nine times in one night,

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and possibly also to Victor Hugo’s allegedly accomplishing the same feat as related to Sainte-Beuve, who Pichois believes told it to Baudelaire (OC I: 886n). But the serpents around a pole play the female role, for it is to them that the woman in the other poem is compared: “Même quand elle marche, on croirait qu’elle danse, / Comme ces longs serpents . . . ” [Even when she walks, you would think she was dancing, / Like those long serpents . . . ] (ll. 2–3). This is consistent with what Baudelaire writes in the prose poem “Le Thyrse” [The Thyrsus] in Le Spleen de Paris, where the flowers entwined around the staff in the thyrsus are “l’élément féminin exé- cutant autour du mâle ses prestigieuses pirouettes” [the feminine element performing around the male its prestigious pirouettes] (OC I: 336). There is another role, likewise connected to hell, that the speaker in “Sed non satiata” refuses to play: “Hélas! et je ne puis, Mégère libertine, / Pour briser ton courage et te mettre aux abois, / Dans l’enfer de ton lit deve- nir Proserpine!” [Alas! Nor can I, libertine Megera, / To break your spirit and bring you to bay, / In the hell of your bed become Proserpine!] (ll. 12–14). Adam writes of the Proserpine allusion, “one can hardly make any sense of this line unless it means that this woman was no less avid for women’s embraces than men’s” (FM Adam, 309)—only by making love to her as a woman could the speaker satisfy this Megera. That interpretation finds support in “Avec ses vêtements . . . ,” where the woman displays “La froide majesté de la femme stérile” [The cold majesty of the sterile woman] (l. 14). For sterility in Les Fleurs du mal is associated with feminine homosexuality, in both “Lesbos,” where Lesbian lust is a “stérile volupté” [sterile pleasure] (l. 17), and “Femmes damnées: À la pâle clarté . . . ” [Damned Women: In the pale brightness . . . ], where it is an “âpre stérilité” [bitter sterility] (l. 97).

“Avec ses vêtements ondoyants et nacrés . . . ” / “Le Serpent qui danse”

The connections between “Avec ses vêtements ondoyants et nacrés . . . ” (1857: 25) and “Le Serpent qui danse” [The Dancing Serpent] (1857: 26) are startlingly obvious, so much so that Adam concludes that in these two poems Baudelaire “is treating the same subject as the former, seeking to redo, in a different rhythm, what had first appeared in sonnet form” (FM Adam, 310). Pichois agrees, except to note that 26 concludes on a more positive note than 25 (OC I: 888n). Numerous elements of lines 2–4 of 25—“Même quand elle marche, on croirait qu’elle danse, / Comme ces longs serpents que les jongleurs sacrés / Au bout de leurs bâtons agitent en cadence” [Even when she walks, you would think she was dancing, / Like those long serpents that sacred jugglers / Shake in rhythm at the end of

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their poles]—reappear in 26’s fifth (and central) stanza: “À te voir marcher en cadence . . . / On dirait un serpent qui danse / Au bout d’un bâton” [To see you walk in rhythm, . . . / One would say [you were] a serpent dancing / At the end of a pole] (ll. 17, 19–20). Specifically: (1) “quand elle marche” becomes “À te voir marcher”; (2) “on croirait” becomes “On dirait”; (3) “qu’elle danse” becomes “qui danse”; (4) “ces longs serpents” become “un serpent”; (5) “Au bout de leurs bâtons” becomes “Au bout d’un bâton” (the only combinations of “Au bout de” + “bâton[s]” in the volume); (6) “en cadence” repeats as “en cadence” (the only appearances of “cadence”). In addition, as Richter remarks, the skin of the woman in “Le Serpent qui danse,” like a serpent’s, is “Comme une étoffe vacillante” [Like a swaying cloth] that is seen to “Miroiter” [Shimmer], a theme “already present in the ‘vêtements ondoyants et nacrés’ of the poem before” (264). The “étoffe” recalls “vêtements,” “vacillante” parallels “ondoyants,” and “Miroiter” evokes the glisten of “nacrés.” yet the two poems take this nearly identical image and go in different directions with it. The woman in “Avec ses vêtements . . . ” is spoken of in the third person; the other is addressed as “tu.” The woman in 25 is unap- proachable, “Insensible . . . / Elle se développe avec indifférence” [Insensi- tive . . . She unfolds with indifference] (ll. 6, 8); she is an “ange inviolé” [unviolated angel] combined with “un sphinx antique” [an ancient sphinx] (l. 11), displaying “La froide majesté de la femme stérile” [The cold majesty of the sterile woman] (l. 14). The narrator seems never to have been able to make love to her. But the woman in 26 is kissable: at her lips “Je crois boire un vin de Bohème” [I think I’m drinking Bohemian wine] (l. 33). Instead of indifferent, she is merely “indolente” [indolent] (l. 1), showing “mollesse” [lethargy] (l. 23) and “paresse” [laziness] (l. 21). She is neither ancient nor majestic, neither a sphinx nor sterile, but childlike, with a “tête d’enfant” [head of a child] (l. 22). her eyes, however, are “deux bijoux froids où se mêle / L’or avec le fer” [two cold jewels where blends / Gold with iron] (ll. 15–16). They thus recall the eyes of the woman before, whose “yeux polis sont faits de minéraux” [polished eyes are made of minerals] (l. 9). And the line “Où tout n’est qu’or, acier, lumière et diamants” [Where all is but gold, steel, light, and diamonds] (l. 12), especially its “or” and “acier,” anticipates the combination in the childlike woman’s eyes of “or” with “fer.” Yet that line refers not to the eyes of the first but to her whole being: “cette nature étrange et symbolique / Où l’ange inviolé mêle au sphinx antique, // Où tout n’est qu’or, acier . . . ” [this strange and symbolic nature / Where the unviolated angel blends with the ancient sphinx, // Where all is but gold, steel . . . ] (ll. 10–12). It is only the eyes of the woman in “Le Serpent qui danse” that are cold, while the woman in “Avec ses vêtements . . . ” is

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completely so, in her “froide majesté.”

“Le Serpent qui danse” / “Une charogne”

Through her eyes as well as her capacity to resemble a serpent on a pole, the woman in “Le Serpent qui danse” resembles the woman in “Avec ses vêtements . . . ,” but in every other respect she differs from her predecessor in the sequence, for she is not ancient but childlike, not indifferent but indolent, not unattainable but embraced. To understand this apparent contradiction we need to take in the larger picture the sequence provides by looking at the next poem, “Une charogne” [A Carcass] (1857: 27), for answers. There, the narrator asks his mistress if she remembers the summer morning they were walking down a path and encountered a rotting carcass covered with flies and worms.

Les mouches bourdonnaient sur ce ventre putride, D’où sortaient de noirs bataillons De larves qui coulaient comme un épais liquide le long de ces vivants haillons.

Tout cela descendait, montait comme une vague, Ou s’élançait en pétillant

[The flies hummed on that putrid belly, From which emerged black battalions Of larvae flowing like a thick liquid The length of those living tatters.

All of that was falling, rising like a wave, Or shooting forth as it sparkled] (ll. 17–22)

Now consider the description of another rising liquid, in the last two stanzas of “Le Serpent qui danse”:

Comme un flot grossi par la fonte Des glaciers grondants, Quand ta salive exquise monte au bord de tes dents,

Je crois boire un vin de Bohème,

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amer et vainqueur, Un ciel liquide qui parsème D’étoiles mon cœur!

[Like a stream swollen by the melting Of rumbling glaciers, When your exquisite saliva rises To the edge of your teeth,

I think I am drinking Bohemian wine bitter and conquering, A liquid sky that sprinkles my heart with stars!] (ll. 29–36)

The “épais liquide” [thick liquid] on the carcass was preceded by the “ciel liquide” [liquid sky] in his lover’s mouth, in the only two appearances of “liquide” in the 1857 Fleurs du mal. The liquid in “Le Serpent qui danse” “monte” [rises] “Comme un flot” [Like a stream]; the liquid in “Une charogne” “montait comme une vague” [was rising like a wave]. The saliva is likened to a stream “grossi” [swollen] by glaciers melting—from the heat, presumably of the sun; the sun causes the carcass to swell: “Le soleil rayonnait sur cette pourriture” [The sun shone on this putrefaction], with the result that the body expanded, “enflé d’un souffle vague” [swollen with a vague breath]. Her saliva is like wine that scatters stars, recalling Dom Pérignon’s exclamation in the seventeenth century when he accidentally invented champagne, “Je bois des étoiles!” [I’m drinking stars!]; the “liquide” on the carcass was effervescent, too: “s’élançait en pétillant” [was shooting forth as it sparkled]. “Une charogne” becomes a carpe diem poem when the speaker tells his mistress, “vous serez semblable à cette ordure” [you will be like this rottenness] (l. 37) after death. Yet the carcass was already like a sexual woman the first moment we saw it: “Les jambes en l’air, comme une femme lubrique” [Its legs in the air, like a lewd woman] (l. 5). This overturned woman parallels the nearly overturned vessel to which the narrator of “Le Serpent qui danse” compares his mistress:

5. i am indebted to Christopher Hensey, proprietor of The Main Street Gourmet in Oxford, Ohio, for reminding me of what Dom Pérignon said. Mallarmé alludes to it in “Aumône”: “l’aurore est un lac de vin d’or / Et tu jures avoir au gosier les étoiles!” [dawn is a lake of golden wine / And you swear you have stars in your throat!] (ll. 17–18).

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ton corps se penche et s’allonge Comme un fin vaisseau Qui roule bord sur bord, et plonge Ses vergues dans l’eau

[your body leans and stretches out Like a fine ship Pitching from side to side, and plunging Its spars into the sea] (ll. 25–28)

as we move from “Avec ses vêtements . . . ” to “Le Serpent qui danse” and then to “Une charogne,” we pass from an unattainable woman to an attainable one to one who goes beyond being attainable to lubriciously inviting love, and the passage is gradual in that each of the women (and more than that, each of the poems), despite their differences, has numerous elements in common with the preceding one. And we discover new meaning in passages that seemed strange in themselves, such as the praise of saliva in one poem and the effervescence of putrefaction in another, when we realize that each is the hidden half of the other, in the larger poem that Baudelaire always insisted that the Fleurs du mal was. Finally, we realize that the carpe diem motif (as in “vous serez semblable à cette ordure”) applies to the woman in “Le Serpent qui danse” as much as it does to the speaker’s companion in “Une charogne.” In fact, “vous serez semblable à . . . ” [you will be like . . . ] takes on another meaning in the context of the sequence, for the woman in “Le Serpent qui danse” is not yet but will be like the carcass once we read “Une charogne” and see the resemblances, as each poem will be like the next, once we read it.

“Une Charogne” / “De profundis clamavi”

The encounter in “Une charogne” takes place on a hot summer day, “Ce beau matin d’été si doux” [That beautiful summer morning so sweet] (l. 2) when “Le soleil rayonnait sur cette pourriture, / Comme afin de la cuire à point” [The sun shone down upon that rottenness, / As if to cook it to a turn] (ll. 9–10). In absolute contrast, “De profundis clamavi” [Out of the depths have I cried] (1857: 28) is set in a frigid landscape where for six months there is no sun, and for the other six it is “Un soleil sans chaleur” [A sun without heat] (l. 5), a “soleil de glace” [sun of ice] that instead of heating the earth looks down upon it with “froide cruauté” [cold cruelty] (l. 10). Yet each poem has its own particular horror, the “horrible infec-

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tion” (l. 38) that is the rotting carcass and the “horreur” of the six-month night and the frigid sun (ll. 4, 9). The speaker in “Une charogne” warns his female companion that one day, when she is dead and buried, her fate will be that of the animal they found by the side of the road—a lot that, though inevitable, is repugnant. What the speaker cries out for in the last tercet of “De profundis clamavi,” however, is to become like an animal, to acquire its ability to cast off life’s cares, to plunge into a state resembling death: “Je jalouse le sort des plus vils animaux / Qui peuvent se plonger dans un sommeil stupide, / Tant l’écheveau du temps lentement se dévide!” [I envy the lot of the vilest of animals / Who can fall into a stupid sleep, / So slowly does the skein of time unwind!] (ll. 12–14). The eighth stanza of “Une charogne” is the site of some interesting connections to this tercet in “De profondis clamavi”:

Les formes s’effaçaient et n’étaient plus qu’un rêve, Une ébauche lente à venir, Sur la toile oubliée, et que l’artiste achève Seulement par le souvenir.

[The forms were disappearing and were no more than a dream, a sketch slow in coming, On the forgotten canvas, and that the artist completes Only from memory.] (ll. 29–32)

The vile animal that is envied because of its ability to sleep was preceded by the “charogne infâme” [vile carcass] (l. 3) of an animal that in its decomposition comes to resemble a dream, that in fact is nothing but a dream. In both passages something is slow in coming: time’s unwinding skein and the sketch. In both, something disappears: time that undoes itself (“se dévide” [unwinds]) and the forms that “s’effaçaient” [were disappearing] until they were nothing but a dream, nothing but what had not yet come. In a self-referential way, it is “Seulement par le souvenir” [Only from memory] that something else comes into existence here: only by reading “De profundis clamavi” and then remembering these lines from “Une charogne” can we see images like that sketch take shape, the images that emerge from the hidden fabric of the Fleurs du mal. And this can happen only by allowing a certain decomposition to occur, the breaking apart of the elements of each poem, and their subsequent rearrangement in new forms. That is how these flowers bloom, as we saw “la carcasse superbe / Comme une fleur s’épanouir” [the superb carcass / Blossom like a flower] (ll. 13–14). “Une charogne” concludes with the narrator telling the woman not that it is her youth and beauty that his poems will

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preserve but decomposition itself:

Alors, ô ma beauté, dites à la vermine Qui vous mangera de baisers Que j’ai gardé la forme et l’essence divine De mes amours décomposés!

[Then, O my beauty, tell the vermin Who will devour you with kisses That I have preserved the form and the divine essence Of my decomposed loves!] (ll. 45–48)

“De profundis clamavi” / “Le Vampire”

“De profundis clamavi” is a parody of Psalm 130 (“Out of the depths I cry to Thee, O Lord”), in which the role of God is played by the speaker’s mistress: “J’implore ta pitié, Toi, l’unique que j’aime, / Du fond du gouffre obscur où mon cœur est tombé” [I implore your pity, Thou, the only one I love, / From the depth of the dark abyss where my heart has fallen] (ll. 1–2). She is above; he is below. She is obviously not in the abyss with him. Just the opposite takes place in “Le Vampire” [The Vampire] (1857: 29), even though it begins similarly with the narrator addressing his mistress as “Toi”: “toi qui, comme un coup de couteau, / Dans mon cœur plaintif es entrée” [Thou who, like the stab of a dagger, / Hast entered my plaintive heart] (ll. 1–2). For instead of him being alone and her far away, now she is too near and he would rather be alone. With some consistency it is once again “mon cœur” that is the focus of his concern. In “De profundis clamavi” his heart fell into the abyss; in “Le Vampire” his heart has been invaded by “toi.” He is unhappily tied to her like the convict to the chain, the gambler to his game, the drunkard to his bottle, the carcass to its vermin (in a reminiscence of “Une charogne”). He prays again in “Le Vampire” as he had in “De profundis clamavi,” but not to his mistress, and it is in order to bring about just the opposite outcome that he prays: “Jai prié le glaive rapide / De conquérir ma liberté” [I prayed the swift sword / To conquer my liberty”] (ll. 13–14). He wants them to help him kill her so that he can be alone.

“Le Vampire” / “Le Léthé”

In “Le Vampire” he prayed to the sword and poison to help him mur-

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der his mistress, from whom he wished to be free, but they told him that would be pointless, for “Tes baisers ressusciteraient / Le cadavre de ton vampire” [Your kisses would bring back to life / Your vampire’s corpse] (ll. 23–24). That is, he was so tied to his vampire that he would continue kissing her, even when she was dead. And such was his passion that those kisses would bring her back to life. In “Le Léthé” [Lethe] (1857: 30) he seeks death, as he had in “Le Vampire,” but this time his own—in the form of sleep (which he had desired in “De profundis clamavi”): “Je veux dormir! dormir plutôt que vivre! / Dans un sommeil, douteux comme la mort” [I want to sleep! To sleep rather than live! / In a slumber, doubtful like death] (ll. 9–10). In “Le Vampire” he wanted to kill her; now he wants her to kill him. The poison he had called upon for that purpose is replaced by the poison she can supply for his death:

Je sucerai, pour noyer ma rancœur, Le népenthès et la bonne ciguë Aux bouts charmants de cette gorge aiguë Qui n’a jamais emprisonné de cœur.

[I will suck, to drown my rancor, Nepenthes and fine hemlock From the charming tips of those pointed breasts That have never imprisoned a heart.] (ll. 21–24)

Ironically, in “Le Vampire” the expression “Tes baisers” [Your kisses], meaning the speaker’s (since it was the sword and poison speaking), would bring her back to life (“Tes baisers ressusciteraient / Le cadavre de ton vampire”) [Your kisses would bring back to life / Your vampire’s corpse] (ll. 23–24), but the same expression—which appears in only these poems in the 1857 volume—has the opposite meaning here, for “le Léthé coule dans tes baisers” [Lethe (oblivion) flows from your kisses] (l. 16), says the speaker to his mistress. Now they are her kisses, not his.

“Le Léthé” / “Une nuit que j’étais près d’une affreuse juive . . . ”

“Le Léthé” is about forgetting, but “Une nuit que j’étais près d’une affreuse juive . . . ” [One night when I was with a frightful Jewess . . . ] (1857: 31) is about remembering. In “Le Léthé” the narrator sought “L’oubli puissant” [powerful oblivion] (l. 15) in the arms of his mistress; but in “Une nuit . . . ” the narrator tries to forget his mistress by sleeping

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with another woman. But the attempt is unsuccessful, for “Je me pris à songer près de ce corps vendu / À la triste beauté dont mon désir se prive. // Je me représentai sa majesté native” [I began to dream, next to this purchased body, / Of the sad beauty of which my desire was depriving itself. // I pictured to myself her innate majesty] (ll. 3–5). He thinks of her hair and its perfume, “dont le souvenir pour l’amour me ravive” [the memory of which brings me back to life for love] (l. 8). This resurrection in the second quatrain looks back to the description he gave of himself in the first: “Comme au long d’un cadavre un cadavre étendu” [Like a corpse stretched out beside another corpse] (l. 2). Thinking of the woman he loves but cannot have permits him to rise from the dead and make love to the prostitute beside him. The prosecutor who condemned “Le Léthé”—because of the nudity in “Je sucerai . . . / Aux bouts charmants de cette gorge aiguë” [I will suck . . . / From the charming tips of those pointed breasts] (ll. 21, 23), as Pichois explains (OC I: 1130n)—evidently did not pick up on the eroticism of “me ravive.” Nor on that of the second quatrain of “Le Léthé”:

Dans tes jupons remplis de ton parfum Ensevelir ma tête endolorie, Et respirer, comme une fleur flétrie, Le doux relent de mon amour défunt.

[In your skirts filled with your perfume Bury my aching head, And breathe in, as if from a withered flower, The sweet stench of my departed love.] (ll. 5–8)

What he is smelling is the odor of his semen. The same sense for “mon amour” is apparent in “Les Bijoux”: “Et du haut du divan elle souriait d’aise / À mon amour profond et doux comme la mer / Qui vers elle montait comme vers sa falaise” [And from the top of the couch she smiled with pleasure / At my love, deep and gentle as the sea / That toward her ascended as if toward its cliff] (ll. 10–12). His sperm is splashing like sea foam against the shore, reminding us of Aphrodite’s birth from aphros, which means both sea foam and sperm. The same meaning emerges in the “amour” in line 8 of “Une nuit . . . ”: it is that “amour” that is brought back to life when “le souvenir pour l’amour me ravive” [the memory brings me back to life for love].

6. See William Hansen, “Foam-Born Aphrodite and the Mythology of Transforma- tion,” American Journal of Philology 121, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 1–19.

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looked at another way, “Une nuit . . . ” performs an ironic reversal on “Le Léthé.” The narrator sought death there (in seeking to “dormir plutôt que vivre” [to sleep rather than live]), in hoping for a “sommeil, douteux comme la mort” [a slumber as doubtful as death] by going to his mistress; he finds death (the death involved in being a corpse beside another corpse) in “Une nuit . . . ” by abandoning her for another woman. The irony is enriched when we recall that his mistress, in “Le Vampire,” was herself a corpse (“Tes baisers ressusciteraient / Le cadavre de ton vampire” [Your kisses would bring back to life / Your vampire’s corpse] (ll. 23–24). Just after his “amour” comes back to life in “Une nuit . . . ” he tells his mistress (whom he had spoken of until now in the third person) what he would have liked to do: “j’eusse avec ferveur baisé ton noble corps” [I would have fervently kissed your noble body] (l. 9), creating a parallel to what he said he plans to do in “Le Léthé”: “J’étalerai mes baisers sans remord / Sur ton beau corps” [I will spread out my kisses without remorse / On your beautiful body] (ll. 11–12). The combination of baiser (noun or verb) and ton . . . corps (or even corps alone) is unique to these neighboring poems.

“Une nuit que j’étais près d’une affreuse juive . . . ”/ “Remords posthume”

In “Une nuit . . . ” he would have covered his mistress with kisses on the condition that with a tear obtained without effort she could darken the splendor of her cold eyes. This appears to be an impossible condition. But then in “Remords posthume” [Posthumous Remorse] (1857: 32) the narrator sets up a situation in which he believes she will be bound to do so. He imagines her a corpse in her grave, and “Durant ces grandes nuits d’où le somme est banni” [During those long nights from which sleep is banned] (l. 11) (echoing the “quelque soir” [some evening] (l. 12) that he wishes the tear would come in (“Une nuit . . ”) her tomb “Te dira « Que vous sert, courtisane imparfaite, / De n’avoir pas connu ce que pleurent les morts? »” [Will say to you “What good does it do you, imperfect courtisan, / Not to have known that for which the dead weep?”] (ll. 12–13). What the dead weep for is the erotic embrace that she, being “imparfaite” as a courtesan, will not give him. Or that he would fervently give her in “Une nuit . . . ” if only she would shed a tear. but instead of being caressed by him “depuis tes pieds frais jusqu’à tes noires tresses” [from your chilly feet to your black tresses] (l. 10), the length of her body is oppressed by the tomb:

. . . la pierre, opprimant ta poitrine peureuse

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Et tes flancs . . . , Empêchera ton cœur de battre et de vouloir, Et tes pieds de courir leur course aventureuse

[. . . the stone, pressing down on your fearful breast And your sides . . . , Will forbid your heart to beat and to desire, And your feet to run their reckless course] (ll. 5–6, 7–8)

Imagining her body as a corpse becomes a substitute for having her body in life, as lying next to another woman’s corpselike body was in its own way a substitute for the same thing.

“Remords posthume” / “Le Chat: “Viens, mon beau chat . . . ”

As the tomb holds tight her restless body, in “Le Chat” [The Cat] (1857: 33) the speaker holds in his grasp his restless cat, who itself is yet another substitute for the woman he desires but, it seems, cannot have. The narrator’s cat will later show that restlessness in “Spleen: Pluviôse, irrité . . . ” [Spleen: Pluvius, irritated . . . ] (1857: 59): “Mon chat sur le carreau cherchant une litière / Agite sans repos son corps” [My cat, looking for a place to lie down on the tile, / Stirs his body restlessly] (ll. 5–6). In contemplating and caressing the animal, the narrator of “Le Chat” says, “Je vois ma femme en esprit” [I see my woman in spirit] (l. 9). But by addressing it in the first line as “mon beau chat” [my beautiful cat] he identifies the cat not just with the woman he loves but more specifically with the woman in the tomb in the previous poem, for in that poem’s first line he had addressed her in similar terms: “ma belle ténébreuse” [my beautiful shadowy one] (l. 2). In no other poem in the 1857 volume will Baudelaire write either “mon beau” or “ma belle.” Even when he will write “ma belle visiteuse” in “Un fantôme” [A Phantom] in 1861, it is not in the vocative, as here. in “Remords posthume” the stone of the tomb presses down on “tes flancs qu’assouplit un charmant nonchaloir” [your flanks, made supple by a charming nonchalance] (1. 6); in “Le Chat” that suppleness is expressed as elasticity: “mes doigts caressent à loisir / . . . ton dos élastique” [my fingers caress at leisure / . . . your elastic back] (ll. 5, 6). That the oppress- ing tomb and the caressing poet have something in common is suggested in “Remords posthume”: “le tombeau toujours comprendra le poète” [the tomb will always understand the poet] (l. 10), and will thus be able to

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speak for him in asking the woman in its grasp what good it does her not to have enjoyed in her life what it is the dead weep for.

“Le Chat: Viens, mon beau chat . . . ” / “Le Balcon”

In “Le Balcon” [The Balcony] (1857: 34) the narrator embraces the woman he loves for real—not through a substitute woman (as in “Une nuit . . . ”), not as a tomb imprisoning her (as in “Remords posthume”), not through a cat that evokes her presence (as in “Le Chat”). Especially not as he had with the cat. There, the narrator exclaims, “laisse-moi plonger dans tes beaux yeux” [let me plunge into your beautiful eyes] (l. 3); here, “mes yeux dans le noir devinaient tes prunelles” [my eyes in the dark sought out your pupils] (l. 17). There, “mes doigts caressent” [my fingers caress] (l. 5); here, “Tu te rappelleras la beauté des caresses” [You will recall the beauty of the caresses] (l. 3). There, “ma main s’enivre du plaisir / De palper ton corps” [my hand is intoxicated with the pleasure / Of touching your body] (ll. 7–8); here, “tes pieds s’endormaient dans mes mains” [your feet fall asleep in my hands] (l. 19). There, in caressing the cat, he was put in mind of the woman’s “dangereux parfum” [dangerous perfume] (l. 13); here, “Je croyais respirer le parfum de ton sang” [I felt I could breathe the perfume of your blood] (l. 14). As the narrator of “Le Balcon” asks, “à quoi bon chercher tes beautés langoureuses / Ailleurs qu’en ton cher corps et qu’en ton cœur si doux?” [why seek your langorous beauties / Elsewhere than in your dear body and than in your heart so sweet?] (ll. 23–24). The question has particular relevance to the three preceding poems, where he was consistently doing that.

“Le Balcon” / “Je te donne ces vers . . . ”

In “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” [I give you these lines . . . ] (1857: 35) the question asked in “Le Balcon” (“why seek your langorous beauties / Elsewhere than in your dear body?”) is still relevant, for here the poet imagines future generations (her body having long disappeared) discovering her in his poems. Her memory will nag the reader with the insis- tance of a hammered dulcimer, and hang suspended from his lofty rhymes like a fraternal and mystic link of chain (ll. 6–8). It is appropriate that it should be her memory (“ta mémoire”) that persists, since “Le Balcon” begins by calling her the mother of memories (“Mère des souvenirs”). In fact, all of that poem comes out of what the narrator says to his mistress in line 3 about remembering: “Tu te rappelleras” [You will remember]

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all those pleasant evenings we spent on the balcony. “Le Balcon” is completely about memory, including the final stanza, when he asks if all those memories could be reborn after passing into the abyss. Will those recol- lected promises, perfumes, and kisses be reborn “d’un gouffre interdit à nos sondes, / Comme montent au ciel les soleils rajeunis / Après s’être lavés au fond des mers profondes” [from an abyss forbidden to our soundings, / As rejuvenated suns ascend to heaven / After being washed in the depths of deep seas]? The passage itself, if not the promises, perfumes, and kisses, is itself reborn—and remembered—in lines 9 and 10 of “Je te donne ces vers . . . ,” particularly the distance stretching from the depths of the abyss to the heights of heaven: “de labîme profond / Jusqu’au plus haut du ciel” [from the deep abyss / To the highest heaven]. likewise remembered in “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” is the fraternal quality of the poet’s hands when they hold her feet in line 19 of “Le Bal- con,” reappearing as a fraternal link in line 7: “tes pieds s’endormaient dans mes mains fraternelles” [your feet fell asleep in my fraternal hands]. In no other 1857 poem does the adjective appear. Although it is the memory of the woman to whom the poem is addressed that he calls a “fraternel et mystique chaînon” attached to his poems, the fraternal link is itself a link therein attached, particularly to these two, in the manner of the “choses . . . concaténées” [concatenated things] that in Baudelaire’s opinion “constituent une poésie bien faite” [constitute well-made poetry] (OC II: 803). Those feet return, too, in lines 12–13, when they trample those who called her bitter. The connection between her feet and fraternity first established in “Le Balcon” was originally recalled here even more closely, for the second hemistich of line 13 in the page proofs had read “qui t’appellent leur frère” [who call you their brother] (OC I: 905): her foot was tram- pling the stupid mortals who claimed a fraternal connection. Might they have included the poet, who seems to have made such a claim in “Le Bal- con”? Here we can see Baudelaire at work forging an even stronger link between “Le Balcon” and “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” and then rejecting it, perhaps because mortals calling her their brother would be inconsistent with her being called “maudit” [cursed], presumably by those same mortals. Better for them to call her “amère” [bitter].

“Je te donne ces vers . . . ” / “Tout entière”

If the poet’s mistress gives rise in “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” to a fatiguing, unpleasant music in line 5, where her memory is as nagging to the reader of his poems as the sound of a hammered dulcimer, the opposite is the case in lines 17–20 of “Tout entière” [Completely Entire] (1857: 36):

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Et l’harmonie est trop exquise, Qui gouverne tout son beau corps, Pour que l’impuissante analyse En note les nombreux accords.

[Too exquisite is the harmony That governs her entire beautiful body, For impotent analysis To transcribe its numerous chords.] (ll. 17–20)

The difficult labor this music poses for the task of analysis reminds us of the work the poet hopes his name will make human brains undertake in “Je te donne ces vers . . . ”: “Je te donne ces vers afin que, si mon nom . . . / Fait travailler un soir les cervelles humaines” [I give you these lines so that, if my name . . . / Should some evening set human brains to work] (ll. 1, 4). In the next chapter we will see that in 1861 he would replace “travailler” by “rêver” at the same time that he would break up the connections between these two poems by inserting another poem, “Semper eadem,” between them. But for the moment, “travailler” works, connecting the mental labor his poems will impose in “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” to the mental labor of musical analysis in “Tout entière.” it would seem that the woman addressed in one poem is not the same as the one addressed in the other, for scholars agree that 35 is the last in the Jeanne Duval cycle, while 36 is the first poem devoted to Madame Saba- tier. Baudelaire himself declared in a letter to Sabatier that “Tout entière” was written for her (OC I: 906n). One muse would give rise to fatiguing music, the other to music so complex it defies analysis. But both give rise to music. in addition, lines 9–10 of “Je te donne ces vers . . . ”—“Etre maudit à qui de labîme profond, / Jusqu’au plus haut du ciel rien, hors moi, ne répond” [Cursèd being to whom from the deep abyss / Up to the highest part of heaven nothing, except me, responds]—bear an interesting relation to the framing situation in “Tout entière”: “Le Démon, dans ma chambre haute” [The Demon, in my high room] (l. 1) came to see me, asked me what part of my beloved do I find most sweet, and “mon âme, / Tu répon- dis” [my soul, / You responded] (ll. 9–10). We had already seen how this passage in “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” paralleled lines 27–29 of “Le Balcon” (“d’un gouffre . . . au ciel . . . mers profondes”). Now the same passage is echoed in “Tout entière.” The abyss is represented by the “Démon” who comes from there, the “haut du ciel” is replaced by the poet’s “chambre haute,” and a new connection appears between the reponse the poet alone makes between the abyss and the height and the response the poet in

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his high room makes to the demon from the abyss. In both passages the response concerns the woman the poet loves (even though biographers will remind us it is not the same woman). The response to the Demon is in a way a nonresponse, since the poet refuses to single out any particular feature of his beloved for praise. But at the same time it is quite a substantial response, in three parts: (1) Because everything in her is ravishing and seductive, there is no one thing better (or worse) than another. (2) The harmony of those parts is too exquisite for all its numerous “accords” to be analyzed. (3) By a kind of mystical metamorphosis all the poet’s senses are melted into one, so that her breath makes music, as her voice makes perfume. In other words, things get mixed up, senses (both sensory perceptions and meanings) are confused, subjects and predicates get rearranged, the impossible happens. For breath cannot really make music, nor voice perfume (except through metonymy: breath and voice being parts of the same whole). What Baudelaire is describing is not just this idealized woman but the Fleurs du mal itself. The same kind of reorganization of elements is what we find to persist as elements of each poem (such as abyss, height, and response) reappear in a different arrangement in the next. The harmony of the collection is so rich, the accords connecting poem to poem so numerous, that analysis is difficult (I refuse to say “impuissante” unless it refuses the task). Baudelaire indeed “Fait travailler . . . les cervelles humaines.” What he strives for in the Fleurs is a work of art where “tant toutes choses y sont bien unies, conjointes, réciproquement adaptées, et . . . concaténées” [all things are so well united, conjoined, reciprocally adapted, and . . . concatenated] (OC II: 803), it is so “tout entière,” that there is no one thing that seduces; rather, it is the “tout” [whole] that “ravit” [ravishes].

“Tout entière” / “Que diras-tu ce soir . . . ”

In “Que diras-tu ce soir . . . ” [What will you say tonight . . . ”] (1857: 37) the poet does the very thing that in “Tout entière” he said he would not do: single out for praise a particular quality of his beloved. He enumerates several:

—Nous mettrons notre orgueil à chanter ses louanges: Rien ne vaut la douceur de son autorité; Sa chair spirituelle a le parfum des Anges, Et son œil nous revêt d’un habit de clarté.

[—We will set our pride to sing her praises:

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Nothing equals the gentleness of her authority; Her spiritual flesh has the perfume of the angels, And her eye clothes us in brightness.] (ll. 5–8)

And it happens that the first one he lists, “la douceur de son autorité,” could be read as a reply to the very question the Demon had posed in “Tout entière”: of all her qualities, “Quel est le plus doux” [Which is the sweetest] (l. 9)? The “Rien ne” with which he begins his enumeration echoes his refusal to enumerate in “Tout entière”: “Rien ne peut être préféré” [Noth- ing can be preferred over anything else] (l. 12).

“Que diras-tu ce soir . . . ” / “Le Flambeau vivant”

“Le Flambeau vivant” [The Living Flame] (1857: 38) is so continuous with and so similar to “Que diras-tu . . . ” (37) that one poem is almost to the other as the sun is to the candle in the tercets of “Le Flambeau vivant”: rivals with the same goal, each trying to outdo the other in praising the woman in parallel ways, with the same words. In 37 “Son fantôme dans l’air danse comme un flambeau” [Her phantom dances in the air like a torch] (l. 11); in 38 “Tout mon être obéit à ce vivant flambeau” [All my being obeys this living torch] (l. 8). In 37 “son œil nous revêt d’un habit de clarté” [her eye clothes us in brightness] (1. 8); in 38 her “Yeux . . . brille[nt] de . . . clarté mystique” [Eyes . . . shine with mystic brightness] (l. 9). In 37 her “flambeau” tells him, “Je suis belle, et j’ordonne / Que pour l’amour de moi vous n’aimiez que le Beau” [I am beautiful, and I command / That for the love of me you love only the Beautiful] (ll. 12–13); in 38 her eyes “conduisent mes pas dans la route du Beau” [lead my steps along the road of the Beautiful] (l. 6), and he obeys their command: “Tout mon être obéit à ce vivant flambeau” [All my being obeys this living torch] (1. 8).

“Le Flambeau vivant” / “À celle qui est trop gaie”

In “Le Flambeau vivant” the sun engages in a contest of strength with the beloved’s eyes: “Charmants Yeux, vous brillez de la clarté mystique / Qu’ont les cierges brûlant en plein jour; le soleil / Rougit, mais n’éteint pas leur flamme fantastique” [Charming Eyes, you shine with the mystic brightness / Of candles burning in full daylight; the sun / Reddens, but cannot not extinguish their fantastic flame] (ll. 9–11). The sun returns as a rival in “À celle qui est trop gaie” [To the One Who Is Too Gay] (1857: 39) but as a rival to the poet, instead of the beloved. The sun could not extinguish the

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flame of the candles of the mystical “clarté” [brightness] (l. 9) of her eyes, reappearing here as the “clarté / De tes bras et tes épaules” [brightness / Of your arms and shoulders] (ll. 7–8). But it can hurt the poet, tearing at his chest in line 20, making him smart from the irony of the contradiction between its strength and his weakness, between its joy and his melancholy. In the second stanza it becomes apparent that the woman has the same effect on him that the sun does. Any passing “chagrin” that she encounters is “ébloui” [blinded] by her “clarté” [brightness]. The effect she has on his own chagrin is the same, hence his violent reaction. Adam observes: “This happy, beautiful woman makes him think of spring. But Baudelaire cannot bear springtime. He sees irony in his surroundings. They seem to mock his sadness, his state of depression, his lifeless atony. So much so that, exasperated, he stupidly destroys a flower. . . . In the same way, he would like to avenge himself on such health and gaiety, to inject her with his illness, melancholy” (FM Adam, 434–35n). In the earlier version of the poem Baudelaire sent Madame Sabatier in 1852, instead of “ébloui” in line 6 he had written “éclairé” [illumined, enlightened]. The difference is telling. By replacing “éclairé” with “ébloui,” by replacing a positive effect (illumina- tion) with a destructive one (blinding, bedazzlement), Baudelaire adapted the poem to allow it to enter into a richer dialogue with “Le Flambeau vivant.” There is both reversal and consistency between the two poems. The woman triumphs in both—triumphs over the sun in 38 by refusing to be extinguished in the face of its greater brightness, triumphs over the poet in 39 by blinding him with hers. Yet the poems are opposed as well, for in “Le Flambeau vivant” she has a beneficent effect on the poet, but here she makes him suffer.

“À celle qui est trop gaie” / “Réversibilité”

From the first words of “Réversibilité” [Reversibility] (1857: 40)—“Ange plein de gaîté” [Angel full of gaiety] (l. 1)—we know the poet is addressing the same woman as he did in “À celle qui est trop gaie” and that he thinks she has the same problem, an excess of gaiety. In both that poem and this he wants to counteract that gaiety, but he goes about it in different ways—there, by injecting her with his venom; here, by confronting her with compelling evocations of anguish, hatred, illness, and aging. In the stanza devoted to illness, the sun that in “À celle qui est trop gaie” was portrayed as an enemy, attacking the suffering poet—“dans un beau jardin, / Où je traînais mon atonie, / J’ai senti comme une ironie / Le soleil déchirer mon sein” [in a beautiful garden, / Where I was dragging my atony, / I felt, like an irony, / The sun tear my breast] (ll. 17–20)—is

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transformed into its opposite, something beneficent and eagerly sought: the ill in a hospice “s’en vont d’un pied traînard, / Cherchant le soleil rare” [go along with dragging step, / Seeking the rare sun] (ll. 13–14). The way “traînard” echoes “traînais” points up the irony (already announced in “J’ai senti comme une ironie”). The poet was dragging his step in the garden as the patients are dragging theirs in the hospice. Ironically, the sun cheers the latter but devastates the former. There is one “ironie” within “À celle qui est trop gaie,” and another within the intratext that poem forms with “Réversibilité.” You could say that was ironic.

“Réversibilité” / “Confession”

As if in answer to the questions the poet asked her in “Réversibilité,” in “Confession” (1857: 41) the beloved, despite her “gaîté” (l. 16), surprises him by revealing that yes, she has indeed experienced anguish and doubt. In “Réversibilité” he had asked her, “connaissez-vous les rides, / Et la peur de vieillir . . . ?” [are you acquainted with wrinkles, / And the fear of getting old . . . ?] (ll. 16–17); in “Confession” the beloved answers that question: “tout craque, amour et beauté, / Jusqu’à ce que l’Oubli les jette dans sa hotte / Pour les rendre à l’Éternité!” [everything cracks, both love and beauty, / Right up until the time Oblivion throws them in to his basket / To hand them over to Eternity!] (ll. 34–36).

“Confession” / “L’Aube spirituelle”

A striking feature of “Confession” is the way the confession itself is represented as a child hidden away until now, both “horrible, sombre, immonde” [horrible, dark, disgusting] (l. 21) yet at the same time a “pauvre ange” [poor angel] (l. 25). Something similar, yet opposite, happens in “L’Aube spirituelle” [The Spiritual Dawn] (1857: 42): “Dans la brute assoupie un ange se réveille” [In the sleepy brute an angel awakens] (l. 4). The two events are equally surprising. The “poor angel,” though dark and horrible, emerged from a woman who until then had displayed a “radieuse gaîté” [radiant gaiety] (l. 16) and had been “claire et joyeuse” [luminous and joyful] (l. 17). The other angel

7. richter points out that the titles of both poems refer to Catholic dogma. Reversibil- ity is the interchangeability of merits within the community of saints. That the confession she makes has a religious overtone, he remarks, “is confirmed by the word ‘confessional’ in the last line” (417).

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emerged from a “débauché” but distinguished itself from him by yearn- ing for “l’Idéal,” for the inaccessible azure of spiritual skies. Each angel, in other words, is the opposite of the person from whom it emerges; each angel is the other’s opposite as well: one complains; the other aspires. It is the light of dawn that awakens the angel in “L’Aube spirituelle,” as the first stanza makes clear (the dawn working together with the Ideal). It was the light of the moon that made it possible for the other angel to emerge in “Confession.” It was a full moon (l. 6), and the freedom of intimacy that enabled her to make her confession bloomed in its pale light (ll. 13–14).

“L’Aube spirituelle” / “Harmonie du soir”

Although it takes place at evening instead of dawn, part of “Harmonie du soir” [Evening Harmony] (1857: 43) seems to grow out of lines 10–11 of “L’Aube spirituelle”: “Ton souvenir plus clair, plus rose, plus charmant, / A mes yeux agrandis voltige incessamment” [Your memory—brighter, more rosy, more charming— / Incessantly turns (or flutters) before my widened eyes]. I am thinking of lines 3 and 16 in “Harmonie du soir”: “Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir” [Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air] and “Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir” [Your memory shines in me like a monstrance]. The phrase “ton souvenir” appears nowhere else in the Fleurs du mal. The verb voltiger can mean to flutter or to rotate; however, the latter is the original sense, according to Le Petit Robert. It comes from the Italian volteggiare, which means to make a volta (volte in French), a complete turn executed on horseback. The sense of “to flutter” or “to fly about” was later given to voltiger by the influence of the verb voleter.

“Harmonie du soir” / “Le Flacon”

In the 1857 edition the verb voltiger makes its only other appearance in “Le Flacon” [The Perfume Flask] (1857: 44), the poem just after “Harmonie du soir,” where, as in “L’Aube spirituelle,” its subject is “souvenir”: “Voilà le souvenir enivrant qui voltige / Dans l’air troublé;—les yeux se ferment; le vertige / Saisit l’âme . . . ” [Behold the intoxicating memory that turns / In the troubled air;—the eyes close; vertigo / Seizes the soul] (ll. 13–15). Clearly these three poems “turn” around the words souvenir, voltige, and vertige (the latter appearing in lines 4 and 7 of “Harmonie du soir”):

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• “L’Aube spirituelle” (1857: 42): “Ton souvenir . . . À mes yeux . . . voltige” • “Harmonie du soir” (1857: 43): “Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air. . . . Ton souvenir en moi luit” • “Le Flacon” (1857: 44): “le souvenir . . . voltige / Dans l’air”

The fact that the sounds and perfumes “tournent dans l’air” in “Harmonie du soir” and that memory “voltige / Dans l’air” in “Le Flacon” suggests that voltiger may mean tourner in both “L’Aube spirituelle” and “Le Fla- con.” In addition, in lines 10–11 of “L’Aube spirituelle” and lines 3 and 16 of “Harmonie du soir”:

a. “Ton souvenir” corresponds to “Ton souvenir” b. “plus clair” [brighter] corresponds to “luit” [shines] c. “À mes yeux” [In my eyes] corresponds to “en moi” [in me]

having established this common ground, we can better appreciate how the two poems are each other’s opposite in other ways. In “L’Aube spirituelle” the sun is immortal. More surprisingly, in the struggle between candles and the sun, the woman who in “Le Flambeau vivant” had been symbol- ized by the former has now changed sides: “Le soleil a noirci les flammes des bougies; / —Ainsi, toujours vainqueur, ton fantôme est pareil, / Ame resplendissante, à l’immortel soleil!” [The sun has darkened the candles’ flames; / —Thus, always conquering, your phantom is like, / Resplendent soul, the immortal sun!] (ll. 12–14). But the sun’s immortality is brief, for in “Harmonie du soir” it seems to die: “Le soleil s’est noyé dans son sang qui se fige” [The sun has drowned in its coagulated blood] (ll. 12, 15). And the woman is no longer the sun, glowing in the poet like an “ostensoir” [monstrance] in line 16 after the sun dies in the line before. The dawn sky (in “L’Aube spirituelle”) and the evening sky (in “Har- monie du soir”), as could be expected, are each other’s opposites, one azure and the other black. Nevertheless, both represent the same thing: nothingness. In “L’Aube spirituelle” the inaccessible azure “S’ouvre et s’enfonce avec l’attirance du gouffre” [Opens and deepens with the attraction of the abyss] (l. 7). In “Harmonie du soir” the tender heart, gazing at the night sky, “hait le néant vaste et noir!” [hates the vast black nothingness!] (ll. 10, 13). The sky’s abyss, attractive in one poem, is detested in the other. “Il est de forts parfums pour qui toute matière / Est poreuse” [There are strong perfumes for which all matter / Is porous] (ll. 1–2) we are told in “Le Flacon”; “on dirait qu’ils pénètrent le verre” [one would say that they penetrate glass] (l. 2). This statement seems to have an element of metafic- tional self-reference, for the perfumes of one poem penetrate the barrier

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separating that poem from the next, almost literally so, as the perfumes that turn in the evening air in “Harmonie du soir” become the intoxicating memory that “voltige / Dans l’air” [turns / In the air] (ll. 13–14), and the evaporation named in lines 2 and 5 of “Harmonie du soir” becomes the whole premise of “Le Flacon,” where perfumes become resurrected memories. The vertigo that dances in “Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige” [Melancholy waltz and languorous vertigo] (ll. 4, 7) reappears as “le vertige” [the vertigo] that “Saisit l’âme vaincue et la pousse à deux mains / Vers un gouffre où l’air est plein de parfums humains” [Seizes the conquered soul and pushes it with both hands / Toward an abyss where the air is full of human perfumes] in lines 14–16 of “Le Flacon.”

“Le Flacon” / “Le Poison”

Commentators agree that “Le Poison” [Poison] (1857: 45) begins a new cycle of poems, devoted to Marie Daubrun. The poems in the 1857 edition from “Les Bijoux” (1857: 20) to “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” (1857: 35) were inspired by Jeanne Duval, and those from “Tout entière” (1857: 36) to “Le Flacon” (1857: 44) by Madame Sabatier. Daubrun had green eyes, as indicated in line 12 of “Le Poison.” We saw in reading “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” together with “Tout entière” that the change of mistress has no effect on the continuities linking one poem to the next. Neither does it here. The poison itself of “Le Poison” grows out of the poison of “Le Flacon”: “Cher poison préparé par les anges! liqueur / Qui me ronge, ô la vie et la mort de mon cœur!” [Dear poison prepared by the angels! Liquor / That eats at me, O life and death of my heart!] (ll. 27–28). Adam’s remark is pertinent here: “If we want to know why he calls [his love for Madame Sabatier] a poison” at the end of “Le Flacon,” “we only have to read the poem that immediately follows this one. For the connection between the two is evident, and the second comments on the last lines of the first” (FM Adam, 333). The connection, paradoxically, begins at the very moment the speaker indicates that he has started to write about another woman, one with green eyes: “le poison qui découle / De tes yeux, de tes yeux verts” [the poison that flows / From your eyes, from your green eyes” (ll. 11–12). In other words, in both instances he is writing about a poison that comes from a woman—but from two different women. This is strong evidence in support of the proposition that the connections linking the poems are stronger than the poems’ external referentiality, and it even rivals the strength of their internal self-sufficiency. in lines 14–16 of “Le Flacon,” “vertige” [vertigo] pushes the vainquished soul towards a “gouffre” [abyss]. We find “gouffres” in line 15 of

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“Le Poison,” when her green eyes become “ces gouffres amers” [those bitter abysses], and we find “vertige” once more in line 19. “Vertige” appears nowhere in the 1857 edition but in the three consecutive poems “Harmo- nie du soir,” “Le Flacon,” and “Le Poison,” which it effectively links.

“Le Poison” / “Ciel brouillé”

In “Ciel brouillé” [Cloudy Sky] (1857: 46) the narrator compares his mistress to a misty horizon lit up by the sun:

Tu ressembles parfois à ces beaux horizons Qu’allument les soleils des brumeuses saisons; —Comme tu resplendis, paysage mouillé Qu’enflamment les rayons tombant d’un ciel brouillé!

[Sometimes you resemble those beautiful horizons Lit up by the sun in seasons of mist. How resplendent you are, a rain-swept landscape Enflamed by sunbeams falling from a cloudy sky!] (ll. 9–12)

This combination of sun and “ciel brouillé” [cloudy sky] evokes the combination of sun and “ciel nébuleux” [cloudy sky] in “Le Poison”: “Le vin . . . fait surgir plus d’un portique fabuleux / Dans l’or de sa vapeur rouge, / Comme un soleil couchant dans un ciel nébuleux” [Wine . . . makes more than one fabulous portico emerge / In the gold of its red vapor, / Like a sun setting in a cloudy sky] (ll. 1, 3–5). Wine’s “vapeur” in line 4 is answered by the “vapeur” covering her gaze in “Ciel brouillé”: “On dirait ton regard d’une vapeur couvert” [As if your gaze was covered by a vapor] (l. 1). These are the only two poems in which “vapeur” in the singular appears in 1857. Wine is one of the poisons (the other is opium) that he finds less deadly than the kind that flows from her eyes, said to be green in both poems, though with more uncertainty in the second than the first: “le poison qui découle / De tes yeux, de tes yeux verts” [the poison that flows / From your eyes, from your green eyes] (“Le Poison,” ll. 11–12); “Ton œil mysté- rieux,—est-il bleu, gris ou vert?” [Your mysterious eye—is it blue, gray, or green?] (“Ciel brouillé,” l. 2). In likening one of the poisons in one poem to the kind of sunlit cloudy sky to which he will compare his mistress in the next, as well as an echoing “vapeur,” Baudelaire makes the two poems

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echo each other in a subtle, and not immediately obvious, way. It is more interesting and aesthetically pleasing than the fact that both are about the same woman. baudelaire begins “Ciel brouillé” by focusing on the beloved’s eyes:

On dirait ton regard d’une vapeur couvert; Ton œil mystérieux,—est-il bleu, gris ou vert?— Alternativement tendre, doux et cruel, Réfléchit l’indolence et la pâleur du ciel.

[One would say your gaze was covered with a vapor; Your mysterious eye—is it blue, gray, or green?— Alternatively tender, sweet, and cruel, Reflects the indolence and paleness of the sky.] (ll. 1–4)

“Ciel brouillé” / “Le Chat: Dans ma cervelle . . . ”

We will encounter that ocular paleness again in the “prunelles pâles” [pale pupils] (l. 38) of “Le Chat” [The Cat] (1857: 47). Two of the three adjectives (“tendre, doux et cruel” [tender, sweet and cruel]) that he applies to her eyes in line 3 of “Ciel brouillé” he likewise attributes to the feline: “Un beau chat, fort, doux et charmant; / Quand il miaule, on l’entend à peine, // Tant son timbre est tendre et discret” [A beautiful cat, strong, sweet and charming; / When he meows, one can barely hear it, // Its timbre is so tender and discreet] (ll. 3–5). not only do her eyes in “Ciel brouillé” (1857: 46) resemble both the misty sky in the poem before (“Le Poison” [1857: 45]) and the pale eyes in the one that follows (“Le Chat” [1857: 47]), but they serve as a midpoint between those poems in another way. In “Le Poison” her eyes are “Lacs où mon âme tremble et se voit à l’envers” [Lakes in which my soul trembles and sees its mirror image] (l. 13); in “Le Chat,” after finding his eyes drawn to the cat as if by a magnet, the narrator says, “je regarde en moi-même” [I look into myself] and “vois avec étonnement / Le feu de ses prunelles pâles, / Clairs fanaux, vivantes opales, / Qui me contemplent fixement” [see with astonishment / The fire of those pale pupils, / Bright beacons, living opals, / Contemplating me with a fixed stare] (ll. 36–40). In “Le Poison” he sees himself in her eyes; in “Le Chat” he sees the cat’s eyes within himself. Appropriately, one situation is the mirror-reversed image of the other.

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“Le Chat: Dans ma cervelle . . . ” / “Le Beau Navire”

Although “Le Chat” is in the midst of a series of poems apparently devoted to Marie Daubrun, it actually makes no mention of her at all. Pichois writes, “In this poem, the primary reader to whom it is destined—the contempo- rary reader [of the Fleurs du mal in 1857]—knows nothing of the relations Baudelaire had with any woman, and certainly not with Marie Daubrun. The reader therefore takes literally the enumeration and description of this cat’s qualities (voice, fur, perfume, eyes)” (OC I: 925). Pichois goes on to say that the poet’s friends may have known that she loved the cat (or, I might add, that it was her cat), but he wasn’t writing for them. “Le Chat” echoes “Ciel brouillé” whether we read the cat as representing the woman or not. Likewise, “Le Beau Navire” [The Beautiful Ship] (1857: 48) shows subtle connections to “Le Chat” for which we do not need to see any connection between Daubrun and the cat in order to appreciate. I will start with a continuity running through all three poems: (a) “Ton œil . . . tendre, doux et cruel” [Your eye . . . tender, gentle and cruel] (“Ciel brouillé,” ll. 2, 3), (b) “Un beau chat, fort, doux et charmant” [A beautiful cat, strong, gentle and charming] (“Le Chat,” l. 3], (c) “un rythme doux, et paresseux, et lent” [a rhythm gentle, and lazy, and slow] (“Le Beau Navire,” l. 8). On the page proofs for this line from “Le Chat” in 1857 Baudelaire changed it into its present form from “Un beau chat, doux, fier et charmant” [A beautiful cat, gentle, proud, and charming]. The change has the effect of maintaining the “doux et” in the middle of three adjectives through three consecutive poems. The combination “doux et” or “doux, et” appears only here in the 1857 Fleurs du mal. (In 1861, the line in “Ciel brouillé” would lose its “doux et” when it became “tendre, rêveur, cruel” [tender, dreamy, cruel], but the echo between “Le Chat” and “Le Beau Navire” would remain.) The first thing the poet tells us in “Le Chat” is that the cat “Dans ma cervelle se promène” [Walks in my brain] (l. 1). In “Le Beau Navire” his mistress works on his brain, too, her breast an “Armoire à doux secrets, pleine de bonnes choses, / De vins, de parfums, de liqueurs / Qui feraient délirer les cerveaux et les cœurs” [A cabinet with sweet secrets, full of good things, / Of wines, perfumes, liqueurs / That would make brains and hearts delirious” (ll. 22–24). The cat, too, has “son secret” [his secret] (l. 8) and exudes his own “parfum si doux” [perfume so sweet] (l. 26). He walks, by contrast to the motionless cat in the earlier poem with the same title, number 33, whom the poet held captive on his chest, the better to create a parallel with his mistress held captive in her tomb in the immediately preceding “Remords posthume.” This cat’s forward motion has a similar role to play with regard to “Le Beau Navire,” paralleling the advance of

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the ship, whose beauty emerges from the way it moves, when the sweep of the beloved’s skirt puts the poet in mind of a departing ship under full sail, rolling through the waves at a pace “doux, et paresseux, et lent” [gentle, and lazy, and slow] (l. 8). It is apparent in the way she walks, when “Ta tête se pavane” [Your head struts] (l. 10) and “Tu passes ton chemin, majestueuse enfant” [You go your way, majestic child] (l. 12). His mistress walking at the same time gives rise to the extraordinary image of two witches stirring “un philtre noir dans un vase profond” [a black potion in a deep vase] (l. 32), which sends us back to the cat walking in his brain, whose voice “pénètre comme un philtre” [penetrates like a potion] (l. 12).

“Le Beau Navire” / “L’Invitation au voyage”

The first words of “L’Invitation au voyage” [The Invitation to the Voy- age] (1857: 49),“Mon enfant” [My child] (l. 1), echo the last word of “Le Beau Navire”: “majestueuse enfant” [majestic child] (l. 40). The first stanza of “Le Beau Navire” had already broached this theme, asserting that the essence of the woman’s beauty is that though mature, she is nevertheless childlike: “Je veux te peindre ta beauté, / Où l’enfance s’allie à la maturité” [I want to depict your beauty, / Where childhood (or the quality of being like a child) allies itself with maturity] (ll. 3–4). That union of opposites would be complemented by another union of opposites in “L’Invitation au voyage,” one fundamental to the earthly paradise where he invites the woman addressed to join him: order and beauty, in the repeated refrain “Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté, / Luxe, calme et volupté” [There, all is but order and beauty, / Luxury, calm, and delight] (ll. 13–14, 27–28, 41–42). The three adjectives of the refrain’s second line are anticipated by the trio of adjectives (each of which are variations on the middle term in the other group of three, “calme”) describing how she advances like a beautiful ship: “doux, et paresseux, et lent” [gentle, and lazy, and slow]. In fact, that line, together with the other two I have just cited for their parallels with the second poem, are each part of a refrain of sorts in their own poem. For the first stanza (where “l’enfance s’allie à la maturité”) repeats as the fourth, the second stanza (where her rhythm is “doux, et paresseux, et lent”) as the seventh, and the third stanza (“ . . . majestueuse enfant”) as the tenth. The second poem takes the two most important elements of the first, the woman and the “beau navire” she resembles, and combines them in a different way. Having been a means of travel, “un beau vaisseau” [a beautiful vessel] (ll. 6 and 26), the woman becomes a traveling companion; and once at their destination, she and the poet can gaze at vessels related to her

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in a different way:

Vois sur ces canaux Dormir ces vaisseaux. . . . C’est pour assouvir Ton moindre désir Qu’ils viennent du bout du monde

[See on those canals Those sleeping vessels. . . . It is to satisfy Your least desire That they come from the ends of the earth] (ll. 29–30, 32–34)

The other thing to which he compares her in “Le Beau Navire” is a piece of furniture, an “Armoire à doux secrets, pleine de bonnes choses” [Cabinet with sweet secrets, full of good things], including “parfums” [fragrances] (ll. 22, 23). Furniture, sweet fragrances, and secrecy will reappear in the destination promised in “L’Invitation au voyage”:

Des meubles luisants, Polis par les ans, Décoreraient notre chambre; les plus rares fleurs mêlant leurs odeurs Aux vagues senteurs de l’ambre, . . . . .

a l’âme en secret Sa douce langue natale.

[Gleaming furniture, Polished by the years, Would adorn our bedroom; The rarest flowers blending their odors With the vague smells of amber, . . . . .

everything there would speak To the soul in secret Its sweet native language] (ll. 15–20, 24–26)

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Even the furniture’s gleaming (the “meubles luisants”) looks back to the woman in “Le Beau Navire”: “Tes bras . . . / Sont des boas luisants les solides émules” [Your arms . . . / Are the solid equals of shiny boa constric- tors] (ll. 33, 34). These are the only instances of “luisants” (in the masculine plural) in the 1857 edition.

“L’Invitation au voyage” / “L’Irréparable”

Having originally borne the title “À la Belle aux cheveux d’or” when it appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1855, “L’Irréparable” [The Irreparable] (1857: 50) shows every indication of having been inspired by a play titled “La Belle aux cheveux d’or” in which Marie Daubrun was an actress. It is possible to illuminate such mysterious details as the “Auberge” [Inn] (l. 26) whose lights are extinguished, the dying man menaced by wild beasts, and the sorceress by consulting the play (as Adam does at length, FM Adam 343–45). Indeed, in the last two stanzas Baudelaire seems to allude to it. But, just as we could not presume that his first reading public could have known that the cat was Marie Daubrun’s, neither can we presume that they were familiar with the play. As Lawler writes, “the language, if personal, is not private. We do not need to identify ‘l’Être aux ailes de gaze’ with Marie alone” (1997, 89). In fact, as Adam points out, while Marie did play a character wearing gauze, the poem appears to give her another role as well. He writes: “Marie did not play the role of the fairy, as Baudelaire seems to believe, but that of the Princess Rosalinde. It must be admitted that enough time had passed” since Baudelaire saw the play in 1847, “for his memories to become jumbled” (FM Adam, 344). Our concern here, of course, is not to make the poem fit the play but to see how the poem fits into the sequence of the Fleurs du mal. The play’s relation to the poem, however, actually bears some similarity to the relation of poem to poem in the Fleurs’ sequence. For one way in which a poem relates to the next is as a source of raw material, of elements that the next poem can rearrange in its own constellation, for its own ends. By conflating the fairy and the princess, Baudelaire was taking from each what he needed to construct a counterpart to the woman the poem addresses (who had acted in only one of the roles in the play). It was the princess who was clothed in gold and gauze (l. 46), but it was the fairy who vainquished Satan (l. 47). It was the princess who commanded that there be light, in the scene to which lines 21–25 allude, reassuring the prince with comforting words (FM Adam, 345), as if answering the question Baudelaire poses in those lines. The poet appears to identify himself

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with the prince, but the dying man in lines 11–20 who despairs of having a tomb, and for whose sake the poet asks his questions with such urgency that we may presume he is speaking for himself, is not the prince in the play but the villain, a demonic magician persecuting the princess. but it happens that the poet in “L’Invitation au voyage” was seeking a final resting place, too, a country in which to love and then die: “Aimer et mourir / Au pays qui te ressemble!” [To love and to die / In the land that resembles you] (ll. 5–6). As travelers, the poet and his beloved in “L’Invitation au voyage” would be looking for a place to lodge, and in the poet’s imagination they find one, the luxuriously furnished bedroom described in lines 15–26. Travelers in “L’Irréparable” also search for a place to stay, but in vain:

L’Espérance qui brille aux carreaux de l’Auberge est soufflée, est morte à jamais! Sans lune et sans rayons trouver où l’on héberge les martyrs d’un chemin mauvais! —Le Diable a tout éteint aux carreaux de l’Auberge.

[Hope shining in the windows of the Inn is snuffed out, forever dead! With neither moon nor rays of light to find where one lodges The martyrs of a bad road! —The Devil has snuffed out all in the windows of the Inn.] (ll. 26–30)

But it was not like that in the play. Adam recounts: “The princess . . . flees [the evil magician]. She notices a habitation with light in the windows. She goes there. Now this is the demons’ manor [but she doesn’t know that]. She lies down to sleep. They put out the candles; thunder is heard. She awakens and cries out: ‘How dark it is! Who put out the lights?’” (FM Adam, 345). In the play there is only one traveler, the princess; in the poem the travelers are plural (the “martyrs” of line 29). In the play, the building is a habitation; in the poem, an inn. In the play, the lights are put out after the traveler has entered and gone to bed; in the poem, the light in the windows is extinguished before the travelers can find their way there; with no light to guide them, the inn itself (“où l’on héberge” [where one lodges] [l. 28]) cannot be found. each of these departures from the source brings “L’Irréparable” closer to “L’Invitation au voyage.” The travelers in both poems are, unlike the princess in the play, plural. As “martyrs of a bad road” the travelers in “L’Irréparable” suffer the fatigue of an arduous journey (made all the more so by the absence of any light to guide them), whereas in the play the prin-

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cess was on the run from a vile pursuer. While there is no indication that the travelers in “L’Invitation au voyage” suffer an arduous journey, at least both groups are traveling or will travel; they are not fleeing. Making the habitation into an “Auberge” [Inn] places those seeking it in the category of travelers, not damsels in distress. The change made with regard to the moment when the lights are extinguished has the same effect: their extinction in the play makes the princess realize she is not alone (“Who put out the lights?”); their extinction in “L’Irréparable” just adds to the difficulty of finding an inn. The first line of the last stanza of “L’Irréparable”—“Un être, qui n’était que lumière, or et gaze” [A being who was but light, gold and gauze] (l. 46)—should sound familiar. It should put us in mind of the refrain “Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beaute, / Luxe, calme, et volupté” [There, all is but order and beauty, / Luxury, calm, and delight] (ll. 13– 14, 27–28, 41–42). In both, something—in “L’Irréparable” the “being” who is the conflation of fairy and princess as well as the woman to whom the poem is addressed, in “L’Invitation au voyage” the land that resembles the woman to whom the poem is addressed—is said to be entirely composed of the elements that follow “ne + être + que.” Each of the three elements “lumière, or et gaze” has its equivalent in the other poem (even apart from the way “or” echoes the or of “ordre,” and the lu of “lumière” echoes the lu of “luxe” and “volupté). In “L’Invitation au voyage” (a) the setting suns clothe everything in a golden light (“D’hyacinthe et d’or” [With hyacinthe and gold] [l. 38]); (b) at the same time all is bathed in “une chaude lumière” [a warm light] (l. 40); (c) gauze finds its counterpart in the blurring veil of haze of that comes from “Les soleils mouillés / De ces ciels brouillés” [The watery suns / Of those cloudy skies] (ll. 7–8).

“L’Irréparable” / “Causerie”

The speaker switches from “tu” to “vous” in a disconcerting way in “Cau- serie” [Chat] (1857: 51). It is odd, too, that this “causerie” should be so one-sided—unless we take the title in the other sense (as in Sainte-Beuve’s Causeries du lundi) of a brief topical discourse by one person. But that is surely ruled out by the fact that he is not speaking to a public but to a woman who has her hand on his chest. We only hear one voice, presumably the poet’s, but is he speaking to different women? The dashes are no help, for elsewhere in the collection they do not consistently indicate a change of speaker. Pichois resolves the difficulty by suggesting that the speaker slips from distance to familiarity and then, when the woman disapproves

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of the “tu,” back to distance again, and that the “tu” of the final tercet is addressed to Beauty itself, not to the woman (OC I: 933n). in any event, there are obvious carryovers from “L’Irréparable.” The “dent” [tooth] (“Causerie,” l. 7) that attacked his heart recycles the “dent maudite” [cursèd tooth] (“L’Irréparable,” l. 36) that eats away at his soul. The “monstres” [monsters] (“Causerie,” l. 8) that ate his heart can be traced back to the wild beasts that prepare to devour the wounded soldier (“L’Irréparable,” ll. 16–20). “Mon cœur est un palais flétri par la cohue” [My heart is a palace ravaged by the mob] (“Causerie,” l. 9) closely parallels “mon cœur . . . / Est un théàtre” [my heart . . . / Is a theater] (“L’Irréparable,” ll. 48–49), as Richter notes (526). The words “mon cœur est [ . . . ] un . . . ” appear in no other poem. But as in other poems, although these elements reappear in “Causerie,” they leave the associations they had in “L’Irréparable” and take up new ones. There, it was the tooth of remorse that ate at the poet; here, that of the women in his life.

“Causerie” / “L’Héautontimorouménos”

The first tercet of “Causerie” is particularly rich in material Baudelaire would recycle in “L’Héautontimorouménos” [The Self-Tormentor] (1857: 52) (or vice versa, depending on which poem he wrote first). There is drunkenness is “mon cœur” in both “Mon cœur est un palais flétri par la cohue; / On s’y soûle” [My heart is a palace ravaged by the mob; / They get drunk there] (“Causerie,” ll. 10–11) and “dans mon cœur quils soûleront / Tes chers sanglots retentiront” [in my heart, which they will inebriate, / Your dear sobs will resound] (“L’Héautontimorouménos,” ll. 10–11). But this happens for different reasons: in “Causerie” his heart suffers from the inebriation of others, while in “L’Héautontimorouménos” it is his heart that gets drunk, and enjoys it. “Un parfum nage autour de votre gorge nue” [A perfume swims around your naked breast” (“Causerie,” l. 11) is reworked (or again, vice versa) as “Mon désir gonflé d’espérance / Sur tes pleurs salés nagera” [My desire, swelled up by hope, / Will swim on your salty tears] (“L’Héautontimorouménos,” ll. 7–8). There is not just swimming in both passages but air as well, the air the perfumes swim in and the air that swells his desire. His desire “nagera // Comme un vaisseau qui prend le large” [will swim // Like a ship putting out to sea] (“L’Héautontimorouménos,” ll. 8–9), so we realize that there is indeed air swelling his desire, wind in its sails. It sails on her tears that amass to make a sea, as in “Causerie” “la tristesse en moi monte comme la mer” [sadness in me mounts like the sea] (l. 2). His sadness in “Causerie” becomes her sadness in “L’Héautontimorouménos,” and both are a rising sea. Not

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only does the second poem recycle elements of the first in this instance; it does so through a reversal. That, of course, is central to the argument of “L’Héautontimorouménos”: to invert the roles, to inflict on the woman the suffering she (and all the others) had inflicted on him. “Je suis le sinistre miroir / Où la mégère se regarde” [I am the sinister mirror / Where the Megera sees herself] (ll. 19–20), the speaker declares, but the poem, too, is a mirror, reversing the imagery of “Causerie.”

“L’Héautontimorouménos” / “Franciscae meae laudes”

“I will sing of you on new chords” [Novis te cantabo chordis], the speaker begins in “Franciscae meae laudes” [Lauds for My Francisca] (1857: 53), but the chord may not be all that new. In “L’Héautontimorouménos” he declared himself to be “un faux accord / Dans la divine symphonie” [a false chord / In the divine symphony] (ll. 13–14). Yet the two situations are opposite: in “L’Héautontimorouménos,” he makes bad music, striking a false chord; in “Franciscae meae laudes” he sings his best. Although there are other “accords” in the Fleurs du mal, these are the only two poems in which the speaker makes music on them. The women in both poems display salty associations. The victim of his assault in “L’Héautontimorouménos” will shed “pleurs salés” [salty tears] (l. 8); Francisca is “Panis salsus” [Salted bread] (l. 32). There is no other saltiness in the 1857 Fleurs du mal. both are also sources of water. His victim’s tears will spring forth like water from the rock Moses struck, irrigating his Sahara and becoming a sea on whose surface his ship will sail (“L’Héautontimorouménos,” ll. 1– 12). Francisca is herself a “Piscina” [pool], a “Fons aeternae juventutis” [A fountain of eternal youth] (ll. 16–17).

“Franciscae meae laudes” / “À une dame créole”

In “Franciscae meae laudes” Baudelaire clothes a girl of his own century in the language of a more ancient time, the ecclesiastical Latin of the Middle Ages; in “À une dame créole” [To a Creole Lady] (1857: 54) he does the same thing, for if the Creole lady were to come to the “antiques manoirs” [ancient châteaux] (l. 11) of the Loire, she would be celebrated by son- neteers such as Ronsard, whose style Pichois (943n), Adam (FM 353n), and Richter (584) agree that he imitates, particularly in the first tercet. As

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Francisca would make lips speak (l. 18), this woman would cause poets to write sonnets (ll. 12–13).

“À une dame créole” / “Moesta et errabunda”

The speaker in “À une dame créole” invites a woman who lives in the tropics to think about coming to France; in “Moesta et errabunda” [Sad and Wandering] (1857: 55) he encourages a woman who lives in France to imagine going to the tropics. In other words, one poem is the inverse of the other. The Creole woman lives in a “pays parfumé” [perfumed land] (l. 1); he entices Agathe, dwelling in an “immonde cité” [filthy city] (l. 2) that could be Paris, to think of going to a “paradis parfumé” [perfumed paradise] (ll. 16, 20). Nowhere else in the Fleurs du mal will a geographical place be “parfumé.” Here, in France, “la boue est faite de nos pleurs” [the mud is made from our tears] (“Moesta et errabunda,” l. 12); but there the luxury of idle ease “pleut sur les yeux” [rains down on the eyes] (“À une dame créole,” l. 3). Eyes in both poems are associated with both the sorrow of “here” and the delights of “there.” he invites the Creole lady not only to come to France but also to go into the past, in the sixteenth century of the châteaux of the Loire and of Ronsard; in the last two stanzas of “Moesta et errabunda” he invites Agathe to think of going back into another past, her own childhood, “le vert paradis des amours enfantines” [the green paradise of childhood loves] (ll. 21, 25).

“Moesta et errabunda” / “Les Chats”

In “Les Chats” [The Cats] (1857: 56) Baudelaire pursues the theme of the difference between “here” and a southern and warmer “elsewhere” that appeared most recently in “À une dame créole” and continued in “Moesta et errabunda.” Fervent lovers, austere savants, and cats are all “frileux” [sensitive to cold] and “sédentaires” [sedentary] (l. 4), but cats offer the imagination a virtual voyage to a southern land—Egypt—where the “frileux” can get warm (or imagine they do) and the sedentary are not obliged to get up from their chair. Cats become, for the lovers and savants who contemplate them, “[de] grands sphinx allongés au fond des solitudes” [great sphinxes stretched out in the depths of the wilderness] (l. 10), and by looking into their eyes one can see what seems like sand (l. 13). Cats play in this poem the role the ocean plays in “Moesta et errabunda,” carrying the “Amis . . . de la volupté” [Devotees . . . of sensual pleasure] (l. 5) to a place where they can find “volupté,” where “sous un clair azur . . . / Où dans la

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volupté pure le cœur se noie” [under a bright azure sky . . . / Where the heart drowns itself in pure sensual pleasure] (“Moesta et errabunda,” ll. 17, 19). Cats are the means of transportation for this virtual voyage; but they are also considered for the job of transporting in a less virtual way: “L’Èrèbe les eût pris pour ses coursiers funèbres, / S’ils pouvaient au ser- vage incliner leur fierté” [Erebus would have chosen them for his funeral horses, / If to servitude they could have bent their pride] (ll. 7–8). Cats in “Les Chats” are like the ocean in “Moesta et errabunda” in this way as well, for the ocean is not only the means of transport but is also described in that poem as being, like cats, unsuited for a certain responsibility:

La mer, la vaste mer, console nos labeurs! —Quel démon a doté la mer,—rauque chanteuse Qu’accompagne l’immense orgue des vents grondeurs,— De cette fonction sublime de berceuse? La mer, la vaste mer, console nos labeurs!

[The sea, the vast sea consoles us for our labors! What demon endowed the sea, hoarse singer Accompanied by the immense organ of the groaning winds, With this sublime function of rocker of cradles? The sea, the vast sea consoles us for our labors!] (ll. 6–10)

The howling storm-tossed sea seems to the narrator strikingly miscast as a comforter. The demon who gave the sea that sublime function was as mis- taken as Erebus (who shares an infernal connection with demons) when he thought cats might make good coursers.

“Les Chats” / “Les Hiboux”

Cats have an attitude—“Ils prennent en songeant les nobles attitudes / Des grands sphinx” [When they dream they assume the noble attitudes / Of the great sphinxes] (ll. 9–10)—and so do “Les Hiboux” [The Owls] (1857: 57): “Leur attitude au sage enseigne” [Their attitude teaches the wise] (l. 9). But it would appear that what the Owls’ attitude teaches is the opposite of what the Cats’ attitude leads to:

Qu’il faut en ce monde qu’il craigne Le tumulte et le mouvement:

L’homme ivre d’une ombre qui passe

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Porte toujours le châtiment D’avoir voulu changer de place.

[That in this world he must fear Tumult and movement:

The man intoxicated with a passing shadow Is always punished For having wanted a change of place.] (ll. 10–14)

Fervent lovers and austere savants are allowed a change of place by taking a mental voyage south. Yet since they travel only in their imagination to the hot sands where sphinxes lie, are they really guilty of wanting a change of place? Being “frileux” (l. 4), they are attracted to the south (like the poet and Agathe in “Moesta et errabunda”), but being at the same time “séden- taires” (l. 4), they want to remain physically right where they are. both cats and owls remain motionless for a long time, the cats turning into statues of sphinxes, the owls not moving until the melancholy hour when shadows fall (ll. 5–8). The owls look like foreign gods (l. 3); the cats look like foreign sphinxes. In their motionlessness, only the eyes of either are alive: the owls are “Dardant leur œil rouge” [Darting out their red eye] (l. 4), the cats’ mystic pupils shine like golden stars (ll. 13–14). The cats are asleep and dreaming (“songeant” [l. 9]); but the owls are awake: “ils méditent” [they meditate] (l. 4). The relation of the two to shadows is complicated—in one way the opposite, in the other the same. This is because shadows appear twice in “Les Hiboux,” as “ténèbres” in line 8 and as the “ombre qui passe” in line 12. In teaching the wise not to be like the man intoxicated with a passing shadow, owls are the opposite of cats, who, like fervent lovers and austere savants, “cherchent . . . l’horreur des ténèbres” [seek out . . . the horror of shadows] (l. 6). But at dusk when shadows fall, the owls will move. They might have made good coursers for Erebus.

“Les Hiboux” / “La Cloche fêlée”

In a precise reversal, those who want to move suffer the consequences of that desire in “Les Hiboux,” but in “La Cloche fêlée” [The Cracked Bell] (1857: 58) someone suffers from his inability to move, despite “d’immenses efforts” [immense efforts] (l. 14). Had he been able to get out from under the pile of corpses, he might have survived. In this connection, “Sans

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remuer” [Without moving] (“Les Hiboux,” l. 5) parallels “sans bouger” [without budging] (“La Cloche fêlée,” l. 14). The other soldier resembles the owls, keeping watch under the tent as they keep watch under the trees: “Sous les ifs noirs qui les abritent . . . / Ainsi que des dieux étrangers, / . . . Ils méditent” [Under the black yew-trees that shelter them . . . / Like foreign gods, / . . . They meditate] (ll. 1–4). “Ainsi qu’un vieux soldat qui veille sous la tente” [Like an old soldier who keeps watch under the tent] (l. 8). Baudelaire fine-tuned the resemblance after the poem’s initial publication, changing the third line from “Comme des idoles de jais” to “Ainsi que . . . ” (OC I: 962n).

“La Cloche fêlée” / “Spleen: Pluviôse, irrité . . . ”

In “Spleen: Pluviôse, irrité . . . ” [Spleen: Pluviôse, irritated . . . ] (1857: 59) it is winter (“Pluviôse” being the month straddling January and Febru- ary in the revolutionary calendar); the poet sits by his smoky fire, a “bûche enfumée” [smoky log] (l. 9); the weather outside is foggy (“brumeux,” l. 4), cold and dark: “un froid ténébreux” [a gloomy cold] (l. 2); he hears a church bell in the distance: “Le bourdon se lamente” [The bass bell laments] (l. 9). In “La Cloche fêlée” it is winter: “pendant les nuits d’hiver” [on winter nights] (l. 1); the poet sits by his smoky fire, “près du feu qui palpite et qui fume” [near the fire that crackles and smokes] (l. 2); outside it is foggy: (“dans la brume” [in the fog] [l. 4]), dark, and cold: “l’air froid des nuits” [the cold air of the nights] (l. 10); and he hears bells ring, “des carillons qui chantent” [carillons singing] (l. 4). But the bells in the two poems connote opposite emotions: those in 58 “sing” and are fortunate (“Bienheureuse” [l. 5]) to be in good health, with a “gosier vigoureux” [vigorous throat] (l. 5), but the one in 59 “se lamente” [laments] (l. 9). The voice of a poet is heard in both poems. In “Spleen” it is “la triste voix” [the sad voice] (l. 8) of the ghost of a poet; in “La Cloche fêlée” it is the “voix affaiblie” [enfeebled voice] (l. 11) of the poet-narrator. But by way of opposition, that “vieux poète” [old poet] (l. 7) with his pitiful voice forms a contrast to the “vieux soldat” [old soldier] (l. 8) to whom the vigorous-throated bell is likened. The theme of moving versus not moving continues into 59, as the cat “Agite sans repos son corps” [Restlessly agitates his body] (1. 10) in his search for a place to rest. This is a symmetrical opposite to the wounded soldier in 58 who is trying to move but cannot, seeking a way out of his enforced immobility. The weight of the dead piled above is imposing this final resting place on its unwilling tenant. The dead are collected in 59, too, the “pâles habitants du voisin cimetière” [pale inhabitants of the neighbor-

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ing cemetery] (l. 3) on which the rain falls. The pack of cards constitutes another collection of the dead, a pile like the “grand tas de morts” [great pile of dead] (l. 13) from which a voice is heard, the “râle” [death rattle] (l. 12) of the wounded soldier that resembles the narrator’s “voix affaiblie” [weakened voice] (l. 11). Voices emerge from the stack of cards, too, the jack of hearts and queen of spades discussing “leurs amours défunts” [their dead loves] (l. 14).

“Spleen: Pluviôse, irrité . . . ” / “Spleen: J’ai plus de souvenirs . . . ”

Baudelaire takes the theme of the piled-up dead, begun in “La Cloche fêlée” (1857: 58) with the stack of dead soldiers and continued in “Spleen: “Pluviôse, irrité . . . ” (1857: 59) with the pack of playing cards, of which two speak from beyond the grave, and builds a whole poem around it in “Spleen: J’ai plus de souvenirs . . . ” [Spleen: I have more memories . . . ] (1857: 60). There is old perfume in both 59 and 60: the “sales parfums” [dirty perfumes] (l. 11) coming from the deck of cards and “le vieux parfum d’un flacon débouché” [the old perfume of an unstoppered perfume bottle] (l. 14). Like the playing cards, the items in the chest of drawers in 60 to which the poet likens his brain compose a tomb “Qui contient plus de morts que la fosse commune” [Containing more dead than the paupers’ cemetery] (l. 7). Like the deck of cards in 59, and like the pile of dead soldiers in 58, a sound emerges from this tomb, too, the sphinx that sings when struck by the rays of the sun (ll. 22–24). in 59 Pluviôse pours down from his urn “la mortalité” [mortality] (l. 4) in the form of cold rain. In 60 time hangs heavy in the form of “les lourds flocons des neigeuses années” [the heavy snowflakes of the snowy years] (l. 16) that give rise to ennui that “Prend les proportions de l’immortalité” [Assumes the proportions of immortality] (l. 18). In other words, both “mortalité” and “immortalité” precipitate from time (from the month called Pluviôse in 59, from the snowy years in 60), in the only appearance of either word in the 1857 or 1861 collection.

“Spleen: J’ai plus de souvenirs . . . ” / “Spleen: Je suis comme le roi . . . ”

In 60 “L’ennui, fruit de la morose incuriosité” [Ennui, the fruit of morose incuriosity] (l. 17), assumes the proportions of immortality; in “Spleen: Je

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suis comme le roi . . . ” [Spleen: I am like the king . . . ] (1857: 61) boredom and incuriosity instead proves mortal, leading to the imminent death of the king who “S’ennuie avec ses chiens” [Is bored with his dogs] (l. 4) as with everything else, and whom the poet says he resembles. The poet in 60 felt old, having “plus de souvenirs que si j’avais mille ans” [more memories than if I were a thousand years old” (l. 1); the poet in 61 is both “jeune et pourtant très-vieux” [young and yet very old] (l. 2). But though he sees himself as old in both poems, and in both is afflicted by ennui, the two versions of himself are each other’s opposite in several respects. In 60 he is full to overflowing. More packed with memories than if he had lived a thousand years, hiding more secrets than a large chest of drawers, his brain is an “immense caveau” [immense tomb] (l. 6) that contains more dead than a potter’s field. In 61 he is just a “squelette” [skeleton] (l. 12) with no way to contain anything. His bed becomes a tomb (l. 9), but the poet in 60 saw himself as a tomb—a pyramid, a granite monument, a sphinx—and is thus, like his ennui, immortal, or nearly so. The poet’s persona in 61 cannot be “réchauffé” [reheated] (l. 17); but in 60 he is a sphinx in the Sahara who “chante . . . aux rayons de soleil” [sings . . . at the sun’s rays] (l. 24), who is warmed by those rays, for according to the Memnon myth to which Baudelaire is here alluding, it is the warmth of the sun that made the statue sing. Finally, 60’s narrator is above all one who remembers, but 61’s has Lethe in his veins, the river in Hades that makes one forget all.

“Spleen: Je suis comme le roi . . . ” / “Spleen: Quand le ciel bas et lourd . . . ”

The poet in 61 is like the king of “d’un pays pluvieux” [of a rainy land] (l. 1), and rain falls as well in “Spleen: Quand le ciel bas et lourd . . . ” [Spleen: When the low and heavy sky . . . ] (1857: 62): “la pluie étalant ses immenses traînées” [the rain spreading its immense trails] (l. 9). The poet as king in 61 “S’ennuie” [Is bored] (l. 4) with everything; likewise, in 62 he complains of “longs ennuis” [long fits of boredom] (l. 2). But in other regards the circumstances are opposite. The king’s courtiers in 61 do their best to draw him out, but he refuses to emerge from his self-inflicted imprisonment, with the result that “Son lit . . . se transforme en tombeau” [His bed . . . is transformed into a tomb] (l. 9). The poet in 62, speaking for the whole human race, is imprisoned too, but unwillingly so, through a transformation paralleling that of the bed into a tomb: “la terre est changée en un cachot humide” [the earth is changed into a damp dungeon cell] (l. 5). In 61 ladies-in-waiting give up trying to dress provocatively “Pour tirer un souris” [To get a smile] (l. 12) from the king; in 62 Hope, “comme une

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chauve-souris” [like a bat] (l. 6), tries in vain to escape its prison, beating its wings again the walls and its head against the ceiling. One souris cannot be drawn out; the other (chauve-)souris wants to get out but cannot. instead of a dying “peuple” [people] (l. 6) in front of the king’s balcony—having come, it appears, to press their demands for bread—who in earlier times might, like his falcon and prey, have been able to provide him some amusement, another sort of “peuple” (l. 11), mute this time (as opposed to the populace shouting their demands), breaks in, not only to the speaker’s prison cell but to the depths of his brain. The bells that suddenly burst forth in the next stanza, when we read them in the context of the “peuple” in the streets, as I think Baudelaire encourages us to do, evoke the tocsins that called a furious people to revolution (on August 10, 1792, for example, at the taking of the Tuileries). The explosion of bells is accompanied by stubborn groaning (l. 16), which further suggests a populace in the mood for revolution. The poem closes with a double allusion to the poem before. The king had reduced himself to a skeleton (l. 12); the narrator here seems nearly to have as well, for it is his skull that bears the sign of his defeat: “l’Angoisse despotique / Sur mon crâne incliné plante son drapeau noir” [despotic Anguish / Plants its black flag on my bowed skull] (ll. 19–20). That the skull is bowed recalls the first example given of the king’s refusal to come out of his fatal ennui: “de ses précepteurs méprisant les courbettes” [disdain- ing his tutors’ bows] (l. 3). Symmetrically, the second poem ends with a nod to the way the first began, the poet being obliged to accept here the bowing he disdained there.

“Spleen: Quand le ciel bas et lourd . . . ” / “Brumes et pluies”

In “Brumes et pluies” [Mists and Rain] (1857: 63) the same weather con- ditions obtain as in 62, but the poet’s attitude is just the opposite. It is raining and the sky is overcast, but instead of desperately trying to escape such weather as he did in 62, he now revels in it. He loves and praises the seasons that give rise to mist and rain:

O fins d’automne, hivers, printemps trempés de boue, Endormeuses saisons! je vous aime et vous loue D’envelopper ainsi mon cœur et mon cerveau D’un linceul vaporeux et brumeux tombeau. . . .

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Rien n’est plus doux. . . .

[O ends of autumn, winters, springs drenched in mud, Sleep-inducing seasons! I love and praise you For enveloping thus my heart and my brain In a vaporous shroud and misty tomb. . . . Nothing is sweeter. . . . ] (ll. 1–4)

What was imprisoning in 62 is liberating here. He is enveloped (l. 3), as in the poem before he had been encircled (l. 3) and imprisoned (l. 5). To be enveloped by a shroud and a tomb makes him happy now. By contrast, in 62 he sees “la pluie étalant ses immenses traînées / D’une vaste prison imite les barreaux” [the rain displaying its immense trails / Imitates the bars of a vast prison] (ll. 9–10), and as a result “d’anciens corbillards, sans tambours ni musique, / Défilent lentement dans mon âme” [ancient hearses, with neither drums nor music, / Slowly parade in my soul] (ll. 17–18). The image in 62 of the bat beating its prison walls “de son aile timide” [with its timid wing] (l. 7) is transformed in 63 into the image of the poet’s soul spreading “largement ses ailes de corbeau” [wide its crow’s wings] (l. 8). The horror that “nos cerveaux” [our brains] (l. 12) had endured when invaded by spiders weaving their webs is replaced by the delight his “cerveau” [brain] (l. 3) and heart derive from their vaporous shroud and misty tomb.

“Brumes et pluies” / “L’Irrémédiable”

In “Brumes et pluies” water falls from the sky; in “L’Irrémédiable” [The Irremediable] (1857: 64), something else falls from the sky and lands in water, though in the waters of hell, not of earth (and thus not of celestial origin, as were those “Brumes et pluies”):

Une Idée, une Forme, un Être Parti de l’azur et tombé Dans un Styx bourbeux et plombé Où nul œil du Ciel ne pénètre

[An Idea, a Form, a Being Having left the sky and fallen Into a muddy and leaden Styx Where no eye from Heaven can penetrate] (ll. 1–4)

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There is mud in both poems: seasons “trempés de boue” [drenched with mud] (“Brumes et pluies,” l. 1); “un Styx bourbeux” [a muddy Styx] (“L’Irrémédiable,” l. 3). The angel who fell is just as trapped in his “piège” [trap] (l. 26) and “geôle” [jail] (l. 28) as the poet complained of being in his “cachot” [dungeon cell] (l. 5) and “prison” (l. 10) in “Spleen: Quand le ciel bas . . . ” and rejoiced at being in his shroud and tomb in “Brumes et pluies” (l. 4). He took delight in “l’aspect permanent” [permanent aspect] (l. 12) of those misty and rainy seasons; by contrast, the poet as fallen angel despairs at the eternal descending stairs (l. 20) and his irremediable fate (l. 30).

“L’Irrémédiable” / “À une mendiante rousse”

“L’Irrémédiable” concludes with the poet peeking through a kind of hole—a well—at something pale, the “étoile livide” [pale star] (l. 36), reflected from the sky above. “À une mendiante rousse” [To a Red-Haired Beggar Girl] (1857: 65) begins with the poet peeking through holes at pale beauty, the holes in the dress of the “blanchette” [white-skinned girl] (l. 1). In “L’Irrémédiable” as he looked into the well he saw his mirror image (l. 34); the “poète chétif” [sickly poet] (l. 5) gazing at the girl’s “corps maladif” [sickly body] (l. 6), given the equivalence of those adjectives, is, Richter suggests, likewise staring at someone who resembles him. The poet, Richter writes, “is himself also reduced to poverty, to illness, to a decline in value” (907). Anne Berger concurs: “the poet is like the beggar girl, with whom he clearly identifies himself in the second stanza: the self- portrait of the speaker as a ‘poète chétif’ is in fact connected by the rhyme to the evocation of her ‘corps maladif.’ The red-haired beggar girl is him, as his words ‘pour moi’ [for me] would already suggest.” indeed, what we see the girl doing at the end of the poem is what we saw the poet doing in the final stanzas of “L’Irrémédiable,” looking down—as he looked down into the well—“lorgnant en dessous” [peering down at] (l. 49) some cheap jewelry, a counterpart to the “étoile livide” [pale star] (l. 36), to the “phare ironique” [ironic beacon] (l. 37) he saw in the well. If it was ironic then, it is even more so now. In an earlier version of “À une mendiante rousse” it was “De vieux bonnets” [Some old bonnets] (OC I: 1001n) that she had seen and desired. Changing them to jewels with the potential to shine, despite their cheapness, created a closer equivalent to the shining light (variously “étoile,” “phare,” and “flambeau”

8. anne Berger, “‘À une mendiante rousse’: Variations sur le don d’un poème,” in Lectures des Fleurs du mal, ed. Steve Murphy (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2002), 323.

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[torch]) glimpsed in the well.

“À une mendiante rousse” / “Le Jeu”

“Le Jeu” [Gambling] (1857: 66) is a dream, “un rêve nocturne” [a nocturnal dream] (l. 13). The poem presents a gambling den populated by two distinct groups, aged prostitutes and illustrious poets. The latter have come to “gaspiller leurs sanglantes sueurs” [squander their bleeding perspiration] (l. 12). With drops of blood on their skin, they have one trait in common with the freckled beggar girl, whose body is “Plein de taches de rousseur” [Full of spots of red—i.e., of freckles] (l. 7). In addition, Baudelaire plants a linguistic link between the beggar girl’s “maigre nudité” [skinny beauty] (l. 55) and the courtisans’ “maigres oreilles” [skinny ears] (l. 3). Yet the red splotches linking the poets in “Le Jeu” with the freckled girl replay the identification in the other poem between the poet and the girl evident in the rhyming “chétif” and “maladif.” The “poètes illustres” [illustrious poets] (l. 11) in the gambling den recall those named in 65, Belleau (l. 30) and Ronsard (l. 38), the difference being that those two were not identified with the girl, while the poet- narrator of that poem was, but in “Le Jeu” the opposite takes place. The “poètes illustres” (in addition to being linked by their blood-beaded sweat to the freckled girl) are lumped together with the prostitutes, trafficking in their honor as the courtesans are in their beauty, whereas the poet-narrator is not. He is off in a corner taking it all in, though wishing in a way he were like the gamblers, envying the poets’ tenacious passion and the whores’ deathly gaiety (ll. 17–18).

“Le Jeu” / “Le Crépuscule du soir”

There is a gambling scene in “Le Crépuscule du soir” [Evening Twilight] (1857: 67), as there was in “Le Jeu” (1857: 66), again populated by two groups of players of whom prostitutes are one. But the other group is composed, not of illustrious poets as in “Le Jeu,” but of their accomplices, cardsharps: “Les tables d’hôte, dont le jeu fait les délices, / S’emplissent de catins et d’escrocs, leurs complices” [The tables d’hôte, where gambling delights, / Fill up with whores and cheats, their accomplices] (ll. 23–24). Yet the “fronts ténébreux de poètes illustres” [gloomy brows of illustrious poets] (l. 11) that we saw in “Le Jeu” are recalled again here: “Le savant obstiné dont le front s’alourdit” [the obstinate scholar whose brow becomes heavy] (l. 9), his obstinacy recalling the obstinacy of the “passion tenace”

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[tenacious passion] (l. 17) attributed to the gloomy-browed poets. both poems conclude with the image of mortals going to an abyss. In “Le Jeu” the poet was frightened by how much he envied the poets, the prostitutes, and the poor man “Qui court avec ferveur à l’abîme béant” [Who fervently hastens to the gaping abyss] (l. 22); in “Le Crépuscule du soir” the poet tells his soul to close its ear to the sounds of the dying, who are on their way to “leur gouffre commun” [their common abyss] (l. 33). The envy he felt in “Le Jeu” is here replaced by pity.

“Le Crépuscule du soir” / “Le Crépuscule du matin”

As one might expect from its title, “Le Crépuscule du matin” [Morning Twilight] (1857: 68) bears a number of resemblances to “Le Crépuscule du soir” (1857: 67), one twilight recalling the other. The wind blows on the street lamps in both: “les lueurs que tourmente le vent” [the glimmers tormented by the wind] in 67 (l. 14); “le vent du matin soufflait sur les lanternes” [the wind of morning was blowing on the lanterns] in 68 (l. 2). People are breathing their last in hospitals: “ils finissent / Leur destinée et vont vers le gouffre commun; / Lhôpital se remplit de leurs soupirs” [they finish / Their destiny and go toward the common abyss; / The hospital is full of their sighs] in 67 (ll. 32–34); “les agonisants dans le fond des hospices / Poussaient leur dernier râle” [the dying in the depth of the hospices / Were sounding their death rattle] in 68 (ll. 22–23). Somewhat contra- dictorily, each poem claims that its twilight is the hour when pain increases: “C’est l’heure où les douleurs des malades s’aigrissent” [It is the hour when the pains of the sick become worse] in 67 (l. 31); “C’était l’heure où parmi le froid et la lésine / S’aggravent les douleurs des femmes en gésine” [It was the hour when, amid the cold and want, / The pains of women in childbirth become worse] in 68 (ll. 17–18). These are the only poems in the Fleurs du mal where “l’heure où” appears with “les douleurs.” They are also the only two where “leur travail” and “leurs travaux” can be found: thieves will soon begin “leur travail” [their work] in 67 (l. 26); the debauched return, broken with fatigue, from “leurs travaux” in 68 (l. 24). Despite their similarities, there is one major difference between the two twilights. It is cold in “Le Crépuscule du matin”: poor women blow on their fingers (l. 16), birthing mothers suffer “parmi le froid” [amid the cold] (l. 17), dawn herself is “grelottante” [shivering] (l. 25). But although the wind blows on the street lanterns in the evening just as it does in the morning, there is no mention of the weather in “Le Crépuscule du soir,” and no reason to believe that what weather there is is cold. The evening is “charmant” [charming] (l. 1) and “aimable” [lovable] (l. 5), and people

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are out and about, going to restaurants, theaters, and concerts.

“Le Crépuscule du matin” / “La servante au grand cœur . . . ”

The cold that reigns in “Le Crépuscule du matin,” however, connects it to the immediately following poem, “La servante au grand cœur dont vous étiez jalouse . . . ” [The big-hearted servant of whom you were jealous . . . ] (1857: 69), where those fortunate to be alive sleep “chaudement dans leurs draps” [warmly in their sheets] (l. 8) but the dead “sentent s’égoutter les neiges de l’hiver” [feel winter’s snows drip down] (l. 12). It is on a cold December night that the narrator imagines the family servant returning from her grave to gaze upon him with a maternal eye. As morning twilight was the hour when for women giving birth “parmi le froid . . . / S’aggravent les douleurs” [amid the cold . . . / The pains become worse] (ll. 17, 18), here it is when the year turns cold that “Les morts, the pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs” [The dead, the poor dead, endure terrible pains] (l. 4), particularly the servant who has come to “Couver l’enfant grandi de son œil maternel” [Watch over the child now grown with her maternal eye] (l. 20). When he sees “tomber des pleurs de sa paupière creuse” [tears fall from her hollow eye] (l. 22), we remember that in the poem before we saw “un visage en pleurs” [a face in tears] (l. 9). It was “L’air . . . plein du frisson des choses qui s’enfuient” [The air . . . full of the shiver of things that are fleeing] (l. 10). The dead servant with tears in her eyes was one of the “squelettes gelés” [frozen skeletons] who “sentent . . . l’éternité fuir” [feel . . . eternity fleeing] (ll. 11, 12, 13). We do not know what those “choses qui s’enfuient” in 68 are, but at least in 69 we know that eternity is one of them.

“La servante au grand cœur . . . ” / “Je n’ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville . . . ”

“La servante au grand cœur . . . ” is followed by “Je n’ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville . . . ” [I have not forgotten, neighboring the city . . . ”] (1857: 70), which is likewise about a childhood memory:

Je n’ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville, Notre blanche maison, petite mais tranquille, Sa Pomone de plâtre et sa vieille Vénus Dans un bosquet chétif cachant leurs membres nus;

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—Et le soleil, le soir, ruisselant et superbe, Qui, derrière la vitre où se brisait sa gerbe, Semblait, grand œil ouvert dans le ciel curieux, Contempler nos dîners longs et silencieux, Et versait largement ses beaux reflets de cierge Sur la nappe frugale et les rideaux de serge.

[I have not forgotten, neighboring the city, Our white house, small but tranquil, Its plaster Pomona and its old Venus In a puny grove hiding their naked limbs; —And the sun, at evening, streaming and superb, That behind the window where its spray [or sheaf] was breaking Seemed, a great eye open in the curious sky, To contemplate our long and silent dinners, And generously pour its beautiful candlelike reflections On the frugal tablecloth and serge curtains.]

The two poems are intimately linked, as we learn from a letter Baudelaire wrote to his mother on January 11, 1858:

Vous n’avez donc pas remarqué qu’il y avait dans Les Fleurs du mal deux pièces vous concernant, ou du moins allusionnelles à des détails intimes de notre ancienne vie, de cette époque de veuvage qui m’a laissé de singuliers et tristes souvenirs,—l’une: Je n’ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville . . . (Neuilly), et l’autre qui suit: La servante au grand cœur dont vous étiez jalouse . . . (Mariette)?

[Have you then not noticed that there were in the Fleurs du mal two poems about you, or at least alluding to some intimate details of our former life, from that period of widowhood that gave me memories both singular and sad—one, Je n’ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville . . . (Neuilly), and the other that follows it, La servante au grand cœur dont vous étiez jalouse . . . (Mariette)?” (OC I: 1036n)

Richter argues, illogically, from the fact that “Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ” is preceded in the 1861 edition by “L’Amour du mensonge” that the other person implied in the “Notre” [Our] in line 2 of “Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ” (“Notre blanche maison, petite mais tranquille” [Our white house, small but tranquil]) must be the woman who figures in that preceding poem (Rich- ter, 1149). He seems to have forgotten the 1857 edition, where “L’Amour du mensonge” does not appear, and where “Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ” is pre-

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ceded by “La servante au grand cœur . . . ,” Baudelaire having kept them together in 1861 but reversed their order. In his analysis of “La servante au grand cœur . . . ” Richter does identify the other person in the narrator’s first-person plural (“Nous aurions déjà dû lui porter quelques fleurs” [We should have already brought her some flowers] [l. 3]) as the latter’s mother, given that the poet names himself in line 20 as a grown-up child (Richter, 1159). I agree, and would use Richter’s own argument (misap- plied to the 1861 edition because he writes as if “La servante au grand cœur . . . ” was always preceded by “L’Amour du mensonge”) to contend that since we know the other part of “Nous” in “La servante . . . ” is the mother, the other part of “Nous” in the immediately following poem, “Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ,” may well be her, too. But although like Richter I find clues in contiguity, I do not believe we can blithely assume that a character in one poem is identical to a similar character in the next. Each poem in the Fleurs du mal refers to its predecessor, but usually despite a change in the context local to each poem. Each poem rewrites its predecessor yet tells its own story, even while seeming to retell the one we have just read. Can we tell from “Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ” that the other member of “Nous” is the speaker’s mother? Perhaps. Because in no other poem does he describe himself as living in a suburb, as he does in lines 1–2. Rather, we see him living in a city apartment, as for example in “Spleen: Pluviôse, irrité . . . ” How could he have afforded to live with a mistress (the only other likely possibility for “Nous”) in a white house in a suburb with two statues on the lawn? By a process of deduction we might have arrived at the same conclusion—that the narrator is referring to a more distant past, his childhood, when he lived under his mother’s protection. brigitte Mahuzier argues that both Pomona and Venus evoke the mother, but in a mocking way. The statue of Pomona is in plaster and thus not likely to last the perennial change of seasons of which she is the goddess (she is the goddess as well of the bounty of nature), while Venus is old (l. 3) and thus hardly an icon of beauty. If the narrator’s mother resembles this Pomona and this Venus, she is neither nourishing nor beautiful. As if they had realized their nakedness and were chased out of Paradise, Mahuzier argues, these two try to hide their nakedness behind a bush unequal to the task. They fear the prying eye, but a prying eye is exactly what we get in lines 5–10, the great open eye of the sun in a curious sky, contemplating the mother and son’s long and silent dinners. The sun, in Baudelaire, is

9. brigitte Mahuzier, “Profaned Memory: A Proustian Reading of ‘Je n’ai pas oublié . . .,’” in Understanding Les Fleurs du mal: Critical Readings, ed. William J. Thomp- son (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1997), 166.

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often the father: the sun is a “père nourricier” [nourishing father] in “Le Soleil” (l. 9), a liquid fire, “ruisselant” [streaming] (l. 5) in “Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ” and pouring out its light, as in “Élévation” it was “une pure et divine liqueur, / Le feu clair” [a pure and divine liquor, / The bright fire] (ll. 11–12). Knowing what we know (and what the public of 1857 could not) about Baudelaire’s family history, we10 can identify this particular sun (the one contemplating mother and son at dinner) with François Baude- laire, the father whose death when Baudelaire was six caused the widowhood that generated the sad memories to which he refers in the letter. This contemplating paternal eye responds—in the way the Fleurs’ contiguous poems answer each other—to the contemplating “œil maternel” [maternal eye] of the servant in the poem before. That eye wanted both to “Couver l’enfant grandi” [Watch over the grown-up child] (l. 20) and to give a silent reproach to the mother for not having brought flowers to her grave (l. 3). For the dead servant did not really return, but the poet asks his mother what could he reply if she did, and tears flowed from her hollow eyes. Both the paternal eye and its maternal counterpart (as the servant regards the poet with a motherly gaze) exude a liquid: the father’s is “ruisselant” [streaming] and “versait” [was pouring out] its light; the maternal one was weeping tears. ironically, and as if making up for this sin of omission, the sun brings flowers to the mother and son, “sa gerbe” [its spray of flowers] (l. 6) that breaks against the window (line 6)—as in the expression “déposer une gerbe sur une tombe / to place a spray of flowers on a grave” (Collins- Robert French-English English-French Dictionary). (Although a “gerbe” is commonly a sheaf of wheat, it can also be a bouquet of flowers. Littré cites an instance of “gerbe” in that sense in Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Péruvienne [“Elle vint me présenter une gerbe de fleurs ornée de rubans” (letter 32)], a text that dates from the eighteenth century.) The father does what the mother (and son) should have done, as if reproaching them for not having done it. The living having neglected to bring flowers to the dead, the dead bring flowers to the living. The mother, like the Pomona and Venus seeking to hide their nakedness, has reason to fear an all-seeing eye, her late husband’s. Would he be reproaching her for more than the absent flowers? Perhaps for remarrying so quickly, and to the man who would prove so disastrous a stepfather to her son?

10. along with Jean Starobinski in “‘Je n’ai pas oublié . . .’ (Baudelaire: Poème XCIX des Fleurs du mal)” in Au bonheur des mots: Mélanges en l’honneur de Gérald Antoine (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1984), 419–29.

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“Je n’ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville . . . ” / “Le Tonneau de la Haine”

“Le Tonneau de la Haine” [Hatred’s Cask] (1857: 71) is the Danaïdes’ unfillable cask, which they were condemned to try to fill because they had murdered their husbands. That is an extraordinary myth to which to allude in a poem that immediately follows one in which a husband comes back from the dead to stare, possibly with reproach, at his wife (it is through that poem’s parallel with the one before it that we can see that it is her dead husband, and the speaker’s dead father). Is Baudelaire suggesting that his mother killed his father? Note that this is the third poem in a row to feature liquid coming out of a hole: the tears from the maternal “paupières vides” [empty eyelids] in “La servante au grand cœur . . . ,” the liquid light pouring out of the streaming hole in the sky that is the paternal sun in “Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ,” and now the blood, sweat, and tears leaking out of the secret holes the Demon makes. The dining room in the poem before, with the liquid emanating from the father-sun falling “sur la nappe frugale” [on the frugal tablecloth] (l. 10) of its table, is here transformed into a tavern with a table under which Hatred can never drink itself to sleep.

“Le Tonneau de la Haine” / “Le Revenant”

The holes that made Hatred’s cask (l. 1) and the abysses (l. 5) impossible to fill in “Le Tonneau de la Haine” are transformed in “Le Revenant” [The Ghost] (1857: 72) into the “place vide” [empty place] (l. 10) the speaker will leave in the bed of the woman after he returns from the grave to visit her. His absence will make it impossible for her to satisfy her longing. Thus this empty place will fulfill the same function as the holes in the cask, to make desire (desire for vengeance in “Le Tonneau de la Haine,” desire for love in “Le Revenant”) insatiable. His mistress thus resembles the “pâles Danaïdes,” whose pallor is here evoked by the “matin livide” [pale morning] (l. 9) in which she will find the “place vide.” as a body returning from the grave, he puts us in mind of the galva- nized bodies in “Le Tonneau de la Haine” (l. 4):

Le Démon fait des trous secrets à ces abîmes, Par où fuiraient mille ans de sueurs et d’efforts, Quand même elle saurait allonger ses victimes, Et pour les resaigner galvaniser leurs corps.

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[The Demon makes secret holes in these abysses, By which a thousand years of sweats and efforts would escape, Even if she [Hatred] could lay down her victims, And galvanize their bodies to bleed them again.] (ll. 5–8)

Those bodies were bled anew in the effort to make up for the blood lost to the “trous secrets” [secret holes] (l. 5), but, by a kind of reversal, it is the poet as “revenant,” the equivalent to those reanimated bodies, who is responsible for the holes’ equivalent, the empty space.

“Le Revenant” / “Le Mort joyeux”

In “Le Revenant” the poet imagined himself coming back from the dead; in “Le Mort joyeux” [The Joyful Corpse] (1857: 73) he imagines himself going in the other direction, lying down in a grave he digs himself, going to sleep, and becoming a corpse on which crows and worms will feed. He is a “mort-vivant,” both dead and alive, in both poems, but in opposite ways. In “Le Revenant” he passes from death to life; in “Le Mort joyeux,” from life to death. The “fosse profonde” [deep pit] (l. 2) that he digs corresponds to the “place vide” he created in “Le Revenant” (which itself corresponded to the “trous secrets” of “Le Tonneau de la Haine”). But the situation is just the opposite, too, for he created the emptiness in “Le Revenant” by not being there; here he creates it so that he might fill it with his presence. He did this in “Le Revenant” to inflict pain on his mistress; he does it here to bring “torture” (l. 13) upon himself.

“Le Mort joyeux” / “Sépulture”

It is once more a woman who will be tortured after death in “Sépulture” [Burial] (1857: 74), as a woman was two poems before, in “Le Revenant.” The editors of the posthumous 1868 edition changed the title to “Sépul- ture d’un poète maudit” [Burial of an Accursed Poet], but there is no indication Baudelaire intended such a change. That the person to be buried had a “corps vanté” [vaunted body] (l. 4) makes it much more likely that it was a woman’s body than a man’s, and certainly not the poet’s own. Jacques Crépet quotes a poem of Voltaire (the Êpître dédicatoire to Zaïre) lamenting the lack of funeral honors paid the actress Adrienne Lecouvreur, a poem it is likely Baudelaire was not only remembering but quoting:

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M. de Laubinière Porta la nuit par charité Ce corps, autrefois si vanté, Dans un vieux fiacre empaqueté Vers le bord de notre rivière

[M. de Laubinière Carried at night as an act of charity This body, once so vaunted, In an old carriage bundled To the bank of our river]11

Baudelaire echoes these lines in lines 1–4 of “Sépulture”: “nuit” in line 1, “par charité” in line 2, “corps . . . vanté” in line 4. Among the mistresses to whom Baudelaire alludes in the Fleurs du mal, one of them—Marie Daubrun—was an actress. in both poems suffering continues in the grave. The poet looks forward in “Le Mort joyeux” to receiving “encore quelque torture” [some new torture] (l. 13) after the crows have bled his carcass and the worms have had their way; the actress will have to listen all year to the cries of wolves and witches, the lustful frolics of the old and the plotting of criminals. But while the poet, of his own volition, buries himself, the actress is buried by the kindness of another. And while the poet invites his suffering, the same can hardly be said of the woman.

“Sépulture” / “Tristesses de la lune”

In “Tristesses de la lune” [Sorrows of the Moon] (1857: 75) the moon is likened to a woman about to fall asleep: “Ainsi qu’une beauté . . . / Qui . . . caresse, / Avant de s’endormir, le contour de ses seins” [Like a beautiful woman . . . / Who . . . caresses, / Before falling asleep, the contour of her breasts] (ll. 2, 3–4). The stars in “Sépulture,” who “Ferment leurs yeux appesantis” [Close their heavy eyes] (l. 6), were about to fall asleep, too. The woman’s “corps vanté” [vaunted body] (l. 4) in “Sépul- ture” is transformed here into the “beauté” [beautiful woman] (l. 2) to whom the moon is compared. The “poète pieux” [pious poet] (l. 11) plays here a role paralleling that of the “bon chrétien” [good Christian] in 74

11. Quoted in Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, ed. Jacques Crépet and Georges Blin (Paris: José Corti, 1942), 417.

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(l. 2). The latter, as a good Christian, took it upon himself to bury the woman; the poet in his piety takes the pale and furtive tear the woman lets fall and hides it in his heart, far from the eyes of the sun—in effect burying it.

“Tristesses de la lune” / “La Musique”

The “larme pâle” [pale tear] (l. 12) that was the focus of the speaker’s attention in “Tristesses de la lune” is transformed into the “pâle étoile” [pale star] (l. 2) toward which he steers in “La Musique” [Music] (1857: 76). The moon floated “Sur le dos satiné des molles avalanches” [On the satiny back of the soft avalanches] (l. 5) of the clouds as here the poet mounts and descends “sur le dos” [on the back] (l. 7) of the waves. The phrase “sur le dos” in 1857 appeared only in these contiguous poems. When Baudelaire changed the order of the poems for the 1861 addition, and these two were no longer contiguous, the phrase disappeared from “La Musique” as well. in “Tristesses de la lune” the clouds “montent dans l’azur” [mount in the azure] (l. 8), as here the equivalent waves are themselves “monts” [mountains] on which the poet says, “je monte et je descends” [I mount and I descend] (l. 7). To complete the transformation of the moon-woman into the poet, Baudelaire constructs a parallel between the attention the woman pays to her own breasts, caressing their contour in lines 3–4, and the attention he pays to his own breast: “La poitrine en avant et gonflant mes poumons / De toile pesante” [My breast in front and swelling my lungs / Of heavy sail] (l. 5–6).

“La Musique” / “La Pipe”

Adam, noting that in the 1857 edition “La Musique” preceded “La Pipe” [The Pipe] (1857: 77), remarks of the former that “we should put it back in its former position to fully see its meaning. In the same way that ‘La Pipe’ joyfully expresses tobacco’s power to charm and heal, ‘La Musique’ celebrates music’s liberating power” (FM Adam, 359). To this we could add that in both poems the poet fills his lungs—with sea air (that is, with music) in “La Musique” (ll. 5–6), with tobacco smoke here; that there he “monte” [mounts] the waves (l. 7), while here the smoke “monte” [mounts] (l. 11); and that the waves “bercent” [cradle] (l. 13) the poet, while here the smoke “berce” [cradles] (l. 9) his soul.

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“La Pipe” / “La Destruction”

The Demon in “La Destruction” [Destruction] (1857: 78) is presented as something very much like tobacco smoke. Because the smoke is comforting and the Demon is maleficent, the poems are precisely opposed. The smoke from the poet’s pipe “guérit / De ses fatigues son esprit” [heals / His spirit of its fatigues] (ll. 13–14), but the demonic air takes the poet, already “brisé de fatigue” [broken by fatigue] (l. 10), and makes his suffering worse. The noun fatigue appears in only these two poems. The first division in the 1857 Fleurs du mal falls between “La Pipe,” the last poem in the section “Spleen et Idéal,” and “La Destruction,” the first poem in the section “Fleurs du mal.” Nevertheless, the two are about as tightly linked as any in the collection. Like many, they not only display a common ground but are also exactly opposed on that very ground. The Demon “nage autour de moi comme un air impalpable; / Je l’avale et le sens qui brûle mon poumon” [swims around me like an impalpable air; / I swallow it and feel it burning my lungs] (ll. 2–3). The smoke of the pipe swirls around him as does this demonic air: “J’enlace et je berce son âme / Dans le réseau mobile et bleu / Qui monte de ma bouche en feu” [I enlace and crade his soul / In the mobile and blue web / That rises from my burning mouth] (ll. 9–11). The poet “avale” [swallows] (l. 3) the demonic air, as he swallows the smoke from his pipe. The demonic air “brûle” [burns] (l. 3) his lungs; the smoke from the pipe comes from its “bouche en feu” [burning mouth] (l. 11).

“La Destruction” / “Une martyre”

At the conclusion of “La Destruction” the Demon “jette dans mes yeux . . . / Des vêtements souillés, des blessures ouvertes, / Et l’appareil sanglant de la Destruction” [casts before my eyes . . . / Soiled clothing, open wounds, / And the bloody apparatus of Destruction] (ll. 12–14). “Une martyre” [A Martyred Woman] (1857: 79) seems to be just the kind of thing the Demon was taking him to see:

Un cadavre sans tête épanche, comme un fleuve, Sur l’oreiller désaltéré Un sang rouge et vivant, dont la toile s’abreuve Avec l’avidité d’un pré

[A headless corpse spreads, like a river, On the thirsty pillow

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Blood red and alive; the cloth soaks it up With the eagerness of a meadow] (ll. 9–12)

To show him this scene, the Demon had led the poet “loin du regard de Dieu, / . . . au milieu / Des plaines de l’Ennui” [far from the gaze of God, / . . . in the midst / Of the plains of Ennui] (ll. 9, 10–11). “Une martyre” begins “Au milieu des” [In the midst of the] (l. 1) decanters, sequined fabrics, and voluptuous furniture, and its scene of horror is “Loin du monde railleur, loin de la foule impure, / Loin des magistrats curieux” [Far from the mocking world, far from the impure crowd, / Far from peering magistrates] (ll. 53–54). To be far from the gaze of such magistrates, in particular, is like being far from where God can see. The Demon, the narrator tells us, threw “dans mes yeux” [into my eyes] (l. 12) a bloody scene of open wounds, and the scene in “Une martyre” is equally eye-catching: “Semblable aux visions . . . qui nous enchaî- nent les yeux” [Like the visions . . . that enchain our eyes] (ll. 13, 14). in “La Destruction” the Demon “nage autour de moi comme un air impalpable” [swims around me like an impalpable air] (l. 2), as in “Une martyre,” where “L’air est dangereux et fatal” [The air is dangerous and fatal] (1. 6) and there is a swarm of bad angels “Nageant dans les plis des rideaux” [Swimming in the folds of the curtains] (l. 37), a connection Pichois notes (OC I: 1060). The Demon’s impalpable air fills the poet with “un désir éternel et coupable” [an eternal and guilty desire] (l. 4), while the dead woman’s eyes and pose reveals “Une coupable joie” [A guilty joy] (l. 33), even though she could not assuage, while alive, “L’immensité [du] désir” [The immensity of the desire] (l. 48) for the lover who murdered her. it was “au milieu / Des plaines de l’Ennui” [in the midst / Of the plains of Ennui] (ll. 10–11) that the poet in “La Destruction” encountered the bloody scene that so strikingly anticipates the one “Une martyre” recounts, in the course of which he wonders if it was ennui that led the woman to open herself to certain desires:

. . . Son âme exaspérée Et ses sens par l’ennui mordus S’étaient-ils entr’ouverts à la meute altérée Des désirs errants et perdus?

[ . . . Her exasperated soul And her senses bitten by ennui, Were they opened to the thirsty horde Of errant and lost desires?] (ll. 41–44)

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“Une martyre” / “Lesbos”

The place name “Lesbos,” the title of the next poem in the sequence (1857: 80), did not in the nineteenth century nor for Baudelaire in particular immediately connote female homosexuality. Jacques Dupont, in his edition of the Fleurs du mal, quotes a passage in the article on Lesbos in Pierre Larousse’s Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle that says that the island was the site of a school for courtesans: “This education, conducted by the most literate and able of women, comprised not only all that concerned the body but also all that had to do with the delights of the mind, and the name of Sappho, who was educated in one of those schools in Lesbos, can give an idea of what those singular institutions could be. Nevertheless, the concen- tration of so many such women in one place could not fail to give rise to shameful morals.”12 He comments that for Baudelaire the name of the island “invokes a sort of ‘counterreligion’ of love and a propensity to excess in debauchery” (FM Dupont, 16). Pichois points out that nineteenth-century dictionaries such as Larousse and Littré did not give the modern, homosexual sense to “lesbien.” Yet in Baudelaire’s circle the word could have the modern meaning. He had originally thought of giving the title Les Les- biennes to what became the Fleurs du mal. Such a title, Pichois comments, “would not have evoked the word’s modern sense in the mind of contem- porary readers. There is thus reason to think that this collection would have offered an ample image of Lesbos in which Sapphic love would have had a place . . . but not the entire place” (OC I: 794). Pichois, however, does cite “Lesbos,” along with the two “Femmes damnées” and “perhaps ‘Sed non satiata,’” as “Sapphic poems.” Dupont, on the other hand, notes that in the poem “Lesbos” Baudelaire “follows the heterosexual version of the death of Sappho” as opposed to the homosexual one (FM Dupont, 322): that is, that she leaped to her death from Mount Leucate because the young ferryman Phaon, to whom Aphrodite had given the power to make himself loved by the most reticent of women, had disdained her advances: “Elle fit son beau corps la pâture suprême / D’un brutal dont l’orgueil punit l’impiété / De Sapho qui mourut le jour de son blasphème” [She offered up her beautiful body as the supreme nourishment / Of a brute whose pride punished the impiety / Of Sappho who died the day of her blasphemy] (ll. 68–70). Phaon’s prideful refusal, along with her resulting death by suicide, was her punishment for the blasphemy of insulting “le rite et le culte inventé” [the rite and the invented cult] (l. 67) of female homosexuality by seeking his love.

12. Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, ed. Jacques Dupont (Paris: GF Flammarion, 2006), 321; hereafter cited in text as FM Dupont.

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Thus, a woman dies both in “Lesbos” (1857: 80) and in “Une martyre” (1857: 79). In 79 there is a “cadavre sans tête” [a corpse without a head] (l. 9); in 80 there is a death without a corpse, the “cadavre adoré de Sapho” [adored corpse of Sappho] (l. 54) having been lost to the waves. The “martyre” of the title returns in “Lesbos” as well, though in a different sense: “l’éternel martyre” [the eternal martyrdom] (l. 26) that Lesbos inflicts on ambitious hearts. The man who killed the woman in “Une martyre” and the man whose refusal brought about Sappho’s death are exact opposites, the former having an immense desire, the latter having none at all. it appears that Baudelaire engages in some subtle wordplay as he relates these two poems in a way that no one, as far as I can tell, has noticed. The detached head of the martyr in 79 reposes on the night table, “comme un renoncule” [like a buttercup] (l. 17). The flower’s name, ranonculus in Latin, means “little frog.” According to Louis-Nicolas Bescherelle’s Dic- tionnaire universel de la langue française, “The name ‘renoncule’ given to this genus comes from the fact that many of the species that compose it are ordinarily found in wet and swampy meadows where one frequently encounters the frog, rana; and it is for that reason as well that several of these plants are commonly given the name grenouillette [little frog].” “Les- bos” counters this frog with a toad: “Lesbos où les Phrynés l’une l’autre s’attirent, / Où jamais un soupir ne resta sans écho” [Lesbos, where the Phrynés attract each other, / Where a sigh is never without its echo] (ll. 11–12). Bescherelle’s entry on Phryné informs us that she was “a celebrated Athenian courtesan” and that the name used figuratively denotes “a woman of dissolute morals.” According to Plutarch the original Phryné’s “name was Mnesarete, but she took on that of Phryne [toad] as a nickname because of her yellow skin.”13 So in Lesbos, one Phryné attracts another, and in the intratext these two poems form, a Phryné attracts a “renoncule,” a toad or a frog.

“Lesbos” / “Femmes damnées: À la pâle clarté . . . ”

In “Lesbos” (1857: 80) Sappho made the mistake of abandoning the cult of female homosexuality for the love of a man (who in the end turned her down). In “Femmes damnées: À la pâle clarté . . . ”) [“Doomed Women: By the pale light . . . ”] (1857: 81) a woman (Hippolyte) in a homosexual relationship with another woman (Delphine) is berated by the latter for

13. Plutarch, “The Oracles at Delphi No Longer Given in Verse,” In Plutarch’s Mora- lia, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University / Loeb Library, 1957), vol. 5: xiv.

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wanting to make love to a man. The man, says Delphine, would be too violent (ll. 28, 31–34). Besides, one cannot serve two masters (l. 73). both poems speak of sterile pleasures, but in different contexts. In “Lesbos” hollow-eyed girls, in love with their bodies, caress the ripe fruits of their nubility in front of mirrors, a “stérile volupté” [sterile pleasure] (l. 17); in “Femmes damnées: À la pâle clarté . . . ” the narrator describes lesbian love (in the modern sense) as “L’âpre stérilité de votre jouissance” [The bitter sterility of your pleasure] (l. 97). The mirrors in the “Lesbos” passage reflect, perhaps, the sterility in the other. in another instance of the same concept (and close synonyms) appearing in differing contexts, the “pâture” [nourishment] (l. 68) that Sappho made her body into for the man she loved in “Lesbos” is reflected in the “terrible repas” [terrible repast] (l. 44) that Hippolyte found her night of lovemaking with Delphine to have been in “Femmes damnées: À la pâle clarté. . . . ” in “Lesbos” Sappho was punished for wanting to make love to a man, “un brutal dont l’orgueil punit l’impiété / De Sapho” [a brute whose pride punished the impiety / Of Sappho] (ll. 69–70); in “Femmes damnées: À la pâle clarté . . . ” the narrator says of lesbian lovers that “votre châtiment naîtra de vos plaisirs” [your punishment will be born of your pleasures] (l. 92). In both cases, the punishment consists of not being sexually satisfied. Sappho’s desire is frustrated by his disdain, while of the lesbian lovers the narrator says, “Jamais vous ne pourrez assouvir votre rage” [Never will you be able to assuage your passion] (l. 91), and it is in that way that their punishment will be born of their pleasures.

“Femmes damnées: À la pâle clarté . . . ” / “Femmes damnées: Comme un bétail pensif . . . ”

“Femmes damnées: À la pâle clarté . . . ” (1857: 81) is followed by “Fem- mes damnées: Comme un bétail pensif . . . ” [Doomed Women: Like a pen- sive herd . . . ] (1857: 82). Beyond the obvious connections linking two poems about lesbianism bearing the same title, and in both of which desire remains unassuaged (“Jamais vous ne pourrez assouvir votre rage” [Never will you be able to assuage your passion] [81, l. 91], “soifs inassouvies” [unassuaged thirsts] [82, l. 27]), we note that in 82 these women seek out the infinite—that they are “Chercheuses d’infini” (l. 23)—while in 81 they do just the opposite: they flee it. The narrator encourages them to continue what they are doing: “fuyez l’infini que vous portez en vous” [flee the infinite that you carry in you] (81, l. 104).

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in both “Femmes damnées” poems there is “hollowing-out” [creuse- ment] going on, but it is heterosexual men who do it in one and homosexual women in the other. Your lover’s kisses, Delphine warns Hippolyte, “creuseront leurs ornières” [will hollow out their ruts] (81, l. 31) on her body like chariots or plowshares. In the other poem, “Les unes . . . / Vont épelant l’amour des craintives enfances / Et creusent le bois vert des jeunes arbrisseaux” [Some women . . . / Spell out the love of timid adolescences / And hollow out the green wood of young shrubs] (82, ll. 5, 7–8). In other words, some of these “femmes damnées” are carving out letters on young trees to declare their love.

“Femmes damnées: Comme un bétail pensif . . . ” / “Les Deux Bonnes Sœurs”

Baudelaire provided “Lesbos” (1857: 80), “Femmes damnées: À la pâle clarté . . . ” (1857: 81), and “Femmes damnées: Comme un bétail pensif . . . ” (1857: 82) with a number of connections more subtle than the obvious common topic that they, unusually among neighboring poems in the Fleurs, share. With “Les Deux Bonnes Sœurs” [The Two Good Sisters] (1857: 83) we seem to have left that topic behind, yet the “Sœurs” [Sisters] of the title (and line 10) appear to emerge from the immediately preceding “Femmes damnées,” where the word twice appears: “D’autres, comme des sœurs, marchent lentes et graves” [Others, like sisters, walk, slow and solemn] (l. 9); “Pauvres sœurs, je vous aime autant que je vous plains” [Poor sisters, I love you as much as I pity you] (l. 26). In 82 the word “sœurs” had acquired a nuance of lesbianism, and now suddenly in 83, which is not about Lesbos, the word immediately reappears—and in its plural form, which appears in no other poems than these two in the 1857 edition. richter notes this connection, along with the fact that both the two good sisters, Debauchery and Death, and the lesbian lovers are virginal (1342, 1344). Lesbian lovers are so named in line 21 of 82: “Ô vierges” [O virgins]. Debauchery and Death “sont deux aimables filles / Prodigues de baisers” [are two lovable girls / Prodigal with kisses] (83, ll. 1–2)—and at that moment we are reminded of the prodigality of kisses in “Lesbos, où les baisers sont comme les cascades” [Lesbos, where the kisses are like cascades] (80, l. 6)—“ Dont le flanc toujours vierge . . . / Sous l’éternel labeur n’a jamais enfanté” [Whose ever virgin loins . . . / Despite eternal labor have never given birth] (83, ll. 3–4). This endless labor never even- tuating in childbirth resembles the “soifs inassouvies” [unassuaged thirsts] (82, l. 27) of lesbian love as Baudelaire imagines it, a desire that never reaches fulfillment. It resembles lesbianism as well with regard to the lat-

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ter’s “stérilité” (81, l. 97), which never leads to childbirth, either. The “bonnes sœurs” in the first tercet of 83 who offer us, alternately, “De terribles plaisirs et d’affreuses douceurs” [Terrible pleasures and horrible sweetnesses] (l. 11) resemble in their tendency to combine pain and pleasure the sisters (in both the monastic and lesbian sense) who “Mêlent / L’écume du plaisir aux larmes des tourments” [Blend / The Froth of pleasure with the tears of torments] (82, ll. 19–20). But the blends are of opposite kinds, for while “terribles” contrasts with “plaisirs” and “affreuses” with “douceurs,” “écume” is as much in harmony with “plaisir” as “larmes” with “tourments.” another instance of blending is part of the connective tissue between these poems, in which what happens twice is not the blending but the application of a blade to a young shrub. In 83 Death will graft its cypresses onto Debauchery’s myrtles: “Quand veux-tu m’enterrer, Débauche aux bras immondes? / O Mort, quand viendras-tu, sa rivale en attraits, / Sur ses myrtes infects enter tes noirs cyprès?” [When will you bury me, filthy-armed Debauchery? / O Death, her rival in attractions, when will you come / And graft your black cypresses onto her disgusting myrtles?] (ll. 12–14). According to Bescherelle’s Dictionnaire, the myrtle (“myrte”) “est un arbrisseau” [is a shrub]. Among the “femmes damnées” in 82, some “creusent le bois vert des jeunes arbrisseaux” [hollow out the green wood of the young shrubs] (l. 8). The contexts—young same-sex love in 82, death and debauchery in 83—are entirely different, yet in both a blade is applied to “arbrisseaux” (and not “arbres”).

“Les Deux Bonnes Sœurs” / “La Fontaine de sang”

The last tercet of “La Fontaine de sang” [The Fountain of Blood] (1857: 84)—“J’ai cherché dans l’amour un sommeil oublieux, / Mais l’amour n’est pour moi qu’un matelas d’aiguilles / Fait pour donner à boire à ces cruelles filles!” [I sought in love a forgetful sleep, / But love for me was but a mattress of needles / Designed to provide drink for those cruel girls!] (ll. 12–14)—makes a reference to “ces cruelles filles” [those cruel girls] as if they had been mentioned already in the poem, but they have not been. Adam remarks, “These last two lines are, at first glance, difficult to inter- pret. They become clear when one observes, in the preceding poem, that Debauchery and Death are ‘deux aimables filles’ [two lovable girls]. Baude- laire intended the rapprochement” (FM Adam, 414n). Pichois agrees: “Who are these . . . cruelles filles? . . . They are not to be found in this sonnet, but in the preceding one: Debauchery and Death” (OC I: 1064n). So here is a poem in the Fleurs du mal that cannot be understood on even the

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basic level without our having read another poem, the one that precedes it. Note that it is not just any poem elsewhere in the collection that must be read to understand this one, but the poem that immediately precedes it. Not a poem that had preceded it at some distance (as the liquidity of the sun in “Le Soleil” enables us to appreciate its liquidity in “Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ”), but the poem that immediately precedes it. If over the years readers of Baudelaire had paid attention to what he kept claiming about the continuity and sequentiality of the Fleurs du mal, this would come as no surprise. We should realize that none of the poems in the volume can be fully understood without an awareness of the one just before, that the poems were not written to be anthologized and read in isolation from each other. “La Fontaine de sang” is incomprehensible when read without “Les Deux Bonnes Soeurs.” No wonder Baudelaire was horrified to contemplate the mutilation of his book. Debauchery and Death form a pair in “Les Deux Bonnes Sœurs” (1857: 83) and reappear in “La Fontaine de sang” (1857: 84), but the latter introduces another duo, wine and love. Neither provides the repose the poet seeks. He asks wine to put to sleep the terror that undermines him, even if only for a day, but wine makes his senses perceive terror all the more acutely. He seeks in love a forgetful sleep, but love proves a bed of needles. Yet he told us in 83 that Death (as “Tombeaux” [Tombs]) and Debauchery (as “lupanars” [brothels]) offer “Un lit que le remords n’a jamais fréquenté” [A bed that remorse has never frequented] (ll. 7, 8). That is, Death and Debauchery can do what wine and love cannot, offer remorse-free repose. In this way 83 and 84 are alike yet opposite. Each describes its own pair of potential escape routes. Those in one poem are efficacious; those in the other are not.

“La Fontaine de sang” / “Allégorie”

The beautiful woman in “Allégorie” [Allegory] (1857: 85) “rit à la mort et nargue la débauche” [laughs at death and scoffs at debauchery] (l. 5), an explicit reference to the two “filles” who inhabit both 83 and 84. Pichois comments: “It indeed seems that these three poems . . . are organized together in an ensemble. Doubtless it is in this consecutiveness [consécu- tion] that one must look for the meaning of the last line of the ‘Fontaine de sang’ and the general meaning of ‘Allégorie’” (OC I: 1063). For Adam, the three poems likewise “form a series and shed light on each other mutu- ally” (FM Adam, 414n). Neither the woman in “Allégorie” nor the “poète sinistre” [sinister poet] (l. 5) in “Les Deux Bonnes Sœurs” finds death and debauchery threatening. She laughs and scoffs; he finds them both

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“aimables” and able to offer a bed untroubled by remorse (ll. 1, 8). With regard to death and remorse, she resembles him even more closely, for she too finds no remorse in death: “Elle regardera la face de la Mort . . . sans remord” [She will look at the face of Death . . . without remorse] (ll. 19, 20). They are alike in yet another way. Although “inféconde” [infertile] (l. 13), she is “nécessaire à la marche du monde” [necessary to the progress of the world] (l. 14), of universal benefit as is he when his overflowing blood “s’en va . . . / Désaltérant la soif de chaque créature” [goes out . . . / Slaking the thirst of every creature] (“La Fontaine de sang,” ll. 6, 7), as if he were some new Lamb of God. She, perhaps the allegory of prostitution as Adam suggests, is the sinister poet’s uncanny double. Yet they are not entirely alike. He is the “Favori de l’enfer” [Hell’s favorite] (“Les Deux Bonnes Sœurs,” l. 6), and evidently he knows it, whereas she “ignore l’enfer” [is ignorant of hell] (l. 17). He seeks repose in “Le vin” and “l’amour” and is disappointed (“La Fontaine de sang,” ll. 9–14); she is familiar with yet indifferent to both: she “laisse dans son vin traîner sa chevelure. / Les griffes de l’amour, les poisons du tripot, / Tout glisse et tout s’émousse au granit de sa peau” [lets her hair trail in her wine. / Love’s claws, the poisons of gambling dens /—All slide off, blunted by the granite of her skin] (ll. 2–4). “Allégorie” in this passage seems at odds with “La Fontaine de sang,” for the latter presents wine and love as distinct from, and having different qualities than, debauchery and death. In “Allégorie” love has “griffes” [claws], and love together with wine (and gambling’s poisons) can harm mortals not endowed with a granite skin. Wine and love are in “Allégorie” to be lumped together in the same list with death and debauchery, “monstres dont la main . . . toujours gratte et fauche” [monsters whose hand . . . always scratches and cuts] (l. 6), as if they too, like love, had claws. The “cruelles filles” in the last line of “La Fontaine de sang” are clearly distinct from love, since love is the needle mattress that is designed to slake their thirst. The poet in both “Les Deux Bonnes Soeurs” and “La Fontaine de sang” responds positively to Debauchery and Death, negatively to love and wine; the woman in “Allégorie” is indifferent to all four.

“Allégorie” / “La Béatrice”

The poet in “La Béatrice” [The Beatrice] (1857: 86) displays two additional features that contribute to his resemblance to the “femme belle” of “Allégorie.” Her skin was made of granite, and thus the claws of love could not harm her, while his heart is made of stone: “J’aiguisais lentement

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sur mon cœur le poignard” [I was slowly sharpening the dagger on my heart] (l. 4). As Pichois points out (OC I: 1067n), Baudelaire is thinking of Shakespeare: “Thou hid’st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts, / Whom thou hast whetted on thy stony heart” (Henry IV, Part 2, IV. 5. 106–7). Sharp objects harm neither his heart nor her skin. Another Shakespeare allusion in “La Béatrice” has him imitating Hamlet’s posture, “Le regard indécis et les cheveux au vent” [With indecisive look and his hair in the wind] (l. 15). But he is at the same time imitating the woman in “Allégo- rie,” whose long hair was carelessly trailing, too: “une femme belle . . . / Qui laisse dans son vin traîner sa chevelure” [a beautiful woman . . . / Who lets her hair trail in her wine] (ll. 1–2). but clearly because the woman in “Allégorie” “ignore l’Enfer comme le Purgatoire” [knows neither Hell nor Purgatory] (l. 17), she also resembles the Beatrice to whom the title alludes, Dante’s guide in Heaven but not in Hell or Purgatory (that task was left to Virgil). The woman in “La Béatrice” additionally shares with the woman in “Allégorie” the ability to laugh, and this turns her against the poet. The woman in “Allégorie” “rit à la mort” [laughs at death] (l. 5); Beatrice joined the mocking demons and “riait avec eux de ma sombre détresse” [was laughing with them at my dark distress] (l. 29).

“La Béatrice” / “Les Métamorphoses du vampire”

The laughter continues in “Les Métamorphoses du vampire” [The Meta- morphoses of the Vampire] (1857: 87), where the poet’s mistress declares: “Je . . . fais rire les vieux du rire des enfants” [I . . . make the old laugh the laughter of children] (ll. 7, 8). What she means, of course, is that she is such an expert lover that she can make old men young again. The context has changed, but here again the poet’s mistress is in the company of a laughing group (though with but one at a time), as the poet’s mistress in “La Béatrice” was with the laughing demons. In light of the discovery that she can make others laugh, we can wonder if she not merely joined in the demons’ laughter but also incited them to laugh at the poet’s expense. in both poems the narrator suddenly sees a shocking change in his mistress. In “La Béatrice” she turns against him; in “Les Métamorphoses du vampire” she turns into a sack of pus, and then some bones. Put differently, and in a way that draws out the precision of their opposition, in one poem he is surprised to find her there, and in the other he is surprised to find her gone. her skeletal remains make the sound of a weathervane or a sign “Que balance le vent” [that the wind sways about] (l. 28), which makes them

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resemble the poet as the demons (and his mistress) see him, a Hamlet with “les cheveux au vent” [windblown hair] (l. 15). This motif undergoes metamorphosis as we pass from “Allégorie,” where it is the woman’s hair trailing in her wine, to “La Béatrice,” where it is the poet’s hair in the wind, and then to “Les Métamorphoses du vampire,” where it becomes the woman again, now blown about, like the poet, by the wind.

“Les Métamorphoses du vampire” / “Un voyage à Cythère”

The verb in the last line of “Les Métamorphoses du vampire”—“Que balance le vent pendant les nuits d’hiver” [That the wind sways about during winter nights]—reappears in the first line of “Un voyage à Cythère” [A Voyage to Cythera] (1857: 88): “Mon cœur se balançait comme un ange joyeux” [My heart was swaying about like a happy angel]. That reappear- ance eerily anticipates an important part of the argument of “Un voyage à Cythère,” the poet’s realization that the hanged man on the tree is a symbolic image of himself: “un gibet symbolique où pendait mon image” [a symbolic gibbet where my image was hanging] (l. 58). We had just seen, in reading the last two poems, how the bones of his beloved’s skeleton creaking like a windblown sign are a metamorphosis of the image of himself in the poem before as a Hamlet with windblown hair. The wind is still present, and now he is swaying in it as he approaches the island that will prove as much a shocking surprise as the woman who turned into the skeleton. That is, the verb “se balançait” in recalling the “balance” of the immediately preceding line also recalls how the poet (at least through an attentive reader’s eyes) might see himself in the wind-tossed sign that was her bones. but this beautiful continuity between the end of one poem and the beginning of the next will prove a surprise for readers unfamiliar with the 1857 version, for the “Les Métamorphoses du vampire” was excised from the Fleurs du mal by the public prosecutor, and so Baudelaire was obliged to keep it out of the 1861 edition. Once it was gone, there was no further need for the speaker of the poem to se balancer [sway] in the wind. In place of that line, for the 1861 version Baudelaire wrote “Mon cœur, comme un oiseau, voltigeait tout joyeux” [My heart, like a bird, was joyfully flut- tering about]. In doing so, he was restoring the line to something much closer to what it had been in 1851, when he sent “Un voyage à Cythère” with eleven other poems to Théophile Gautier in hopes of seeing them published in the Revue de Paris: “Mon cœur comme un oiseau s’envolait tout joyeux” [My heart like a bird was joyfully flying away] (OC I: 1072n,

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806–7n). This would explain why he bothered to change the line again in 1861. He preferred a version of the line in which his heart would be a bird, not an angel, and the verb not be “se balancer.” In 1857 he went against his judgment of what was best for the poem because of his judgment of what was best for the larger poem of the book. It is hard to imagine a more telling piece of evidence for the proposition that the poem that really counted for Baudelaire was the volume as a whole. Cythera had been vaunted as the Eldorado of all “les vieux garçons” [the old bachelors] (l. 7), as the woman in the poet’s bed in “Les Métamor- phoses du vampire” boasted of being able to make “rire les vieux du rire des enfants” [the old laugh the laughter of children] (l. 8)—that is, to make old men into boys again, as Cythera was to have been the paradise of men both old and boyish. Only in these two poems does the phrase “les vieux” appear with reference to men. but the truth of the matter is that the island “n’était plus qu’un terrain des plus maigres, / Un désert rocailleux troublé par des cris aigres” [was nothing more than the barest of landscapes, / A rocky desert troubled by sharp cries] (ll. 18–19). Similarly, when the poet in “Les Métamorpho- ses du vampire” turned to look again at the woman, he “ne vis plus / Qu’” [saw nothing more / Than] a sack of pus and some skeletal debris “Qui d’eux-mêmes rendaient le cri” [That by themselves made the cry] (ll. 19–20, 26) of some weathervane or sign swung about by the wind. The “outre aux flancs gluants, toute pleine de pus” [wineskin with gluey sides, all full of pus] (l. 20) that she turned into is reconfigured as the hanged man’s “ventre effondré” [burst stomach] (l. 33) from which “Les intestins pesants . . . coulaient” [The heavy intestines . . . flowed down] (l. 34), all the more so for the fact that “outre” comes from the Latin “uter,” “ventre.” in both poems, the poet, lured on by sex, is surprised by horror.

“Un voyage à Cythère” / “L’Amour et le crâne”

Love and death, combined in “Un voyage à Cythère” when the island of love becomes a scene of death, are combined in a different way in “L’Amour et le crâne” [Love and the Skull] (1857: 89). Love (perhaps in the form of a cupid, which “amour” can mean in French—especially if Baudelaire is thinking of Goltzius’s engraving Quis evadet? reproduced in the Garnier edition) is seated on the skull of Humanity, blowing bubbles in the air. The skull, apparently conscious and suffering, asks, “Ce jeu féroce et ridicule, / Quand doit-il finir?” [This ferocious and ridiculous game, / When will it end?] (ll. 15–16). The cupid perched on the skull playing his ferocious

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game recalls the “féroces oiseaux perchés sur leur pâture” [ferocious birds perched on their food] (l. 29) in 88, and that the narrator calls the game ridiculous in addition to ferocious recalls how the narrator in 88 described the man on whom the birds were perched: “Ridicule pendu” [Ridiculous hanged man] (l. 45). In 1857 the word “ridicule” appears only in these two poems. So too (and not just in the 1857 edition) the phrase “ma chair,” which we find in “Un voyage à Cythère” at the height of the narrator’s self-identification with the ridiculous victim of the ferocious birds. The narrator has also felt the beaks and jaws of piercing crows “Qui jadis aimaient tant à tri- turer ma chair” [Who used to love so much to attack my flesh] (l. 52), and at the conclusion of “L’Amour et le crâne,” when the skull complains that the contents of the bubbles the cupid is blowing “c’est ma cervelle, / Mon sang et ma chair!” [it is my brain, / My blood and my flesh!] (ll. 19–20). The one speaking at this moment in “L’Amour et le crâne” is the skull, not the narrator, but what he says parallels what the narrator of the other poem has to say. Both are pointing out that something else—the hanged man, the bubbles that so amuse the cupid—are their own flesh. This paral- lelism continues in the last line of each poem, “Mon sang et ma chair” in “L’Amour et le crâne” recalling “mon cœur et mon corps” [my heart and my body] (l. 60) in “Un voyage à Cythère.”

“L’Amour et le crâne” / “Le Reniement de saint Pierre”

The cupid was seated “sur le crâne / De l’Humanité” [on the skull / Of Humanity] (ll. 1–2); in “Le Reniement de saint Pierre” [Saint Peter’s Denial] (1857: 90) Baudelaire gives those two elements a new combination when the speaker addresses Jesus: “ton crâne où vivait l’immense Humanité” [your skull where resided immense Humanity] (l. 16). The suffering skull in 89 prayed: “J’entends le crâne à chaque bulle / Prier et gémir” [I hear the skull at each bubble / Pray and groan] (ll. 13–14); so too does the suffering Jesus, in the Garden of Olives; “Dans ta simplicité tu priais à genoux / Celui qui dans son ciel riait au bruit des clous” [In your simplicity you prayed on your knees / To him who in his heaven was laughing at the sound of the nails] (ll. 10–11). Like God, the cupid to whom the skull prayed was laughing, too: “le profane, / Au rire effronté // Souffle gaîment des bulles rondes / Qui montent dans l’air” [the impious one, / With an impudent laugh // Gaily blows spherical bubbles / That mount up into the air] (ll. 3–6). “Le Reniement de saint Pierre” begins with a repetition of the bubbles’ upward movement: “Qu’est-ce que Dieu

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fait donc de ce flot d’anathèmes / Qui monte tous les jours vers ses chers Séraphins?” [What does God then do with this stream of anathema / That mounts up every day toward his dear Seraphim?] (ll. 1–2). Like the stream of curses from suffering humanity, the bubbles rise to heaven: “montent dans l’air, / Comme pour rejoindre les mondes / Au fond de l’éther” [mount up into the air, / As if to reach the worlds / At the depth of the ether] (ll. 6–8). What mounts up in both poems is liquid: bubbles and a “flot” [stream]. The liquid in both includes blood: “Mon sang” [My blood] (l. 16), says the skull; “le sang” [the blood] (l. 7) of martyrs. In one poem, blood comes out of the skull; in the other, from the head: “ton sang / Et ta sueur coulaient de ton front” [your blood / And your sweat flowed from your head] (ll. 18–19). each bubble flies upward in 89, then “Crève et crache son âme grêle / Comme un songe d’or” [Bursts and spits out its flimsy soul / Like a golden dream] (ll. 11–12). The gentle noise of the bubbles bursting together with their association with dreams and therefore sleep, as well as the syllable “d’or,” are hauntingly recalled in 90 when God “s’endort aux doux bruit de nos affreux blasphèmes” [falls asleep to the gentle noise of our horrid blasphemies] (l. 4). In this way Baudelaire continues the parallel between the mounting bubbles and the mounting blasphemies. In pairing these poems he does not simply recombine elements from the first poem in the second (as he often does); he makes the second an allegory of the first, consistently aligning Jesus, whose skull held “l’immense Humanité,” with the skull of Humanity and with humanity itself, and God with the cruel cupid. God is Love, as it were. Humanity suffers to see its essence burst and “crache[r]” [spit] (l. 11); Jesus suffers, the narrator recalls, “Lorsque tu vis cracher sur ta divinité / La crapule du corps-de-garde et cuisines” [When you saw spitting on your divinity / Vile bodyguards and scullions] (ll. 13–14). The verb cracher appears in no other poem. The three poems “Un voyage à Cythère” (1857: 88), “L’Amour et le crâne” (1857: 89) and “Le Reniement de saint Pierre” (1857: 90) should be read together as meditations on Golgotha, “the place of the skull” (as Richter reminds us [1425]). In the hanged man in whom the narrator recognizes himself, on a gibbet with room for two more victims—“un gibet à trois branches” [a gibbet with three arms] (l. 33)—we can recognize the Jesus (see Richter, 1469) in whom humanity recognizes itself, on a cross surrounded by two others. The man on Cythera was pierced by “ses bourreaux . . . à coups de bec” [his torturers . . . with blows of the beak] (ll. 35, 36); the man on Golgotha was pierced by the nails that “d’ignobles bourreaux plantaient dans tes chairs vives” [ignoble torturers planted in your living flesh] (l. 12). The division Baudelaire made within his 1857 volume by virtue of which “Le Reniement de saint Pierre” begins the new

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section “Révolte” has no effect whatsoever on the continuities linking that poem to “L’Amour et le crâne,” the last poem in the section “Fleurs du mal.”

“Le Reniement de saint Pierre” / “Abel et Caïn”

“Abel et Caïn” [Abel and Cain] (1857: 91) is a call to arms in harmony with the sentiment expressed in the last stanza of “Le Reniement de saint Pierre.” Peter, who cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant in the Gar- den of Olives in an attempt to defend Jesus from the Roman soldiers come to arrest him, did well to use the sword—and to deny Jesus for having told him to put it away. The poet wants to take it up again: “Puissé-je user du glaive et périr par le glaive!” [May I use the sword and perish by the sword!] (l. 31), echoing Jesus’ rebuke to Peter (Matthew 26:52). As Richter reminds us (1476), Jesus himself had used a whip when he chased the merchants from the temple (as he does in line 26 of “Le Reniement de saint Pierre”). It is clear in stanzas 6 and 7 of “Le Reniement de saint Pierre” that the narrator regrets the change that came over Jesus in the Garden of Olives when in his “simplicité” he prayed to an unfeeling God and subsequently submitted meekly to his fate. Jesus should feel remorse (l. 27) for having betrayed the eternal promise he had come to fulfill (ll. 22–23), and that he had been fulfilling when he whipped the merchants. Action should be sister to the dream (l. 30). it is ironic, as Richter points out (1462), that this praise of the fraternity of action and dream should be followed by a poem about fraternal emnity. God smiled on Abel’s sacrifice but rejected Cain’s. Subsequently, Cain’s descendants, vagabond and poor, become the wretched of the earth; Abel’s live off the fat of the land. Peter’s sword, which the poet would brandish in support of the promise Jesus abandoned, is here replaced by the pike. Rooting for Cain’s descendants, the poet is happy to see that “le fer est vaincu par l’épieu” [iron is vanquished by the pike] (l. 30). Adam writes that because Baudelaire “makes Cain nomadic [un nomade] and Abel sedentary, which is exactly the opposite of the Genesis version, iron is the symbol of Abel the plowman—that is, the iron of the plow. The épieu is the symbol of Cain the hunter. Baudelaire announces the victory of the revolutionary proletariat” (FM Adam, 422n). Pichois concurs (OC I: 1082n). but Adam is wrong to say that Baudelaire reverses the biblical version. In Genesis 4:2–15, Abel was a shepherd (“pastor ovium,” in the Latin Vulgate) and Cain a farmer (“agricola”). Cain offered as a sacrifice to God the fruits of the earth (“de fructibus terrae”), while Abel sacrificed the

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firstborn of his flock and some of their fat (“de primogenitis gregis sui et de adipibus eorum”). God accepted Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s. Cain was depressed and angry and killed his brother. God told Cain that from now on the land he had tilled would no longer be fruitful, and he must wander the earth as a vagabond and an exile (“vagus et profugus eris super terram”). The characters in the poem’s drama are not Cain and Abel but their descendants. With Cain’s descendants condemned to be vagabonds, Abel’s are now free to be both farmers and herdsmen: “Race d’Abel, vois tes semailles / Et ton bétail venir à bien” [Abel’s race, see your seeds / And your livestock flourish] (ll. 9–10). They continue to raise sheep and cattle, but they expand their domain into what had been Cain’s territory, tilling the soil. Adam’s error is twofold: (1) He conflates the vagabond- age to which Cain was condemned with sheep-raising, calling the latter nomadic. It is less sedentary than tilling the earth, but it is far from being as nomadic as the eternal exile to which Cain was condemned, and that for Baudelaire resembles the lifestyle he describes in “Bohémiens en voyage.” We see this spelled out in lines 23–24: “Race de Caïn, sur les routes / Traîne ta famille aux abois” [Cain’s race, on the roads / Drag your fleeing family]. Like the bohemians they are constantly on the road. (2) He forgets that Abel’s descendants continue to raise livestock—“bétail” (l. 10), a category that, according to Bescherelle, includes sheep, lamb, goats, and cattle. If those who raise sheep are nomadic, then Abel’s children would be nomadic, too. The conflict in line 30 between “le fer” and “l’épieu” can indeed be understood as Adam would have it, as a struggle in which the iron of the plow—the agricultural practice of tilling the soil that Abel and his descendants, like the greedy capitalists Baudelaire portrays them to be, were able to take over from Cain once God told him the soil would no longer respond to his efforts—is conquered by the pike. But it would be wrong to conclude that the “épieu” could only be, as Bescherelle defines it, “the symbol of Cain the hunter [le chasseur],” for it was also a weapon of war: (according to Larousse’s Grand dictionnaire, in the Middle Ages it found a particular use in the infantry.14 The sword the poet wants Cain’s descendants to take up may be more a weapon of war, and thus of revolutionary uprising, than a hunter’s weapon: not a clash of cultures (hunter-gatherer vs. agricultural) but class warfare. in “Le Reniement de saint Pierre” God, “Comme un tyran gorgé de viande et de vins, / . . . s’endort” [Like a tyrant gorged with meat and wines, / . . . falls asleep] (l. 3–4). Abel’s descendants enagage in the same three activities (see Richter, 1467), with God’s blessing: “Race d’Abel, dors,

14. Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle (Paris: Pierre Larousse, 1866–77).

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bois et mange: / Dieu te sourit complaisamment [Abel’s race, sleep, drink and eat: / God smiles on you complacently] (ll. 1–2). The same “Séraph- ins” [Seraphim] (l. 2) who experience “volupté” [sensual delight] (l. 7) in hearing the curses and sobs of the oppressed whose sound mounts up to heaven take pleasure as well in the smell of the sacrifices Abel’s children send their way: “Race d’Abel, ton sacrifice / Flatte le nez du Séraphin!” [Abel’s race, your sacrifice / Delights the nose of the Seraphim!] (ll. 5–6). The suffering of Humanity at the hands of the god of Love in “L’Amour et le crâne,” which continued in the suffering of Jesus who represented that Humanity in “Le Reniement de saint Pierre,” continues here in the suffering of Cain’s descendants, the oppressed of the earth. Baudelaire underlines that continuity by formulating the same question for both: The skull asked, “Ce jeu féroce et ridicule, / Quand doit-il finir?” [This ferocious and ridiculous game, / When will it end?] (ll. 15–16); the narrator in “Abel et Caïn” asks, “Race de Caïn, ton supplice / Aura-t-il jamais une fin?” [Cain’s race, your torture / Will it ever have an end?] (ll. 7–8).

“Abel et Caïn” / “Les Litanies de Satan”

While Abel’s race can warm its belly at the “foyer patriarcal” [patriarchal hearth] (l. 14), Cain’s descendants, bereft of that patriarchal hearth, must tremble in the cold of a cave. But in “Les Litanies de Satan” [The Litanies of Satan] (1857: 92) the latter find a new father in Satan, “Père adoptif de ceux qu’en sa noire colère / Du paradis terrestre a chassés Dieu le Père” [Adoptive Father of those whom, in his black ire, / God the Father chased out of the earthly paradise] (ll. 43–44). Like Cain, whom God condemned to wander on the earth, Satan, too, having been chased out of heaven, is an exile: “O Prince de l’exil, à qui l’on a fait tort” [O Prince of exile, who has been done wrong] (l. 4). Satan, “Bâton des exilés” [Staff of the exiled] (l. 40), “aux parias . . . / Enseign[e] par l’amour le goût du Paradis” [incul- cates in pariahs, through love, the taste for Paradise] (ll. 10, 11). Satan would like to regain heaven and teaches other pariahs to have the same goal; the poet encouraged Cain’s race to strive for the same end in “Abel et Caïn”: “Race de Caïn, au ciel monte, / Et sur la terre jette Dieu! [Cain’s race, ascend to heaven, / and cast God down to earth!] (ll. 31–32). The poet had smiled on the victory of the pike over the plow (“Le fer est vaincu par l’épieu!” [Iron is vainquished by the pike!] (l. 30), as Cain’s race triumphed over Abel’s. He speaks again here of the weapons the oppressed take up in the struggle for domination: “O Satan . . . qui, pour consoler l’homme frêle qui souffre, / Nous appris à mêler le salpêtre et le soufre” [O Satan . . . who, to console frail suffering humankind, / Taught

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us how to mix saltpeter with sulfur] (ll. 30, 31–32) to make gunpowder, the great equalizer in the struggle between the weak and the strong. For Abel’s race, “L’argent fait aussi des petits” [Money also has its progeny] (l. 18). Money begets money for those who charge interest, but on them Satan puts his mark: “Toi qui mets ton paraphe, ô complice subtil, / Sur le front du banquier impitoyable et vil” [You who put your paraph, O wily accomplice, / On the forehead of the pitiless and vile banker] (ll. 34–35). That paraph is the counterpart to the mark of Cain, but it will have the opposite effect. The “signum” (Genesis 4:15) God placed on Cain would save his life from those who would have killed him because he killed his brother, but the mark the devil puts on the banker singles him out, it would seem, for destruction. Just in case the allusion to the mark of Cain might be missed, Baudelaire changed “paraphe” to “marque” in the 1861 edition; in a pre-1857 version the line had read “Toi qui mets un opprobre éternel et sanglant” [You who put an eternal and bloody opprobrium] (OC I: 1085n), which would not have been a mark at all. At some point between “opprobre” and “paraphe” Baudelaire realized that here was an opportunity to invent a counterpart to the mark of Cain.

“Les Litanies de Satan” / “L’Âme du vin”

“Les Litanies de Satan” (1857: 92) glorified Satan: “Gloire et louange à toi, Satan” [Glory and praise to you, Satan] (l. 46); “L’Âme du vin” [The Soul of Wine] (1857: 93) glorifies wine: “Tu me glorifieras et tu seras content” [You will glorify me and be happy] (l. 16). Satan, “Aimable médecin des angoisses humaines” [Amiable physician of human anguish] (l. 8), consoles “l’homme frêle qui souffre” [frail suffering humankind] (l. 31); wine will be “pour le frêle athlète de la vie / L’huile qui raffermit les muscles des lutteurs” [for the frail athlete of life / The oil that firms up wrestlers’ muscles] (ll. 19–20). Ironically, it was someone who had imbibed too much wine who needed the oil Satan applied: “Toi qui frottes de baume et d’huile les vieux os / De l’ivrogne attardé foulé par les chevaux” [You who rub with balm and oil the old bones / Of the drunkard, late getting home, trampled by horses] (ll. 28–29). When “L’Âme du vin” was moved in 1861 so that it no longer followed “Les Litanies de Satan,” the oil disappeared from Satan’s pharmacopoeia: “Toi qui, magiquement, assouplis les vieux os / De l’ivrogne . . . ” [You who, magically, make supple the old bones / Of the drunkard . . . ]. It was no longer needed to connect two poems no longer neighbors. another textual change offers additional evidence of Baudelaire’s prac-

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tice of adding connections: When “L’Âme du vin” was first published in a magazine in 1850 (and again in 1851), the second line had been: “Homme, je pousserai vers toi, mon bien-aimé” [Man, I will send toward you, my beloved]. On a page proof for the 1857 edition, he had first written “Homme, je pousserai vers toi, pauvre déshérité” [Man, I will send to you, poor disinherited one]. As Pichois points out, this is two syllables too many for an alexandrine; Baudelaire then corrected “je pousserai vers toi, pauvre” (eight syllables) to “vers toi je pousse, ô cher” (six syllables) (OC I : 1046n). He was apparently so intent on changing “mon bien-aimé” to “déshérité” that he forgot to count the syllables. Why was he so fixed on that word? Because he wanted to forge another link with the preceding poem, in which Satan comforts the disinherited: “Père adoptif de ceux qu’en sa noire colère / Du paradis terrestre a chassés Dieu le Père” [Adop- tive Father of those whom, in his black ire, / God the Father chased out of the earthly paradise] (ll. 43–44). although Satan and wine both comfort the afflicted, the anti-God stance of “Les Litanies de Satan” and the two poems that precede it is no longer present (and neither is Satan) in “L’Âme du vin.” Wine is praised (actually, praises itself, as the soul of wine speaks throughout the poem) as the gift of God, growing from seed cast by “l’éternel Semeur” [the eternal Sower] (l. 22), and as a means of access to God on high: “Pour que de notre amour naisse la poésie / Qui jaillira vers Dieu comme une rare fleur!” [So that from our love would be born poetry / That would shoot up toward God like a rare flower!] (ll. 23–24). This contrasts with the Satan who teaches pariahs (the equivalent in that poem to the disinherited in this one) “par l’amour le goût du Paradis” [by love a taste for Paradise] (l. 11), though it is also by “amour” that the flower of poetry that reaches heavenward is born. The poem that aims for heaven has replaced the taste for Paradise that motivated Satan, in league with those the Father disinherited, to storm heaven and overthrow God. by paying close attention to a word that appears in only these two poems among the Fleurs du mal, we can observe how this change takes place. “Ô Satan . . . toi, qui de la Mort . . . / Engendras l’Espérance” [O Satan . . . you who from Death . . . / Will engender Hope] (ll. 12, 13, 14); “Je sais” [I know],” wine tells humankind, “combien il faut, sur la colline en flamme, / De peine, de sueur et de soleil cuisant / Pour engendrer ma vie et pour me donner l’âme” [how much is required, on the hill in flame, / Of pain, sweat, and blistering sun / To engender my life and give me a soul] (ll. 5–7). Satan engenders hope; man engenders wine, which provides hope: “l’espoir qui gazouille en mon sein palpitant” [the hope that gurgles in my throbbing breast] (l. 14).

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“L’Âme du vin” / “Le Vin des chiffonniers”

A connection between poetry and wine is one of several threads uniting “L’Âme du vin” (1857: 93) with “Le Vin des chiffonniers” [The Ragpick- ers’ Wine] (1857: 94). In 93 wine’s soul claims as its divine purpose that “de notre amour naisse la poésie / Qui jaillira vers Dieu comme une rare fleur!” [from our love would be born poetry / That would shoot up toward God like a rare flower!] (ll. 23–24). In 94 the drunken ragpicker staggers around and bumps into walls “comme un poète” [like a poet] (l. 6). Baude- laire is alluding to his earlier poem “Le Soleil” (1857: 2), where the poet is depicted “Trébuchant sur les mots comme sur les pavés, / Heurtant parfois des vers depuis longtemps rêvés” [Stumbling on words as on cobblestones, / Bumping up at times against lines long dreamed of] (ll. 7–8). In Du vin et du hachisch, an article published in March 1851 in Le Messager de lAssemblée, in which can be found a prose version of “L’Âme du vin” immediately followed by one of “Le Vin des chiffonniers,” he draws out the resemblance: the chiffonnier “arrive hochant la tête et butant sur les pavés, comme les jeunes poètes qui passent toutes leurs journées à errer et à chercher des rimes” [arrives nodding his head and stumbling on the cobblestones, like young poets who spend their days wandering about and looking for rhymes] (OC I: 381). In the same passage, he goes into more detail than he does in the poem about what specifically a chiffonnier does:

Voici un homme chargé de ramasser les débris d’une journée de la capitale. Tout ce que la grande cité a rejeté, tout ce qu’elle a perdu, tout ce qu’elle a dédaigné, tout ce qu’elle a brisé, il le catalogue, il le collectionne. . . . Il fait un triage, un choix intelligent; il ramasse, comme un avare un trésor, les ordures qui, remâchées par la divinité de l’Industrie, deviendront des objects d’utilité ou de jourissance.

[Behold a man charged with the responsibility of amassing the debris of a day in the capital. All that the great city has rejected, all that it has lost, all that it has disdained, all that it has broken, he catalogs it, he collects it. . . . He makes a selection, an intelligent choice; he amasses, like a miser his treasure, the garbage that, chewed over again by the god of Industry, will become objects of use or enjoyment.] (OC I: 381)

Rosemary Lloyd, commenting on this passage, writes of “Baudelaire’s identification with the old rag and bone man . . . picking over the city’s detritus to refashion it into the work of art.”15 Although this is inexact, since it

15. rosemary Lloyd, Baudelaire’s World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 155, hereafter cited in text. 110

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is not the ragpicker but the god of Industry that effects the transformation, still the collection and triage the chiffonnier performs is surely, in Baudelaire’s mind, the same work he does as he wanders the city, finding “bric-a-brac that the poet reassembles in his great city poems, part of the dross that his alchemy turns to gold” (Lloyd, 154). But it is also the work his poems do, each poem being for the next in sequence something like the debris of the day that is collected and assembled into the object of use and enjoyment that is the succeeding poem. It is also the work of dream as Freud describes it in The Interpretation of Dreams, where the “day’s residues,” the events of the day immediately preceding the dream, become raw material for the dream. “The psychically significant impression and the indifferent experiences from the previous day are brought together in the dream-material, provided always that it is possible to set up communicating ideas between them.”16 The day’s residues are raw material with which the unconscious disguises its repressed wish in the dream. in “L’Âme du vin” wine sings “Sous ma prison de verre” [Beneath my glass prison] (l. 3) and recalls “la colline en flamme” [the hill in flame] (l. 5)—the flame of the “soleil cuisant” [blistering sun] (l. 6), the hill of the vineyard where it was engendered. In “Le Vin des chiffonniers” glass and flame are recycled and given a new combination: “Souvent, à la clarté rouge d’un réverbère / Dont le vent bat la flamme et tourmente le verre” [Often, in the brightness of a street lamp / Whose flame the wind beats and whose glass it torments] (ll. 1–2). Now, as Freud would ask, is there a communicating idea between them—that is, between the “flamme” + “verre” in one poem and the “flamme” + “verre” in the next (a combination that appears in no other poem in the collection)? Yes, for as Ross Chambers comments, “the staggering gait of the ragpicker, the uncertainty of his progress through the city, reproduces this image”—that is, the image of the vacillating flame. Chambers also points out that the ragpicker’s “zigzagging” is not just “characteristic of drunkards but also, quite indepen- dently of alcohol intake, of those whose trade is scavenging.”17 For the chiffonnier moves from object to object, going toward what looks prom- ising. But if the vacillating flame within the glass of the street lamp is a version of the ragpicker, so too, as Baudelaire himself asserts, is the poet. And since, in the way his poems have of scavenging their predecessors, the flame-begotten wine under glass that strives toward engendering poetry as a fleur is recycled (reverberated, one could say) as the zigzagging flame of

16. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: Avon Books, 1965), 261, 262. 17. ross Chambers, “Recycling the Ragpicker: ‘Le Vin des chiffonniers,’” in Under- standing Les Fleurs du mal: Critical Readings, ed. William J. Thompson (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1997), 183, 189.

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the réverbère, poetry-making is the communicating idea. The ragpicker who walks and works “comme un poète” talks like the soul of wine. The ragpicker “relève les victimes, . . . / S’enivre des splendeurs de sa propre vertu” [lifts up the victims, . . . / Becomes intoxicated with the splendors of his own virtue] (94, ll. 10, 12); wine waxed enthusiastic about its power to raise up life’s victims: “À ton fils je rendrai sa force et ses couleurs / Et serai pour ce frêle athlète de la vie / L’huile qui raffermit les muscles des lutteurs” [I will give back to your son his strength and color / And will be for this frail athlete of life / The oil that firms up wrestlers’ muscles] (93, ll. 18–20). Both seek glory: the ragpicker “Épanche tout son cœur en glorieux projets” [Pours out all his heart in glorious projects] (94, l. 8); the soul of wine says to humankind, “Tu me glorifieras” [You will glorify me] (93, l. 16). in both poems wine sings: “l’âme du vin chantait dans les bouteilles . . . / Un chant plein de lumière et de fraternité” [the soul of wine was singing in the bottles . . . / A song full of light and brotherhood] (93, ll. 1, 4); “Le vin . . . chante ses exploits” [Wine . . . sings of its exploits] (94, ll. 26, 27). Wine is happy to fall “Dans le gosier d’un homme usé par ses travaux” [Into the throat of a man worn down by his labors] (93, l. 10); the ragpicker and his comrades are “Moulus par le travail” [worn out by labor] (94, l. 14), but “Par le gosier de l’homme” [Out of the throat of man]—that is, of the ragpickers—wine sings of its exploits (the combination “gosier” + “homme” appears in no other poem). Wine goes into (Dans) of the throat of man in one poem; wine’s song comes out [Par] of it in the next. The prose versions of “L’Âme du vin” and “Le Vin des chiffonniers” in Du vin et du hachisch are remarkably close to the poems. Take, for example, the following passage, in which we see another version of 94’s lines 9–28:

Maintenant il complimente son armée. La bataille est gagnée, mais la jour- née a été chaude. Il passe à cheval sous des arcs de triomphe. Son cœur est heureux. Il écoute avec délices les acclamations d’un monde enthousiaste. Tout à l’heure il va dicter un code supérieur à tous les codes connus. Il jure solennellement qu’il rendra ses peuples heureux. La misère et le vice ont disparu de l’humanité. et cependant il a le dos et les reins écorchés par le poids de sa hotte. Il est harcelé de chagrins de ménage. Il est moulu par quarante ans de travail et de courses. L’âge le tourmente. Mais le vin, comme un Pactole nouveau, roule à travers l’humanité languissante un or intellectuel. Comme les bons rois, il règne par ses services et chante ses exploits par le gosier de ses sujets.

[Now he compliments his army. The battle is won, but the action had been hot. He rides on horseback under triumphal arches. His heart is happy.

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He hears with delight the acclamations of an enthusiastic crowd. Soon he is going to dictate a legal code superior to all known codes. He solemnly swears that he will make his people happy. Poverty and vice have disappeared from the human condition. and yet his back and his loins are tormented by the weight of his basket. He is hassled by household problems. He is worn out by forty years of work and walking. He is tormented by old age. But wine, like a new River Pactolus, rolls an intellectual gold across languishing humanity. Like good kings, it reigns by the services it renders and sings of its exploits through the throats of its subjects.] (OC I: 382)

It is therefore very interesting to see just how much of the last stanza of “Le Vin des chiffonniers”—

Pour noyer la rancœur et bercer l’indolence De tous ces vieux maudits qui meurent en silence, Dieu, saisi de remords, avait fait le sommeil; L’Homme ajoute le Vin, fils sacré du Soleil!

[To drown the rancor and cradle the indolence Of all those old condemned ones who die in silence, God, seized with remorse, had made sleep; Man added Wine, sacred son of the Sun!] (ll. 29–32)

—does not appear in the prose version: “Il y a sur la boule terrestre une foule innombrable, innomée, dont le sommeil n’endormirait pas suffisam- ment les souffrances. Le vin compose pour eux des chants et des poèmes” [There are on the terrestrial ball a countless, nameless multitude whose suf- ferings slumber would not sufficiently put to sleep. For them, wine makes up songs and poems] (OC I: 382). There is no God here (nor in the prose version of “L’Âme du vin”), no remorse, and no drowning.

“Le Vin des chiffonniers” / “Le Vin de l’assassin”

Drowning and remorse, however, have their place (remorse by its absence) in “Le Vin de l’assassin” [The Murderer’s Wine] (1857: 95), in which a man drowns his wife and will sleep without remorse, with the help of wine:

Je l’ai jetée au fond d’un puits, Et j’ai même poussé sur elle

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Tous les pavés de la margelle. —Je l’oublierai si je puis! . . .

Je serai ce soir ivre-mort; Alors, sans peur et sans remord, Je me coucherai sur la terre,

Et je dormirai comme un chien!

[I threw her into a well And I even pushed onto her All the stones of the rim. —I will forget her if I can!

Tonight I’ll be dead drunk. Then, without fear and without remorse, I will lie down on the ground,

And I’ll sleep like a dog!] (ll. 13–16, 42–45)

Wine will help him forget, and sleep; but he will need a lot of it: “D’autant de vin qu’en peut tenir / Son tombeau;—ce n’est pas peu dire” [As much wine as her tomb can hold—and that’s not a small amount] (ll. 11–12). Thus in both poems wine is the supplement that makes sleep and the relief of suffering possible; and remorse figures in both as well, but in radically different ways: God’s remorse that leads him to create sleep versus a murderer’s remorse for which he seeks oblivion in wine-assisted sleep. “Autant qu’un roi je suis heureux” [I am as happy as a king] (l. 5), he declares, echoing two moments in “Le Vin des chiffonniers.” One of them is when wine sings of its exploits “Et règne par ses dons ainsi que les vrais rois” [And reigns by its gifts like true kings] (l. 28). This passage closely follows the prose version, as we can see in the last sentence of the passage quoted above. The other is when the ragpicker “sans prendre souci des mouchards, ses sujets, / Épanche tout son cœur en glorieux projets” [without worrying about the spies, his subjects, / Pours out all his heart in glorious projects] (ll. 7–8). The “mouchards” [spies] are the police who patrol the city at night, “des patrouilles” [patrols] in an earlier version of the poem (OC I: 1049n). He does not worry about their listening to his speech and reporting it to the authorities because in his delusion he takes them to be “ses sujets” [his subjects] and himself to be their king. The

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police spies are not present in the prose version: “Il parle tout seul; il verse son âme dans l’air froid et ténébreux de la nuit” [He speaks in solitude; he pours out his soul in the cold and shadowy night air] (OC I: 381). Why does Baudelaire add the “mouchards” to the scene? I think it is because to do so sets up a connection with “Le Vin de l’assassin,” in which a murderer confesses to his crime, heedless of the consequences of his confession. He does not care who hears, because he plans to lie down dead drunk in the street, where

Le chariot aux lourdes roues Chargé de pierres et de boues, Le wagon enragé peut bien

Écraser ma tête coupable Ou me couper par le milieu, Je m’en moque. . . .

[The heavy wheeled cart Loaded with stones and mud, The hurtling wagon may well

Crush my guilty head Or cut me in half, I don’t care. . . . ] (ll. 46–51)

Thus his “Je m’en moque” answers the “sans prendre souci.” In Baude- laire’s sketch for a play to be called “L’Ivrogne,” which recounts a more complicated version of the same murder, the murderer tries to escape detec- tion but ultimately cannot help confessing, and the police take him away (OC I: 634). in the play the motive for murder is not at all what it is in the poem. In the poem the murderer tells us that he killed his wife so that he could drink as much as he wanted without being torn apart by her tears when he came home with no money because he had spent it all on drink. But in the play that is not a problem, because he is no longer living with her (OC I: 631). A rich young man is in love with the wife, but she resists his advances. The husband is aware of this and is jealous, but he uses “le prétexte de sa jalou- sie surexcitée pour se cacher à lui-même qu’il en veut surtout à sa femme de sa résignation, de sa douceur, de sa patience, de sa vertu” [the pretext of his overheated jealousy to conceal from himself the fact that he is most of all angry at his wife for her self-denial, her sweetness, her patience, her

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virtue] (OC I: 632).

“Le Vin de l’assassin” / “Le Vin du solitaire”

Baudelaire changed the motive for the crime to something much more like the sentiment expressed in “Le Vin du solitaire” [The Solitary Man’s Wine] (1857: 96), that the singular glance from a desirable woman or a libidinous kiss “ne vaut pas” [is not worth] (l. 9) the penetrating balms the wine bottle can fournish the “solitaire.” Indeed, the murderer was happy to declare “Me voilà libre et solitaire!” [Now I am free and solitary!] (l. 41) (see Richter, 1282). That the rejected woman’s glance slides in our direction like a white ray of light that the moon sends to the trembling surface of a lake “Quand elle y veut baigner sa beauté nonchalante” [When she wants to bathe her nonchalant beauty in it] (l. 4) is surely not unconnected to the woman in the well. The speaker in this poem finds wine more attractive; the speaker in the other would forget the woman in the water if he could, and he covers her with stones to blot out her image, so that he is now free to be alone with his wine.

“Le Vin du solitaire” / “Le Vin des amants”

While in “Le Vin du solitaire,” as in “Le Vin de l’assassin,” the narrator turns his back on a woman for the sake of wine, in “Le Vin des amants” [The Lovers’ Wine] (1857: 97) the opposite takes place in that the narrator enjoys both at the same time. Wine does not destroy love; it contributes to amorous ecstasy. Or at least that is the possibility the narrator holds out in hopes that his mistress will accept his proposal that they drink wine together to flee to the paradise of his dreams. But as Richter points out (1296), it is the paradise of his dreams. And there is something more troubling: the torturing “cal- enture” (l. 6) that will affect the poet and his lover, angels though they be. Both Adam and Pichois quote the definition Littré’s Dictionnaire (1873) gives the word: “species of furious delirium to which sailors are subject in the torrid zone” (OC I: 1057)—which is too bad, because they miss the essential, which can be found (as Richter notes [1293]) in Bescherelle’s Dictionnaire of 1856, more contemporaneous with the first publication (and possibly the composition) of the poem in 1857): “Espèce de délire furieux auquel les navigateurs sont sujets sous la zone torride . . . caracté- risée particulièrement par le désir irrésistible de se jeter à la mer” [species of

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furious delirium to which sailors are subject in the torrid zone . . . characterized in particular by the irresistible desire to throw oneself into the water] (italics added). It is that particular characteristic that is behind its appearance in the poem (in which Baudelaire’s formulation “implacable calen- ture” seems to echo Bescherelle’s “désir irrésistible”). It explains why even though the narrator and his lover would be flying through the air, he imagines them to be “nageant” [swimming] (l. 12). And it recalls the singular look of an amorous woman transformed in the poem before into a ray of moonlight “Que la lune onduleuse envoie au lac tremblant, / Quand elle y veut baigner sa beauté nonchalante” [That the undulant moon sends to the trembling lake, / When she wants to bathe her nonchalant beauty in it] (ll. 3–4). The moon, in other words, wants to go into the water, a desire that is becoming “implacable” (l. 6)—that is, insistent—in that it has now appeared in two successive poems. In fact, the action of going into the water appears in three successive poems, if we remember the woman thrown into the well in “Le Vin de l’assassin.” Indeed, it is as if the poems (“Le Vin du solitaire” and “Le Vin des amants”) were remembering it.

“Le Vin des amants” / “La Mort des amants”

“La Mort des amants” [The Lovers’ Death] (1857: 98) begins a new section, “La Mort” (after “Le Vin”). But the poem’s title so strongly parallels that of the immediately preceding poem, “Le Vin des amants,” that it is obvious Baudelaire does not want the division into sections to trouble the continuing connections between sequential poems. The motif of two-ness predominates in both: in “Le Vin des amants,” the lovers are “Comme deux anges” [Like two angels] (l. 5), “Dans un délire parallèle” [In a parallel delirium] (l. 11), and “côte à côte” [side by side] (l. 12); in “La Mort des amants,” their “deux cœurs seront deux vastes flambeaux, / Qui réfléchiront leurs doubles lumières / Dans nos deux esprits, ces miroirs jumeaux” [two hearts will be two immense torches, / That will reflect their double lights / In our two spirits, those twin mirrors] (ll. 6–8). In this respect the two poems are like the two lovers, each a mirror reflecting the other, and what they reflect is doubling itself. yet in other ways they diverge. “Le Vin des amants” (1857: 97) was an invitation to erotic ecstasy, “La Mort des amants” (1857: 98) an invitation to death. The former looked to “le bleu . . . du matin” [the blue . . . of morning] (l. 7), the latter to “Un soir plein . . . de bleu” [An evening full . . . of blue] (l. 9). Both allude to a better sky, the “ciel féerique et divin” [magical and divine sky] (97, l. 4) where wine would take the lovers,

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the “cieux plus beaux” [more beautiful skies] (98, l. 4) under which the flowers bloomed, but the latter is a destination, the former a provenance. One poem describes a departure, the other a final destination.

“La Mort des amants” / “La Mort des pauvres”

At least three items are recycled from “La Mort des amants” into “La Mort des pauvres” [The Death of the Poor] (1857: 99) besides death: beds, an angel who does household chores, and doors that open. The lovers will have “des lits pleins d’odeurs légères, / Des divans profonds comme des tombeaux” [beds full of light scents, / Divans deep as tombs] (98, ll. 1–2), beds that are or will become tombs; an “Ange . . . refait le lit des gens pauvres et nus” [Angel . . . remakes the bed of poor and naked folk] (99, ll. 9, 11); that Angel is Death, those beds tombs. This Angel remakes beds; the other Angel will open the doors of the room where the lovers have died, polish the mirrors, and relight the fires. yet the lovers are fortunate. Their death seems willed, as if they had made a suicide pact. Their beds are gently scented; exotic flowers have been brought in just for them. They die in luxury. But the poor are so unfortunate in life that death is their only hope. Their assurance of dying is their only wealth, their “grenier mystique” [mystic granary] (l. 12]; they know that when it comes they will find rest. Death does, though, have a “mystique” in both poems, as the lovers die on “Un soir plein de rose et de bleu mystique” [An evening full of pink and mystic blue] (l. 9). in 98 we see an Angel “entr’ouvrant les portes” [opening the doors] (l. 12), complemented in 99 by a “portique ouvert sur les Cieux inconnus” [portico open to unknown Skies] (l. 14). The Angel will pass through the doors to “ranimer” [bring back to life] (l. 13) the lovers, allegorized as flames and mirrors. Thus, the lovers remain where they are, and new life comes to them through the doors. The poor, on the other hand, will leave where they are and exit through the “portique” to unknown skies, possibly to life after death. What the Angel is expected to do at the end of “La Mort des amants,” to “ranimer” the lovers, is ironically echoed by what Death does in the first line of “La Mort des pauvres”: “C’est . . . la Mort qui fait vivre” [It is . . . Death that brings life]—ironically, because what Death in 99 does is merely allow the poor to live with at least the hope that Death will put an end to their suffering. Death is not, at least not at this moment in the poem, bringing life after death.

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“La Mort des pauvres” / “La Mort des artistes”

Whereas Death was associated with something mystic in “La Mort des amants”—the “bleu mystique” of the evening when the lovers will die— and in “La Mort des pauvres” with the “grenier mystique” that is one of its names, in “La Mort des artistes” [The Death of Artists] (1857: 100) that adjective is reserved not for Death directly but for “le but” [the goal]: “Pour piquer dans le but, mystique quadrature” [To strike the goal, mystic quadrature] (l. 3). (Baudelaire is alluding to the quadrature of the circle, traditionally an impossible yet dreamed-of goal.) The phrase “le but” appears in only one other poem in 1857, “La Mort des pauvres,” where it is another name for Death: “le but de la vie” [the goal of life] (l. 2). There- fore, among these three poems Death as “mystique” unites the first and second, and “le but” as “mystique” the second and third. in the same line as it is “le but,” Death for the poor is also “le seul espoir” [the only hope] (99, l. 2); and it is that as well for the artists, who “N’ont qu’un espoir” [Have but one hope] (100, l. 12), which is that Death will make the flowers of their brain blossom. Note that there are three parts to this mirroring effect: (1) that there is only one (“le seul,” “N’ont qu’un”) (2) hope (“espoir”), and (3) that it is Death (“la Mort”). As the Angel will “ranimer” the lovers in “La Mort des amants,” and Death “fait vivre” (l. 1) the poor in “La Mort des pauvres,” Death “Fera s’épanouir” [Will make blossom] (l. 14) the flowers in “La Mort des artistes.” Thus does the 1857 Fleurs du mal end with an allusion to itself, and to the difference between realization and intent. Baudelaire’s hope that after his death the flowers he envisioned would eventually blossom—and that his intent be realized—comes closer to fulfillment every time a mirroring effect such as this is brought to light.

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The Sequence Rebuilt i

The Fleurs of 1861

“Bénédiction” / “L’Albatros”

The first change we encounter in the 1861 edition is that a new poem, “L’Albatros” [The Albatross] (1861: 2), has taken the place of “Le Soleil” (1857: 2; 1861: 87) between “Bénédiction” (1857/1861: 1) and “Éléva- tion” (1857/1861: 3); “Le Soleil” will appear later, between a new poem, “Paysage” [Landscape] (1861: 86) and an old one, “À une mendiante rousse” (1857: 65; 1861: 88). In “L’Albatros” the poet is allegorized as a giant-winged bird at home in the skies but on earth a figure of ridicule, barely able to walk. As Susan Blood observes, the idea is hardly original. “By the time Baudelaire enters the tradition” of the poet as awkward bird, “it has become a cliché.” It is “an idea we already knew.” Besides, the poem is so easy even a child can understand it, so where is the subtlety, where is the poetry? “The very simplicity of the poem becomes a problem.” She notes that Flaubert for this reason includes it in Bouvard et Pécuchet in his “sottisier” of instances of stupidity on the part of great writers. but what she says of the albatross is also true of “L’Albatros.” It is “a problem of perspective . . . : the albatross may seem ugly to the sailors aboard ship but only because the bird is not in its element” (8). For the

1. Susan Blood, “Mimesis and the Grotesque in ‘L’Albatros,’” in Understanding Les Fleurs du mal: Critical Readings, ed. William J. Thompson (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press), 4–5, hereafter cited in text.

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poem’s proper element is its immediate context in the Fleurs du mal. It may, like the bird, seem feeble when detached from its intended context. But in that context its full power is revealed. richter writes, “One of the principal reasons that motivated Baudelaire to assign ‘L’Albatros’ this second place in the sequence could be the fact that here, as in ‘Bénédiction,’ the Poet is still the object of a description. By that I mean that he is observed by the narrator, with whom he is not yet identified” (66). The Poet has not yet spoken in the first person (he will do so in the third poem, “Élévation”). To this we can add that the Poet was already at home in the wind and the clouds in “Bénédiction,” where “Il joue avec le vent, cause avec le nuage” [He plays with the wind, converses with the cloud] (l. 25), as in “L’Albatros” he is “semblable au prince des nuées / Qui hante la tempête” [like the prince of the clouds / Who haunts the storm] (ll. 13–14). And in “Bénédiction” he is already a bird, though not yet an albatross: “gai comme un oiseau des bois” [gay as a forest bird] (l. 28). The Poet’s wife compares his heart, which she threatens to tear out of his breast, to “un tout jeune oiseau qui tremble et qui palpite” [a young bird that trembles and shudders] (l. 49). The poem’s first printed version, before its appearance in the Fleurs du mal, did not include the third stanza:

Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule! Lui, naguère si beau, qu’il est comique et laid! L’un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule, L’autre mime, en boitant, l’infirme qui volait!

[This winged traveler, how clumsy and feeble he is! Once so beautiful, now he is comical and ugly! One of the sailors torments his beak with a pipe; Another mimes, limping, the cripple who used to fly!] (ll. 9–12)

This addition creates still more connections to “Bénédiction,” where the young poet, like the albatross, is tormented by those who

Cherchent à qui saura lui tirer une plainte, Et font sur lui l’essai de leur férocité.

Dans le pain et le vin destinés à sa bouche Ils mêlent de la cendre . . .

[Vie to see who can draw from him a protest,

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And try out on him their ferocity.

In the bread and wine destined for his mouth They mix ashes . . . ] (ll. 31–34)

The albatross’s beak corresponds to the Poet’s mouth; the ashes in the burning pipe—appropriately, a “brûle-gueule” [mouth-burner]—to the ashes in the Poet’s food and drink. in “Bénédiction” the Poet “Vers le Ciel . . . lève ses bras pieux” [Toward the Sky . . . raises his pious arms] as if they were wings that would take him there, “Et les vastes éclairs de son esprit lucide / Lui dérobent l’aspect des peuples furieux” [And the vast illuminations of his lucid mind / Hide from him the sight of the raging mob] (ll. 53, 54–56). He has that vastness in common with albatrosses, “vastes oiseaux des mers” [vast birds of the seas] (l. 2).

“L’Albatros” / “Élévation”

Vastness would henceforth be evoked in “Élévation” (1857/1861: 3) as well, due to a change Baudelaire made in that poem when “L’Albatros” became its immediate predecessor: in line 13 “les sombres chagrins” [dark sorrows] became “les vastes chagrins” [vast sorrows]. But even apart from that “L’Albatros” seems already tailor-made to fit as well with the poem after it as the one before. The Poet, who as an albatross had “grandes ailes blanches” [great white wings] (l. 7), “ailes de géant” [giant wings] (l. 16), can still “d’une aile vigoureuse / S’élancer” [soar with a vigorous wing (ll. 15–16). The opposition between weakness and unhappiness below and strength and delight above runs through both poems: “Envole-toi bien loin de ces miasmes morbides; / Va te purifier dans l’air supérieur” [Fly away far from these morbid miasms; / Go purify yourself in the upper air] (ll. 9–10), the Poet tells his spirit in “Élévation,” knowing it fully capable of doing so: “Mon esprit, tu te meus avec agilité . . . / Tu sillonnes gaî- ment l’immensité profonde / Avec une indicible et mâle volupté” [My spirit, you move with agility . . . / You gaily plow the deep immensities / With an indescribable masculine delight] (ll. 5, 7–8). The albatross when brought to earth was weighed down by his wings, which dragged like oars (ll. 7–8); in “Élévation” the “ennuis et les vastes chagrins” [ennuis and vast sorrows] (l. 13) of the earthbound “chargent de leur poids l’existence” [oppress existence with their weight] (l. 14). The albatross’s wings are “vastes” and so enable him, when aloft, to escape such “vastes chagrins.” It is in light of this opposition that Baudelaire’s alteration of “sombres chagrins” to “vastes chagrins” reveals its significance.

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“La Géante” / “Le Masque”

With “Le Masque” [The Mask] (1861: 20) we come to the first instance of a change in the sequence necessitated by the disappearance of a censored poem, “Les Bijoux” (1857: 20). Baudelaire replaced the latter with not just one poem but two, “Le Masque” and “Hymne à la Beauté” [Hymn to Beauty] (1861: 21). Both “Le Masque” and the immediately preceding poem “La Géante” (1857/1861: 19) depict women as monsters. By virtue of her size, the Giantess was one of the “enfants monstrueux” [monstrous children] (l. 2 conceived by Nature in an earlier epoch, whereas “Le Masque” depicts a statue that the viewer, when he sees it from the side, will at first take to be a “monstre bicéphale” [two-headed monster] (l. 19). He will soon discover that instead of having two heads, the woman is holding a mask in front of her face, behind which she is weeping:

Pauvre grande beauté! le magnifique fleuve De tes pleurs aboutit dans mon cœur soucieux; . . . mon âme s’abreuve Aux flots que la Douleur fait jaillir de tes yeux!

[Poor grand beauty! The magnificent river Of your tears flows into my worried heart; . . . my soul drinks From the waves that sadness makes spring from your eyes!] (ll. 25–26, 27–28)

The smiling mask gives no hint of the reality behind it. The Giantess’s eyes are also wet: “J’eusse aimé . . . / Deviner si son cœur couve une sombre flame / Aux humides brouillards qui nagent dans ses yeux” [I would have loved . . . / To guess if her heart were covering a dark flame / From the humid mists swimming in her eyes] (ll. 5, 7–8). That the eyes of the woman the statue depicts are wet is not apparent at first glance, but the opposite is true in “La Géante,” where the narrator begins with the evidence of the wetness in her eyes and then wonders if a dark flame of passion is hidden in her heart. The statue changes before the viewer’s eyes, as he sees first the smiling mask and then the weeping face. Similarly, the narrator would like to see the Giantess change before his eyes, but in a different, more gradual, way: “J’eusse aimé voir son corps fleurir avec son âme / Et grandir” [I would have liked to see her body flower with her soul / And grow up] (ll. 5–6). He would have liked as well to “Parcourir à loisir ses magnifiques formes” [To explore at leisure her magnificent forms] (l. 9). Baudelaire constructs

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a parallel to this by imagining the charms of the sculpted woman being examined at leisure, too, writing that she was “faite pour . . . charmer les loisirs d’un pontife ou d’un prince” [made to . . . charm the leisure of a pontiff or a prince] (ll. 6, 7). Both women are athletic: the Giantess playing “ses terribles jeux” [her fearsome games] and the sculpted woman, with her “corps musculeux” [muscular body] (l. 2) and “flanc d’athlète” [athlete’s flanks] (l. 31). Baudelaire focuses in both poems on their knees: the narrator of “La Géante” would have loved to “Ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes” [Crawl about the slope of her enormous knees] (l. 10); the other woman’s sadness “la fait frémir jusqu’aux genoux” [makes her shudder down to her knees] (l. 34). The sculpted woman seems for a moment to be a “monstre bicéphale,” but even after the viewer no longer sees her as monstrous, once he realizes she is holding a mask in front of her face, she appears to have a dual nature, her tears in conflict with her beauty: “Mais pourquoi pleure-t-elle? Elle, beauté parfaite / Qui mettrait à ses pieds le genre humain vaincu . . . ?” [But why is she weeping? She, perfect beauty / Who could lay at her feet the conquered human race . . . ?] (ll. 29–30). The narrator finds an answer to that question (she weeps because she has lived, lives, and will live), but the apparent contradiction lingers.

“Le Masque” / “Hymne à la Beauté”

Beauty is likewise represented, though in an entirely figurative sense, as a two-faced woman in “Hymne à la Beauté” (1861: 21), the new poem that immediately follows “Le Masque,” and that with it replaces “Les Bijoux”: “Viens-tu du ciel profond ou sors-tu de l’abîme, / Ô Beauté? ton regard, infernal et divin, / Verse confusément le bienfait et le crime” [Do you come from the deep sky or from the abyss, / O Beauty? Your gaze, infernal and divine, / Pours out indiscriminately benefit and crime] (ll. 1–3). She evokes both sunset and sunrise, sows joy and disaster. Like the woman in the statue (and the Giantess before her), she is a “monstre” [monster] (l. 22). So too, we recall, had been the woman in “Les Bijoux,” in which the narrator saw “unis par un nouveau dessin / Les hanches de l’Antiope au buste d’un imberbe” [by some new design / The hips of an Antiope united with the chest of a beardless youth] (ll. 25–26). Baudelaire thus replaced one poem about a monstrous woman, who had in her own way paralleled the “enfant monstrueux” who was the Giantess, with two other poems about monstrous women. In this way he continued the parallel threatened by the disappearance of the censored poem. And thus do the two new

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poems also allude to the one they replace. But it is not the only way. The initial impression of a body with two heads in “Le Masque” evokes the two bodies combined into one in lines 25–26 of “Les Bijoux.” All the more so for the fact that those two bodies are of different genders, combining to form a nearly bisexual monster, to be replaced by a “monstre bicéphale.” In “Hymne à la Beauté” Beauty as a woman wears jewels that dance, creating a hidden allusion to the dancing “bijoux” in the missing poem: “De tes bijoux l’Horreur n’est pas le moins charmant, / Et le Meurtre, parmi tes plus chères breloques, / Sur ton ventre orgueilleux danse amoureuse- ment” [Of your jewels Horror is not the least charming, / And Murder, among your dearest bracelet charms, / Dances amorously on your proud belly] (ll. 14–16). In “Les Bijoux” the poet’s mistress was wearing only “ses bijoux sonores” [her sounding jewels] (l. 2), a radiant world of metal and stone that made “en dansant” [in dancing] (l. 5) a noise that sent him into ecstasy. The smile of the woman in “Les Bijoux”—“elle souriait d’aise” [she smiled with pleasure] (l. 10)—returns through the connecting thread tying the “souris” [smile] (l. 23) of Beauty with the “souris fin et voluptueux” [delicate and voluptuous smile] (l. 8) of the mask.

“Hymne à la Beauté” / “Parfum exotique”

“Hymne à la Beauté” was written in such a way as to include connections not only with the missing “Les Bijoux” and with “Le Masque” but also with the poem that follows it, “Parfum exotique” (1857: 21; 1861: 22). Line 6, “Tu répands des parfums comme un soir orageux” [You spread perfumes like a stormy evening], seems planted there merely to anticipate the entire argument of “Parfum exotique,” especially the passage “en un soir chaud d’automne, / Je respire l’odeur de ton sein” [on a hot autumn evening, / I breathe the odor of your breast] (ll. 1–2), for this line does not take part in the oppositions that precede and follow it within “Hymne à la Beauté.” In lines 1–4 the speaker asks if Beauty comes from heaven or hell and declares that she spreads both benefit and crime; in line 5 her eye contains both the sunset and the dawn; in lines 7–8 she creates both cowardice and courage. In contrast to these, the perfumes she spreads in the stormy evening have no contradictory effects, in fact, have no effects at all—except to figure in the last stanza’s summary of attractions that render the question of whether she comes from heaven or hell irrelevant: “Qu’importe, si tu rends,—fée aux yeux de velours, / Rythme, parfum, lueur . . . / L’univers moins hideux et les instants moins lourds?” [What does it matter, is you make,—velvet-eyed enchantress, / Rhythm, perfume, glow . . . / The universe less hideous and the instants less heavy?] (ll. 26–

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27, 28). Even there, in line 27, the words “Rythme, parfum, lueur” are merely floating, syntactically adrift from the rest of the sentence. breathing in the odor of his mistress’s breast, the poet in “Parfum exotique” can see “des rivages heureux / Qu’éblouissent les feux d’un soleil monotone” [happy shores / Dazzled by the fires of an unchanging sun] (ll. 3–4). In “Hymne à la beauté” the woman as Beauty dazzles with fire: “L’éphémère ébloui vole vers toi, chandelle, / Crépite, flambe, et dit: Bénissons ce flambeau!” [The dazzled mayfly flies to you, candle, / Crackles, catches fire, and says: Let us bless this flame!] (ll. 17–18). This works well as an image of the danger Beauty poses and, unlike the combination of soir and woman’s scent in line 6, does not suggest a similarity between the woman in this poem and the woman in the next but engages instead in wordplay, recombining the verb éblouir with various words for fire (“flambe,” “flambeau,” and “feux”), creating for them a new context.

“Parfum exotique” / “La Chevelure”

That wordplay takes a new twist in “La Chevelure” [The Hair] (1861: 23) when éblouir’s combination in “Hymne à la Beauté” and “Parfum exotique” with fire (with “flambeau” and “feux,” respectively) is succeeded by its combination with some “flammes” that are not in fact fire: “un éblou- issant rêve / De voiles, de rameurs, de flammes et de mâts” [a dazzling dream / Of sails, of oarsmen, of pennants and of masts] (ll. 14–15). Only in these three poems among the Fleurs du mal is something ébloui [dazzled] by fire—or a homonym for a word meaning fire. Baudelaire appears to have been intent on maintaining the combination throughout succeeding poems, while varying the meaning, so much so in the last instance that it is really a kind of pun. This “dazzling” sequence grows out of the words “éblouissent les feux” in “Parfum exotique,” the only poem of the three that existed in the 1857 Fleurs du mal, extending on either side of that original poem into the new poems that now accompany it. “La Chevelure” recycles a number of other motifs from “Parfum exotique.” As the perfume of her breast gave the poet visions of a tropical port in that poem, the smell of her hair accomplishes the same task in this one. Guided “par ton odeur vers de charmants climats, / Je vois un port rempli de voiles et de mâts” [by your odor to charming climates, / I see a port filled with sails and with masts] (ll. 9–10) in “Parfum exotique”; in “La Chevelure” the “parfum” (l. 2) of her hair makes him think of “l’ardeur des climats” [the heat of the climates] (l. 12), in a dazzling dream “De voiles . . . et de mâts” [Of sails . . . and of masts] (l. 15) (the repeating phrase “et de mâts” appears in no other poem), and “Un port” [a port]

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(l. 16). There were “Des arbres singuliers . . . / Des hommes dont le corps est . . . vigoureux” [Singular trees . . . / Men with robust bodies] in “Par- fum exotique” (l. 7); in “La Chevelure,” “l’arbre et l’homme” [tree and man] are “pleins de sève” [full of vigor] (l. 11). So closely does the second poem repeat the first, one might well wonder what the difference between the two might be, other than the replacement of “sein” by “chevelure” as the source of the voyage-inducing perfume. Pichois (who also noted that “mâts” rhymes with “climats” in both poems) has found the answer to that question. In Proustian terms, he writes, “involuntary memory [la mémoire involontaire] functions in ‘Par- fum exotique,’” while in the other poem “it is voluntarily [volontairement] that the poet awakens the memories hidden in the hair” (OC I: 880). In “Parfum exotique” it is simply “Quand . . . / Je respire l’odeur de ton sein chaleureux” [When . . . / I breathe in the odor of your warm breast] that “Je vois se dérouler” [I see glide by] those sun-dazzled tropical shores. Just breathing in an odor already there is enough. But in “La Chevelure” he has to shake her hair to achieve the same effect, and it is with the specific aim of awakening what lies hidden within that he does so: “Pour peupler ce soir l’alcôve obscure / Des souvenirs dormant dans cette chevelure, / Je la veux agiter dans l’air comme un mouchoir!” [To populate this evening the dark alcove / With the memories sleeping in this hair, / I want to shake it in the air like a handkerchief!] (ll. 3–5). Pichois suggests the archaic place- ment of “la” before “veux” is itself an act of will on Baudelaire’s part, with the result that “this voluntary aspect is underlined” (OC I: 880).

“La Chevelure” / “Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne . . . ”

If we keep this in mind, we will be able to see a gradual change in the relation between intention and effect as we pass from “Parfum exotique” to “La Chevelure” to “Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne . . .” (1857: 22; 1861: 24). In the first of these three, the effect was achieved without an act of will; in the second, it was by an act of will that it would be achieved; in the third, despite an act of will, the poet cannot effect the voyage he desires. The woman he adores flees his grasp like the unattainable moon:

tu me fuis, Et . . . tu me parais, ornement de mes nuits, . . . ironiquement accumuler les lieues Qui séparent mes bras des immensités bleues

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[you flee me, And . . . you seem, O ornament of my nights, . . . ironically to accumulate the leagues That separate my arms from the blue immensities] (ll. 3, 4, 5–6)

He cannot travel to the night sky, cannot overcome the miles that separate him from the object of his desire. In 1857 “Parfum exotique” was to “Je t’adore . . . ” as a voyage easily, indeed involuntarily, achieved is to one attempted but unachievable. In 1861, by placing “La Chevelure” in the sequence at this point, Baudelaire added a logically intermediate state between those two. in doing so, he planted in “La Chevelure” two additional connections with “Je t’adore . . . ” The poet’s attempt to reach his arms to the sky in lines 5–6 of the latter now has a forerunner in “La Chevelure”: “les vaisseaux . . . / Ouvrent leurs vastes bras pour embrasser la gloire / D’un ciel pur” [the ships . . . / Open their vast arms to embrace the glory / Of a pure sky] (ll. 18, 19–20). These arms can embrace what the poet’s in the next poem cannot, the sky. And the sky’s “immensités bleues” in line 6 of “Je t’adore . . .” are now anticipated by “l’azur du ciel immense et rond” [the azure of the immense and round sky] (l. 27) that he comes to possess thanks to her “Cheveux bleus” [Blue hair] (l. 26).

“Le Vampire” / “Une nuit que j’étais près d’une affreuse Juive . . . ”

The “cadavre” in the last lines of “Le Vampire” (1857: 29; 1861: 31)—

Tes baisers ressusciteraient Le cadavre de ton vampire!

[Your kisses would resuscitate Your vampire’s corpse!] (lines 23–24)

—is immediately followed by another (in fact, by two) in the first lines of the poem that follows it in 1861:

Une nuit que j’étais près d’une affreuse Juive, Comme au long d’un cadavre un cadavre étendu [One night when I was with a frightful Jewess Like a corpse stretched out alongside a corpse] (ll. 1–2)

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Indeed, the second line of “Une nuit . . . ” (1857: 31; 1861: 32), with its one “cadavre” lying next to another, enacts in microcosm what Baudelaire made happen in the collection when he (albeit involuntarily) removed “Le Léthé,” which came between the two poems in 1857. For these two, in particular the last lines of the first and the first lines of the second, now themselves lie side by side, like the “cadavres.” This is the first time in our perusal of the 1861 changes that we arrive at a new proximity of two poems both surviving from 1857. Neither has been altered in any way that would increase their potential for reflecting each other, but it is important to bear in mind that both were already part of a trio of related poems in the first edition. Baudelaire, as we have seen, most recently in the combination of “éblouir” with fire (and with “flammes” of a different sort) in the 1861 trio “Parfum exotique,” “La Chevelure,” and “Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne . . . ,” sometimes works in threes. We saw him do so in 1857 with regard to the poems we are revisiting now, for in that edition “Tes baisers” [Your kisses] (l. 23) in “Le Vampire” (1857: 29) were matched word for word by “tes baisers” [your kisses] (l. 16) in “Le Léthé” (1857: 30) (yet at the same time opposed by them, since “tes” in “Le Vampire” referred to the narrator but in “Léthé” to his beloved), and both were followed in “Une nuit . . . ” (1857: 31) by “j’eusse avec ferveur baisé ton noble corps” [I would have fervently kissed your noble body] (l. 9). The excision of “Léthé” allows the kissing in “Une nuit . . . ” to resonate in a more striking way (more striking because the two poems now lie side by side) with the kissing in “Le Vampire.” For both instances of kissing are connected to reanimation as well as to the sense that something would or would have taken place, conveyed in “Le Vampire” by the conditional verb “ressusciteraient” [would resuscitate] and in the matching passage in “Une nuit . . . ” by the second form of the conditional perfect: “j’eusse avec ferveur baisé ton noble corps” [I would have fervently kissed your noble body]. In a symmetrical opposition, in “Le Vampire” it is the reanimation that would be brought about (as poison and the sword inform the narrator that even if with their aid he killed his beloved, the kisses he would lavish on her corpse would bring her back to life), but in “Une nuit . . . ” what would have taken place is the kissing he would have lavished on his living (but absent) mistress’s body “Si, quelque soir . . . / Tu pouvais seulement, ô reine des cruelles! / Obscurcir la splendeur de tes froides prunelles” [If, some evening . . . / You could just, O queen of cruel women! / Dim the splendor of your cold eyes] (ll. 12–14)—in other words, if she had been a little less cold. But because his recollection of his mistress when he is with the prostitute revives him for love, those kisses, or at least that part of him that now rises

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from the dead, are (is) lavished on her, whose “corps vendu” [sold body] (l. 3) had until his reanimation been as much a corpse as he. In other words, the kisses that would bring about reanimation in “Le Vampire” are answered in “Une nuit . . . ” by a reanimation that would bring about kisses.

“Le Chat: Viens, mon beau chat . . . ” / “Duellum”

The next change in the sequence is the insertion of the new poem “Duellum” [Duel] (1861: 35) between “Le Chat: Viens, mon beau chat . . . ” (1857: 33; 1861: 34) and “Le Balcon” (1857: 34; 1861: 36). The cat is capable of doing damage with its claws: “Viens, mon beau chat . . . / Retiens les griffes de ta patte” [Come, my beautiful cat . . . / Hold back the claws of your paw] (ll. 1, 2); the eyes of the poet’s mistress are similarly sharp and dangerous: “Son regard . . . coupe et fend comme un dard” [Her glance . . . cuts and splits like a dart] (ll. 9, 10). “Duellum” prolongs the motif of perilously sharp weapons, recasting the cat’s claws as “ongles acérés” [sharp fingernails] (l. 6) and the cutting and piercing dart as “glaives . . . l’épée et la dague” [swords . . . the épée and the dagger] (ll. 5, 7). Both the woman’s darts in “Le Chat” and the swords, dagger, and sharp fingernails in “Duel- lum” are lovers’ arms, as “Duellum” allegorizes love as armed combat. Curi- ously, the ravine where the lover-duellists grapple is “hanté des chats-pards et des onces” [haunted by lynxes and panthers] (l. 9). As Jacques Dupont observes in his edition of the Fleurs du mal, in the Goya Capricho (number 62, Quien le creyera!) to which Baudelaire is alluding, and of which he writes in Quelques caricaturistes étrangers (OC II: 568–69), “the ‘chats-pards’ and ‘onces’ do not appear” (FM Dupont, 277). As the theater of the lovers’ combat is haunted by felines, so too is “Duellum” haunted by images from “Le Chat,” including the cats that Baudelaire seems to have added to enhance these poems’ connections.

“Duellum” / “Le Balcon”

“Duellum” (1861: 35) ends in the “gouffre” [abyss] (l. 12) of this feline- haunted ravine, where the poet invites his lover to tumble, “Afin d’éterniser l’ardeur de notre haine” [In order to eternalize the ardor of our hatred] (l. 14). “Le Balcon” (1857: 34; 1861: 36) ends in a “gouffre” as well, where another eternalization may take place:

Ces serments, ces parfums, ces baisers infinis, Renaîtront-ils d’un gouffre interdit à nos sondes,

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Comme montent au ciel les soleils rajeunis Après s’être lavés au fond des mers profondes?

[These promises, these perfumes, these infinite kisses, Will they be reborn from an abyss forbidden to our soundings, As rejuvenated suns rise to heaven After having been washed in the depths of deep seas?] (ll. 26–29)

Thus there is a precise opposition between the rebirth, and since the sun is rejuvenated every day, the eternalization, of their love and that of their hatred.

“Le Balcon” / “Le Possédé”

The sun’s disappearance into a darkness likened to a “gouffre” is immediately repeated in the opening lines of the new poem “Le Possédé” [The Possessed] (1861: 37): “Le soleil s’est couvert d’un crêpe. Comme lui, / O Lune de ma vie! emmitoufle-toi d’ombre . . . / Et plonge tout entière au gouffre de l’Ennui” [The sun has draped itself in mourning. Like him, / O Moon of my life, wrap yourself in shadow . . . / And plunge completely into the abyss of Ennui] (ll. 1–2, 4). This is the third descent in a row into a “gouffre,” thanks to Baudelaire’s adding two poems (“Duellum” and “Le Possédé”) on either side of “Le Balcon.” The poet is addressing his mistress and complaining that she is being moody. Sleep or smoke as you wish, he tells her; be mute, be gloomy. Throw yourself entirely into the abyss of boredom. I like you like that. However, if you want you could come out of your gloom and go walking in the streets of the city—“Comme un astre éclipsé qui sort de la pénombre, / Te pavaner aux lieux que la Folie encombre” [Like an eclipsed star that comes out of its penumbra, / Parade yourself in places encumbered by madness] (ll. 6–7). Thus, like the sun in “Le Balcon” that falls into the dark “gouffre” and the next morning returns over the horizon, the poet’s mistress can plunge into the “gouffre” of Ennui and then emerge from that darkness like the sun coming out of an eclipse. In other words, what happens in the last stanza of “Le Balcon” is repeated in the quatrains of this sonnet, though in a wholly new context. In fact, it takes up the entirety of those quatrains, more than half the poem. The tercets begin with a discreet allusion to “Le Balcon.” There, as darkness fell, “mes yeux dans le noir devinaient tes prunelles” [my eyes in the blackness could make out your pupils] (l. 17). Here: “Allume ta prunelle à la flamme des lustres!” [Light your pupil from the flame of chandeliers!] (l. 9). The combination of the second-person singular possessive adjective

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and “prunelle(s)” as two sequential words appears in the Fleurs du mal only in these two poems.

“Le Possédé” / “Un fantôme”

“Le Possédé” (1861: 37) is followed by “Un fantôme” [A Phantom] (1861: 38), a new poem that is itself a combination of four linked poems: “I. Les Ténèbres” [The Shadows], “II. Le Parfum” [The Perfume], “III. Le Cadre” [The Frame], and “IV. Le Portrait” [The Portrait]. In the first of these, the poet has been relegated by Destiny to something very like an abyss of darkness, “les caveaux d’insondable tristesse . . . / Où jamais n’entre un rayon” [the cellars of unfathomable sadness . . . / Where no ray of light ever enters] (ll. 1, 3). That it is “insondable” puts it on a level with the “gouffre interdit à nos sondes” in “Le Balcon” (l. 27). The beloved’s emergence from the shadows in “Le Possédé” (like an eclipsed star coming out of its penumbra) happens again here:

Par instants brille, et s’allonge, et s’étale Un spectre fait de grâce et de splendeur . . .

Quand il atteint sa totale grandeur, Je reconnais ma belle visiteuse: C’est Elle! noire et pourtant lumineuse

[Sometimes there shines, and lengthens, and spreads A ghost made of grace and splendor . . .

When it reaches its full height, I recognize my beautiful visitor: It is She! Black and yet luminous] (ll. 9–10, 12–14)

She is “noire” as she had been the “nuit noire” [black night] (l. 12) in “Le Possédé.” The four sonnets comprising “Un fantôme” build on each other in the same way that all the poems in the Fleurs du mal do. In fact, they could each be considered as an individual poem in the volume’s sequence, since there are strong ties between the first and “Le Possédé,” and between the last and the poem that follows them, “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” (1857: 35; 1861: 39). In “I. Les Ténèbres” the speaker describes himself a painter whom a mocking God condemns to paint on shadows. In his darkness, he

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adds, as a “cuisinier aux appétits funèbres, / Je fais bouillir et je mange mon cœur” [cook with funereal appetites, / I boil and eat my own heart] (ll. 7–8). The first four lines of “II. Le Parfum” recycle the motif of appetite and restate it as “gourmandise,” changing the context from food to fragrance: “Lecteur, as-tu quelquefois respiré / Avec ivresse et lente gourmandise / Ce grain d’encens qui remplit une église . . . ?” [Reader, have you sometimes breathed in / With intoxication and slow gluttony / That grain of incense that fills a church . . . ?] (ll. 1–3). The gradual filling of the church doubles the gradual lengthening and stretching of the specter. The speaker in “II. Le Parfum” then relates the perception of fragrance to recollection of the beloved:

Charme profond, magique, dont nous grise Dans le présent le passé restauré! Ainsi l’amant sur un corps adoré Du souvenir cueille la fleur exquise

[Profound charm, magic by which we are intoxicated In the present by the restored past! Thus the lover on her adored body Plucks the exquisite flower of memory] (ll. 5–8)

Thus Baudelaire takes three motifs from “I. Les Ténèbres”—appetite, gradual increase in size, and conjuring up the beloved—and weaves them into a new combination in “II. Le Parfum.” in “III. Le Cadre” he returns to the painting motif introduced in “I. Les Ténèbres,” where he was condemned to paint on shadows. Here he compares his mistress to a painting, and her clothes (and other contex- tual attributes such as jewels) become “un beau cadre” [a beautiful frame] that “ajoute à la peinture” [adds to the painting] (l. 1). She “noyait / Sa nudité voluptueusement // Dans les baisers du satin et du linge” [was drowning / Her nudity voluptuously // In the kisses of the satin and linen] (ll. 10–12). The motif of her clothes had already been introduced in “II. Le Parfum,” where they were connected to that of fragrance: “des habits, mousseline ou velours, / Tout imprégnés de sa jeunesse pure, / Se dégageait un parfum de fourrure” [from the clothes, muslin or velvet / All imbued with her pure youth, / Issued a perfum of fur] (ll. 12–14). Muslin and velvet, satin and linen: these fabrics occupy precisely the same place in both sonnets, the conclusion of the first line of the second tercet. in “IV. Le Portrait” the painting motif continues but is now associated with memory, as fragrance had been before, so that an element from

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the third sonnet is combined with one from the second. Illness and Death have made ashes of the fires of our ardor, the narrator complains, and what remains? “Rien qu’un dessin fort pâle” [Nothing but a very pale drawing] (l. 8) at which Time rubs each day with its rough wing. But Time, he declares, “Tu ne tueras jamais dans ma mémoire” [You will never kill in my memory] (l. 13) the one who was my pleasure and my glory. With this drawing in danger of disappearing we return full circle to the first sonnet with its image of a painting in danger of never coming into existence because it must be painted on shadows. To these recurring themes linking sonnet to sonnet, and in which on several occasions the third recycles elements from the first and second, Baudelaire adds a linguistic play involving drowning and kisses. In “III. Le Cadre” she “noyait” [was drowning] her nudity in the “baisers” [kisses] (ll. 10–12) of satin and linen; in “IV. Le Portrait” Illness and Death make ashes “De cette bouche où mon cœur se noya, // De ces baisers” [Of that mouth where my heart drowned, // Of those kisses] (ll. 4–5). As she drowned in the kisses of satin and linen, he drowned in hers.

“Un fantôme” / “Je te donne ces vers afin que si mon nom . . . ”

The last tercet of “IV. Le Portrait” was thus in the manuscript: “Comme un manant ivre, ou comme un soudard / Qui bat les murs, et salit et coudoie / Une beauté frêle, en robe de soie” [Like a drunken churl, or a roughneck soldier / Who beats the walls, and soils and elbows / A frail beauty dressed in silk] (OC I: 903n). In the version that appeared in the book, however, Baudelaire replaced this with an expression of defiance to the power of Time: “Noir assassin de la Vie et de l’Art, / Tu ne tueras jamais dans ma mémoire / Celle qui fut mon plaisir et sa gloire!” [Black murderer of Life and Art, / You will never kill in my memory / The one who was my pleasure and my glory!] (ll. 12–14). As Pichois observes, this “constitutes the transition to the next poem: You will not entirely die, says the poet to the woman, beloved and aging. This explains the change Baudelaire made to the last tercet” (OC I: 903n). Actually, the new tercet greatly enhances a connection that was already there. In “Je te donne ces vers afin que si mon nom . . . ” (1857: 35; 1861: 39) the poet says that he is giving his beloved these lines so that “Ta mémoire . . . / Reste comme pendue à mes hautaines rimes” [Your memory . . . / Remains as if suspended from my lofty rhymes] (ll. 5, 8), echoing both the question asked in the second quatrain of “IV. Le Portrait”—of her eyes, mouth, and kisses, “Que reste- t-il?” [What remains?] (l. 7)—and the words “ma mémoire” [my memory]

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(l. 13) in the new tercet: “Tu ne tueras jamais dans ma mémoire . . . The question of what remains in “ma mémoire” becomes that of what of “Ta mémoire” will remain.

“Je te donne ces vers afin que si mon nom . . . ” / “Semper eadem”

A textual change in “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” (1857: 35; 1861: 39) provides a subtle tie to its new neighbor, “Semper eadem” [Always the Same] (1861: 40), which in 1861 separates it from “Tout entière” (1857: 36; 1861: 41). Originally the poet spoke of the possibility that his name in future epochs would cause human brains to “travailler” [work] (l. 4), which in the previous chapter we found to be echoed in “Tout entière” by the difficult mental labor of “analyse” (l. 19) that would be required to note the numerous “accords” in the beloved’s too-exquisite harmony. However, beginning in 1861 future minds would no longer be made to “travailler” but instead to “rêver” [dream] (l. 3). Baudelaire evidently made this change because (1) “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” was no longer immediately followed by “Tout entière” and (2) it was now followed by “Semper eadem,” where the poet will tell his beloved he wants to “Plonger dans vos beaux yeux comme dans un beau songe” [Plunge into your beautiful eyes as in a beautiful dream] (l. 13). In the 1861 “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” and “Semper eadem” the beloved gives one reason to dream, while in the 1857 “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” and “Tout entière” she made one think. She is not the same beloved in “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” and “Semper eadem,” despite the latter’s title. Yet, true to that title, certain things will always remain the same in the Fleurs du mal, despite the occasional change of mistress, among them the “liens subtils” [subtle ties] (l. 11) connecting poem to poem. Those “liens subtils” in “Semper eadem” are a self-referential instance of what they name, for they are themselves a subtle tie to the “mystique chaînon” [mystic link] (l. 7) in “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” They are tied to each other, even if their immediate contexts are different, the “mystique chaînon” being what suspends the beloved’s name from the poet’s rhymes, the “liens subtils” being that by which Death holds us. “Semper eadem” begins in medias res, the poet repeating a question his beloved had asked, and then giving a response. “‘D’où vous vient, dis- iez-vous, cette tristesse étrange, / Montant comme la mer sur le roc noir et nu?’ / —Quand notre cœur a fait une fois sa vendange, / Vivre est un mal” [“Whence comes,” you were saying, “this strange sadness, / Rising like the sea on the black, naked rock?” / Once our heart has gathered in its grapes, / Living is an evil] (ll. 1–4). The fact that he gives a response is

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itself a response to a passage in “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” There he characterized his beloved as an “Être maudit à qui . . . rien, hors moi, ne répond” [Cursèd being to whom . . . nothing, except me, responds] (ll. 9–10). In one poem he says that nothing, and evidently no one, responds to her but him, and then in the next he does precisely that.

“Semper eadem” / “Tout entière”

As we saw in the preceding chapter, that “Tout entière” (1857: 36; 1861: 41) is about a question and its response—actually the poet’s refusal to respond to the question in the terms in which it was posed—was one of threads connecting it to “Je te donne ces vers . . . ” That the poem now coming between them, “Semper eadem” (1861: 40), should also be about a question and its answer suggests that Baudelaire was well aware of that connecting thread and decided to extend it from two poems to three. When the Demon asks the poet in “Tout entière” to name, of all the charming objects that make up his mistress’s body, “Quel est le plus doux” [Which is the sweetest] (l. 9), he refuses to single out any one thing. “Lorsque tout me ravit, j’ignore / Si quelque chose me séduit” [When everything ravishes (delights) me, I am ignorant / Of any one thing seducing me] (ll. 13–14). The poet, “ravished” by everything, is in the exact same situation as the beloved herself in “Semper eadem”: “Taisez-vous, ignorante! âme toujours ravie! [Be quiet, ignorant girl! Soul always ravished (delighted)!] (l. 9). Not only is he “ravi” by all he sees, as she is “ravie” all the time, but like her he is ignorant. Surely Baudelaire is amusing himself with wordplay in these successive poems. And he is defying “l’impuissante analyse” [impotent analysis] (l. 19) to find all the “nombreux accords” [numerous chords] (l. 20) in the “beau corps” [beautiful body] (l. 18) that is not just the beloved but also the Fleurs du mal. yet another accord may be counted here. When the Demon asks what is “le plus doux” of her bodily attributes, the poet says he cannot single any one out, but in the end—in the last words of the poem—he does allude to two: “Son haleine fait la musique, / Comme sa voix fait le parfum” [Her breath makes the music, / As her voice makes the perfume] (ll. 23–24). He means this as an illustration of the synesthesia she creates as a “métamorphose mystique / De tous mes sens fondus en un” [mystical metamorphosis / Of all my senses melted into one] (ll. 21–22). But at the same time he has answered the Demon’s request to name one by naming two, of which the second is her voice. And it happens that in “Semper eadem” he had described her voice with the same adjective the Demon asked for: “bien que votre voix soit doux, taisez-vous!” [though your voice is sweet, be quiet] (l. 8).

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“Le Flambeau vivant” / “Réversibilité”

The next change in the sequence arises from the condemnation of “À celle qui est trop gaie” (1857: 39). Baudelaire did not replace it with another poem, so “Le Flambeau vivant” (1857: 38; 1861: 43) and “Réversibilité” (1857: 40; 1861: 44) become neighbors. However, he did make a textual change in “Le Flambeau vivant” in order to forge a connection between the two. In 1857 the fourth line was “Suspendant mon regard à leurs feux diamantés” [Suspending my gaze at their diamondlike fires]; in 1861 it became “Secouant dans mes yeux leurs feux diamantés” [Shaking into my eyes their diamondlike fires]. There are two changes here: “Suspendant” to “Secouant” and “mon regard” to “dans mes yeux.” The second is the relevant one, necessitating the first. By changing “mon regard” to “dans mes yeux,” Baudelaire allowed an ironic backward glance to emerge from the fourth stanza of “Réversibilité”: “connaissez-vous . . . ce hideux tourment / De lire la secrète horreur du dévouement / Dans des yeux où longtemps burent nos yeux avides?” [do you know . . . that hideous torment / Of reading the secret horror of devotion / In eyes where our avid eyes long drank?] (ll. 16, 17–19). The poet here appears to allude to an aging mistress, as he does in “IV. Le Portrait” in “Un fantôme,” whose “grands yeux si fervents et si tendres” [large eyes so fervent and so tender] (l. 3) Illness and Death turn to ashes. She is evidently not the same beloved as the one whose eyes shake their fire in “Le Flambeau vivant.” Nevertheless, the verbal echo, and the presence of eyes in both poems, link these passages. in “Le Flambeau vivant” “le soleil / Rougit, mais n’éteint pas” [the sun / Reddens, but does not extinguish] (ll. 10–11) the beloved’s eyes, for they are “Astres dont nul soleil ne peut flétrir la flamme” [Stars whose flame no sun can wither] (l. 14); this hostility (doubled in 1857 by the sun’s hostility to the poet in the intervening “À celle qui est trop gaie,” when it tore the poet’s breast) finds its opposite in the sun’s beneficence in “Réversibilité” when sick patients “le long de grands murs de l’hospice blafard, / Comme des exilés, s’en vont d’un pied traînard, / Cherchant le soleil rare” [alongside the walls of the pale hospital, / Like exiles, trudge, / Seeking the rarely glimpsed sun] (ll. 12–13). They walk in search of the sun and thus parallel the poet in “Le Flambeau vivant,” who walks to follow the sun’s rival, the eyes of the beloved: “Ils marchent devant moi, ces Yeux pleins de lumières . . . / Ils conduisent mes pas . . . / Tout mon être obéit à ce vivant flambeau” [They walk before me, those Eyes full of lights . . . / They guide my steps . . . / All my being obeys that living flame] (ll. 1, 6, 8). These “Yeux pleins de lumières” at the end of the first line of “Le Flam- beau vivant” are symmetrically echoed by the parallel description of the beloved in the last line of “Réversibilité”: “Ange plein de bonheur, de joie

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et de lumières” [Angel full of happiness, of joy, and of lights] (l. 25, also 21). In no other poem of the Fleurs du mal does the phrase “plein [ . . . ] de lumières” (with lumières in the plural) appear.

“Causerie” / “Chant d’automne”

After “Causerie” (1857: 51; 1861: 55) Baudelaire introduced four new poems. The first of these, “Chant d’automne” [Song of Autumn] (1861: 56), seems, as its title suggests, to grow out of the first line of “Causerie”: “Vous êtes un beau ciel d’automne, clair et rose!” [You are a beautiful autumn sky, bright and pink!]. As in “Causerie,” the woman addressed can incarnate the season: “soyez la douceur éphémère / D’un glorieux automne” [be the ephemeral warmth / Of a glorious autumn] (ll. 23–24). Autumn in this poem is the prelude to winter: “Bientôt nous plongerons dans les froides ténèbres” [Soon we will plunge into the cold shadows] (l. 1). Winter’s cold is both real and figurative:

Tout l’hiver va rentrer dans mon être: colère, Haine, frissons . . . Et, comme le soleil dans son enfer polaire, Mon cœur ne sera plus qu’un bloc rouge et glacé

[All of winter is about to enter my being: anger, Hatred, shivers . . . And, like the sun in its arctic hell, My heart will be nothing more than a red and frozen block] (ll. 5–6, 7–8)

As in “Causerie,” here, too, he focuses on the damage to his heart. There, he invites the woman to destroy by fire what remains of his heart: “Avec tes yeux de feu . . . / Calcine ces lambeaux qu’ont épargnés les bêtes!” [With your eyes of fire . . . / Burn up those shreds the beasts spared!] (ll. 13, 14). The woman addressed is a source of heat in both poems, but a destructive fire in “Causerie” as opposed to a comforting warmth in “Chant d’automne.” When he asks her to be “la douceur éphémère / D’un glorieux automne,” he goes on to say “ou d’un soleil couchant” [or of a setting sun] (l. 24). The warmth of a setting sun is about to disappear; so too is an autumn’s “douceur,” which should here be understood in the meteorological sense: mildness, warmth—rather than sweetness. When he tells her that “rien, ni votre amour, ni le boudoir, ni l’âtre, / Ne me vaut le

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soleil rayonnant sur la mer” [nothing, neither your love, nor the boudoir, nor the hearth, / Is worth as much to me as the sun shining on the sea] (ll. 19–20), he is contrasting the intense heat of the sun high in the sky to the soon-to-disappear warmth of a setting sun. Her love is not worth as much as the sun on the sea because she, like a setting sun—and an autumnal day—cannot be counted on to provide as much heat. That she is of less value than the sun on the sea has another dimen- sion that cannot be understood unless we read the two poems together. In “Causerie” bitterness is likened to the sea:

Vous êtes un beau ciel d’automne, clair et rose! Mais la tristesse en moi monte comme la mer, Et laisse, en refluant, sur ma lèvre morose Le souvenir cuisant de son limon amer

[You are a beautiful autumnal sky, bright and pink! But sadness mounts in me like the sea, And leaves, as it ebbs, on my morose lip The burning memory of its bitter mud] (ll. 1–4)

That same order of events—initial praise of the woman, couched in terms of color (green instead of pink), interrupted by a “mais” [but] introduc- ing the complaint that he suffers from bitterness—is repeated in “Chant d’automne”:

J’aime de vos longs yeux la lumière verdâtre, Douce beauté, mais tout aujourd’hui m’est amer, Et rien, ni votre amour, ni le boudoir, ni l’âtre, Ne me vaut le soleil rayonnant sur la mer

[I love the greenish light of your long eyes, Gentle beauty, but everything today is bitter to me, And nothing, neither your love, nor the boudoir, nor the hearth, Is worth as much to me as the sun shining on the sea] (ll. 17–20)

The sun shining on the sea counteracts its bitterness, which the green-eyed beloved cannot do. The sun elsewhere in the Fleurs du mal, as we have seen, is often the father. According to Michel Quesnel, it is again here: the poet’s praise of the sun above the sea “reestablishes the father in glory” (177).

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“Chant d’automne” / “À une Madone”

“Chant d’automne” is followed by another new poem, “À une Madone” [To a Madonna] (1861: 57), in which the poet, who in “Chant d’automne” said to his beloved, “soyez mère” [be a mother] (l. 21), continues to see her in a maternal light, but one now tinged with religion:

Je veux bâtir pour toi, Madone, ma maîtresse, Un autel souterrain au fond de ma détresse, Et creuser dans le coin le plus noir de mon cœur . . . Une niche . . . Où tu te dresseras, Statue émerveillée

[I want to build for you, Madonna, my mistress, An underground altar in the depth of my distress, And to hollow out in the blackest corner of my heart . . . A niche . . . Where you will stand, amazed] (ll. 1–3, 5, 6)

The poem is subtitled “Ex-voto dans le goût espagnol” [Votive Offering in the Spanish Style], and Mary the Mother of Jesus is surrounded by the accoutrements typical of the genre, except that Baudelaire gives them an erotic charge:

Ta Robe, ce sera mon Désir, frémissant, Onduleux, mon Désir qui monte et qui descend, Aux pointes se balance, aux vallons se repose, Et revêt d’un baiser tout ton corps

[Your Dress will be my Desire, shuddering, Flowing, my Desire rising and descending, Posing at the peaks, resting in the valleys, And covering your whole body with a kiss] (ll. 15–18)

For a finishing touch, “pour compléter ton rôle de Marie . . . des sept Péchés capitaux, / Bourreau plein de remords, je ferai sept Couteaux / Bien affilés, et . . . / Je les planterai tous dans ton Cœur” [to complete your role of Mary . . . from the Seven Deadly Sins, / An executioner full of remorse, I will make seven Knives / Well-sharpened, and . . . / I will plant them all in your Heart] (ll. 37, 39–41, 43). The seven swords in Marian iconography are not the Seven Deadly Sins, however, but the Seven Sor-

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rows: the prophecy of Simeon (Luke 2:35), the flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:13–21), the three-day disappearance of the child (Luke 2:41–51), the meeting between Jesus and Mary on the way of the cross (Luke 23:27– 31), Mary seeing Jesus suffer and die (John 19:25–27), receiving the body (Matthew 27:55–61), and seeing it buried in the tomb (Luke 23:55–56). “Chant d’automne,” scholars agree, was inspired by the green-eyed Marie Daubrun, an actress and the mistress of the poet Théodore de Banville. In October 1859, “Banville being ill, she turned to Baudelaire” (Pichois, in OC I: 934n). The poem, Adam believes, was written at that time (FM Adam, 347). Daubrun’s acting career subsequently led her to leave Paris for Nice. She took Banville with her; there he regained his health, and his mistress. “À une Madone,” according to Adam and Pichois, was Baudelaire’s revenge. That may be, but “Chant d’automne,” curiously, anticipates that vengeance. The poet hears the repeated thuds of winter firewood being unloaded onto the courtyard of his apartment:

J’écoute en frémissant chaque bûche qui tombe; L’échafaud qu’on bâtit n’a pas d’écho plus sourd. Mon esprit est pareil à la tour qui succombe Sous les coups du bélier infatigable et lourd.

Il me semble, bercé par ce choc monotone, Qu’on cloue en grande hâte un cercueil quelque part.

[Shuddering, I hear each log that falls; The scaffold that one builds has no echo more muffled. My spirit is like the tower that succumbs Under the blows of the indefatigable and heavy battering ram.

It seems to me, lulled by that monotonous pounding, That somewhere one is nailing a coffin in great haste.] (ll. 9–14)

The scaffold “qu’on bâtit” [that one builds] does have an echo, in the first line of “À une Madone”: “Je veux bâtir pour toi, Madone, ma maîtresse, / Un autel souterrain” [I want to build for you, Madonna, my mistress, / An underground altar]. And the “échafaud” as a place of execution has an echo there, too, when the poet describes himself as a “Bourreau” [Executioner] (l. 40). The seven knives that he, “comme un jongleur insensible” [like a callous circus performer] (l. 41), will plant in her heart echo the repeated

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blows of the battering ram and the hammering of nails in the coffin. This suggests that when Baudelaire wrote “Chant d’automne,” planting in it the imagery of the executioner’s scaffold, the nails, and the verb “bâtir,” he already had in mind what he would write in “À une Madone.”

“À une Madone” / “Chanson d’après-midi”

According to those who read Baudelaire’s poems with reference to the women who may have inspired them, “À une Madone” is the last inspired by Marie Daubrun, and “Chanson d’après-midi” [Afternoon Song] (1861: 58) begins a diverse series devoted to “so-called secondary heroines” (Pichois, OC I: 937n), women who passed briefly in and out of his life. Nevertheless, the poet says to a woman who is evidently not the “Marie” (l. 37) (Daubrun) of “À une Madone,” “Je t’adore . . . / Avec la dévotion / Du prétre pour son idole” [I adore you . . . / With the devotion / Of the priest for his idol] (ll. 5, 7–8), so that his adoration is likened to his pious devotion to the statue. As Adam remarks, “Baudelaire had just used this theme in ‘À une Madone.’ The rapprochement could hardly be fortuitous” (FM Adam, 351). Neither could be the one between the “beaux Souliers / De satin” [beautiful Slippers / Of satin] (ll. 19–20) the speaker puts on the statue’s feet that had “Pour Marchepied . . . une Lune d’argent” [For a Footstool . . . a Moon of silver] (l. 24) and the following passage:

tu mets sur mon cœur Ton œil doux comme la lune.

Sous tes souliers de satin . . . je mets ma grande joie, Mon génie et mon destin, Mon âme

[you place on my heart Your eye gentle as the moon.

Under your slippers of satin . . . I place my great joy, My genius and my destiny, my soul] (ll. 31–33, 35–36)

In no other poem do “souliers de satin” appear. Baudelaire enriches the parallel by associating the moon with satin slippers in both poems, though in different ways. In “À une Madonne” the slippered feet are placed on

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the moon; in “Chanson d’après-midi” he places the moon in the line just above the one where the slippers appear, even though they have no causal relation to each other and are in neither the same sentence nor the same stanza. They are simply adjacent, like the poems. It could hardly be by chance. besides having the moon for a footstool, the Madonna’s satin-slippered feet have something of the poet’s beneath them as well: “Je mettrai le Ser- pent qui me mord les entrailles / Sous tes talons, afin que tu foules . . . / Ce monstre tout gonflé de haine” [I will place the Serpent that eats at my entrails / Under your heels, so that you will trample . . . / That monster all swollen with hatred] (ll. 25–26, 28). So too does the woman in “Chanson d’après-midi”; here, as in “À une Madone,” the poet met [places] that part of himself there:

Sous tes souliers de satin, Sous tes charmants pieds de soie, Moi, je mets ma grande joie, Mon génie et mon destin,

Mon âme par toi guérie

[you place on my heart Your eye gentle as the moon.

Beneath your slippers of satin, Beneath your charming silken feet, I place my great joy, My genius and my destiny,

My soul, healed by you] (ll. 33–37)

Baudelaire seizes the opportunity to link the two poems by making each of these two passages the other’s mirror reversal, placing beneath the woman’s slippers the worst of himself in one, in the other the best.

“Chanson d’après-midi” / “Sisina”

“Chanson d’après-midi” is followed by “Sisina” (1861: 59), where slippers are once again associated with the triumph of the heroine of the poem, though this time by their absence:

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Avez-vous vu Théroigne, amante du carnage, Excitant à l’assaut un peuple sans souliers, . . . montant, sabre au poing, les royaux escaliers?

Telle la Sisina!

[Have you seen Théroigne, lover of carnage, Urging a mob without slippers to the assault, . . . ascending, saber in hand, the royal stairs?

Such is Sisina!] (ll. 5–6, 8–9)

In histories of the French Revolution that Baudelaire undoubtedly read, Théroigne de Méricourt (1762–1817) was said to have led the mob up the stairs of the Tuileries Palace. The poet also likens Sisina to Diana, goddess of the moon: “Imaginez Diane en galant équipage, / Parcourant les forêts ou battant les halliers, / Cheveux et gorge au vent” [Imagine Diana in gal- lant attire, / Ranging the forests or beating the bushes, / Hair and breasts in the wind] (ll. 1–3). He had likewise constructed an association between woods and the hair of the woman addressed in “Chanson d’après-midi”: “Le désert et la forêt / Embaument tes tresses” [The desert and the forest / Give their scent to your tresses] (ll. 9–10). As Sisina was likened to the goddess of the moon, the woman there was likened to the moon itself:

Tu me déchires, ma brune, Avec un rire moqueur, Et puis tu mets sur mon cœur Ton œil doux comme la lune

[You tear me apart, my dark one, With a mocking laugh, And then you place on my heart Your eye gentle like the moon] (ll. 29–32)

After her aggressive mockery she shows her “œil doux” [gentle eye] as after her warlike behavior Sisina shows that she is a “douce guerrière” [gentle warrioress] whose soul is “charitable autant que meurtrière” [as charitable as it is murderous], for “son cœur . . . a toujours, / Pour qui s’en montre

2. See Richard D. E. Burton, “Baudelaire’s S/Z: ‘Sisina’ and the Domestication of the Feminine,” Modern Philology 92, no. 1 (1994): 64–72.

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digne, un réservoir de larmes” [her heart . . . has always, / For those who show themselves worthy, a reservoir of tears] (ll. 9, 10, 13–14).

“Sisina” / “Franciscae meae laudes”

Offering a restorative liquid from her reservoir of tears, Sisina in this way resembles the woman celebrated in “Franciscae meae laudes” (1857: 53; 1861: 60), who is a “Piscina” [Pool], a “Fons” [Spring], a “Dulce balneum” [Sweet bath], and “Aqua . . . seraphica” [Seraphic . . . water] (ll. 16, 17, 26, 30). We found in the previous chapter that the “pleurs salés” [salty tears] the poet would make his beloved shed in “L’Héautontimorouménos,” the poem that immediately preceded “Franciscae meae laudes” in 1857, were echoed by the saltiness of the “Panis salsus” [Salted bread], one of the epithets applied to Francisca, as well as by the water-associated names she is given there (the pool, spring, bath, and seraphic water). In 1861 Baude- laire decided to move “L’Héautontimorouménos” to a later position in the sequence, replacing it as immediate forerunner of “Franciscae meae laudes” with “Sisina,” thus replacing one woman’s “pleurs salés” with another’s “réservoir de larmes.” In this way one of the connections between “Fran- ciscae meae laudes” and whatever poem would immediately come before it it was maintained. as Sisina is a modern-day woman (a courtesan of Baudelaire’s acquaintance) whom the poet clothes in mythical (Diana) and historical (Théroigne) garb, Francisca is a modern-day woman (the “modiste érudite et dévote” [erudite and devout milliner] indicated in the 1857 edition) robed in ecclesiastical medieval Latin—a blend of past and present that connects this poem as well to the one that follows it in both editions, “À une dame créole,” as we saw in the preceding chapter.

“Moesta et errabunda” / “Le Revenant”

The 1861 edition brings together “Moesta et errabunda” (1857: 55; 1861: 62) and “Le Revenant” (1857: 72; 1861: 63), which were widely separated in 1857. Pichois puzzles over their new propinquity, noting that in 1857 “Le Revenant” was placed between “Le Tonneau de la Haine” and “Le Mort joyeux.” “Nothing then,” he writes, “designated it as a love poem. It is possible that Baudelaire inserted it where we see it in 1861 to create a contrasting effect between ‘Moesta et errabunda’ and ‘Sonnet d’automne’” (OC I: 945n). I think there is more to it than that. When Baudelaire added the new poem “Sonnet d’automne” [Autumn Sonnet] (1861: 64), he had

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to find a place for it in the sequence. As we will see, he found a good location for it between “Le Revenant” and “Tristesses de la lune” (1857: 75; 1861: 65), both poems from the first edition, but to place it there he had to move “Le Revenant” from its original slot between “Le Tonneau de la Haine” and “Le Mort joyeux.” That is, his decision to place “Le Revenant” after “Moesta et errabunda” flowed from his decision to place it before “Sonnet d’automne.” as he reread “Moesta et errabunda” and “Le Revenant” to see if they might fit together, Baudelaire could have seen that the “baisers” [kisses] amid “Les courses, les chansons, les baisers, les bouquets, / Les violons mourant derrière les collines” [The races, the songs, the kisses, the bouquets, / The violins dying behind the hills] (ll. 22–23) in the “vert paradis des amours enfantines” [green paradise of childhood loves] (ll. 21, 25) of which the speaker asks, “Peut-on le rappeler avec des cris plaintifs, / Et l’animer encore d’une voix argentine?” [Can one call it back with plaintive cries, / And bring it back to life with a silvery voice?] (ll. 28–29)—that those “baisers” could themselves be recalled by the “baisers froids comme la lune” [kisses cold like the moon] (l. 6) in “Le Revenant” that the poet returned from the dead plans to give his mistress. As a revenant he is brought back to life, reanimated, as the childhood paradise might or might not be: “peut-on . . . l’animer encore d’une voix argentine?” [can one . . . bring it back to life with a silvery voice?] (ll. 28, 29). The only other silver thing in the Fleurs du mal is the “Lune d’argent” [Moon of silver] (l. 24) that the poet in “À une Madone” (1861: 57) said he would carve. This association there established between silver and the moon may be the reason the voice that might reanimate the past is “argentine,” for the reanimated revenant is moonlike, giving kisses with a lunar coldness. More significantly, perhaps, the continuity between these two now neighboring poems is assured by the fact that at the end of “Moesta et errabunda” the poet asks if the past can come back, and that in “Le Revenant” the past does come back, in the form of the ghost the poet imagines himself to be. To enhance that continuity, Baudelaire made a change in “Moesta et errabunda.” In 1857 the violins in line 23 were “mourant” [dying]; in 1861 they are “vibrant” [vibrating]. The violins had been associated with death; now they are vibrant with life. The change was necessary because once the poems became neighbors, the paradise of childhood loves had to be fully alive in the past, with nothing dead or dying in it, so that it could parallel the poet who before his death had also been unquestionably alive. In 1857, as it still does in 1861, these last two stanzas of “Moesta et errabunda” about the lost paradise of childhood loves paralleled the past evoked by the sixteenth-century “antiques manoirs” (l. 11) of which the poet speaks in “À une dame créole” (1857: 54; 1861: 61). But the opposi-

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tion of life versus death was not thematic in that poem, nor in its association with “Moesta et errabunda.” Nor was it in the poem that in 1857 followed “Moesta et errabunda,” “Les Chats” (1857: 56; 1861: 66).

“Le Revenant” / “Sonnet d’automne”

“Le Revenant” (1857: 72; 1861: 63) is followed in 1861 by the new poem “Sonnet d’automne” (1861: 64), where the poet’s mistress is pale and cold, qualities she could have picked up from his “baisers froids comme la lune” in “Le Revenant”: “Ô pâle marguerite! / Comme moi n’es-tu pas un soleil automnal, / Ô ma si blanche, ô ma si froide Marguerite?” [O pale daisy (or pearl)]! / Are you not, like me, an autumnal sun, / O my Marguerite so white, so cold?] (ll. 12–14). She shares with the poet (“Comme moi”) the paleness and the cold of an autumnal sun, as in the poem before he had shared with her a lunar coldness. These last three poems thus form a chain with these links: from “baisers” (“Moesta et errabunda,” l. 22) to “baisers froids” (“Le Revenant,” l. 6) to “froide” (“Sonnet d’automne,” l. 14)—with the further continuity that it is the poet’s mistress who both receives the cold kisses in the second poem and is cold in the third. Graham Robb suggests that when in “Sonnet d’automne” Love “bande son arc fatal” [bends his fatal bow] (l. 10) Baudelaire is making the same play on the other sense of bander [to have an erection] that Renaissance poet Rémy Belleau did in a poem on impotence: “Un Arc tousiours courbé et qui jamais ne bande” [A Bow always curved and that never is erect]. Robb also argues that “cœur” in Baudelaire can designate the male organ, a sense it very clearly has in Rimbaud, but which he also found in a text of Balzac dating from 1836 (72–73). In light of this, lines 3–6 of “Sonnet d’automne” can be seen to offer the same kind of secondary reading as Cupid’s bending bow:

Mon cœur, que tout irrite, Excepté la candeur de l’antique animal,

Ne veut pas te montrer son secret infernal, Berceuse dont la main aux longs sommeils m’invite

3. Graham Robb, “Érotisme et obscénité des ‘Fleurs du mal,’” Europe, no. 760–61 (Aug.–Sept. 1992): 75, hereafter cited in text. Belleau’s poem is reproduced in Roger Kuin and Anne Lake Prescott, “The Wrath of Priapus: Rémy Belleau’s ‘Jean qui ne peult’ and Its Traditions,” Comparative Literature Studies 37, no. 1 (2000): 3–5.

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[My heart, that everything irritates Except the candor (or whiteness) of the ancient beast,

Does not want to show you its infernal secret, O cradler whose hand invites me to long slumbers]

She is cradling his “heart” in her inviting hand (the same reading now suggests itself for “Causerie”: “Ta main se glisse en vain sur mon sein qui se pâme . . . / Ne cherchez plus mon cœur; les bêtes l’ont mangé” [Your hand slides in vain over my fainting breast . . . / Stop looking for my heart; the beasts have eaten it] [ll. 5, 8]). With this kind of reading in mind, we can see something similar in “Le Revenant”: “je te donnerai . . . des caresses de serpent” [I will give you . . . a serpent’s caresses] (ll. 5, 7). If the serpent, by its shape, is what the “cœur” also is, then the situation is similar but opposite: the “serpent” gives caresses in one poem; the “heart” receives them in the other.

“Sonnet d’automne” / “Tristesses de la lune”

The woman’s caressing hand immediately returns in the next poem, “Trist- esses de la lune” (1857: 75; 1861: 65), but now she is caressing herself. The moon is like “une beauté . . . / Qui d’une main distraite et légère caresse / Avant de s’endormir le contour de ses seins” [a beautiful woman . . . / Who with a distracted and light hand caresses, / Before falling asleep, the contour of her breasts] (ll. 2, 3–4). In both poems the hand’s caress is related to sleep: in “Sonnet d’automne,” the relationship was causal, the hand inviting the poet to long slumbers; here, sleep simply follows the caress. bearing in mind that Baudelaire wrote “Sonnet d’automne” after “Trist- esses de la lune,” and specifically to precede it in the second edition of the Fleurs du mal, we can see how the paleness and the whiteness so evident in the latter—the “molles avalanches” [soft avalanches] (l. 6) and “visions blanches” [white visions] (l. 7) formed by the night sky’s clouds, the “larme pâle” [pale tear] (l. 12) the moon furtively sheds and the poet treasures— led him to develop in the former the imagery of “pâle marguerite . . . si blanche” [pale daisy (or pearl) . . . so white] (ll. 12, 14). That imagery goes, ultimately, in an opposite direction, leading him to call this pale and white Marguerite a kind of sun, “un soleil automnal” [an autumnal sun] (l. 13), while in the earlier poem not only does the paleness come from the moon, but the sun is also portrayed as its enemy: the poet takes the pale tear “Et la met dans son cœur loin des yeux du soleil” [And puts it into his heart,

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far from the eyes of the sun] (l. 14). Yet this is at the same time consistent with another passage in “Sonnet d’automne” and appears to have inspired it as well: “Mon cœur, que tout irrite, / Excepté la candeur de l’antique animal” [My heart, that everything irritates / Except the candor (or whiteness) of the ancient beast] (ll. 3–4). Candeur is the only thing that will not irritate his heart, and thus it is appropriate that the moon’s pale tear should find a welcome there. if one wonders why the woman’s caressing hand invites the poet to “longs sommeils” [long slumbers] (l. 6) in “Sonnet d’automne,” the answer is surely that in the preexisting “Tristesses de la lune” the moon as woman “se livre aux longues pâmoisons” [gives herself up to long swoons] (l. 6).

“Tristesses de la lune” / “Les Chats”

Not only did Baudelaire compose “Sonnet d’automne” to precede “Trist- esses de la lune,” but he also picked the latter as the best poem to follow it, thereby disturbing that part of the original sequence where the latter appeared—between “Sépulture” (1857: 74; 1861; 70) and “La Musique” (1857: 76; 1861: 69). It was a case, as he said of Wagner’s music in characterizing it as a model of “une poésie bien faite” [a well-made poem] (OC II: 803), of reciprocal adaptation. Each poem was adapted in relation to the other: the older poem was wrenched from its first sequential context to fit with the new one, and the new one was written to fit with the older. What results at this point in the 1861 sequence is that two poems not next to each other in 1857, “Tristesses de la lune” (1857: 75; 1861: 65) and “Les Chats” (1857: 56; 1861: 66), now are. What might have caught Baudelaire’s eye to justify making them neighbors is that both speak of dreaming and falling asleep:

Ce soir, la lune rêve . . . Ainsi qu’une beauté . . . Qui . . . caresse Avant de s’endormir le contour de ses seins

[Tonight, the moon dreams . . . Like a beautiful woman . . . Who . . . caresses Before falling asleep the contour of her breasts] (“Tristesses de la lune,” lines 1–4)

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The cats take on “en songeant” [as they dream] the noble poses of great sphinxes “Qui semblent s’endormir dans un rêve sans fin” [Who seem to fall asleep in a dream without end] (ll. 9, 11).

“Les Hiboux” / “La Pipe”

“Les Chats” and “Les Hiboux” (1857: 57; 1861: 67) were neighbors in 1857, and still are in 1861. But “Les Hiboux” is now followed by “La Pipe” (1857; 77; 1861: 68). Their common ground is the motif of the hour for sadness, present in “Les Hiboux” as “l’heure mélancolique” [the melancholy hour] (l. 6) until which the owls will remain motionless on the tree branches, repeated in “La Pipe” as the hour of the day when the poet most suffers douleur: “Quand il est comblé de douleur” [When he is overcome with grief] (l. 5). In both poems the melancholy moment is the onset of evening, the hour when “Les ténèbres s’établiront” [Shadows will settle in] (l. 8) in “Les Hiboux,” the hour in “La Pipe” when the plowman returns and the smoking chimney to which the pipe is likened signals that dinner is being prepared. The evening meal is about to become available for the owls as well, for they will now leave their motionless pose to go in search of prey.

“La Musique” / “Sépulture”

“La Pipe” (1857: 77; 1861: 68) and “La Musique” (1857: 76; 1861: 69) are contiguous in both editions, though in reversed order. “La Musique” is followed in 1861 by “Sépulture” (1857: 74; 1861: 70), and Baudelaire made major changes to its second stanza for that reason:

1857: La poitrine en avant et gonflant mes poumons De toile pesante, Je monte et je descends sur le dos des grands monts D’eau retentissante

[My breast forward and swelling my lungs Of heavy canvas, I mount and descend on the backs of the great mountains Of resounding water] (ll. 5–8)

1861:

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La poitrine en avant et les poumons gonflés Comme de la toile, J’escalade le dos des flots amoncelés Que la nuit me voile

[My breast forward and my lungs swollen Like canvas, I scale the backs of the amassed waves That night veils from me] (ll. 5–8)

The changes work in two directions, (1) removing the poem’s earlier attachment to “Tristesses de la lune,” which preceded it in 1857, and (2) adding connections to “Sépulture.” As we saw in the preceding chapter, in 1857 the poet’s riding “sur le dos” [on the back] of the waves paralleled the moon-woman’s lying “Sur le dos” (l. 5) of the soft avalanches of clouds. Those poems no longer neighbors in 1861, the expression “sur le dos” disappears from “La Musique,” as part of a larger change that introduces the new theme of night (“des flots amoncelés / Que la nuit me voile” [the piled-up waves / That night veils from me] [ll. 7–8]), which will predominate in “Sépulture” from the very first line: “Si par une nuit lourde et sombre” [If on a heavy and dark night]. “Sépulture” insists on such horrors of the night as the howling of wolves and witches. another consequence of the rewriting of the stanza is that “étoile” (l. 2) now rhymes with “toile” (l. 6), as in “Sépulture” “étoiles” (l. 5) rhymes with “toiles” (l. 7). The “toile” is sail canvas, the “toiles” spiders’ webs. by imposing this new proximity on these poems, Baudelaire invites us to consider what else in one might reappear in the other, as day residue reappears in a dream, or in a nightmare, in this instance—for the music, felt through the vibrations of the ship, and the sea itself (“La musique souvent me prend comme une mer!” [Music often takes hold of me like an ocean!] [l. 1]), and that is a source of delight, is transformed in “Sépulture” into the weird and disagreeable sounds endured by the sufferer in the tomb: “Vous entendrez toute l’anneé . . . / Les cris lamentables des loups // Et des sorcières” [You will hear all year long . . . / The appalling cries of the wolves / And the witches] (ll. 9, 11–12).

“Sépulture” / “Une gravure fantastique”

In “Une gravure fantastique” [A Fantastic Engraving] (1861: 71) a skeletal horseman flashes his sword

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Sur les foules sans nom que sa monture broie, Et parcourt . . . Le cimetière immense . . . Où gisent . . . Les peuples de l’histoire ancienne et moderne

[Over the nameless crowds that his horse tramples, And traverses . . . The immense cemetery . . . Where lie . . . The peoples of ancient and modern history] (ll. 10–14)

The “cimetière immense” is the terrestrial globe, seen as one enormous graveyard where all the persons who have ever lived are buried. It is not a cemetery in the normal sense, not a terrain set aside for the purpose. The grave in “Sépulture” was not located in a cemetery, either, but simply “Derrière quelque vieux décombre” [Behind some old rubble] (l. 3), where some charitable soul buried the body at night, in secret. “Une gravure fantastique” is clearly—or rather, given its two earlier versions, clearly became—a reworking of “Sépulture.” There is something disturbing going on above the condemned in both poems: “Sur votre tête condamnée” [Over your condemned head] (l. 10) you will hear, the poet announces in “Sépul- ture,” the ghastly howling of wolves and witches, the frolics of lubricious old men, and the plotting of thieves; “Sur les foules sans nom” [Over the nameless crowds] (l. 10) the apocalyptic rider will wave his sword and ride his steed. In the John Hamilton Mortimer engraving that is probably the source for the poem, as well as in Revelation 6:8, to which both Mortimer and Baudelaire allude, the horseman is slaying the living—a fourth of the earth, in the Revelation passage, condemned to death and destruction. But then—and at this point, as Adam points out (360), Baudelaire departs from the engraving—the horseman rides over the dead, the vast “cemetery” that is the world. This addition increases the poem’s connection with “Sépul- ture.” Neither of these motifs (the cemetery that isn’t one and the disturbance taking place above the dead) were present in either of the two earlier versions of the poem dating from the 1840s that Pichois reproduces (OC I: 967–68n). There is a ghostly, skeletal horseman, but his only contact with the dead is that his horse “va reniflant les corps morts” [is sniffing at the dead bodies]. He is not depicted as riding over their graves. And in the version published in November 1857 (several months after the publication of the 1857 Fleurs du mal) the peoples of ancient and modern history are not dead but alive. They “grouillent” [swarm, mill about] (l. 13), whereas in

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1861 they “gisent” [lie in their graves] (l. 13). Evidently when Baudelaire wrote the November 1857 version he had not yet determined where (or even if) he would place it in any subsequent edition of the Fleurs du mal. He changed “grouillent” to “gisent” so that the poem would more closely match “Sépulture,” its immediate predecessor in 1861.

“Une gravure fantastique” / “Le Mort joyeux”

Likewise, it would better match the poem that would follow it there, “Le Mort joyeux” (1857: 73; 1861: 72), where there is yet another grave. Here, the poet says he wants to dig his own and lie down in it alive, waiting for the crows and worms. In “Sépulture” we encountered a grave that was not in a cemetery, and in “Une Gravure fantastique” a cemetery (the world) that was not really a cemetery; here we find a grave that is not entirely a grave, either. It is not a tomb, for the speaker does not want one: “je hais les tombeaux” [I hate tombs] (l. 5). It is “une fosse profonde” [a deep pit] (l. 2), dug out of the earth but left uncovered. The protagonist here is the same and yet the opposite of the skeletal horseman, for the latter was dead but behaved as if he were alive, while the former is alive but behaves as if he were dead: “Vivant, j’aimerais . . . inviter les corbeaux / À saigner tous les bouts de ma carcasse immonde” [Living, I would like . . . to invite the crows / To drain the blood from all my filthy carcass] (ll. 7–8).

“Le Mort joyeux” / “Le Tonneau de la Haine”

As the protagonist of “Le Mort joyeux” (1857: 73; 1861: 72) spoke of making a hole in the earth (“Je veux creuser moi-même une fosse profonde” [I want to hollow out myself a deep pit] [l. 2]), in “Le Tonneau de la Haine” (1857: 71; 1861: 73) “Le Démon fait des trous” [The Demon makes holes] (l. 5) in the abysses where Vengeance pours the blood and tears of the dead. In 1857 “Le Tonneau de la Haine” and “Le Mort joyeux” were separated by only one poem, “Le Revenant,” and in the previous chapter we saw that the “place vide” [empty place] (l. 10) the poet will leave in his mistress’s bed in “Le Revenant” corresponded both to the holes in the abyss (together with the holes in the “tonneau des pâles Danaïdes” [cask of the pale Danaids] in “Le Tonneau de la Haine”) and the hole in the earth in “Le Mort joyeux.” The connection that in 1857 linked three poems in 1861 still links the first and last of the three. Another echo emerges thanks to their new proximity: in both the happy sleep. The narrator of “Le Mort joyeux” is “joyeux” at the prospect of being able

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to “dormir dans l’oubli” [sleep in the oblivion] (l. 4) of the grave, and the tavern drinkers are “heureux” (l. 12) because they, unlike Hatred, can “s’endormir sous la table” [fall asleep under the table] (l. 14).

“Le Tonneau de la Haine” / “La Cloche fêlée”

“La Cloche fêlée” (1857: 58; 1861: 74) was not near “Le Tonneau de la Haine” (1857: 71; 1861: 73) in 1857, but Baudelaire’s decision to place them together in 1861 allows some parallels to emerge. The bell’s imper- fection (its crack) matches the cask’s (its holes), and both shortcomings make them work less well. The “lac de sang” [lake of blood] (l. 13) on the edge of which the wounded soldier expires “dans d’immenses efforts” [in immense efforts] (l. 14) in “La Cloche fêlée” recalls the “seaux pleins du sang et des larmes des morts” [pails full of the blood and the tears of the dead] (l. 4) and the “mille ans de sueurs et d’efforts” [thousand years of sweats and efforts] (l. 6) that are another way of expressing that blood and those tears. baudelaire in addition rewrote lines 7 and 8 of “Le Tonneau de la Haine” in such a way as to create a new parallel (or to enhance one potentially there). The first edition’s “Quand même elle saurait allonger ses victimes, / Et pour les resaigner galvaniser leurs corps” [Even if she could lay down her victims, / And galvanize their bodies to bleed them again] becomes in 1861 “Quand même elle saurait ranimer ses victimes, / Et pour les pressurer ressusciter leurs corps” [Even if she could reanimate her victims, / And resuscitate their bodies to press them]. Pichois notes, quoting the Crépit-Blin edition of the Fleurs du mal, that Baudelaire here alludes to the sorceress Erichto, who appears in the sixth book of Lucan’s Pharsalia. Asked by Sextus Pompeius to predict the future, she wanders the battlefield to find a recently slain soldier she can bring back from the dead. Having located her candidate, she first pours blood that she has obtained from other corpses into his chest wound and then engages in a number of magical practices to bring him back to life. Pichois also points out, however, that for “galvaniser” (which appears in the passage in 1857 but not in 1861) “the verb’s first sense must be restituted: ‘To communicate movements to the muscles either during life or shortly after the moment of death with the assistance of galvanic electricity’” (OC I: 972). But electricity was not available to Lucan’s witch (nor was Luigi Galvani [1737–98], who invented the technique). Thus it would appear either that the 1857 passage was not an allusion to Erichtho while the 1861 one was, or that the 1861 revision, by removing the anach- ronism, improved the allusion. In either case, the scene of the battlefield

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strewn with the corpses of dead soldiers that an allusion to the passage in the Pharsalia evokes creates a parallel with the second tercet of “La Cloche fêlée,” which likewise describes a battlefield strewn with corpses. My soul’s weakened voice, the narrator says, “Semble le râle épais d’un blessé qu’on oublie / Au bord d’un lac de sang, sous un grand tas de morts” [Seems the thick death rattle of a wounded man forgotten / At the edge of a lake of blood, under a great pile of corpses] (ll. 12–13). The lake of blood appears to be a reminiscence of the passage where Sextus first glimpsed Erichtho, seated on a crag, making incantations in the hope that she might profit from the blood the battle would spill. She feared

Lest Mars might stray into another world, And spare Thessalian soil the blood ere long To flow in torrents; and she thus forbade Philippi’s field, polluted with her song, Thick with her poisonous distilments sown, To let the war pass by. Such deaths, she hopes, Soon shall be hers! the blood of all the world Shed for her use!

“Spleen: Quand le ciel bas et lourd . . . ” / “Obsession”

“Obsession” (1861: 79), new to the second edition, seems to have been composed to be placed directly after the last of the four “Spleen” poems, “Spleen: Quand le ciel bas et lourd . . . ” (1857: 62; 1861: 78), for in the latter “l’Espoir, / Vaincu, pleure” [Hope, / Vanquished, weeps] (ll. 18–19), whereas in “Obsession” Baudelaire writes of “l’homme vaincu, plein de sanglots” [the vanquished man, full of sobs] (l. 7). And in “Spleen” the “affreux hurlement” [horrible roaring] (l. 14) church bells made is answered in “Obsession” by the hurlement of other music likewise emanating from a church: “Grands bois, vous m’effrayez comme des cathédrales; / Vous hurlez comme l’orgue” [Great forests, you frighten me like cathedrals; / You roar like the organ] (ll. 1–2). but the most interesting conjunction is that of these two passages: “un peuple muet d’infâmes araignées / Vient tendre ses filets au fond de nos cerveaux” [a silent people of loathsome spiders / Come to spread their webs in the depth of our brains] (“Spleen,” ll. 11–12) and “je cherche le vide,

4. lucan, Pharsalia,trans. Edward Ridley (originally The Pharsalia of Lucan [London: Longmans, Green, 1896]), Book 6, ll. 681–88. Available at The Online Medieval and Clas- sical Library, http://omacl.org/Pharsalia.

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et le noir, et le nu! // Mais les ténèbres sont elles-mêmes des toiles / Où vivent, jaillissant de mon œil par milliers, / Des êtres disparus aux regards familiers” [I seek the empty, the black, and the bare! // But the shadows are themselves canvases / Where live, leaping from my eye by thousands, / Departed beings with familiar gazes] (“Obsession,” ll. 11–14). Adam comments: “Night itself is not nothingness, and the blackest shadows do not bring rest. . . . Baudelaire wrote in a letter to his mother . . . ‘I can no longer sleep because I am always thinking.’ . . . In the midst of shadows, his mind remains active. Memory speaks, evoking departed friends, and their images are projected on the dark wall like . . . glitter on a black curtain” (364–65). The “toiles” in “Obsession” suggest the “toiles” that spiders weave and that are a synonym for the “filets” named in “Spleen”; in fact, the same homonymy connects the “toile” [sail canvas] in “La Musique” with the “toiles” [webs] that “L’araignée . . . fera” [The spider will make] in its neighbor “Sépulture.” In both “Spleen” and “Obsession” there is a crowd of people in the poet’s brain: the spiders and the departed beings (the latter pour forth from his eye onto the shadows, but they originate from within his memory). Yet they are each other’s opposite, for the spiders are loathsome while the departed beings are beloved. In another opposition of similarities, the “toiles” in “Obsession” are outside the poet’s mind, while the spiders’ webs in “Spleen” are inside it.

“Obsession” / “Le Goût du néant”

“Obsession” (1861: 79) is the first of four new poems added at this point in the sequence, all of which seem made to fit together. The second of these is “Le Goût du néant” [The Taste for Nothingness] (1861: 80), whose title repeats the motif that had just been stated near the end of “Obsession”: “je cherche le vide” [I seek the void] (l. 11). At the conclusion of “Le Goût du néant” the poet speaks of what he is not seeking: as Time envelops him like snow engulfing a frozen body, “je n’y cherche plus l’abris d’une cahute” [I no longer seek the shelter of a hut] (l. 14). We saw that “Obsession” repeated the “conquered” motif—“l’homme vaincu, plein de sanglots” [the vanquished man, full of sobs] (“Obsession,” l. 7)—that began in “Spleen: Quand le ciel bas et lourd . . . ”: “l’Espoir, / Vaincu, pleure” [Hope, / Conquered, weeps] (ll. 18–19). The motif continues in “Le Goût du néant”: “Esprit vaincu, fourbu!” [Vanquished, worn- out spirit!] (l. 6).

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“Le Goût du néant” / “Alchimie de la douleur”

The poet has lost the ardor he once had: “Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte, / L’Espoir, dont l’éperon attisait ton ardeur, / Ne veut plus t’enfourcher!” [Gloomy spirit, once in love with battle, / Hope, whose spur used to quicken your ardor, / No longer wants to ride you!] (“Le Goût du néant,” ll. 1–3). He returns to this motif in the opening lines of “Alchimie de la douleur” [Alchemy of Sorrow] (1861: 81): “L’un t’éclaire avec son ardeur, / L’autre en toi met son deuil, Nature!” [One man illumines you with his ardor, / The other places in you all his grief, O Nature!] (ll. 1–2). In “Le Goût du néant” the poet was at an earlier time (“autrefois”) the former, full of “ardeur,” but now that he suffers from a “Morne esprit” and a “cœur sombre” [somber heart] (l. 9), he has become the latter. Now, “Dans le suaire des nuages // Je découvre un cadavre cher” [In the shroud of clouds // I discover a dear corpse] (ll. 11–12), as in “Obsession” he had seen the dear departed projected onto the night’s shadows; “Et sur les célestes rivages / Je bâtis de grands sarcophages” [And on the celestial shores / I build great sarcophagi] (ll. 13–14).

“Alchimie de la douleur” / “Horreur sympathique”

In “Horreur sympathique” [Sympathetic Horror] (1861: 82), the last of these four tightly interwoven new poems, Baudelaire continues the motif of the sky as the projection of his gloomy thoughts and grief:

Cieux déchirés comme des grèves, En vous se mire mon orgueil, Vos vastes nuages en deuil

Sont les corbillards de mes rêves

[Skies torn asunder like beaches, In you is mirrored my pride; Your vast grieving clouds

Are the hearses of my dreams] (ll. 9–12)

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The “nuages en deuil” combine from the immediately preceding “Alchimie de la douleur” the “deuil” (l. 2) of the man without ardor and the “suaire des nuages” (l. 11), the “cadavre cher” and “sarcophages” are evoked in the “corbillards,” while the comparison of the skies to “des grèves” restates the metaphor that saw them as “rivages” (“Alchimie de la douleur,” l. 13). Paradise is exchanged for hell in both poems: cursed with a reverse Midas touch, “je change l’or en fer / Et le paradis en enfer” [I change gold into iron / And paradise into hell] (“Alchimie de la douleur,” ll. 9–10); “Insa- tiablement avide / De l’obscur et de l’incertain, / Je ne geindrai pas comme Ovide / Chassé du paradis latin” [Insatiably avid for the obscure and uncer- tain, / I will not whine like Ovid / Exiled from Latin paradise] (“Horreur sympathique,” ll. 5–8). Unlike Ovid, he embraces his exile. The skies’ “lueurs sont le reflet / De l’Enfer où mon cœur se plaît” [gleams are the reflection / Of the Hell my heart delights in] (“Horreur sympathique,” ll. 13–14).

“Horreur sympathique” / “L’Héautontimorouménos”

With “L’Héautontimorouménos” (1857: 52; 1861: 83) we return to a poem from the original edition after four new poems added to the second. The mirror motif from “Horreur sympatique” (1861: 82)—“Cieux . . . , / En vous se mire mon orgueil” [Skies . . . , / In you my pride mirrors itself] (ll. 9, 10)—is mirrored here: “Je suis le sinistre miroir / Où la mégère se regarde” [I am the sinister mirror / In which the shrew sees herself] (ll. 19–20).

“L’Héautontimorouménos” / “L’Irrémédiable”

The “mégère” [shrew] (l. 19) in “L’Héautontimorouménos” (1857: 52; 1861: 83) is “la vorace Ironie” [voracious Irony] (l. 15), which is related to looking at one’s mirror image in the conclusion to “L’Irrémédiable” (1857: 64; 1861: 84):

Tête-à-tête sombre et limpide Qu’un cœur devenu son miroir! Puits de Vérité, clair et noir, Où tremble une étoile livide,

Un phare ironique”

[What a somber and limpid tête-à-tête

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Is a heart that has become its own mirror! Well of Truth, clear and black, Where trembles a livid star

Ironic beacon] (ll. 33–37)

As Adam writes, “This word ironique reminds us of ‘L’Héautontimoroumenos’ and helps us see the close connection between these two poems. At the center of both there is doubling, Irony, Conscience—both its curse and its grandeur” (372). Pichois likewise stresses the connection that irony makes between these two poems (even though they were not neighbors in 1857). In a note on “la vorace Ironie” in “L’Héautontimorouménos” he comments, “It is with Baudelaire that irony enters into French poetry. See the following poem” (OC I: 987).

“L’Irrémédiable” / “L’Horloge”

“L’Irrémédiable” is followed by a new poem, “L’Horloge” [The Clock] (1861: 85), which takes the motifs of the “gouffre” (“Un damné descendant sans lampe, / Au bord d’un gouffre dont l’odeur / Trahit l’humide profondeur” [A damned man descending without a lamp, / At the edge of an abyss whose odor / Reveals its humid depths] [“L’Irrémédiable,” ll. 17–19]) and the deepening night (“Où veillent des monstres visqueux / Dont les larges yeux de phosphore / Font une nuit plus noire encore” [Where slimy monsters keep watch / Whose wide and phosphorescent eyes / Make night blacker still] [“L’Irrémédiable,” ll. 21–23]) and recycles them in a new context: “Le jour décroît; la nuit augmente . . . / Le gouffre a toujours soif” [The day decreases; the night increases . . . / The abyss is always thirsty] (“L’Horloge,” ll. 19–20). The night becomes blacker for different reasons: in “L’Irrémédiable” by contrast with the phosphorescent eyes (or because their brightness blinds the observer to the surrounding darkness), in “L’Horloge” just by the passage of time. In one poem, a fallen angel is confronting at the same time both an abyss and a deepening night; in the other, the poet laments the inevitable passage of time toward death, where the abyss awaits. The two are simultaneous in the first, sequential in the second.

“L’Horloge” / “Paysage”

“Paysage” [Landscape] (1861: 86), another new poem, offers an entirely different, indeed an opposite, perspective on time. In “L’Horloge” time is

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fleeting, irrecoverable, and leads to death. The Clock is a “dieu sinistre, effrayant, impassible” [sinister, frightening, impassive god] (l. 1). Soon the hour will sound when “tout te dira: Meurs, vieux lâche! il est trop tard!” [everything will tell you: “Die, old coward! It is too late!”] (l. 24). In “Paysage,” by contrast, the poet delights in observing the passage of time. Instead of inspiring him with horror and thoughts of the abyss, as it did in “L’Horloge,” the deepening of night affords him a pleasant spectacle: “Il est doux, à travers les brumes, de voir naître / L’étoile dans l’azur, la lampe à la fenêtre . . . / Et la lune verser son pâle enchantement” [It is sweet, through the mists, to see being born / The star in the blue sky, the lamp at the window . . . / And the moon pouring out its pale enchantment] (ll. 9–10, 12). Note that this is the third poem in a row—going back to “L’Irrémédiable”—to feature this motif. From his garret window he sees the seasons pass: “Je verrai les printemps, les étés, les automnes” [I will see springs, summers, autumns] (l. 13); whereas in “L’Horloge” man is granted but one season, and it is quickly eaten away: “Chaque instant te dévore un morceau du délice / À chaque homme accordé pour toute sa saison” [Each instant devours for you a piece of the delight / Accorded each man for all his season] (ll. 7–8). Spring may have come and gone, but he can always call it back:

Car je serai plongé dans cette volupté D’évoquer le Printemps avec ma volonté, De tirer un soleil de mon cœur, et de faire De mes pensers brûlants une tiède atmosphère

[For I will be plunged into that voluptuousness Of evoking Spring by the power of my will, Of pulling a sun from my heart, and of creating Out of my burning thoughts a warm atmosphere] (ll. 23–26)

The past, irrevocably lost in “L’Horloge,” is recoverable in “Paysage.” Baudelaire first published the poem in late 1857; in that version the passage I have just quoted did not appear. Instead, there was this:

[Je] ne bougerai plus de l’antique fauteuil Où je veux composer pour un jeune cercueil (Il faut charmer nos morts dans leurs noires retraites) De doux vers tout fumants comme des cassolettes

[(I) will no longer budge from the ancient armchair

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Where I want to compose for a young casket (One must charm the dead in their black retreats) Sweet lines of poetry all steaming like incense burners] (OC I: 994–95n)

Baudelaire clearly changed the poem to fit the 1861 sequence, to enhance the opposition “Paysage” makes to what “L’Horloge” says about time.

“Paysage” / “Le Soleil”

In making this change to “Paysage” (1861: 86) he at the same time prepared it to anticipate “Le Soleil” (1857: 2; 1861: 87), which follows it in 1861 but which in the first edition appeared near the beginning of the sequence, taken from there in the second edition to make way for “L’Albatros.” I am alluding to line 25 in the revised conclusion to “Paysage”: “De tirer un soleil de mon cœur” [Of pulling a sun from my heart]—that soleil, as we have just seen, was not in the original version. There is a relation between the poet and the sun in both poems. In “Paysage” the sun is what the poet creates, part of the warm climate he can call into existence out of his burning thoughts. In “Le Soleil” the sun is a figure for the poet himself: “Quand, ainsi qu’un poète, il descend dans les villes, / Il ennoblit le sort des choses les plus viles” [When, like a poet, he (the sun) goes down into cities, / He ennobles the fate of the vilest things] (ll. 17–18). The poet goes down into the city, too:

Je vais m’exercer seul à ma fantasque escrime, Flairant dans tous les coins les hasards de la rime, Trébuchant sur les mots comme sur les pavés, Heurtant parfois des vers depuis longtemps rêvés

[I go out alone to practice my fantastic fencing, Sniffing out in every corner the chances of rhyme, Stumbling over words as over cobblestones, Sometimes bumping into long dreamed-of lines] (ll. 5–8)

He does so at the same time that the sun is descending into the city, “Quand le soleil cruel frappe à traits redoublés / Sur la ville et les champs, sur les toits et les blés” [When the cruel sun strikes repeated blows / On the city and the fields, on roofs and wheat] (ll. 3–4). He imitates the sun not only by going down into the city but also, in his own stumbling way, by his physical contact with paving stones, which parallels the sun’s repeated blows. As the sun “Eveille dans les champs les vers comme les

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roses” [Awakens in the fields worms like roses] (l. 10), the poet discovers, and thus brings to life, long dreamed-of vers [lines of poetry], which he will make into flowers, the Fleurs du mal, as the sun makes vers into roses.

“Le Soleil” / “À une mendiante rousse”

“À une mendiante rousse” (1857: 65; 1861: 88) was not anywhere near “Le Soleil” (1857: 2; 1861: 87) in 1857, yet we can see why Baudelaire decided to place “Le Soleil” (which after “L’Albatros” was added he had to put somewhere) immediately before it now. Rhymes and chance are linked in both. In “Le Soleil” the poet is looking in every corner for “les hasards de la rime” [the chances of rhyme] (l. 6); in “À une mendiante rousse” Baudelaire lumps together rhymers and lovers of chance:

Valetaille de rimeurs Te dédiant leurs primeurs Et contemplant ton soulier Sous l’escalier,

Maint page épris du hasard, Maint seigneur et maint Ronsard Épieraient pour le déduit Ton frais réduit!

[Menial rhymers Dedicating to you their first fruits And contemplating your slipper From beneath the stairs,

Many a page in love with chance, Many a lord and many a Ronsard Would peek, for their pleasure, Into your chilly lodgings] (ll. 33–40)

In an early manuscript of the poem, dating from at least 1851 and perhaps even as far back as 1845 (according to Pichois, OC I: 1000n), line 37 had been “Pages flaireurs de hazards” [Pages sniffing out chances], which shares not just one but two elements with line 6 of “Le Soleil”: “Flairant dans tous les coins les hasards de la rime.” So striking an echo suggests that Baudelaire may have originally thought of linking “Le Soleil” and “À une

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mendiate rousse” in the 1857 sequence, but he changed his mind, choosing to place “Le Soleil” between “Bénédiction” and “Élévation” so it could take part in the solar imagery in both, and so that he could establish early on for the reader that for this poet the sun is both God and his father. If this is the case, in 1861 “Le Soleil” returned to where it should have been in the first place. The sun brings health to the sickly (“Ce père nourricier, ennemi des chloroses, / . . . rajeunit les porteurs de béquilles / Et les rend gais et doux comme des jeunes filles” [This nourishing father, enemy of anemia, / . . . rejuvenates those on crutches / And makes them as happy and gentle as girls] [“Le Soleil,” ll. 9, 13–14]) and makes the vile noble (“ennoblit le sort des choses les plus viles” [l. 18]). The poet may not have the sun’s power to heal the sick, but he is attracted to the “corps maladif” [sickly body] (“À une mendiante rousse,” l. 6) of the beggar girl, and like the sun he ennobles the lowly, uncovering her beauty and imagining her in sumptuous court dress.

“À une mendiante rousse” / “Le Cygne”

The beggar girl is “Blanche” [White] (l. 1), like the swan in “Le Cygne” [The Swan] (1861: 89) (as Richter points out [921]), who “de ses pieds palmés frottant le pavé sec, / Sur le sol raboteux traînait son blanc plumage” [his webbed feet rubbing the dry pavement, / On the rough ground was dragging his white plumage] (ll. 18–20), as for the beggar girl the poet wishes “Qu’un superbe habit de cour / Traîne à plis bruyants et longs / Sur tes talons” [That a superb court dress / Might drag with long and rustling folds / Over your heels] (ll. 14–16). The girl’s skinniness, apparent in her “maigre nudité” [skinny nakedness] (l. 55), is reflected in that of the exiled African woman, “amaigrie et phtisique” [made skinny and consumptive] (“Le Cygne,” l. 41), and the “maigres orphelins” [skinny orphans] (l. 48), to whom he also likens the swan. As he imagines the swan as Andromache, princess of Troy and later queen of Epirus, he had imagined the beggar girl as striding “plus galamment / Qu’une reine de roman” [more gallantly / Than a queen in a novel] (ll. 9–10). In the 1857 version, line 10 had read: “Qu’une pipeuse d’amant” [Than a lover’s deceiver]. Her promotion to royalty coincides with her new proximity, in 1861, to “Le Cygne.” Baudelaire not only imagines the girl in better clothing but also projects her into the sixteenth century, surrounding her with Belleau, Ron- sard, and the Valois; the swan, having become Andromache, is projected into an even more distant past. “Le Cygne” begins where “À une mendiante rousse” ends, with debris.

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After imagining the latter as a Renaissance courtesan, exciting the lust of “Maint seigneur et maint Ronsard” [Many a noble and many a Ronsard” (l. 38), it comes as a disappointment for him to see the real beggar girl begging for “Quelque vieux débris gisant / Au seuil de quelque Véfour / De carrefour” [Some old debris lying / At the door of some Véfour / Of the crossroads] (ll. 46–48) and “lorgnant de dessous / Des bijoux de vingt-neuf sous” [peering down longingly at / Some trinkets worth 29 sous] (ll. 49–50). But the poet in “Le Cygne” is looking at debris, too, in his mind’s eye:

tout ce camp de baraques, Ces tas de chapiteaux ébauchés et de fûts, Les herbes, les gros blocs verdis par l’eau des flaques, Et, brillant aux carreaux, le bric-à-brac confus

[all that encampment of huts, Those piles of rough-hewn cornices and posts, The weeds, the great blocks turned green by puddles, And, shining on the paving stones (or in the windows), the confusion of bric-a-brac] (ll. 9–12)

The bric-à-brac, secondhand items for sale in a shop window (if “carreaux” = windows, as it does in “L’Irréparable”: “L’Espérance qui brille aux carreaux de l’Auberge” [Hope that shines in the windows of the Inn] [l. 26]) or simply glittering on the ground (if “carreaux” = paving stones or tiles, as it does in “Spleen: “Pluviôse, irrité . . . ”: “Mon chat sur le carreau cherchant une litière” [My cat on the tile searching for a place to lie down] [l. 5]), corresponds to the cheap jewelry at which the beggar girl longingly stared. The abandoned debris—the blocks turned green and thus abandoned, the capitals and posts lying in piles (as opposed to being part of a finished building)—corresponds to the “Quelque vieux débris gisant” by the door of some restaurant, “quelque Véfour / De carrefour.” all carryovers from one poem to the next in the Fleurs du mal, I argued in the last chapter, work like day residue, as debris left over from the lived events of the day that the night’s dreaming mines for material. In this instance, the debris is literally debris. Indeed, the debris in “Le Cygne” in seen by the poet “en esprit,” in his mind’s eye, in recollection. Coming from “Le vieux Paris” [The old Paris] that “n’est plus” [is no more] (l. 7), it is old—as is the “vieux débris” in the poem before. As old debris recol- lected, it is even more likely to trace its origin to the objects left behind at the close of “À une mendiante rousse.” It is as if “Le Cygne” really were a

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dream in which the dreamer was remembering the debris, the day residue, of the immediately preceding day. It was “Comme je traversais le nouveau Carrousel” [As I was crossing the new Carrousel] (l. 6) that the memory of the old debris (itself an instance of debris: debris of debris) that was once in that place comes back to him. The syllable carr- insists, soon to return in the “carreaux” (l. 12) where the bric-a-bric glitters, and itself a piece of debris from the site of the “vieux débris” in the poem before, the “Véfour / De carrefour.”

“Le Cygne” / “Les Sept Vieillards”

Seeing the swan looking for water in a “ruisseau sans eau” [waterless stream] (l. 20), futilely bathing “ses ailes dans la poudre” [its wings in the dust] (l. 21), the poet is put in mind of the simulated river Andromache had built to remind her of the Simoïs of her native land: “Ce petit fleuve, / Pauvre et triste miroir . . . / Ce Simoïs menteur” [That little river, / Poor and sad mirror . . . / That lying Simoïs] (ll. 1–2, 4). The simulated river returns in another form in “Les Sept Vieillards” [The Seven Old Men] (1861: 90): “dans la triste rue / Les maisons, dont la brume allongeait la hauteur, / Simulaient les deux quais d’une rivière accrue” [in the sad street / The houses, their height increased by the mist, / Simulated the two quais of a swollen river] (ll. 5–8). As the first syllable of “carrefour” persisted in that of “Carrefour” and of “carreaux,” the Sim- of the name of the river persists in the verb that names what it and its counterpart do: “Simulaient.” In a dizzying multiplicity that parallels the poet’s hallucinatory encounter with the dizzying multiplicity of identical old men, the “Simoïs menteur” simulates the one in Troy and is simulated by the waterless stream that is a poor substitute for a real stream, as the fake Simoïs is for the real river, and those simulated rivers are simulated by the fog and the walls of the Parisian buildings it makes seem higher. The fog is not just named as “brume” but also as “brouillard” (“Un brouillard sale et jaune” [A dirty and yellow fog] [l. 9]), so that it recalls as well “la muraille immense du brouillard” [the immense wall of fog] (l. 44) in “Le Cygne” behind which the African woman looks in vain for the absent coconut trees of her native land. That the fog in “Le Cygne” is a wall, indeed a wall immensely high, is no accident, given that the fog in “Les Sept Vieillards” increases the height of the walls that form the two quais through which the imagined river flows. The African exiled woman parallels the Trojan one, as does the exiled swan; she also parallels the first old man the poet encounters, for both find it hard to walk in the mud: “Dans la neige et la boue il allait s’empêtrant” [In the snow and the mud he went hobbling along] (l. 26); “Je pense à la

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négresse . . . / Piétinant dans la boue” [I think of the black woman . . . / Trudging in the mud] (ll. 41, 42). As the poet first sees one old man and then six others, with a seventh threatening to appear, the swan makes him think of Andromache, of the African woman, of the thin orphans, of sailors forgotten on an island, of captives, of the conquered, and “à bien d’autres encor” [of many others besides] (l. 52). The motif of multiple images of the same thing, which are so much at the heart of “Les Sept Vieillards,” was already waiting in “Le Cygne.”

“Les Sept Vieillards” / “Les Petites Vieilles”

“Les Petites Vieilles” [The Little Old Women] (1861: 91) parallels “Les Sept Vieillards” in some fairly obvious ways, but the less obvious ones are naturally more interesting. In both poems the narrator encounters several decrepit old persons on a Paris street: the first of the old men, like the rest, “n’était pas voûté, mais cassé” [was not bent over, but broken] (l. 21); likewise, the women were “monstres . . . Tout cassés” [Completely broken monsters] (l. 16)—in the only other appearance of that past participle in the Fleurs du mal. Pichois (OC I: 1019n) notes that the “Fourmillante” in 90’s first line, “Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves, / Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant!” [Swarming city, city full of dreams, / Where the specter in full daylight accosts the passerby!] (ll. 1–2), returns in 91: “j’entrevois un fantôme débile / Traversant de Paris le fourmillant tableau” [I glimpsed a feeble ghost / As I was traversing the swarming tableau of Paris] (ll. 25–26). More than that adjective connects the two passages: in both it is the city that swarms, and in both there is a ghost (the “spectre” and the “fantôme”). in both poems the narrator begins by focusing on the strange things he finds in the inner spaces of the city’s anatomy: “Les mystères partout coulent comme des sèves / Dans les canaux étroits du colosse puissant” [Mysteries flow throughout like sap / In the narrow channels of the powerful colossus] (“Les Sept Vieillards,” ll. 3–4); “Dans les plis sinueux des vieilles capitales, / Où tout, même l’horreur, tourne aux enchantements” [In the sinuous folds of old capitals, / Where everything, even horror, becomes enchantment] (“Les Petites Vieilles,” ll. 1–2). an overturning of the normal relation between generations arises in both poems, a paradox of impossible paternity. The eighth old man, were he to appear, would be the “fils et père de lui-même” [son and father of himself] (l. 43). The narrator follows the old women with such tender attention that it is, he imagines telling them, “comme si j’étais votre père” [as if I were your father] (l. 75).

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he was horrified to see that the first old man “se multiplait!” [was multiplying himself!] (l. 36) into the other six, but in the other poem it is the poet himself who becomes multiple: “Mon cœur multiplié jouit de tous vos vices!” [My multiplied heart takes pleasure in all your vices!] (l. 79). This is one way in which the two poems, despite their several similarities, are opposed. Another is that while the old men were all identical—“Nul trait ne distinguait” [No trait distinguished] one “jumeau centenaire” [cen- tenarian twin] (ll. 30, 31) from the other—the old women were of various shapes and sizes, so that the poet, in a reflection on their eventual funeral caskets, wonders “Combien de fois il faut que l’ouvrier varie / La forme de la boîte où l’on met tous ces corps” [How many times the workman would have to vary / The form of the box where one would put all these bodies] (ll. 31–32). The poem had first appeared in 1859 (with “Les Sept Vieillards”), but the quatrain where he expresses this thought was added for its publication in the 1861 Fleurs du mal.

“Les Petites Vieilles” / “Les Aveugles”

Though they are diverse, the women are in another sense “Des êtres singuliers” [singular beings] (l. 4]—yet not unique in that regard, for the blind in “Les Aveugles” [The Blind] (1861: 92) are that as well: “Terribles, singuliers comme les somnambules” [Frightening, singular like sleepwalk- ers] (l. 3). Some of the women “trottent, tout pareils à des marionnettes” [trot along, just like marionettes] (l. 13), a turn of phrase Baudelaire repeats when he says that the blind are “Pareils aux mannequins” [Like mannequins] (l. 2). “Pareils aux” is, in other words, pareil à [like] “pareils à”— and marionettes and mannequins, though not interchangeable, are alike in that they are both articulated human figures. Bescherelle defines “mari- onette” as a “Petite figure humaine” [Small human figure] that an enter- tainer causes to move by wires, springs, or by hand, and “mannequin” as an articulated “Figure d’homme” [Figure of a man] used by painters and sculputors as models. Thus the old women and the blind are alike in that both are human beings who resemble, in the way they walk down the street, mechanical doubles of human beings. The sightless eyes of the blind oblige them to traverse “le noir illimité” [unlimited blackness] (l. 9); women’s eyes were associated with darkness in a different way: “Luisants comme ces trous où l’eau dort dans la nuit” [Shining like holes where water sleeps in the night] (l. 18). Echoing Pascal, Baudelaire finds that that limitless blackness evokes eternity, the “silence éternel” [eternal silence] (l. 10); so too the women: “Débris d’humanité pour l’éternité mûrs” [Debris of humanity ripe for eternity] (l. 72). While

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the blind “traversent” [traverse] the limitless blackness, “Ô cité! / . . . autour de nous tu chantes, ris et beugles” [O city! / . . . around us you sing, laugh, and bellow] (ll. 10–11); we can see a similar contrast between the tranquility of the people at whom the poet is staring and the urban hubbub around them in “Les Petites Vieilles”: “vous cheminez, stoïques et sans plaintes, / À travers le chaos des vivantes cités” [you make your way, stoic and uncomplaining, / Through the chaos of living cities] (ll. 61–62). The blind seem inordinately interested in the sky because they seem to be looking upward: “Que cherchent-ils au Ciel, tous ces aveugles?” [What are they looking for in Heaven, all those blind people?] (l. 14); likewise, among the aged women, there are some who demand of Devotion, “mène-moi jusqu’au ciel!” [lead me up to heaven!] (l. 44).

“Les Aveugles” / “À une passante”

The poet, who spies on the blind without their knowing it (because they cannot see him), does the same with the women, following them unob- served at a distance: “moi qui de loin tendrement vous surveille . . . / Je goûte à votre insu des plaisirs clandestins” [I who from afar tenderly watch over you . . . / I taste without your knowing it clandestine pleasures] (ll. 73, 76). In the same way that the noisy city, as the poet says in “Les Aveugles,” sings, laughs, and bellows “autour de nous” [around us], so too in “À une passante” [To a Woman Passing By] (1861: 92), “La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait” [The deafening street around me was screaming] (l. 1). In “À une passante” Baudelaire takes elements from “Les Aveu- gles”—namely, the eye, the sky, and pleasure that leads to violence—and puts them in a new arrangement and context: “Moi, je buvais . . . / Dans son œil . . . / La douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui tue” [I drank . . . / From her eye . . . / The sweetness that fascinates and the pleasure that kills] (ll. 6, 7, 8). Her eye is a sky, which is a different relationship between the two than in “Les Aveugles,” where the eyes of the blind seemed to stare at the sky. The pleasure that kills recalls the pleasure that leads to atrocity (“Éprise du plaisir jusqu’à l’atrocité” [Consumed by pleasure to the point of atrocity] [l. 12]); Pichois notes that the word should be taken in the sense of “the blackest of crimes” [OC I: 1022n]), but here that pleasure comes from her eye, whereas in the case of the blind it existed in another world, the surrounding city. Obviously, the poet is fascinated by the eyes of the woman passerby as he had been by those of the blind, but for a different reason. He had been as deeply fascinated by the women’s eyes in “Les Petites Vieilles.” Some of them had eyes “perçants comme une

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vrille” [piercing like a drill] (l. 17); others’ shone like holes where water sleeps at night; still others evoked wells, crucibles, or the eye of an eagle. “Ces yeux mystérieux ont d’invincibles charmes / Pour celui que l’austère Infortune allaita” [Those mysterious eyes have invincible charms / For one whom austere Misfortune has nursed] (ll. 35–36).

“À une passante” / “Le Squelette laboureur”

The old women resembled marionettes, the blind looked like mannequins, and the motif of a human being who comes to resemble a created human figure continues in “À une passante” when the woman lifts her skirt to reveal “sa jambe de statue” [her leg of a statue] (l. 5). This glimpse of naked leg is transformed into the last lingering image of “Le Squelette laboureur” [The Skeleton Plowman] (1861: 94):

Que tout, même la Mort, nous ment, Et que sempiternellement, Hélas! il nous faudra peut-être

. . . pousser une lourde bêche Sous notre pied sanglant et nu?

[That everything, even Death, is a lie, And that sempiternally, Alas! we will perhaps be obliged

. . . to push a heavy spade Under our bloody and naked foot?] (ll. 26–28, 31–32)

In “À une passante” the poet had asked another question, which, like the one asked in “Le Squelette laboureur,” concerns eternity: “Fugitive beauté . . . / Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l’éternité?” [Fugitive beauty . . . / Will I never see you again except in eternity?] (ll. 9, 11). The anatomical drawings the poet was perusing, which depicted skeletons and human figures stripped of their skin engaged in agricultural tasks, “Ont communiqué la Beauté” [Communicated Beauty] (l. 8)—as did the woman he glimpsed in the street. Her beauty was “fugitive,” soon to disappear; theirs is, in a way horrible for the poet to contemplate, sempiternal.

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“Le Squelette laboureur” / “Le Crépuscule du soir”

Such an idea is horrible because it suggests that when we become skeletons we will have no eternal rest, that “dans la fosse même / Le sommeil pro- mis n’est pas sûr” [in the grave itself / The promised sleep is not certain] (ll. 23–24). That sleep does not necessarily come with evening, either, is the premise of “Le Crépuscule du soir” (1857: 67; 1861: 95), despite the promise made: “Ô soir, aimable soir, désiré par celui / Dont les bras, sans mentir, peuvent dire: Aujourd’hui / Nous avons travaillé!” [O evening, lovable evening, desired by him / Whose arms, without lying, can say: Today / We have labored!] (ll. 5–8). It is true that his arms are not lying, and that the laborer is indeed tired, but it is true as well that evening is the moment when many other workers—prostitutes, restaurant cooks, actors, musicians, gamblers, and thieves—“Vont bientôt commencer leur travail” [Will soon be going to work] (l. 26). And for others still, night does not bring rest, either: “C’est l’heure où les douleurs des malades s’aigrissent! / La sombre Nuit les prend à la gorge” [It is the hour when the pains of the sick become worse! / Dark Night grabs them by the throat] (ll. 31–32). That it is “sans mentir” [without lying] (l. 6) that those tired arms assure the man who works by day that he has earned his rest acquires some degree of irony when we remember that in “Le Squelette laboreur” everything, even Death, “nous ment” [lies to us] (l. 26). It acquires it only now, in 1861, because it did not have it in 1857, when “Le Squelette laboreur” did not exist, and did not appear next to “Le Crépuscule du soir” in the Fleurs du mal. Though that man may indeed find the rest he awaits, Night in this poem, like Death in the one before, is when work (for thieves, et al.) never stops and sleep (for the gravely ill) is not a sure thing.

“Le Jeu” / “Danse macabre”

“Le Jeu” (1857: 66; 1861: 96) was neighbor to “Le Crépuscule du soir” in 1857, but their order is reversed here. We can see why Baudelaire did that, for the latter complements the poem that precedes it now, as “Le Jeu” complements (or is complemented by) the new poem that follows it in 1861, “Danse macabre” [Dance of Death] (1861: 97). “Le Jeu” depicts a dream of old courtesans and illustrious poets gambling, consumed by a “passion ténace” [tenacious passion] (l. 17) and a “funèbre gaieté” [funereal gaiety] (l. 18); in “Danse macabre” the skeleton of a woman appears at “La fête de la Vie” [The feast of Life] (l. 22), perfectly attired as a woman at the dance:

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Fière, autant qu’un vivant, de sa noble stature, Avec son gros bouquet, son mouchoir et ses gants, Elle a la nonchalance et la désinvolture D’une coquette maigre aux airs extravagants.

[Proud, as much as a living person, of her noble stature, With her large bouquet, her handkerchief, and her gloves, She has the nonchalance and easy manner Of a skinny coquette putting on excessive airs.] (ll. 1–4)

Baudelaire rewrote the first stanza of “Le Jeu” to lend the old courtesans the skeleton’s coquettishness. In 1857:

Dans des fauteuils fanés des courtesanes vieilles, —Fronts poudrés, sourcils peints sur des regards d’acier,— Qui s’en vont brimbalant à leurs maigres oreilles Un cruel et blessant tic-tac de balancier

[In faded armchairs old courtesans, With powdered foreheads, eyebrows painted above a steel-like gaze, Who rattle on their skinny ears A cruel and hurtful tick-tock] (ll. 1–4)

In 1861, lines 2–4 become: “Pâles, le sourcil peint, l’œil câlin et fatal, / Minaudant, et faisant de leurs maigres oreilles / Tomber un cliquetis de pierre et de métal” [Pale, with painted eyebrow, affectionate and fatal eyes, / Simpering, and making with their skinny ears / The sound of click- ing stone and metal]. In place of “des regards d’acier” [steel-like gazes] their look is now “câlin” [affectionate], and they are “Minaudant” [simpering]—clearly coquettish behavior. The “maigres oreilles” [skinny ears] remain from the original version, inspiring Baudelaire to plant the same adjective in the corresponding first stanza, if not perhaps even the whole idea of a skeletally skinny coquette (“une coquette maigre”). To the courtesans’ “funèbre gaieté” [funereal gaiety] (l. 18) the skeleton at the dance responds with her “funèbres appas” [funereal attractions] (l. 12). To their “infernale fièvre” (l. 7) she replies with “l’enfer allumé” [burning hell] in her heart (l. 28). yet the poems display an opposition as well, one that self-reflexively turns on the same or similar turns of phrase. In “Le Jeu” the poet finds himself envying the person who, like the gamblers in his dream, is “Cou- rant avec ferveur à l’abîme béant, / Et qui, soûl de son sang, préférerait en

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somme / La douleur à la mort et l’enfer au néant” [Running fervently to the gaping abyss, / And who, drunk with his own blood, would prefer, in sum, / Pain to death and hell to nothingness] (ll. 22–24). Such people as these, clearly aware of the choice they are making, are absent from “Danse macabre.” The guests at the dance, “amants ivres de chair” [lovers drunk with flesh], as those the poet envied in “Le Jeu” who were drunk with their blood, “ne comprennent pas” [do not understand] (l. 18) that this coquette is death itself. They do not realize, as the poet wishes the skeleton would tell them, that “Vous sentez tous la mort” [You all smell of death] (l. 48). As those the poet envies run to the gaping abyss, these dancers are headed there, too; they just don’t know it:

la danse macabre Vous entraîne en des lieux qui ne sont pas connus! . . . Le troupeau mortel saute et se pâme, sans voir Dans un trou du plafond la trompette de l’Ange Sinistrement béante ainsi qu’un tromblon noir

[The dance of death Is dragging you to unknown places! . . . The troupe of mortals leap and swoon, without seeing In a hole in the ceiling the Angel’s trumpet Sinisterly gaping like a black blunderbuss] (ll. 51–52, 54–56)

“Danse macabre” / “L’Amour du mensonge”

By calling our attention to the ceiling in “Le Jeu” (or rather, when considered in retrospect it gives that impression, if we may presume that Baude- laire had not yet imagined “Danse macabre” in 1857) with the lines “Sous de sales plafonds un rang de pâles lustres / Et d’énormes quinquets pro- jetant leurs lueurs” [Under the dirty ceilings a row of pale chandeliers / And enormous lamps projecting their rays] (ll. 9–10), Baudelaire prepared us for the remarkable image of the Angel’s trumpet breaking through the ceiling in “Danse macabre.” This image will immediately find an echo in the opening lines of “L’Amour du mensonge” [The Love of the Lie] (1861: 98): “Quand je te vois passer, ô ma chère indolente, / Au chant des instruments qui se brise au plafond” [When I see you pass, O my indolent darling, / To the instruments’ song breaking on the ceiling] (ll. 1–2). In “Danse macabre” a musical instrument breaks through the ceiling; in “L’Amour du mensonge” the sound of musical instruments breaks against the ceiling. In the poem to follow, “Je n’ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville . . .” (1857: 70; 1861: 99),

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the evening sun will do to the window what the music does to the ceiling: “le soleil, le soir, ruisselant et superbe, / . . . derrière la vitre où se brisait sa gerbe” [the sun, at evening, streaming and majestic, / . . . behind the window pane against which its spray was breaking] (ll. 5–6). This light breaking on the windows brings us full circle, back to the light that came from the ceiling in “Le Jeu.” To sum up:

• “Le Jeu” (1861: 96): light from the “plafonds” • “Danse macabre” (1861: 97): a trumpet pokes through a hole in the “plafond” • “L’Amour du mensonge” (1861: 98): the music “se brise au plafond” • “Je n’ai pas oublié . . .” (1861: 99): light “se brise” on the window

The “chère indolente” [dear indolent one] (“L’Amour du mensonge,” l. 1) presents a ghostly parallel to the skeletal coquette. The latter’s “yeux profonds sont faits de vide” [deep eyes are made of emptiness] (l. 13)—as we would well expect, since her head is a skull. But the woman addressed in “L’Amour du mensonge” has deep and empty eyes as well:

Je sais qu’il est des yeux, des plus mélancoliques, Qui ne recèlent point de secrets précieux; Beaux écrins sans joyaux, médaillons sans reliques, Plus vides, plus profonds que vous-mêmes, ô Cieux!

[I know there are eyes, among the most melancholy, That hide no precious secrets, Beautiful jewel boxes without jewels, lockets without relics, Emptier, deeper than you, O Skies!] (ll. 17–20)

The skies are less empty and deep than the eyes of the woman he is addressing, but from the way he describes them those eyes could just have easily been those of the coquettish skeleton: containers containing nothing, bone eye sockets devoid of flesh. “Es-tu vase funèbre?” [Are you a funeral vase?] (l. 14), he asks her, reminding us of the coquette’s “funèbres appas” [funereal attractions] (l. 12). He associates both the coquette and this woman with something royal: the skeleton wears a dress of “royale ampleur” [royal fullness] (l. 6), while of the other he writes, “Qu’elle est belle! et bizarrement fraîche! / Le souvenir massif, royale et lourde tour, / La couronne” [How beautiful she is! And bizarrely fresh! / Massive memory, royal and heavy tower, / Crowns her] (ll. 9–11). In an earlier version of “L’Amour du mensonge” that Baudelaire sent Poulet-Malassis, his publisher, the line read “Le souvenir divin, antique et lourde tour” [The divine memory,

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ancient and heavy tower]. After he changed it to “royale” Poulet-Malassis appears to have raised an objection to that word, for Baudelaire wrote in another letter:

Le mot royale facilitera pour le lecteur l’intelligence de cette métaphore qui fait du souvenir une Couronne de tours, comme celle qui incline le front des déesses de maturité, de fécondité, et de sagesse. L’amour (sens et esprit) est niais à vingt ans, et il est savant à quarante. Tout cela, je vous l’affirme, a été très lentement combiné.

[The word royale will make it easier for the reader to understand this metaphor that makes of memory a Crown of towers, like the one on the head of the goddesses of maturity, of fertility, and of wisdom. Love (both the senses and the mind) is naive at twenty, and wise at forty. All that, I assure you, has been slowly worked out] (Corr. II: 15)

Baudelaire did not tell Poulet-Malassis the other reason he replaced “antique” with “royale”: so that it would parallel the same word in the poem before. He concealed from his publisher the nuts and bolts of his construction. The word appears in no other poem. as often happens, not only are things “slowly worked out” so that parallels emerge, but oppositions, too. In this instance, it turns around the fraîcheur attributed to the woman in “L’Amour du mensonge” (“Qu’elle est . . . bizarrement fraîche!” [How . . . bizarrely fresh she is!] [l. 9]). It was a quality the skeletal coquette lacked: “viens-tu demander au torrent des orgies” [do you come to ask of the flood of orgies] in the Feast of Life “De rafraîchir l’enfer allumé dans ton cœur?” [To cool the hell burning in your heart?] (ll. 27–28).

“L’Amour du mensonge” / “Je n’ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville . . . ”

As he had with “Le Jeu” (1857: 66; 1861: 96) and “Le Crépuscule du soir” (1857: 67; 1861: 95), Baudelaire inverts the order of “La servante au grand cœur . . .” (1857: 69; 1861: 100) and “Je n’ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville . . . ” (1857: 70; 1861: 99). We have already noted how the “chant des instruments qui se brise au plafond” in “L’Amour du mensonge” forms a connection with the sun that “se brisait” on the window in “Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ” Baudelaire had to reverse the order of that poem and “La ser-

5. From an undated letter, possibly from mid-March 1860. See Corr. II: 14.

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vante au grand cœur . . . ” because the music that breaks on the ceiling was part of a chain that went back to “Danse macabre” and “Le Jeu.” There is other evidence that Baudelaire wrote “L’Amour du mensonge” in such a way that it would be well placed beside “Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ” The two statues in the latter, the “Pomone de plâtre” [plaster Pomona] and the “vieille Vénus” [old Venus] (l. 3), each illustrate an aspect of the woman addressed in “L’Amour du mensonge.” Pomona is “the goddess of fruits” and “for poets symbolizes autumn, the time of the harvest of fruits” (see Bescherelle’s definition of “Pomone”). This is what Baudelaire had in mind when he has the speaker ask the woman, “Es-tu le fruit d’automne aux saveurs souveraines?” [Are you the fruit of autumn, with its sovereign flavors?] (l. 13). He celebrates the delights of ripeness: “son cœur, meurtri comme une pêche / Est mûr, comme son corps pour le savant amour” [her heart, bruised like a peach, / Is ripe, like her body, for a knowing love] (ll. 11–12). Like Pomona, she calls to mind autumnal fruits; but like the “vieille Vénus,” she is no longer young. “Qu’elle est belle! et bizarrement fraîche!” [How beautiful she is! and bizarrely fresh!] (l. 9). She is strangely young-looking for her age, an illusion to which the “mensonge” in the title alludes. “Mais ne suffit-il pas que tu sois l’apparence . . . ? / Masque ou décor, salut! J’adore ta beauté” [But isn’t it enough that you are the semblance . . . ? / Mask or façade, I salute you! I adore your beauty] (ll. 21, 24). We have already seen ample evidence that this woman and the skeleton coquette in the immediately preceding “Danse macabre” are each other’s ghostly double; in light of those parallels as well as those between the woman and the statues, that the latter are “cachant leurs membres nus” [Hiding their naked limbs] (l. 4) behind the bushes puts us in mind of how the skeleton coquettishly did the same: “La ruche qui se joue au bord des clavicules . . . / Défend pudiquement . . . / Les funèbres appas qu’elle tient à cacher” [The ruffles that play on the edge of her clavicles . . . / Discreetly defend . . . / The funereal charms she tries to hide] (ll. 9, 11, 12). as Baudelaire indicated in his letter to Poulet-Malassis, he was alluding to goddesses of ripeness, fecondity, and wisdom when he wrote: “Le souvenir massif, royale et lourde tour, / La couronne” [Massive memory, royal and heavy tower, / Crowns her]. Pomona is one such goddess; another is Cybèle, traditionally represented as “Couronnée de tours” [Crowned with towers], as Joachim DuBellay depicted her in the Antiquitez de Rome. (Elsewhere in the Fleurs du mal Cybèle appears in “J’aime le souvenir des ces époques nues . . . ” and “Bohémiens en voyage.”) The memory motif is significant in “Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ,” which we know Baudelaire addressed to his mother (and wrote her to ask if she caught the allusion [Corr. I: 443–45]), and which recounts their time together after his father’s death and before her remarriage. The sun’s “grand œil ouvert dans le ciel

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curieux” [great open eye in the curious sky] (l. 7) is, as we saw in the previous chapter, the dead father’s eye, contemplating the mother and son’s long and silent dinners in that white suburban house with the statues in the garden of Pomona and Venus. Baudelaire, I cannot help but feel, wants to impose the weight of the memory on his mother, to place its heavy tower on her head.

“La servante au grand cœur . . . ” / “Brumes et pluies”

“La servante au grand cœur . . . ” (1857: 69; 1861: 100) is now followed by another poem from the 1857 volume that was not beside it there, “Brumes et pluies” (1857: 63; 1861: 101). Both poems speak of cold, wet, and windy seasons and are precisely opposed in that regard, for those seasons bring suffering in one but delight in the other. In “La servante au grand cœur . . . ,” the dead,

quand Octobre souffle . . . Son vent mélancolique ...... ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats, À dormir . . . chaudement dans leurs draps, Tandis que . . . Sans compagnon de lit, . . . Ils sentent s’égoutter les neiges de l’hiver

[when October blows . . . Its melancholy wind ...... they must find the living very ungrateful, To sleep . . . warmly in their sheets, While . . . Without a bed companion . . . They feel winter’s snows drip down] (ll. 5–10, 12)

But in “Brumes et pluies” the speaker says he loves and praises those very same seasons, the “fins d’automne, hivers, printemps trempés de boue . . . / D’envelopper ainsi mon cœur et mon cerveau / D’un linceul vaporeux et d’un vague tombeau” [late autumns, winters, springs soaked with mud . . . / For enveloping thus my heart and my brain / With a vaporous shroud and a vague tomb] (ll. 1, 3–4). Even when “l’autan froid se joue” [the cold wind blows] (“Brumes et pluies,” l. 5), like the

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“vent mélancolique” that blows “à l’entour de leurs marbres” [around their marble tombs] (“La servante . . . ,” l. 6), he enjoys it, for it allows his soul to spread its black wings. Not only does he love the very seasons that make tomb dwellers suffer, but he loves them precisely for the way they make him feel as if he were in a tomb. The dead sleep alone, “Sans compagnon de lit” [Without a bed companion] (l. 10), “ont de grandes douleurs” [have great sorrows] (l. 4), but the speaker in “Brumes et pluies” is more fortunate, being one of those who sleep “deux à deux” [two by two] (l. 13) in order to “endormir la douleur sur un lit hasardeux” [put sorrow to sleep on a risky bed] (l. 14).

“Brumes et pluies” / “Rêve parisien”

What he especially likes about the “blafardes saisons” [pale seasons] (l. 11) is their “aspect permanent” [permanent look] (l. 12). Because they are all mist and rain one cannot see the sun. The sky is unchanging; there is no difference between morning and noon, or between one season and another. A similar sameness is accomplished in “Rêve parisien” [Parisian Dream] (1861: 102) by quite different means. It takes place in the dream the speaker recounts in which he creates a world devoid of “Le végétal irré- gulier” [irregular vegetation] (l. 8)—which is to say lacking all vegetation, precisely because it is irregular—a world composed entirely of metal, marble, and water: “Je savourais . . . / L’enivrante monotonie” [I savored . . . / The intoxicating monotony] (ll. 10, 11). This “monotonie” is a close parallel to the “aspect permanent” of the foggy seasons than which “Rien n’est plus doux” [Nothing is sweeter] (l. 9). The world of the dream was illumi- nated by “Nul astre . . . nuls vestiges / De soleil” [No star . . . no vestiges / Of the sun] (ll. 45–46) but instead “ces prodiges . . . brillaient d’un feu personnel” [these marvels . . . shone with their own light] (ll. 47–48). Nor was there a visible sun in “Brumes et pluies,” for all was enveloped “D’un linceul vaporeux et d’un vague tombeau” (l. 4). In the 1857 version the tomb was not “vague” but “brumeux” [misty]; Baudelaire may have made the change to enhance the parallel to the dream, which left in the dreamer its “image, / Vague et lointaine” [image, / Vague and far away] (ll. 3–4). in “Brumes et pluies” sleep effaces sorrows (l. 14); similarly, in “Rêve parisien” when sleep ends the pain returns: “En rouvrant mes yeux . . . / J’ai . . . senti, rentrant dans mon âme, / La pointe des soucis maudits” [When I opened my eyes . . . / I . . . felt, piercing my soul, / The prick of cursed cares] (ll. 53, 54, 55–56). The last stanza—

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La pendule aux accents funèbres Sonnait brutalement midi, Et le ciel versait des ténèbres Sur le triste monde engourdi.

[The clock with funereal accents Brutally sounded noon, And the sky poured shadows On the sad benumbed world.] (ll. 57–60)

—makes the same rhyme on “funèbres” and “ténèbres” as do the tercets of “Brumes et pluies”:

Rien n’est plus doux au cœur plein de choses funèbres Et sur qui dès longtemps descendent les frimas, Ô blafardes saisons, reines de nos climats,

Que l’aspect permanent de vos pâles ténèbres

[Nothing is sweeter to the heart full of funereal things And on which the hoarfrost has long been falling, O wan seasons, queens of our climates,

Than the permanent look of your pale shadows] (ll. 9–12)

But while the shadows are welcomed in “Brumes et pluies,” they are an unwelcome intrusion in “Rêve parisien.” And while what is funereal in the former is inside the speaker, in the latter it invades him from outside. That the sky could pour forth shadows at noon is understandable when we remember that in the dream the sun was absent. There was no need, as Michel Quesnel puts it, for the “soleil ‘ruisselant et superbe’” (221) of “Je n’ai pas oublié. . . . ” In “Rêve parisien” Baudelaire dreams of going it alone, without the help of the father-sun. He prefers to shine with his own “feu personnel.” But that dream is destroyed, its self-sustaining light plunged into shadow by the overwhelming force of the sun—an event that also took place in “L’Aube spirituelle” (1857: 42; 1861: 46): “Le soleil a noirci les flammes des bougies” [The sun has blackened the candles’ flames] (l. 12).

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“Rêve parisien” / “Le Crépuscule du matin”

“Rêve parisien” is followed by “Le Crépuscule du matin” (1857: 68; 1861: 102), now detached from “Le Crépuscule du soir” (1857: 67; 1861: 95). It would appear that Baudelaire wrote “Rêve parisien” specifically to precede “Le Crépuscule du matin” (as well as to follow “La servante au grand cœur . . . ”), for it ends where the latter begins, at the conclusion of a night’s sleep. This is true even though the narrator of “Rêve parisien” does not awaken until noon. He does so “En rouvrant mes yeux pleins de flamme” [In opening my eyes full of flame] (l. 53); in the other poem,

C’était l’heure . . . Où, comme un œil sanglant qui palpite et qui bouge, La lampe sur le jour fait une tâche rouge; Où l’âme . . . Imite les combats de la lampe et du jour

[It was the hour . . . When, like a bloody eye that twitches and quivers, The lamp makes a red blotch against the daylight; When the soul . . . Imitates the struggles between the lamp and the sun] (ll. 3, 5–7, 8)

His flame-filled eyes are matched by the red blotch of the lamp that looks like an eye. The struggle for dominance between the lamp and the sun replays the one implied by the sun that casts shadows that replays the old topos from such Renaissance emblem books as Maurice Scève’s Délie, whose sixth emblem, “La Chandelle & le Soleil” [The Candle and the Sun], bears the motto “A tous clarté a moy tenebres” [Brightness to all, shadows to me], a struggle Baudelaire makes explicit in “L’Aube spirituelle.” because he did not wake until noon, and because he tells us that “Ce matin encore l’image, / Vague et lointaine, me ravit” [This morning still the image, / Vague and far away, delighted (or delights) me] (ll. 3–4),

6. ross Chambers notes that the clock striking noon (and waking the narrator up) in the last stanza of “Rêve parisien” is echoed by the reveille that sounds in the first line of “Le Crépuscule du matin”: “La diane chantait dans les cours des casernes.” Ross Chambers, “Trois paysages urbains: Les Poèmes liminaires des Tableaux parisiens,” Modern Philology 80, no. 4 (May 1983): 388. 7. The ‘Délie’ of Maurice Scève, ed. I. D. McFarlane (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 1966), 147.

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either the narrator in “Rêve parisien” was having his dream at “l’heure où l’essaim des rêves malfaisants / Tord sur leurs oreillers les bruns adolescents” [the hour when the swarm of malevolent dreams / Makes swarthy (literally, brown-skinned) adolescents twist on their pillows] (“Le Crépus- cule du matin,” ll. 3–4) or he was at least still under its spell. In either case, he was enjoying a ravishing dream full of “merveilles” [marvels] (l. 49) at the same time that the late-rising dreamers in the other poem were being contorted into twisted postures by evil dreams. At this moment the poems are exactly opposed. each poem in the Fleurs’ sequence, as I have suggested, is like a dream, recycling elements of the poem that precedes it as the dream itself recycles elements remembered from the immediately preceding day. Thus, “Rêve parisien” becomes a source of elements for “Le Crépuscule du matin” to weave into its own fabric. Perhaps the most striking instance of this arises from the “quais roses et verts” [pink and green quays] (l. 26) between which water flows in the dream and the “robe rose et verte” [pink and green dress] in which “L’aurore grelottante . . . / S’avançait lentement sur la Seine déserte” [Shivering dawn . . . / Slowly advanced on the deserted Seine] (ll. 25–26). Of course, the order of composition means that it is the latter that is recycled into the former. Indeed, a pink and green dawn is a natural phenomenon; pink and green quays are not (though, of course, nothing in the dream is natural). Baudelaire undoubtedly wrote “Le Crépuscule du matin” long before conceiving the idea of writing “Rêve parisien.” He put the pink and green quays in the latter to create an additional link with the former.

“Le Crépuscule du matin” / “L’Âme du vin”

For the 1861 edition Baudelaire transplanted the five poems of the section “Le Vin” from between “Révolte” and “La Mort” to between the new section “Tableaux parisiens” and “Fleurs du mal.” As a result, “Le Crépuscule du matin” is now followed by “L’Âme du vin” (1857: 93; 1861: 104). The new partnership of these poems works surprisingly well—so much so that it makes one wonder if Baudelaire might have originally planned to place them together. In “Le Crépuscule du matin” the Paris proletariat is represented as a “vieillard laborieux” [hardworking old man] who at dawn would rub his eyes, “Empoignait ses outils” [Pick up his tools] (l. 28), and (presumably) go off to begin the day’s labor. At the same hour, “Les débauchés rentraient, brisés par leurs travaux” [The debauchees would return, broken by their labors] (l. 24). One group is the ironic mirror reversal of the other. But both are mirrored in “L’Âme du vin” when the soul of wine describes the joy

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it feels when falling into the throat “d’un homme usé par ses travaux” [of a man worn down by his labors] (l. 10). The phrase “par + possessive adjective + travaux” appears only in these two poems. In a pre-1857 version it had read “d’un homme épuisé de travaux,” which means that as Baudelaire prepared the poem for its eventual publication in what became the 1857 edition, it came to more closely echo the line from “Le Crépuscule du matin,” and that suggests that he may have at some point as he was putting together the volume considered placing the poems side by side. It is perhaps ironic that wine would ease the pain of a man worn down “par ses travaux,” for the first definition that Bescherelle’s dictionary gives for “débauche” is the abuse of wine (and food): “Excès dans le boire et dans le manger” [Excess in drinking and eating], and the first etymological derivation it offers for “débaucher” is debacchari as a Latin verb meaning “s’enivrer” [to get drunk] from Bacchus as its root. Baudelaire in “Les Deux Bonnes Soeurs,” however, seems by “la débauche” to mean the secondary meaning Bescherelle gives: “Déréglement de moeurs” [dissolute conduct]. another echo between the poems, striking by its position, appears in the first line of each: “La diane chantait dans les cours des casernes” [Reveille was singing in the courtyards of the barracks] (“Le Crépuscule du matin”); “Un soir, l’âme du vin chantait dans les bouteilles” [One evening, the soul of wine was singing in the bottles] (“L’Âme du vin”). Like “par ses/leurs traveaux,” the string of words “chantait dans les” appears in these two poems alone of the Fleurs du mal. If a parallel is intended, it too is an ironic one, for the singing call to awake just adds to the misery of the weary Parisian laborer, but wine sings of its joy in bringing the tired worker relief. There is even a third instance of these two poems—and only these two—speaking the same language: the soul of wine promises “je ne serai point ingrat ni malfaisant” [I will in no way be ungrateful or malevolent] (l. 8), echoing the “rêves malfaisants” [malevolent dreams] (l. 3) that make adolescents twist on their pillows at the break of day. “Malfaisants” makes no other appearance in the Fleurs du mal. As wine resembles the “Crépus- cule du matin” in its singing, it resembles it too in its malfaisance, despite its avowal. Other poems in the section “Le Vin” (“Le Vin des chiffonniers” and “Le Vin de l’assassin”) will remind us of its dangers.

“Le Vin des amants” / “La Destruction”

The last of the wine poems, “Le Vin des amants” (1857: 97; 1861: 108),

8. Published in 1852 in La République du Peuple; noted in Les Fleurs du mal, ed. Crépet and Blin, 123.

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is now followed by “La Destruction” (1857: 78; 1861: 109). At this juncture, too, the connections are striking enough to suggest that in some pre- publication version of the volume these poems might have appeared side by side. In the first, the narrator invites his mistress to join him in “un délire parallèle . . . côte à côte nageant” [in a parallel delirium . . . swimming side by side] (ll. 11, 12); in the second, “Sans cesse à mes côtés s’agite le Démon; / Il nage autour de moi comme un air impalpable” [Ceaselessly at my sides the Demon is always moving; / He swims around me like an impalpable air] (ll. 1–2). The continuity is the more telling for the proximity of these lines, the side by side swimming taking place near the end of “Le Vin des amants,” and the swimming at the narrator’s side at the very beginning of “La Destruction.” The fact that the swimming motif is continued into the next poem, “Une martyre” (1857: 79; 1861: 110), where there are “mauvais anges / Nageant” [bad angels / Swimming] (ll. 35–36) above the scene of death and destruction, increases the suspicion that these three poems may have originally been together in the sequence. The woman he imagines swimming by his side in “Le Vin des amants” and the Demon swimming by his side in “La Destruction” are more alike than they may seem at first glance, for the demon “Parfois . . . prend . . . / La forme de la plus séduisante des femmes” [Sometimes . . . takes . . . / The form of the most seductive of women] (ll. 5–6). As the narrator invites his mistress to drink wine (“Par- tons à cheval sur le vin” [l. 3]) the Demon “Accoutume ma lèvre à des phil- tres infâmes” [Accustoms my lips to infamous philters] (l. 8). A “philtre” according to Bescherelle is a “drink supposedly capable of inspiring love.” Thus what the Demon has the narrator drink serves the same purpose as the wine the narrator invites the woman to consume. Both the narrator in “Le Vin des amants” and the Demon in “La Destruction” transport their companions to another place, though to contrastingly opposite places, a heaven in “Le Vin des amants”—“Nous fuirons . . . / Vers le paradis de mes rêves!” [We will flee . . . / To the paradise of my dreams] (l. 14)—but a hell in “La Destruction”:

Il me conduit . . . au milieu Des plaines de l’Ennui . . .

Et jette dans mes yeux . . . Des vêtements souillés, des blessures ouvertes, Et l’appareil sanglant de la Destruction!

[He leads me . . . to the middle

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Of the plains of Ennui . . .

And casts before my eyes . . . Soiled clothing, open wounds, And the bleeding apparatus of Destruction!] (ll. 9–14)

As we learned in the previous chapter, a scene of bloody destruction is precisely what Baudelaire casts before the reader’s eyes in the immediately following poem, “Une martyre.”

“Une martyre” / “Femmes damnées: Comme un bétail pensif . . . ”

“Une martyre” (1857: 79; 1861: 110) and “Femmes damnées: Comme un bétail pensif . . . ” (1857: 82; 1861: 111) were separated in 1857 by two poems Baudelaire was obliged to remove, “Lesbos” (1857: 80) and “Femmes damnées: À la pâle clarté . . . ” (1857: 81). The texture of connections among these four was extensive, and the excision of the central two impoverishes the volume. Baudelaire chose not to insert any new ones into that absence, leaving “Une martyre” and the second “Femmes dam- nées” lying side by side, like the martyr’s headless body and bodiless head, evidence of the prosecutor’s bloody destruction of his original vision. Nev- ertheless, the “soifs inassouvies” [unassuaged thirsts] (l. 27) of the “mar- tyres” [martyrs] (l. 21) and other “Chercheuses d’infini” [female seekers of the infinite] (l. 23) in “Femmes damnées: Comme un bétail pensif . . . ” recall the desire that the martyr in “Une martyre” could not, “vivante, / Malgré tant d’amour, assouvir” [when alive, / Despite so much love, assuage] (ll. 45–46), but which, the narrator imagines, he might have been able to satisfy on her corpse.

“La Béatrice” / “Un voyage à Cythère”

The removal of “Les Métamorphoses du vampire” (1857: 87) from between “La Béatrice” (1857: 86; 1861: 115) and “Un voyage à Cythère” (1857: 88; 1861: 116) posed no such problem, for the three poems were already tightly linked. We saw in the previous chapter how for the 1857 edition Baudelaire changed the first line of “Un voyage à Cythère” from what it had been in an earlier publication so that it would match “Les Métamorphoses du vampire” (in whose last line the wind “balance” [makes sway] a sign, echoed in the first line of the 1857 version of “Un voyage à Cythère” when the narrator’s

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heart “se balançait” [was swaying] around the ship’s rigging as it approached the island), and then changed it again in 1861 because “Les Métamorphoses du vampire” had vanished, and with it the need for change. “La Béatrice” is set “Dans des terrains cendreux, calcinés, sans verdure” [In cinder-filled, burnt-over terrains devoid of greenery] (l. 1); likewise, Cythera is “un terrain des plus maigres, / Un désert rocailleux” [among the barest of terrains, / A rocky desert] (ll. 18–19), lacking the myrtles and roses the narrator had expected to find. He sees himself (“Ridicule pendu, tes douleurs sont les miennes!” [Ridiculous hanged man, your sorrows are mine!] [l. 45]) in the hanged man surrounded by “un troupeau de jaloux quadrupèdes” [a troop of jealous quadrupeds] (l. 37); the narrator in the other poem is surrounded by “un troupeau de démons vicieux / Semblables à des nains cruels et curieux” [a troop of vicious demons / Resembling cruel and curious dwarves] (ll. 7–8). That they descend on his head like a cloud but also look like dwarves parallels the twofold nature of the scavengers confronting the hanged corpse, the birds from above and the quadrupeds from below, “Sous les pieds” [Beneath his feet] (l. 37). Among the quadrupeds “Une plus grande bête au milieu s’agitait / Comme un exécuteur entouré de ses aides” [One bigger beast in the middle moved about / Like an executioner surrounded by his aides] (ll. 39–40); the narrator’s “Béa- trice” plays a similar role: “parmi leur troupe obscène . . . / La reine de mon cœur . . . riait avec eux de ma sombre détresse / Et leur versait parfois quelque sale caresse” [among their obscene troupe . . . / The queen of my heart . . . laughed with them at my dark distress / And occasionally gave them some dirty caress] (ll. 26, 28, 29–30). The hanged man is an object of ridicule, and so is the narrator in the other poem, subject to the laughter of the demons and his Béatrice.

“Les Litanies de Satan” / “La Mort des amants”

Because Baudelaire moved the section to which he gave the title “Le Vin” (comprising 1857: 93–97 and 1861: 104–108) from between “Révolte” and “La Mort” to between “Tableaux parisiens” and “Fleurs du mal,” now “Les Litanies de Satan” (1857: 92; 1861: 120) finds itself next to “La Mort des amants” (1857: 98; 1861: 121). The result is that a strange parallel emerges between the narrator of “La Mort des Amants” wanting to be buried next to his beloved to await a resurrection and the narrator of “Les Litanies de Satan” wanting to be buried next to Satan to await a resurrection: “Fais que mon âme un jour, sous l’Arbre de Science, / Près de toi se repose, à l’heure où sur ton front / Comme un Temple nouveau ses rameaux s’épandront!” [Make it so that my soul one day, under the Tree

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of Knowledge, / Near you will repose, at the hour when over your brow / Like a new Temple its branches will spread!] (ll. 49–51)—though the resurrection will be Satan’s.

“La Mort des artistes” / “La Fin de la journée”

The last change to the Fleurs du mal is the trio of new poems that would now follow “La Mort des artistes” (1857: 100; 1861: 123), the concluding poem in 1857. In that poem, creators of art who have not fully achieved their goals place their hopes in Death. They have but “un espoir . . . / C’est que la Mort, planant comme un soleil nouveau, / Fera s’épanouir les fleurs de leur cerveau!” [one hope . . . / It is that Death, soaring like a new sun, / Will make the flowers of their brain blossom!] (ll. 12, 13–14). One might well imagine, because of the fleurs, that Baudelaire is among them. A poet, the narrator of the new poem “La Fin de la journée” [The End of the Day] (1861: 124) is like them a creative artist, and like them he waits for what he knows will come from the sky:

sitôt qu’à l’horizon

La nuit voluptueuse monte . . . Effaçant tout, même la honte, Le Poète se dit: “Enfin!”

[as soon as from the horizon

Voluptuous night ascends . . . Erasing everything, even shame, The Poet says to himself: “At last!”] (ll. 4–5, 7–8)

Night is the opposite of the sun, and while the sun will bring the artists’ projects to fruition, night will do the opposite: wipe the slate clean.

“La Fin de la journée” / “Le Rêve d’un curieux”

Yet night is not the opposite of death, which the sun here paradoxically represents. The poet who awaits the night is full of thoughts of mortality:

Le cœur plein de songes funèbres,

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Je vais me coucher sur le dos Et me rouler dans vos rideaux, Ô rafraîchissantes ténèbres!

[My heart full of funereal dreams, I am going to lie on my back And roll myself in your curtains, O refreshing shadows!] (ll. 11–14)

Those curtains immediately return in the next poem, “Le Rêve d’un curieux” [The Dream of a Curious Man] (1861: 125), where they become a curtain on a stage that when lifted is supposed to reveal what lies beyond death. In a dream the narrator, about to die, is seized with curiosity to know what is behind that curtain: “J’étais comme l’enfant avide du spectacle, / Haïssant le rideau comme on hait un obstacle” [I was like the child avid for the show, / Hating the curtain as one hates an obstacle] (ll. 9–10). But unlike the poet in the preceding poem, who was waiting for the night, he is disappointed:

Enfin la vérité froide se révéla:

J’étais mort sans surprise, et la terrible aurore M’enveloppait.—Eh quoi! n’est-ce donc que cela? La toile était levée et j’attendais encore

[At last the cold truth was revealed:

I was dead without surprise, and the terrible dawn Enveloped me. What? Is that all it is? The curtain had lifted and I was still waiting] (ll. 11–14)

The rideaux are associated with night in one poem and death in the other, yet they are opposites, for the curtains in the first are themselves the darkness but in the second the curtain holds back death, even if only temporar- ily; it is only when the curtain disappears that death arrives. The poems are further opposed in that in “La Fin de la journée” the narrator was enveloped in darkness, rolling himself up in the curtains of night, but in “Le Rêve d’un curieux” he is enveloped in light, the terrible dawn.

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“Le Rêve d’un curieux” / “Le Voyage”

“Le Voyage” [The Voyage] (1861: 126) likewise focuses on a child who desires to know:

Pour l’enfant, amoureux de cartes et d’estampes, L’univers est égal à son vaste appétit. Ah! que le monde est grand à la clarté des lampes! Aux yeux du souvenir que le monde est petit!

[For the child, in love with maps and engravings, The universe is equal to his vast appetite. Ah, how big is the world by lamplight! In memory’s eyes how small the world is!] (ll. 1–4)

This child with a vast appetite for learning about the world parallels “l’enfant avide du spectacle” in “Le Rêve d’un curieux,” to whom that poem’s narrator compares himself in his curiosity to see what death will reveal. Curiosity persists in “Le Voyage,” in a passage remarkable for how it reunites elements from both “Le Rêve d’un curieux” and “La Fin de la journée”: “même dans nos sommeils / La Curiosité nous tourmente et nous roule” [even in our slumbers / Curiosity torments and rolls us] (ll. 26–27). Curiosity in sleep is precisely what “Le Rêve d’un curieux” is about, since the story the narrator tells of his curiousity about death was itself a dream. When Baudelaire has Curiosity roll [rouler] us, he is alluding to the concluding lines of “La Fin de la journée”: “Je vais me coucher sur le dos / Et me rouler dans vos rideaux, / Ô rafraîchissantes ténébres!” [I am going to lie on my back / And roll myself in your curtains, / O refreshing shadows!] (ll. 12–14). We already saw how the rideaux in line 13 look ahead to the rideaux at which the narrator of “Le Rêve d’un curieux” stares in his dream; now we see as well how it anticipates Curiosity’s rolling effect in “Le Voyage.” The childlike avidity to learn what death is in “Le Rêve d’un curieux” is paralleled in “Le Voyage” by the childlike appetite to know the world, which in the course of this poem, at 144 lines the longest in Les Fleurs du mal, turns into the desire for the new, and becomes in the end the desire to know what death is, for that is the only new thing left:

Ô Mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps! levons l’ancre! . . .

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Nous voulons . . . Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu’importe? Au fond de l’inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!

[O Death, old captain, it is time! Let us raise anchor! . . . We want . . . To plunge to the depth of the abyss, Hell or Heaven, what does it matter? To the depth of the unknown to find something new!] (ll. 137, 142, 143– 44; italics Baudelaire’s)

In “Le Rêve d’un curieux” the narrator in his dream discovers what death is and is disappointed: “n’est-ce donc que cela? / La toile était levée et j’attendais encore” (ll. 13–14). Yet that was not the real thing; it was only a dream. Thus in “Le Voyage” the effort can begin anew.

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The “serpent tout entier” i

Le Spleen de Paris

Baudelaire repeatedly called the Spleen de Paris a “pendant” to the Fleurs du mal (Corr. II: 299, 339, 512, 523, 566, 572, 591). What did he mean by that term? According to Bescherelle, “pendants” can be “Paint- ings, engravings, groups of sculpture of equal size representing nearly similar objects, and destined to figure together, to correspond to each other” or “The equal or peer, in speaking of persons or things that have many connections, many analogies.” From the reading of the Fleurs du mal pur- sued in the two preceding chapters, it has become clear that each of the poems in either edition of that volume is a “pendant” to its neighbor in this sense, that they are each other’s counterpart. We found that this was true even when, in fact especially when, as was usually the case, the two poems were not in any obvious way about the same thing. If, then, the Spleen de Paris is the “pendant” to that collection, it is not because the prose poems are about the same things as the Fleurs du mal but because they are similar in another way—in their ordering, in their architecture, in their fabric. baudelaire made some oft-cited comments about their fabric, or lack thereof, in a letter to Arsène Houssaye, literary director of La Presse, which published this letter, along with the first nine poems, on August 26, 1862:

1. The remainder of the first twenty poems would appear in La Presse on August 27 and September 24.

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Mon cher ami, je vous envoie un petit ouvrage dont on ne pourrait pas dire, sans injustice, qu’il n’a ni queue ni tête, puisque tout, au contraire, y est à la fois tête et queue, alternativement et réciproquement. Considèrez, je vous prie, quelles admirables commodités cette combinaison nous offre à tous, à vous, à moi et au lecteur. Nous pouvons couper où nous voulons, moi ma rêverie, vous le manuscrit, le lecteur sa lecture; car je ne suspends pas la volonté rétive de celui-ci au fil interminable d’une intrigue superflue. Enlevez une vertèbre, et les deux morceaux de cette tortueuse fantaisie se rejoindront sans peine. Hachez-la en nombreux fragments, et vous verrez que chacun peut exister à part. Dans l’espérance que quelques-uns de ces tronçons seront assez vivants pour vous plaire et vous amuser, j’ose vous dédier le serpent tout entier.

[My dear friend, I am sending you a little work of which it cannot be justly said that it has neither tail nor head, since on the contrary everything is at the same time head and tail, alternatively and reciprocally. Consider, I ask you, the admirable advantages this combination offers to everybody—to you, to me, and to the reader. We can interrupt where we like, I my reverie, you the manuscript, the reader his reading; for I do not hang the latter’s restive upon the interminable thread of a superfluous plot. Remove one vertebra, and the two pieces of this tortuous fantasy will reunite effortlessly. Cut it up in numerous fragments, and you will see that each can exist on its own. In the hope that some of these sections will be sufficiently alive to please and amuse you, I am so bold as to dedicate to you the entire serpent.] (OC I: 275)

He could have been describing the Fleurs du mal. For we have discovered that the poems that compose that volume are also all heads and tails, every two poems forming a single body of which one poem could be described as the head and the other the tail. Every poem except the first and the last is both a head and a tail, both the tail of the poem to one side of it and the head of the poem to the other. We recall Baudelaire declaring (in speaking of Wagner’s music, which he called a poetic work), that in “une poésie bien faite . . . toutes choses y sont bien unies, conjointes, réciproque- ment adaptées, et . . . prudemment concaténées” [well-made poetry . . . all things are well united, conjoined, reciprocally adapted, and . . . prudently concatenated] (OC II: 803). We found that the poems in the Fleurs du mal were not only conjoined but also reciprocally adapted—that he rewrote poems that had appeared in print before 1857 so that they would fit into the sequence in 1857, and that he rewrote poems from 1857 so that they would fit into the new sequence of 1861, that in those sequences each was adapted for and with other neighboring poems, and that as a result the

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poems are reciprocally related to each other. In characterizing the prose poems as being both heads and tails “alternatively and reciprocally,” he confirms the relevance to his poems of that concept of reciprocity. baudelaire goes on to say that the manuscript he is sending Hous- saye (which was not the whole book—at that point far from finished—but only the first twenty-six poems) could be cut at any point, and that it is like a serpent from which one could remove a vertebra and the two remaining pieces could then join together without difficulty. He also says that if the serpent were cut up into a number of pieces, each could exist on its own. Some commentators have concluded that this means that the order in which the poems appear has no importance. J. A. Hiddleston, for example, maintains that Baudelaire was giving Houssaye the freedom “to publish the poems in any order and to omit whichever ones he pleases.” He cites in support of this claim the first three sentences of the letter (up to “ . . . superflue”), evidently focusing on Baudelaire’s saying that Hous- saye could “couper” [cut] the collection of twenty poems anywhere he wanted. But as Steve Murphy points out, at this moment in the letter, before Baudelaire takes up the serpent metaphor, the verb couper means “to interrupt the creation, the publication, or the reading.” It means, in other words, to interrupt: to cut off, not to cut up. in fact, Houssaye did interrupt their publication, refusing to print the fourth and last installment Baudelaire gave him, a group of six poems (numbers 21–26 of the eventually published volume), even though an announcement in La Presse that they would soon appear had accompanied the third installment. He was angry to discover that some of the poems Baudelaire submitted had already been published elsewhere. In a letter to Houssaye on October 8, 1862, Baudelaire justified his decision to include previously published poems by saying that he wanted the reader to get a sense of the whole: “Je voulais donner au lecteur une idée complète de l’ouvrage dans son ampleur, ouvrage conçu depuis longtemps, et avant d’entremêler quelques morceaux anciens, j’ai consulté deux ou trois de mes amis, qui m’ont dit que mes scrupules seraient puérils”[I wanted to give the reader a complete idea of the work in its fullness, a work conceived long ago, and before including some old pieces, I consulted two or three of my friends, who told me that to have scruples about that would be childish] (Corr. II: 264). Apparently Baudelaire, recognizing how hard it was to get his poems published in the first place, was willing to make the sacrifice of allowing the editor to stop the series at any point (or at least

2. J. A. Hiddleston, Baudelaire and Le Spleen de Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 4. 3. Steve Murphy, Logiques du dernier Baudelaire: Lectures du Spleen de Paris (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2007), 54, hereafter cited in text.

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took the risk of expressing that willingness, no doubt hoping he would not in fact do so), yet he still considered the order important enough that he did not simply send him his most recent, unpublished, poems. In fact, he considered the order so important that he took the risk of angering Hous- saye by including the older poems. As Murphy writes, “Above all, despite the concessions we see him make, Baudelaire wanted to present a small (but no less genuine for that) collection [recueil] and not a fortuitous and heterogeneous assemblage of his most recent poetic productions” (57). The interruption could take place at any point because, Baudelaire says, he does not make the reader’s restive will hang upon the “fil interminable d’une intrigue superflue” [the interminable thread of a superfluous plot]. Murphy suggests that he may be alluding, though in an ironic way, to the “interminable” thread of narrative characteristic of novels published in serial form in publications such as Houssaye’s La Presse—ironically, because in fact readers delighted in following such a thread (55). The upshot of this is that, far from being a way to attract readers, the absence of a fil conducteur, whether of a narrative or something else (that something else is what I intend to show in the pages that follow), would actually be a dis- advantage in marketing the work. Therefore, Baudelaire is no more serious here than when he says that the work could be mutiliated and still survive to his satisfaction. but in writing of this “fil . . . d’une intrigue” Baudelaire may also be alluding to something altogether different. When he says of Wagner that his music is like well-made poetry, where all things are so well united, conjoined, and reciprocally adapted that one could say they were prudently concatenated, he had just been quoting Liszt on Wagner, in particular Liszt’s account of the difference between traditional opera, which is composed of discrete pieces—arias and choruses—separate in themselves, and Wagner’s compositional style, based as it was on recurring motifs weaving in and out of a highly unified work. The passage he quotes from Liszt begins with this sentence (the italics are Baudelaire’s):

Le spectateur, préparé et résigné à ne chercher aucun des morceaux déta- chés qui, engrenés lun après lautre sur le fil de quelque intrigue, composent la substance de nos opéras habituels, pourra trouver un singulier intérêt à suivre durant trois actes la combinaison profondément réfléchie, étonnam- ment habile et poétiquement intelligente, avec laquelle Wagner, au moyen de plusieurs phrases principales, a serré un noeud mélodique qui constitue tout son drame.

[The spectator, prepared and resigned to look for none of the detached pieces that, engaged one after the other on the thread of some plot, compose the sub-

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stance of our normal operas, will be able to find a singular interest in following for the course of three acts the deeply thought-out, astonishingly skillful and poetically intelligent combination by which Wagner, by using several principal phrases, had tightened a melodic knot that constitutes all its drama.] (OC II: 801)

In traditional opera, the detached “morceaux”—arias, duets, trios, choruses, and so on—have nothing in common musically except that they come from the same pen and are therefore written in the same style. The only thing that holds them togelther is “le fil de quelque intrigue,” the thread of the opera’s plot. With different words, as part of a different plot, they could just as easily have appeared in another opera by the same composer. Handel, in fact, did this often. In Liszt’s text, as Baudelaire quotes it here in his own essay “Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris,” which was first published in the Revue européenne on April 1, 1861, just a year before the letter to Houssaye, the separate pieces connected like beads on a rosary on the “fil de quelque intrigue” belong to a tradition Wagner rejects. Baude- laire aligns himself with Wagner, not just in the passage quoted earlier in which he attributes to his music all the characteristics of well-made poetry, but also in his letter to the composer of February 17, 1860. The first time he heard Wagner’s music, he writes, “il m’a semblé que je connaissais cette musique, et plus tard en y réfléchissant, j’ai compris d’où venait ce mirage; il me semblait que cette musique était la mienne” [it seemed to me that I knew this music, and later upon reflection, I understood where this mirage came from: I was under the impression that this music was mine] (Corr. I: 672–73; italics Baudelaire’s). The Fleurs du mal (and, as we will find, the Spleen de Paris) are Wagnerian in their construction, united by recurring turns of phrase. Baudelaire, like Wagner, demands of his readers, if they wish to fully enjoy his poems, that they remember what they have just read. He quotes Liszt as saying,

Wagner, forçant notre méditation et notre mémoire à un si constant exercice, arrache, par cela seul, l’action de la musique au domaine des vagues attendrissements et ajoute à ses charmes quelques-uns des plaisirs de l’esprit. Par cette méthode qui complique les faciles jouissances procurées par une série de chants rarement apparentés entre eux, il demande une singu- lière attention du public; mais en même temps il prépare de plus parfaites émotions à ceux qui savent les goûter.

[Wagner, compelling our meditation and memory to such constant exercise, by that alone tears music’s effect away from the realm of vague sentiments and to its charms adds pleasures of the mind. By this method, which

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complicates the facile enjoyments procured by a series of songs rarely related to each other, he demands an extraordinary degree of attentiveness from the public; but at the same time he prepares more perfect emotions for those who know how to taste them.] (OC II: 802; Baudelaire’s italics)

Were we to read the Fleurs du mal as a “pur album,” which Baudelaire assured Vigny it was not, as a collection of poems rarely connected to each other, we would never know the higher pleasures he reserves for the reader. When Baudelaire tells Houssaye in 1862 that readers of his prose poems will not be hanging on the “fil . . . d’une intrigue superflue,” I think he is remembering what he and Liszt were both saying in 1861, that Wagner’s operas do not depend upon “le fil de quelque intrigue” for their power. For it will be, as Baudelaire goes on to say in that same article, when we consider those operas “sans poèsie,” which is to say without their words and therefore without their plot, without “le fil de quelque intrigue,” that Wagner’s music would yet be a poetic work, endowed with all the qualities that constitute well-made poetry, all its elements united, conjoined, and reciprocally adapted (OC II: 803). The equivalent for the Fleurs du mal would be to consider how the poems fit together into one single poem, to detach our attention momentarily from the plot of each poem as well as from the kind of overarching plot that some commentators have thought they saw (from the birth of the poet in “Bénédiction” to his death in “La Mort des artistes” in 1857 and in “Le Voyage” in 1861), in order to enjoy the greater pleasures dependent on the exercise of memory. it is only after this point in the letter to Houssaye that Baudelaire introduces the serpent metaphor: “Enlevez une vertèbre, et les deux morceaux de cette tortueuse fantaisie se rejoindront sans peine” [Remove one vertebra, and the two pieces of this tortuous fantasy will effortlessly reunite]. It is important to bear in mind that he did not say, as Théophile Gautier’s mis- reading (or misremembering) would have it, that one could remove several vertebrae and the remaining pieces would join—“On peut enlever quelques- uns des anneaux et les morceaux se rejoignent toujours vivants” [One can remove some of the rings and the pieces, still alive, will reunite] (Gautier, cited in Murphy, 42)—but only one (at a time). This is in fact what we saw happen in the second edition of the Fleurs du mal when Baudelaire was obliged to remove poems from the first. “Le Léthé” (1857: 30), one of the offending six, came between “Le Vampire” (1857: 29; 1861: 31) and “Une nuit que j’étais près d’une affreuse Juive . . . ” (1857: 31; 1861: 32) in 1857; we found that the ties connecting the three poems (such as the “baisers” in all three) were strong enough that “Le Vampire” and “Une nuit . . . ” were still attachable. The same was true in the case of “La Béa-

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trice” (1857: 86; 1861: 115) and “Un voyage à Cythère” (1857: 88; 1861: 116), between which “Les Métamorphoses du vampire” (1857: 87) was removed, and “Le Flambeau vivant” (1857: 38; 1861: 43) and “Révers- ibilité” (1857: 40; 1861: 44) after the removal of “À celle qui est trop gaie” (1857: 39); although Baudelaire did change a line in “Le Flambeau vivant” to enhance the new arrangement, there were other strands running through the original three. Far from suggesting that the poems could just as well be assembled in any order the reader pleases, the vertebra metaphor actually testifies to the supreme importance of the order Baudelaire—and not some meddling editor—had given them. It also testifies to the fact that the Fleurs and the Spleen de Paris have the same sequential structure. When Baudelaire writes “Hachez-la en nombreux fragments, et vous verrez que chacun peut exister à part” [Cut it up in numerous fragments, and you will see that each can exist on its own], he does not go on to say, as he did in the preceding sentence about what would happen if one removed one vertebra, that the pieces would then automatically join up, but only that each could exist on its own. Of course they could, for the individual poems are each a work of art, like the verse poems. As Murphy remarks, “‘chacun peut exister à part’: certainly, but one could have said as much about the Fleurs du mal, for the autonomy of the individual poems did not prevent them from taking on a new meaning, larger and more complex, within the collection” (54). even though editors have tended to put the letter to Houssaye at the beginning of the book as if it were the author’s preface, this was clearly not Baudelaire’s intent. When he drew up the final table of contents at some point in 1865 or 1866, he did not even include the letter, much less give it pride of place as a preface. It is not even clear that he had meant for Hous- saye to print it as he did with the first installment in La Presse. The letter is not addressed to the reader, as is “Au lecteur” in the Fleurs du mal; it is addressed to an editor of only part of the whole, and the reader is spoken of in the third person. Kaplan, in his translation of the prose poems, had the wisdom to put it in an appendix, not at the head of the book. As Murphy concludes, “In other words, despite the letter’s affirmations but in conformity with the intentions therein expressed in a thinly veiled way, the poet did not want his work to be sliced up like a sausage, still less that its integrity as a whole be taken away. Nevertheless, he was obliged to recognize at every moment, in these humiliating negotiations, that he was not dealing from a position of strength” (58).

4. Charles Baudelaire, The Parisian Prowler: Le Spleen de Paris / Petits Poèmes en prose, trans. Edward K. Kaplan (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989), hereafter cited in text as Kaplan 1989.

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“L’Étranger” / “Le Désespoir de la vieille”

What Baudelaire said about the significance of heads and tails is borne out in the first pair of poems, for the head of the first (its first words) is repeated in the tail (the last words) of the second. “L’Étranger” [The Stranger] (1) begins with the question “Qui aimes-tu le mieux . . . ?” [Whom do you love the best . . . ?] (OC I: 277); “Le Désespoir de la vieille” [The Old Woman’s Despair] (2) concludes with “nous faisons horreur aux petits enfants que nous voulons aimer” [we appear horrible to the little children we want to love] (OC I: 278). One poem is the opposite of the other, for the stranger loves no one, while the old woman wants to love someone but cannot, since the child rejects her love. The one thing the stranger loves is clouds: “les nuages qui passent . . . les merveilleux nuages!” [the passing clouds . . . the marvelous clouds!] (OC I: 277)—as if Baudelaire were establishing a connection between this first poem in the Spleen de Paris and the last poem in the Fleurs du mal: “Les plus riches cités, les plus grands paysages, / Jamais ne contenaient l’attrait mystérieux / De ceux que le hasard fait avec les nuages” [The richest cities, the grandest landscapes / Never contained the mysterious attraction / Of those that chance makes with clouds] (“Le Voyage,” ll. 65–67). The old woman, as Henri Lemaitre notes, “having retreated into her eternal solitude, becomes . . . the sister of the stranger of the first poem.” For the stranger lives in solitude, too, having neither father, mother, sister, brother, nor friend. Robert Kopp asks, “Is the old woman the ‘sister’ of the stranger, as H. Lemaitre would have it? If the two are connected by their solitude and their isolation, they are nevertheless different. The stranger leaves the world, while the old woman seeks to communicate with it. Besides, there is nothing mysterious about her, nothing that would liken her to the ‘homme énigmatique’ [enigmatic man] of the preceding poem.” What Kopp is describing in his attempt to dismiss the notion that there could be any connection between the poems turns out to have the reverse effect, for he is showing that these two have precisely the kind of “same yet opposite” quality that neighboring poems in the Fleurs du mal also have. Of course they cannot be identical! The point is that they are close enough to be each other’s symmetrical opposite. Kaplan understands this: for him these two poems form a “diptych” in which the old woman’s search for affection “symmetrically contradicts the male outsider’s disclaimer, in the first fable, of companionship.” Lawler does not quite seem to grasp the symmetrical

5. Charles Baudelaire, Petits Poèmes en prose, ed. Henri Lemaitre (Paris: Garnier, 1962), 15n. 6. Charles Baudelaire, Petits Poèmes en prose, ed. Robert Kopp (Paris: José Corti, 1969), 188 (my translation); hereafter cited in text as Kopp 1969. 7. edward K. Kaplan, Baudelaire’s Prose Poems: The Esthetic, the Ethical, and the Reli-

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opposition but does note that the second poem “is an abrasive variation on the same theme” (1997, 177) as the first.

“Le Désespoir de la vieille” / “Le Confiteor de l’artiste”

In “Le Confiteor de l’artiste” [The Artist’s Confession] (3) the narrator, the artist of the title, speaks of the “Grand délice” [Great delight] of gazing out to sea, where he focuses on “une petite voile . . . qui par sa petitesse et son isolement imite mon irrémédiable existence” [a little sail . . . that by its littleness and its isolation imitates my irremediable existence] (OC I: 278). The “petite voile” also imitates, by its littleness, its isolation, and the letters that form it, the “petite vieille”—no other “petite v . . . le” appears in the collection—who withdraws into “sa solitude éternelle” [her eternal solitude] (OC I: 278) after the infant rejects her embrace. The “petite vieille” herself resembles the child whom she at first rejoiced to see (she “sentit toute réjouie en voyant ce joli enfant” [felt completely delighted to see this pretty child] [OC I: 277]), as the artist initially feels a “Grand délice” as he stares at the sea and sky (on whose horizon he spots the little sail). The child is “fragile comme elle . . . et, comme elle aussi, sans dents et sans cheveux” [so fragile like her . . . and, like her, too, toothless and bald]. That initial delight will change, in both poems. The woman will try to embrace the child, who will struggle and cry out, filling the house with his “glapissements” [yelpings] (OC I: 278); she will go weep in a corner. The artist will turn against the sight that so pleased him, when the thoughts it provokes become too intense. His nerves will cry out like the child: “Mes nerfs trop tendus ne donnent plus que des vibrations criardes et douloureuses” [My nerves, too tightly wound, produce only screaming and painful vibrations] (OC I: 278). The natural spectacle now revolts him. His impulse is to flee: “faut-il éternellement souffrir, ou fuir éternellement le beau?” [must one forever suffer, or forever flee the beautiful?]. He says to Nature, “laisse-moi!” [leave me alone!]. The study of the beautiful, he concludes, is a duel in which the artist “crie de frayeur avant d’être vaincu” [cries out in fright before being conquered] (OC I: 279). The poems together form a complex intertwining of symmetrical opposites. The artist resembles the “petite vieille” in that they both initially delight in what they see but then something happens that makes them suffer; they resemble each other as well in that each bears a resemblance to the

gious in The Parisian Prowler (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 14, 16, italics added; hereafter cited in text as Kaplan 1990. 8. based on Robert T. Cargo, Concordance to Baudelaire’s Petits Poèmes en Prose (University: University of Alabama Press, 1971).

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thing they see. But as the plot of the second poem unfolds, the artist comes to resemble the child: the child cries out, and the artist’s nerves cry out; the child is afraid of the woman, and the artist is afraid of the spectacle of nature; the child tries to escape the woman’s embrace, and the artist flees nature’s beauty. It’s a complicated play of mirrors, with the child mirroring the “petite vieille,” the “petite voile” mirroring the artist, the “petite voile” mirroring the “petite vieille,” and the artist mirroring the child.

“Le Confiteor de l’artiste” / “Un plaisant”

The narrator’s nervous system, reduced to “des vibrations criardes et douloureuses” [screaming and painful vibrations] by the spectacle of nature, will be made again to suffer in “Un plaisant” [A Joker] (4), this time by the spectacle of streets and sidewalks filled with carriages and pedestrians at New Year’s, when friends greet friends with gifts and salutations: “délire officiel d’une grande ville fait pour troubler le cerveau du solitaire le plus fort” [official delirium of a great city, made for troubling the brain of the most dedicated loner] (OC I: 279). The narrator, lost in “Solitude” and seeing himself in the “isolement” [isolation] of the sail, is a solitary again here. The “insensibilité de la mer, l’immuabilité du spectacle” [the insen- sitivity of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle] (OC I: 278) revolted the artist-narrator; in “Un plaisant” the narrator is revolted, “pris d’une incommensurable rage” [seized by an incommensurable rage] against the behavior of another man confronting another instance of nature’s refusal to react and its immutability when a joker doffs his hat and wishes a happy new year to a donkey trotting along (the donkey representing nature in this urban scene). “L’âne ne vit pas ce beau plaisant, et continua de courir avec zèle où l’appelait son devoir” [The donkey did not see this fine joker, and continued to run with zeal to where his duty called him]. It may be funny to compare a trotting donkey to the sea and sky, but the whole point of the encounter is that the animal shows no sign of having noticed the joker’s salutation or even his existence.

“Un plaisant” / “La Chambre double”

The narrator becomes that donkey in “La Chambre double” [The Double Room] (5). Time, in the form of deadlines for manuscript submissions

9. as Fritz Nies was perhaps the first to point out; Nies also notes that the men carrying their chimera in the next poem are, like the “âne” in “Un Plaisant” and the narrator as

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and the payment of debts, “me pousse . . . avec son double aiguillon.—Et hue donc! bourrique! . . » ” [pushes me . . . with his double goad. “So giddy-up, donkey!” (OC I: 282). As the joker wished the other donkey a good new year (on the occasion of the “nouvel an” [new year])—”‘Je vous la souhaite bonne et heureuse!’” [I wish you a good and happy one!]—so too does Time promise to announce to him something “bonne” [good] and “nouvelle” [new]: “Il n’y a qu’une Seconde dans la vie humaine qui ait mission d’annoncer une bonne nouvelle, la bonne nouvelle [Baudelaire’s italics] qui cause à chacun une inexplicable peur” [There is but one Second in human life whose mission is to announce good news, the good news that causes in each an inexplicable fear]. He means the news that one’s final hour has arrived and evidently looks forward to that news, so that he can cease to be a donkey under Time’s “brutale dictature” [brutal dictator- ship]—as the other donkey was under the goad of another brute, “harcelé par un malotru armé d’un fouet” [harried by a lout armed with a whip]. The inevitable passage of Time was of the essence in “Un plaisant,” too, since it takes place at Time’s official feast day, the passing of the year.

“La Chambre double” / “Chacun sa chimère”

The narrator of “Chacun sa chimère” [Each His Chimera] (6) sees a long “cortège” (OC I: 283)—recalling Time’s “cortège” (OC I: 281) of Memo- ries, Regrets, Spasms, Fears, Anguishes, Nightmares, Angers, and Neuro- ses—of men passing, each carrying on his back an enormous Chimera, heavier than a sack of wheat or coal. These men, like the narrator in 5 when he saw himself as a donkey under Time’s double goad, have become beasts of burden. As Time “pousse” [pushes] him (OC I: 282) these men are “poussés” [pushed] (OC I: 282) as well, by an unconquerable need to keep on walking. As he is “damné” [damned] to live, these men are “condamnés à espérer toujours” [condemned to always hope] (OC I: 283). The memories, regrets, fears, neuroses, and so on that make up Time’s cortège are the narrator’s own, and it is with regard to his own creations that Time pushes especially hard, for his pleasant reverie outside of Time is brought to an end by a knock at the door that could be from “le saute-ruisseau d’un directeur de journal qui réclame la suite du manuscrit” [the messen- ger from a magazine editor who is demanding the rest of the manuscript] (OC I: 281), and when he looks around his shabby apartment his gaze falls on “les manuscrits, raturés ou incomplets; l’almanach où le crayon a mar- qué les dates sinistres!” [the manuscripts, marked out or unfinished; the

“bourrique” in “La Chambre double,” being driven forward [vorwärtsgetriebenen] (278).

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calendar with sinister dates marked in pencil!], deadlines he is in danger of missing. Thus Time’s cortege parallels the cortege of chimera-bearing men, for each of the latter considered his burden “comme faisant partie de lui- même” [as if it were a part of himself] (OC I: 283).

“Chacun sa chimère” / “Le Fou et la Vénus”

The Chimera on each man’s back looked like headgear: “sa tête fabuleuse surmontait le front de l’homme, comme un de ces casques horribles par lesquels les anciens guerriers espéraient ajouter à la terreur de l’ennemi” [its fabulous head loomed above the man’s forehead, like one of those horrible helmets by which ancient warriors hoped to add to the enemy’s terror] (OC I: 282). The Fool in “Le Fou et la Vénus” [The Fool and the Venus] (7) has a strange head covering, too. Outfitted in traditional court jester attire, he is “coiffé de cornes et de sonnettes” [capped with horns and bells] (OC I: 284). The great size of the “énorme Chimère” [enormous Chimera], however, is matched by that of the statue the Fool adores, “une colossale Vénus” [a colossal Venus]. The Fool is emotionally attached to his Venus, but she does not return his devotion. His eyes speak for him: he is the loneliest of humans, deprived of love and friendship, yet he was made to understand and feel immortal Beauty, and he appeals for pity to the goddess the statue represents. “Mais l’implacable Vénus regarde au loin je ne sais quoi avec ses yeux de marbre” [But the implacable Venus gazes in the distance at I know not what with her marble eyes] (OC I: 284). “Chacun sa Chimère” and “Le Fou et la Vénus,” like previous pairs, are both parallel and opposite. In addition to the parallels noted above, in each the narrator observes strange behavior (on the part of the men with chimeras, and the Fool) and learns from those engaging in it (one of the men, whom he interrogates, and the Fool’s eyes, which tell his tale of woe). By way of opposites, (a) the chimera “n’était pas un poids inerte” [was not an dead weight] but enveloped and pressed down on the man with powerful muscles, while the Venus remains “implacable”; (b) the men are constantly on the move, “voyageurs” disappearing over the horizon, but the Fool is staying put, “ramassé contre le piédestal” [heaped against the pedestal] of the statue, which is not going anywhere, either; (c) the narrator is at first intrigued by the men with chimeras but is soon overcome by an irresistible “Indifférence” that weighs him down as much as any of the crushing Chimeras, while the Fool is the result of an equivalent “Ennui” on the part of some king, being “un de ces bouf- fons volontaires chargés de faire rire les rois quand le Remords ou l’Ennui

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les obsède” [one of those willing clowns obliged to bring laughter to kings obsessed by Remorse or Ennui] (OC I: 283–84).

“Le Fou et la Vénus” / “Le Chien et le flacon”

Whereas the Fool appreciates beauty, even to the detriment of his happiness, the dog in “Le Chien et le flacon” [The Dog and the Perfume Bottle] (8) does not, at least not in the form of a beautiful scent; he would prefer, the narrator tells us, to sniff at a packet of excrement—and in this he resembles the public. He calls his dog over to smell “un excellent parfum acheté chez le meilleur parfumeur de la ville” [an excellent perfume purchased from the best perfumer in the city] (OC I: 284). But when the animal places his wet nose on the open mouth of the bottle, he recoils in fright and barks reproachfully at his owner. An attentive reader may notice that in the preceding poem, the air surrounding the Fool and the Venus was redolent with perfumes so intense one could see them: “que les fleurs excitées brûlent du désir de rivaliser avec l’azur du ciel par l’énergie de leurs couleurs, et que la chaleur, rendant visibles les parfums, les fait monter vers l’astre comme des fumées” [that the excited flowers burn with desire to rival the blue of the sky by the energy of their colors, and that the heat, making the perfumes visible, causes them to rise up to the sun like steam] (OC I: 283). It cannot be by chance that Baudelaire bathes with perfume that scene about the appreciation of beauty and then in the very next poem sets up precisely the opposite response to beauty in the form of perfume (Fritz Nies noticed this as well [279]). The narrator says of the dog that he is one of “ces pauvres êtres” [those poor beings] for whom wagging the tail is “le signe correspondant du rire et du sourire” [the sign corresponding to laughing and smiling], language that echoes, yet inverts, his description of the Fool as “un être affligé” [an afflicted being] given the responsability “de faire rire les rois” [of making kings laugh]. Both the dog and the Fool are poor beings, and they are connected with laughter—one by laughing (in his peculiarly canine way), the other by provoking laughter in another.

“Le Chien et le flacon” / “Le Mauvais Vitrier”

There is a direct connection between the glass of the “flacon” [perfume bottle] and the glass so prominently featured in “Le Mauvais Vitrier” [The Bad Glazier] (9), and much else besides in the complex interlocking of parallels and opposites in play between that poem and “Le Chien et le

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flacon.” By way of parallel: the narrator sets a trap for the dog, getting it to come over to him by the promise of something pleasant that turns out to be very unpleasant; the narrator sets a trap for the glazier, inviting him up to his apartment, tempting him with the hope of making a sale, only to insult him and destroy his wares. He calls out to the dog: “Mon beau chien . . . approchez” [My fine dog . . . come here]; he calls out to the glazier: “—‘Hé! hé!’ et je lui criai de monter” [“Hey, hey!” and I called out to him to come up] (OC I: 286). There are two categories of smells, one of which is beautiful (perfume), the other not (excrement); there are two categories of windowpanes, one of which is beautiful (colored glass), the other not (plain glass). by way of opposition: (a) Glass is being shown in both stories, but it is the trickster who shows it (the glass “flacon”) in one poem; it is the trick’s victim who shows it in the other. (b) The victim reproaches the one who tricked him (“il aboie contre moi, en manière de reproche” [he barks at me, by way of reproach]) while the trickster reproaches his victim (“Impu- dent que vous êtes! vous osez vous promener dans des quartiers pauvres, et vous n’avez pas même de vitres qui fassent voir la vie en beau!” [You are shameless! You dare to go through poor parts of town yet don’t even have windowpanes that would make one see life as beautiful!] [OC I: 287]). (c) One trickster believes what he has to show the victim is beautiful while the other trickster pretends disappointment at learning that what his victim has to show him is not beautiful. The conclusion to “Le Mauvais Vitrier” recombines elements not only from “Le Chien et le flacon” but also from “Le Fou et la Vénus” in an interesting way. After the narrator chased the glazier out of his apartment and obliged him to retreat down six flights of stairs, “Je m’approchai du balcon et je me saisis d’un petit pot de fleurs, et quand l’homme reparut au débouché de la porte, je laissai tomber perpendiculairement mon engin de guerre” [I approached the balcony and I grabbed a small pot of flowers, and when the man reappeared at the door opening, I let my war machine fall straight down]. The word “débouché” recalls the moment the dog got his unpleasant surprise, placing his wet nose “sur le flacon débouché” [on the opened bottle]. The repeated débouché, a clue Baudelaire may have planted in the hope someone would begin to put all these pieces together, appears in only these two poems (as far as the Spleen de Paris is concerned). The crash of the flowerpot into the glazier’s glass, a forced combination of glass with flowers (a “floral bombardement,” as Murphy puts it [410]), echoes another combination of glass with flowers brought out by the particular way in which Baudelaire ordered his poems, placing “Le Chien et le flacon,” with its bottle of perfume, immediately after “Le Fou et la Vénus,”

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where flowers make perfume. More than that, the possibility of “verres de couleur . . . verres roses, rouges, bleus” [glass in color . . . pink, red, and blue glass], reminds us that the flowers that perfumed the setting for the Fool and his Venus were actually trying to intensify their colors, burning with desire to rival the sky’s azure “par l’énergie de leurs couleurs” [by the force of their colors]. The pot of flowers that crashes into the glass because it was not colored and therefore not beautiful reunites the elements of flowers, beauty, color, and glass from the two preceding poems. in the “Canevas de la dédicace” found among Baudelaire’s notes that was a draft for the letter to Houssaye, he considered describing what would become the Spleen de Paris as “tenant . . . du kaléidoscope” [having something . . . of the kaleidoscope] (OC I: 365), a toy that takes a finite number of elements and with each turn of the wrist reassembles them into a new symmetrically and aesthetically pleasing combination. It looks like a good description of Baudelaire’s modus operandi. It is particularly evident in this instance, where the elements of three successive poems (perfume, flowers, colors, glass, and beauty) are twice reassembled into new combinations. Lawler picks up on the kaleidoscope idea: “after the fashion of a kaleidoscope, ‘À une heure du matin’ twists the screw of ‘Le Mauvais Vitrier’”— he then cites other pairs (yet sees only twenty-five pairs among the fifty poems: 1 with 2, 3 with 4, etc., but not 2 with 3, or 4 with 5 . . . ). He does not, however, see how the same few elements are recombined from poem to poem; instead, he sees the same theme in all: “The same and the other write the endless subversions of the anticlimactic urban sensibility.”10 Margery Evans sees the kaleidosocope as emblematic of the collection’s structure and draws as well upon Lévi-Strauss’s discussion of the toy and its relation to bricolage: “A kaleidoscope involves the compositional principle of bricolage, the a posteriori association of elements. Patterns emerge, rather than being preordained from the start (although materials are selected with a view to favouring these patterns). . . . Le Spleen de Pais resembles a kaleidoscope in that it gains its effects from a sequence of fragments which appears at first sight to be completely random.”11 But despite what she says about the “sequence of fragments,” the interconnections she finds turn out not to be sequential but drawn from here and there in the collection—of the same sort and in the same way as J. A. Hiddleston in his book Baude- laire and Le Spleen de Paris. I agree with Evans that Spleen is like a kaleidoscope, a true instrument of bricolage that recycles the same preexisting set of elements, but I would point out that it does so by means of mirrors that

10. lawler, “Prose Poem,” 338. 11. evans, Baudelaire and Intertextuality, 3, 8; hereafter cited in text.

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create aesthetically pleasing symmetries. Each poem reuses elements from its predecessor, and mirror-reversal symmetries are often thereby formed. We just saw an instance of that in “Le Chien et le flacon” and “Le Mauvais Vitrier”; we will see many more.

“Le Mauvais Vitrier” / “À une heure du matin”

The “verres” the narrator desires that would make it possible to “voir la vie en beau” [see life as beautiful] are transformed in “À une heure du matin” [At One O’Clock in the Morning] (10) into the “beaux vers” he wants to create: “Seigneur mon Dieu! accordez-moi la grâce de produire quelques beaux vers” [My Lord God, grant me the grace to produce some beautiful verses] (OC I: 288). The idea that poetry can do what colored glass can do, to make something beautiful out of the sordid world, is what the title Les Fleurs du mal asserts. barbara Johnson draws a different conclusion from the vers / verres homonymy: “the story of the window panes’ destruction in ‘Le Mauvais Vitrier’ can be read as an anagrammatical play on the pun ‘briser les verres [to break the glass] = briser les vers’ [to break the poetic lines]. Moving from poetry to prose corresponds to an amputation of everything in poetry that lays claim to unity, totality, immortality, and power.”12 But the unity, totality, immortality, and power she finds absent from individidual prose poems are nevertheless present in the fabric that unites them, in the larger poem they together form. at one o’clock in the morning, when the narrator of the tenth prose poem finds the tranquility to go over the events of the day, he reproaches himself for “m’être vanté . . . de plusieurs vilaines actions que je n’ai jamais commises” [having boasted . . . of several wicked acts that I never committed]. As we have already seen, each poem in the Fleurs recycles elements of the immediately preceding poem as the unconscious recycles in dream elements of the immediately preceding day. The poems in prose work the same way, and in this instance the events of the immediately preceding day are also the events of the immediately preceding poem, where in fact the narrator did claim to commit an evil “action”—“une action d’éclat” [a brilliant action] (OC I: 286), and one of those “actions dangereuses ou inconvenantes” [dangerous or inappropriate actions] that may have a satanic origin—that he may not have committed, one that Baudelaire himself was thought to have committed because he wrote about it in “Le Mauvais Vit-

12. barbara Johnson, Défigurations du language poétique (Paris: Flammarion, 1979), 154.

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rier” but which he most probably did not commit (Murphy, 327–30). another of the events of the day he recalls was “[d’]être monté pour tuer le temps, pendant une averse, chez une sauteuse qui m’a prié de lui dessiner un costume de Vénustre” [to have gone up to kill time, during a rainstorm, at the apartment of a woman acrobat who asked me to draw her a Vénustre costume] (OC I: 288; Baudelaire’s italics). “Vénustre,” Yves Florenne suggests, may be a slip of the tongue on the acrobat’s part combining “Vénus” with “rustre” [rustic].13 The detail of the narrator being asked to sketch such a costume is a puzzle whose answer is available only to those willing to read the poems in pairs. The narrator is here retracing the steps of the glazier, to whom, he says, “je . . . criai de monter” [I called to come up]—as the narrator here had come up [“être monté”] to the acrobat’s apartment. In no other poem does the verb monter appear in the context of climbing the stairs to an apartment. In a symmetrical opposition typical of these poems in their sequential pairings, the narrator in 10 is placed in a situation symmetrically opposite that of the narrator in 9. The narrator in 10 goes up the stairs to pay a visit to someone in her apartment; the narrator in 9 receives the visit of someone who climbs the stairs to his apartment. The visitor in 9 brings panes of glass; the visitor in 10 provides a drawing of a Venus costume. As Murphy suggests, Venus in the kind of performance for which the sauteuse was preparing would hardly be wearing anything at all [“peu habillée”]. This was true of “sauteuses” generally, as Murphy attests in a quotation from Balzac’s Le Cousin Pons, where a character speaks of one particular sauteuse whom “one can see practically naked [“quasi nue”] every evening for forty sous” (Murphy, 186). Thus a Venus costume would have the transparency of . . . glass.

“À une heure du matin” / “La Femme sauvage et la petite-maîtresse”

Another reversal of the narrator’s situation transpires between “À une heure du matin” (10) and “La Femme sauvage et la petite-maîtresse” [The Wild Woman and the Coquette] (11). In “À une heure du matin,” the narrator in his apartment, having at last found a moment to himself at the end of a long day, is happy to be locked away: “D’abord, un double tour à la serrure. Il me semble que ce tour de clef augmentera ma solitude et fortifiera les barricades qui me séparent actuellement du monde” [First,

13. Charles Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris: Petits poèmes en prose, ed. Yves Florenne (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1998), 40n.

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a double turn of the lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will increase my solitude and fortify the barricades separating me now from the world] (OC I: 287). In 11 someone else is under lock and key, and she is, on the contrary, very unhappy. It is the “femme sauvage” the narrator takes his mistress to see, locked inside a “solide cage de fer” [solid cage of iron] where she shakes “les barreaux comme un orang-outang exaspéré par l’exil” [the bars like an orangutan exasperated by exile] (OC I: 289). We had just seen how in the intersection of “Le Mauvais Vitrier” (9) and “À une heure du matin” (10) the narrator in 9 parallels the female circus performer in 10 in that both play host to a visitor who offers the host something transparent to look through (the glazier’s glass, the narrator’s sketch of a costume for Venus). Now, in the intersection of 10 with 11, one female circus performer is matched by another, and both parallel a narrator: the one in 10 parallels the narrator in 9, and the one in 11 parallels the narrator in 10. The female circus performer in 10 will be a Venus, and thus nearly nude; the one in 11 is unclothed, too, except for her “poil postiche” [fake hair]; she is more naked still in her display of primal emotions: hunger (she eats living rabbits and chickens), rage, and pain. Her screams come “plus naturellement” [more naturally] (OC I: 290) because her husband is beating her with a real stick, not a stage prop.

“La Femme sauvage et la petite-maîtresse” / “Les Foules”

The narrator had brought his mistress to see the wild woman’s rage and suffering because he was fed up with her complaining attitude, expressed by her constant sighing. “En vérité, il me prend quelquefois envie de vous apprendre ce que c’est que le vrai malheur” [Truly, sometimes I’d like to teach you what true unhappiness is]. The narrator of “Les Foules” [Crowds] (12) expresses precisely the opposite sentiment: “Il est bon d’apprendre quelquefois aux heureux de ce monde . . . qu’il est des bonheurs supérieurs au leur, plus vastes et plus raffinés” [It is good to teach sometimes the happy ones of this world . . . that there are happinesses superior to theirs, vaster and more refined] (OC I: 291). Baudelaire adds to this symmetry of opposites by including among those whose happiness is superior “les prêtres missionnaires exilés au bout du monde” [missionary priests exiled to the ends of the earth], recalling the description of the caged woman as an orangutan “exaspéré par l’exil” [exasperated by exile]. The missionary exiles resemble her as well in that their happiness is greater than what those who take pity on them think it is: “ils doivent rire quelquefois de ceux qui les

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plaignent pour leur fortune si agitée et pour leur vie si chaste” [they must sometimes laugh at those who pity them for their fortunes so troubled and their life so chaste] (OC I: 292)—for the narrator says of her that “après tout, peut-être, les jouissances titillantes de la gloire ne lui soient pas inconnues. Il y a des malheurs plus irrémédiables, et sans compensation” [after all, perhaps, the titillating delights of fame are not unknown to her. There are misfortunes more irremediable, without any compensation] (OC I: 290). As a performing artist, despite the pain she endures for her art, she is not deprived of the compensation of glory. The reason the narrator of “Les Foules” is speaking of the surprisingly greater happiness of exiled missionary priests, shepherds of peoples, and founders of colonies is that it is akin to the delight he finds in immers- ing himself in crowds. “Celui-là qui épouse facilement la foule connaît des jouissances fiévreuses, dont seront éternellement privés l’égoïste, fermé comme un coffre, et le paresseux, interné comme un mollusque. . . . Ce que les hommes nomment amour est bien petit, bien restreint et bien faible, comparé à cette ineffable orgie” [He who can marry himself to the crowd with ease knows feverish delights from which the selfish, closed like a chest, and the lazy, imprisoned like a mollusk, will be forever deprived. . . . What men call love is very small, limited and weak, compared to that ineffable orgy] (OC I: 291). The poet enjoys the privilege of being both himself and another. Like a wandering soul he can seek out a body and enter it. “Pour lui seul, tout est vacant; et si de certaines places paraissent lui être fermées, c’est qu’à ses yeux elles ne valent pas la peine d’être visitées” [For him alone all is open, and if certain places appear closed to him, it is because in his eyes they aren’t worth the trouble to visit] (OC I: 291).

“Les Foules” / “Les Veuves”

In “Les Veuves” [Widows] (13) the narrator has more to say about those places closed to the poet: “s’il est une place qu’ils dédaignent de visiter, comme je l’insinuais tout à l’heure, c’est surtout la joie des riches. Cette turbulence dans le vide n’a rien qui les attire” [if there is a place that they disdain to visit, as I was just saying, it is especially the joy of the wealthy. That turbulence in a vacuum has nothing to attract them] (OC I: 292). In other words (as Nies also points out [279]), the narrator in 13 is alluding to something he said in 12. Kopp notes that this kind of “renvoi [cross- reference]” from one poem to another “goes against the principle set down in the prefatory letter to Houssaye” (Kopp 1969, 230). Indeed it does, and it shows that Sonya Stephens, for example—who is hardly alone in holding such an opinion—is wrong to claim on the basis of the letter that “We can

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enter and leave the text anywhere and the truncations of our individual reading will nevertheless be joined together.”14 For obviously, if we were to begin such a truncation with “Les Veuves,” we would have no idea what the narrator was talking about when he alludes to what he had just said in the immediately preceding prose poem, which we would not have read. That passage would simply not make sense. Clearly in “Les Veuves” the narrator is continuing to pursue the topic he took up in “Les Foules.” This is apparent not only when he refers back to the preceding poem but throughout “Les Veuves,” for there he does what he said in “Les Foules” that he liked to do, to pick out a person in a crowd and allow his soul to enter his or her body. He does so with two widows. He follows the first one for hours, until at last she “s’assit à l’écart dans un jardin, pour entendre, loin de la foule, un de ces concerts dont la musique des régiments gratifie le peuple parisien” [sat off to the side in a park, to hear, far from the crowd, one of those concerts that regimental bands provide the people of Paris] (OC I: 293). As it happens, he observes the second widow also listening to an open-air concert. Like the first widow, this one, too, is at some distance from the music. But unlike the first, who placed herself “loin de la foule” [far from the crowd], this one is in the midst of a crowd, and the narrator is at pains to understand why. She has, he thinks, too noble a bearing to be mixed up with “la foule de parias qui se pressent autour de l’enceinte d’un concert public” [the crowd of pariahs who press themselves up against the fence surrounding a public concert] (OC I: 293), people dressed in calico and overalls, without the money to buy a ticket (this concert, unlike the one the first widow heard, charges admission). “Pourquoi donc reste-t-elle volontairement dans un milieu où elle fait une tache si éclatante?” [Why then does she willingly remain in a milieu where she so strikingly sticks out?] (OC I: 294). Upon closer inspec- tion, he discovers why: she is accompanied by a child for whom she had to buy some superfluous thing he demanded with the money that could have paid her ticket to the concert. even though there are such striking continuities between these two poems, if we too look more closely we will find that both widows in “Les Veuves” provide a symmetrical opposition to the narrator in “Les Foules.” The narrator in “Les Foules” is attracted by crowds and enjoys mingling with them, but the first widow takes a seat to hear the music “loin de la foule” [far from the crowd] (OC I: 293). The narrator finds certain places closed to him, namely, those the rich inhabit, but he disdains to enter there, finding them of no interest. By contrast, the second widow would like to

14. Sonya Stephens, Baudelaire’s Prose Poems: The Practice and Politics of Irony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 61.

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enter the place where the rich are, the other side of the fence where the orchestra is playing, where there is “rien que de riche, d’heureux; rien qui ne respire et n’inspire l’insouciance et le plaisir de se laisser vivre” [nothing but the rich, the happy; nothing that does not breathe in and out the insouciance and pleasure of letting life go on] (OC I: 294). The narrator is acutely aware of crowds, of the poor, but the second widow, though in the midst of them, does not even see them, so intent is she on catching what fragments she can see and hear of the delights of the rich on the other side of the fence: “comme la plèbe à laquelle elle s’était mêlée et qu’elle ne voyait pas, elle regardait le monde lumineux avec un œœil profond, et elle écoutait en hochant doucement la tête” [like the plebeians with whom she had mixed and whom she did not see, she gazed at the luminous world with deep eyes, and she listened as she gently nodded her head] (OC I: 294). The poet, by contrast, having been denied entry into that luminous world of the idle rich, focuses his gaze on the poor.

“Les Veuves” / “Le Vieux Saltimbanque”

Baudelaire inverts things again with “Le Vieux Saltimbanque” [The Old Saltimbank] (14), for the “insouciance” that in “Les Veuves” (13) characterized the attitude of the idle rich (in the concert audience, where there was “nothing that does not breathe in and out insouciance”]) and that was denied the poor is now the property of the poor—“le peuple” [the people] on holiday, enjoying an “atmosphère d’insouciance” (OC I: 295) as they wander through a fair with magicians, clowns, fireworks, comedians, and music. The barrier erected in “Les Veuves” separating the poor from the happy rich, allowing the narrator to gaze with great interest at the “reflet de la joie du riche au fond de l’œil du pauvre” [reflection of the joy of the rich in the depths of the eye of the poor] (OC I: 294), is no more, for now the poor are “les uns et les autres également joyeux” [each and all equally joyful] (OC I: 296). The poor who in “Les Veuves” could only catch glimpses from outside the fence of “l’étincelante fournaise intérieure” [the sparkling furnace within] (OC I: 294) are now on the inside, where dancers leap and caper “sous le feu des lanternes qui remplissaient leurs jupes d’étincelles” [under the fire of lanterns that filled their skirts with sparks] (OC I: 295). but there is one exception to this general joy, the old saltimbanque who resembles each of the two widows on whom the narrator focused his attention, for different reasons. The first widow was “vieille” [old] (OC I: 293), as he is “vieux”; her solitude was “absolue” [absolute], as is his “misère absolue”[misery absolute] (OC I: 296) (the only appearances

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of that feminine singular adjective in the collection). She was “sans ami” [without a friend]; he resembled an old poet “sans amis” [without friends] (OC I: 297). The second widow had the money required for admission to the concert but could not spend it for that purpose; in a symmetrical reversal, it is the narrator who has the money to buy admission to the saltimbanque’s booth but cannot spend it. He wonders what curiosity, what marvel the old performer could have shown him in these stinking shadows, behind his torn curtain, but he doesn’t dare try to find out for fear of humiliating the man. He did decide, however, to leave some money on the plank where the price of admission would go, “espérant qu’il devinerait mon intention, quand un grand reflux de peuple, causé par je ne sais quel trouble, m’entraîna loin de lui” [hoping he would guess my intent, when a great movement in the crowd, caused by I know not what disturbance, dragged me far from him] (OC I: 296). That is, he was about to make an act of charity in the form of paying his admission to a show he didn’t intend to stay around to see.

“Le Vieux Saltimbanque” / “Le Gâteau”

“Le Gâteau” [The Cake] (15) tells in a number of respects the same story. The narrator tries to perform an act of charity, to give a slice of bread to a child, but his intention is frustrated by the sudden movement of others—the tussle between that boy and another for possession of the bread, which effectively destroys the coveted item, turning it into crumbs. The slice of bread corresponds to the money the narrator meant to leave for the saltimbanque, the violent battle between the boys to the sudden movement of the crowd, itself caused by some “trouble” that might well have been a fight like the one in which the would-be possessors of the bread were engaged, and which prevented the narrator from performing that act of charity. It is not by accident that the narrator points out that the old saltimbanque, the would-be object of his charity there, was the only person in that scene who could not obtain bread. Among the milling crowds and the performers alike there was “partout la certitude du pain pour les len- demains” [everywhere the certainty of bread for tomorrow] (OC I: 296), everywhere except “Ici” [Here], in the saltimbanque’s hut, where reigned “la misère absolue” [absolute misery]. In his desperate need for bread, he resembles the boy to whom the narrator’s “pain” [bread] looks so desirable that he calls it “gâteau” [cake], and who gets into a violent fight with “un autre petit sauvage” [another little savage] (OC I: 298) over possession of the slice the narrator gives him. To intensify the parallel, Baudelaire has the narrator call the saltimbanque a savage, too: his hovel was “plus misérable

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que celle du sauvage le plus abruti” [more miserable than that of the most brutish savage]. Finally, the two stories resemble each other as well in that both begin in joy and end in sadness. Their joys are similar in a surprisingly specific way. In the first, “Partout . . . sébaudissait le peuple en vacances” [Every- where . . . the people on holiday were rejoicing] (OC I: 295); in the second, the narrator speaks of the “joie calme où sébaudissait mon âme” [calm joy in which my soul was rejoicing] (OC I: 299) as he strolled through the countryside before his encounter with the little savages. The verb is rare, appearing in the Spleen de Paris in only these two poems and not at all in the Fleurs du mal. It is rare enough that the Petit Robert calls it “vieux” [archaic], giving as its only example precisely this sentence from “Le Gâteau.” Baudelaire took care, it seems, when he planted it in these neighboring poems as a subtle signpost pointing from one to the other, to put it in the same tense, person, and number. The sadness comes in the last paragraph of “Le Vieux Saltimbanque” when, obsessed by what he had just seen of the man’s poverty and despair, the narrator tells us, “je cherchai à analyser ma soudaine douleur” [I sought to analyze my sudden grief] (OC I: 297), and after the battle over the bread “j’en restai triste assez longtemps” [I remained sad for rather a long time] (OC I: 299).

“Le Gâteau” / “L’Horloge”

That initial joy in “Le Gâteau,” the “parfaite béatitude” [perfect beati- tude] he felt after he climbed up a mountain, above the clouds and far from the vulgar passions of life below, allowed his soul to feel “aussi vaste” [as vast] (OC I: 297) as the sky. When the narrator of “L’Horloge” [The Clock] (16) gazes into his beloved’s eyes, he sees something “vaste, solennelle, grande comme l’espace” [vast, solemn, huge like space] (OC I: 299). It is the hour of infinity, always the same, by contrast to the different hours he claims one can read in the eyes of a cat. In that initial joy at the beginning of “Le Gâteau” the narrator experienced something similarly solemn, the “sensation solennelle” that comes from seeing the shadow of a cloud pass over the surface of a mountain lake “comme le reflet du manteau d’un géant aérien volant à travers le ciel” [like the reflection of the cloak of an airborne giant flying across the sky] (OC I: 297). The lake is far beneath him, since he is already above the clouds (“les nuées . . . défilaient au fond des abîmes sous mes pieds” [the clouds . . . were parading in the depths of the abyss beneath my feet]); therefore it is “petit” [small]. It is also “immobile” (“le petit lac immobile, noir de son immense profondeur” [the little immobile lake, black from its immense depth]), as is, too,

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the hour of eternity he can read in his mistress’s eyes (“une heure vaste, solennelle . . . une heure immobile qui n’est pas marquée sur les horloges” [a vast, solemn hour . . . an immobile hour that is not marked on clocks] [OC I: 299–300]).15 The “heure . . . solennelle” is outside of time, as are the “époques solennelles” [solemn epochs] that the narrator in “Le Vieux Saltimbanque” (14) paradoxically calls the vacation days for the working class that are “une de ces solennités” [one of the solemnities] (OC I: 295) (Baudelaire persists in calling our attention to the paradox by stating it twice) on which saltimbanks and other circus performers count, hoping then to find paying customers. The paradox is only resolved when we realize what connects this solemn time with those in poems 15 and 16. The answer to the riddle of why he calls vacation time solemn is that, as we learn from the two succeeding poems, it is time outside of normal time.16 as for telling time from the eyes of a cat, in a note attached to the first publication of “L’Horloge” in Le Présent in 1857, Baudelaire wrote, “En supposant une mémoire parfaite ou au moins très exercée, il n’est pas difficile de comprendre comment on peut deviner l’heure dans l’œil d’un animal dont la pupille est très sensible à la lumière” [Supposing a perfect or at least a very practiced memory, it is not difficult to understand how one can determine the hour from the eye of an animal whose pupil is very sensitive to light] (OC I: 1320n). The narrator in the poem recounts that a missionary in China, noticing that he had forgotten his watch, asked a boy what time it was. The youngster went to get a cat, looked into its eyes, and reported that it was not quite noon. Baudelaire found this anecdote in L’Empire chinois by the French missionary Évariste Huc, who explained that a cat’s pupil narrows as noon approaches, becoming a slit the width of a hair, and then begins to dilate after noon has passed (quoted in ibid.). Huc recounts that before fetching the cat, the boy had looked at the sky to see where the sun was but clouds obscured the view. From the cat’s eyes one can tell how high the sun is in the sky. Thus in “L’Horloge” there are two sets of eyes that will give the hour: the cats’, which give a specific hour in relation to noon, and those of the narrator’s beloved (appropriately named Féline), which always give the same hour, the hour that is not an hour, “l’Éternité” [Eternity] (OC I: 300). We have seen how Baudelaire relates her eyes to the lake by associating the adjectives vaste, solennelle, and immobile with both, a correlation supported by the feeling of detachment from the finite world that the narrator felt when he was enjoying the mountain view, before he encountered the boy whose eyes pleaded for his bread (“un petit être . . . dont les yeux

15. nies also calls attention to the echoes between these passages (280). 16. i am indebted to my student Ashley Betz for leading me to this insight.

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creux, farouches et comme suppliants, dévoraient le morceau de pain” [a little being . . . whose hollow, shy, and supplicating eyes were devouring the piece of bread] [OC I: 298]), for as an out-of-this-world experience it gave him a glimpse of eternity. But there is also an intriguing parallel between the expanding and contracting pupil of the cat’s eye and the haunting image of a cloud’s shadow passing across the lake like a flying giant’s cloak: in both one deduces the sun’s presence despite (or because of) its absence. The encounter with the boy, and then with his seeming twin, ended the narrator’s reverie, bringing him back down to earth, to the finite from the infinite. But the piece of bread went in the opposite direction, from being a finite unit, a slice of the loaf, to disappearing into a near infinity of particles, crumbling as it passed from hand to hand, “éparpillé en miettes semblables aux grains de sable auxquels il était mêlé” [scattered in bits like the grains of sand into which it was mixed] (OC I: 299). Finally, it is worth noting that “L’Horloge” repeats the encounter of a traveler (the narrator in “Le Gâteau,” who began by saying, “Je voyageais” [I was traveling] [OC I: 297], now matched by the traveling missionary in China) with a boy—except that by a symmetrical reversal in one poem the boy requests something from the traveler (the bread) and in the other the traveler asks for something from the boy (the time).

“L’Horloge” / “Un hémisphère dans une chevelure”

It is well known that “Un hémisphère dans une chevelure” [A Hemisphere in a Head of Hair] (17), first published in 1857, closely parallels the verse poem “La Chevelure,” first published in 1859, and the twenty-ninth poem in the 1861 Fleurs du mal.17 As the narrator in “L’Horloge” can see eternity (“je vois l’heure; il est lÉternité!” [I see the hour; it is Eternity!] [OC I: 300]) in his mistress’s eyes, in “Un Hémisphère dans une chevelure” he sees something infinite: “dans la nuit de ta chevelure, je vois resplen- dir l’infini de l’azur tropical” [in the night of your hair, I see shine the infinity of the tropical azure] (OC I: 301). The equivalent passage in the verse poem lacks that infinity. The azure there is immense but not infinite: “Cheveux bleus, pavillon de ténèbres tendues, / Vous me rendez l’azur du ciel immense et rond” [Blue hair, tent hung with shadows, / You give me back the azure of the sky immense and round] (ll. 26–27). In this regard, at least, the prose poem is closer to its immediate predecessor in the sequence than to its counterpart in verse. Note as well the repeated “je vois”: “je vois . . . l’Éternité”; “je vois . . . l’infini.” These are the only two

17. See, for example, Johnson, Défigurations, 31–55.

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poems in the Spleen de Paris in which the narrator himself says “je vois.” He is transported not only by seeing her hair but also by smelling its fragrance: “Mon âme voyage sur le parfum” [My soul travels on perfume] (OC I: 300). Although the narrator of “L’Horloge” is focusing on the woman’s eyes, he somehow finds a reason to talk about her perfume, and to do so in relation to “mon esprit,” paralleling its relation to “mon âme”: she is “le parfum de mon esprit” [the perfume of my mind] (OC I: 299).

“Un hémisphère dans une chevelure” / “L’Invitation au voyage”

Like “Un hémisphère dans une chevelure” (17), “L’Invitation au voyage” [The Invitation to the Voyage] (18) gives the appearance of being a prose version of a poem from the Fleurs du mal, in this case one bearing the same title and first appearing in the 1857 edition (1857: 49; 1861: 53). When “La Chevelure” (1861: 23) appeared for the first time in the collection in 1861, the two verse poems were nowhere near each other. But their prose counterparts are tightly linked in the Spleen de Paris, partly because of passages in them that do not appear in the verse versions. But even apart from those passages, in both prose poems the woman addressed by the narrator resembles a foreign country. In 17 her hair transports him in his mind to a tropical locale because its smell and its resemblance to a black ocean like the one that could take him there; in 18 she resembles the country to which he would like to take her, which gives every indication of being Holland. The woman in 17 evokes the foreign land by metonymy, a part (her hair) for the whole; the woman in 18 by simile (“une contrée qui te ressemble” [a country that resembles you] [OC I: 302]) and analogy (“Ne serais-tu pas encadrée dans ton analogie . . . ?” [would you not be enclosed in your analogy . . . ?] [OC I: 303]). As 17’s title suggests, he finds another hemisphere in her hair; in 18 the country to which he invites her itself combines two hemispheres, for it is a country “qu’on pourrait appeler l’Orient de l’Occident, la Chine de l’Europe” [that one could call the Orient of the Occident, the China of Europe] (OC I: 301). The woman in 17 resembles the country in 18 that the woman in 18 resembles, but she resembles it in a different way. She resembles it because she too combines two hemispheres in one. That aspect of the country to which he invites the woman in 18 is part of what is attractive about it, but it is not one of the aspects that make her resemble it. The country resembles her with its “trésors, . . . meubles, . . . luxe, . . . ordre, . . . parfums, . . . fleurs miraculeuses . . . grands fleuves et . . . canaux tranquilles” [treasures, . . . furniture, . . . luxury, . . . order, . . . perfums, . . . miraculous

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flowers . . . great rivers and . . . tranquil canals]; the ships that arrive from another hemisphere, “Ces énormes navires . . . ce sont mes pensées qui dorment ou qui roulent sur ton sein” [Those enormous ships . . . are my thoughts slumbering or rolling on your breast] (OC I: 303). The country resembles her in its interiors as well as its exterior, in the furniture, flowers, and perfumes of “l’appartement” [the apartment], in the way the setting sun colors “la salle à manger ou le salon” [the dining room or the salon] (OC I: 302). Here Baudelaire is faithful to the verse version, where “Des meubles luisants, / Polis par les ans, / Décoreraient notre chambre” [Shining furniture, / Polished by the years, / Will decorate our bedroom] (ll. 15–17). But he was not so faithful to the verse version of the other poem, adding an interior scene, a bedroom, to 17 for which “La Chevelure” has no equivalent: “Dans les caresses de ta chevelure, je retrouve les langueurs des longues heures passées sur un divan, dans la chambre d’un beau navire, bercées par le roulis imperceptible du port, entre les pots de fleurs et les gargoulettes rafraîchissantes” [In caressing your hair I find the languor of long hours spent on a couch, in the stateroom of a fine ship, rocked by the imperceptible rolling of the harbor, between flowerpots and cooling water jars] (OC I: 301). The harbor in 17 is “fourmillant de chants mélancoliques, d’hommes vigoureux de toutes nations” [swarming with melancholy songs, with vigorous men of all nations] (OC I: 300–301). The “chants mélancoliques” are answered by the “chants monotones” (OC I: 303) of sailors in 18, but there are no equivalent songs in either verse version. That the men in the harbor come from every nation finds an echo in 18: “Les trésors du monde y affluent, comme dans la maison d’un homme laborieux et qui a bien mérité du monde entier” [The world’s treasures flow there, as into the house of a hardworking man who well deserves the best of the whole world] (OC I: 302). Although the men in “La Chevelure” are equally vigorous (“pleins de sève” [full of energy] [l. 11]), they do not come from every nation, as do those in the two poems in prose. There is opium in both prose poems, though in neither of the verse versions (nor in any other of the prose poems): in 17, “Dans l’ardent foyer de ta chevelure, je respire l’odeur du tabac mêlé à l’opium et au sucre” [In the burning hearth of your hair, I breathe in the odor of tobacco mixed with opium and sugar] (OC I: 301); in 18, “Chaque homme porte en lui sa dose d’opium naturel” [Each man carried in himself his dose of natural opium] (OC I: 303).18 The narrator in 17 says that his soul “voyage sur le parfum comme l’âme des autres hommes sur la musique” [travels on perfume as other

18. i am indebted to my students Brendon Honick and Allison Smith for pointing out this parallel, as well as the opposition between the opium that must be found elsewhere—in the mistress’s hair—and the opium that any man can find within himself.

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men’s souls do on music] (OC I: 300) (as it does in the verse version: “Comme d’autres esprits voguent sur la musique, / Le mien . . . nage sur ton parfum” [As other minds sail on music, / Mine . . . swims on your perfume] [ll. 9–10]). There is no explicit reference to music in the verse version of “L’Invitation au voyage,” but there is in the poem in prose: “Un musicien a écrit l’Invitation à la valse; quel est celui qui composera l’Invitation au voyage, qu’on puisse offrir à la femme aimée?” [A musician wrote the “Invitation to the Waltz”; who is the one who will compose the “Invitation to the Voyage” that one could offer one’s beloved?] (OC I: 302). This would appear to be yet another addition made to increase the connections between the two poems in prose.

“L’Invitation au voyage” / “Le Joujou du pauvre”

Nearly all of “Le Joujou du pauvre” [The Pauper’s Toy] (19) had previously appeared in a longer text, “Morale du joujou,” an essay Baudelaire first published in 1853. The narrator tells of seeing a rich boy looking through the bars of the gate to his château at a poor boy and his toy, a live rat in a box. The rich child finds this toy much more interesting than the expensive one lying on the grass beside him. Here is the way it is told in “Morale du joujou”:

À propos du joujou du pauvre, j’ai vu quelque chose de plus simple encore, mais de plus triste que le joujou à un sou,—c’est le joujou vivant. Sur une route, derrière la grille d’un beau jardin, au bout duquel apparaissait un joli château, se tenait un enfant beau et frais, habillé de ces vêtements de compagne pleins de coquetterie. Le luxe, l’insouciance et le spectacle habituel de la richesse rendent ces enfants-là si jolis qu’on ne les croirait pas faits de la même pâte que les enfants de la médiocrité ou de la pauvreté. À côté de lui gisait sur l’herbe un joujou splendide aussi frais que son maître, verni, doré, avec une belle robe, et couvert de plumets et de verroterie. Mais l’enfant ne s’occupait pas de son joujou, et voici ce qu’il regardait: de l’autre côté de la grille, sur la route, entre les chardons et les orties, il y avait un autre enfant, sale, assez chétif, un de ces marmots sur lesquels la morve se fraye lentement un chemin dans la crasse et la poussière. À travers ces barreaux de fer symboliques, l’enfant pauvre montrait à l’enfant riche son joujou, que celui-ci examinait avidement comme un objet rare et inconnu. Or ce joujou que le petit souillon agaçait, agitait et secouait dans une boîte grillée, était un rat vivant! Les parents, par économie, avaient tiré le joujou de la vie elle-même.

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[Concerning the toys of the poor, I have seen something simpler still, though sadder, than the toy for a penny: the living toy. On a road, behind the gate of a beautiful garden, at the end of each appeared a pretty chateau, stood a beautiful, spiffy child, dressed in those country clothes so full of affectation. Luxury, insouciance, and the habitual spectacle of wealth makes those children so pretty that one would not believe they were made from the same clay as middle-class or poor children. Next to him lay on the grass a splendid toy as spiffy as its owner, polished, gilded, with a beautiful dress and covered with feathers and beads. But the child was not concerned with his toy, and here is what he was looking at: on the other side of the gate, on the road, between the thistles and thorns, there was another child, dirty, rather puny, one of those kids on whom snot slowly makes its way in the mud and dust. Across those symbolic iron bars, the poor child was showing his toy to the rich child, who was examining it avidly as if it were some rare and unknown object. Now this toy that the little scum was teasing, disturbing and shaking in a grated box was a living rat! His parents, by thrift, had drawn this toy from life itself.] (OC I: 584–85)

Here is the version told in “Le Joujou du pauvre” (with the changes I will discuss italicized):

Sur une route, derrière la grille d’un vaste jardin, au bout duquel apparaissait la blancheur d’un joli château frappé par le soleil, se tenait un enfant beau et frais, habillé de ces vêtements de campagne si pleins de coquetterie. le luxe, l’insouciance et le spectacle habituel de la richesse, rendent ces enfants-là si jolis, qu’on les croirait faits d’une autre pâte que les enfants de la médiocrité ou de la pauvreté. À côté de lui, gisait sur l’herbe un joujou splendide, aussi frais que son maître, verni, doré, vêtu d’une robe pourpre, et couvert de plumets et de verroteries. Mais l’enfant ne s’occupait pas de son joujou préféré, et voici ce qu’il regardait: De l’autre côté de la grille, sur la route, entre les chardons et les orties, il y avait un autre enfant, sale, chétif, fulgineux, un de ces marmots-parias dont un œil impartial découvrirait la beauté, si, comme lœil du connaisseur devine une peinture idéale sous un vernis de carossier, il le nettoyait de la répugnante patine de la misère. À travers ces barreaux symboliques séparant deux mondes, la grande route et le château, l’enfant pauvre montrait à l’enfant riche son propre joujou, que celui-ci examinait avidement comme un objet rare et inconnu. Or,

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ce joujou, que le petit souillon agaçait, agitait et secouait dans une boîte grillée, c’était un rat vivant! Les parents, par économie sans doute, avaient tiré le joujou de la vie elle-même. Et les deux enfants se riaient lún à láutre fraternellement, avec des dents dúne égale blancheur. [Baudelaire italicizes “égale.”]

[On a road, behind the gate of a vast garden, at the end of which appeared the whiteness of a pretty chateau struck by the sun, stood a beautiful, spiffy child, dressed in those country clothes so full of affectation. luxury, insouciance, and the habitual spectacle of wealth makes those children so pretty that one would not believe they were made from the same clay as middle-class or poor children. next to him lay on the grass a splendid toy as spiffy as its owner, polished, gilded, dressed in purple and covered with feathers and beads. But the child was not concerned with his favorite toy, and here is what he was looking at: On the other side of the gate, on the road, between the thistles and thorns, there was another child, dirty, puny, sooty, one of those pariah kids whose beauty an impartial eye would discover if, in the same way as the connoisseur’s eye senses an ideal painting beneath the coachmaker’s varnish, he were to cleanse it of the repugnant patina of poverty. across those symbolic iron bars separating two worlds, the open road and the chateau, the poor child was showing his toy to the rich child, who was examining it avidly as if it were some rare and unknown object. Now this toy that the little scum was poking, disturbing and shaking in a grated box was a living rat! His parents, by thrift, no doubt, had taken this toy from life itself.] And the two children were laughing at each other fraternally, with teeth of equal whiteness.] (OC I: 304–5)

By adding that the bars between the boys separated “deux mondes” [two worlds], the world of the château and that of the open road, wealth and poverty, Baudelaire allows this poem to continue the theme of the confrontation between two worlds begun in “Un hémisphère dans une chevelure” (17) when the narrator is taken to another hemisphere by his mistress’s hair while still physically in this one, and continued in “L’Invitation au voyage” (18) when the proposed destination, “l’Orient de l’Occident” and “une Chine occidentale,” is the place where the two worlds of East and West come together. The bars of the gate now play the role that Holland played.

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holland was not only the place where one world meets another; it was also the place that resembled the woman to whom the poem is addressed. The theme of resemblance is equally strong in “Le Joujou du pauvre,” particularly in several additions that distinguish it from the earlier text. Baude- laire lays particular stress on this by italicizing “égale” in speaking of the whiteness of their teeth. And where the original version maintains a distinction between the boys by characterizing the poor one as snot-nosed and dirty, the prose poem asserts that beneath his grime a connoisseur would see beauty. This change makes him equal in that regard to the “enfant beau” [beautiful child] standing on the other side of the gate. The addition of the poem’s last sentence (“Et les deux enfants se riaient l’un à l’autre, avec des dents d’une égale blancheur”) does more than make the boys resemble each other. It works together with an addition made at the beginning of this episode, the “blancheur” added to the château, to enable them both to resemble a place—the château. The other addition at that point, that the château was “frappé par le soleil” [struck by the sun], makes its whiteness all the more evident. Thus both boys share with the woman in the preceding poem the quality of resembling a place, a place in both instances of luxury and wealth. The château displays “Le luxe, l’insouciance et le spectacle habituel de la richesse” [Luxury, insouciance, and the habitual spectacle of wealth]; Holland is a land “où tout est riche” [where all is rich] (OC I: 302), a place of “trésors” and “luxe.” baudelaire sets up an intriguing analogy between the “grille” separating the boys and the “boîte grillée” enclosing the rat. As Murphy remarks, the bars of the gate “find a miniature reflection, through a patent mise en abyme, in those of the rat’s cage” (284). Each boy is just as much imprisoned by the “grille” of the gate as the rat is by that of his cage. “The rich child, behind the bars, finds himself imprisoned in his closed space as firmly as the poor child sees himself excluded, for the outside could be for him a subject of dreams as suggestive as the inside is for the poor one” (ibid., 288). This leads us to see the essential symmetrical opposition the poems together construct: the “grille” of the gate, as we have already established, resembles Holland as a place where two worlds come together, but while Holland is a place to which one can easily travel, essentially an ideal destination, the gate (like the cage’s bars) makes travel impossible.

“Le Joujou du pauvre” / “Les Dons des fées”

The motif of giving gifts to children, evident in “Le Joujou du pauvre” (19) in the expensive doll the rich parents gave their child, in the rat the

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poor parents gave theirs, and in the inexpensive but clever mechanical toys the narrator encourages his readers to hand out for the fun of it, is replayed in “Les Dons des fées” [The Fairies’ Gifts] (20), together with that of rich children versus poor. The fairies award gifts to newborns that will decide, for good or ill, their future lives. Mistakes are made. The power to attract money is given to one who will have no need for it, as he is already rich. The love of beauty and poetic power is given to one from a poor family with no prospects for satisfying that longing. After all the gifts are dis- tributed and none remain, a shopkeeper shows up to demand one for his son. The fairy has nothing to give until she remembers that in such a case she has “la faculté d’en donner encore un, supplémentaire et exceptionnel, pourvu toutefois qu’elle ait l’imagination suffisante pour le créer immé- diatement” [the ability to give one more, an extra and exceptional one, provided that she have the imagination to create it on the spot]. She hesi- tates, still trying to think of a gift, before finally announcing that she will give his son “le Don de plaire” [the Gift of pleasing; emphasis in original]. Being a narrow-minded shopkeeper, the father is perplexed, “incapable de s’élever jusqu’à la logique de l’Absurde” [incapable of rising to the logic of the Absurd] (OC I: 307). Baudelaire here invites us to follow his own logic, by which this improvised gift is the equivalent of the gift the poor child’s parents improvised when there was no way they could give anything else, the rat that turned out to be so pleasing that the rich son abandoned his favorite toy to see it, so enticing that it brought to light the essential equality of those two children from separate worlds.

“Les Dons des fées” / “Les Tentations ou Éros, Plutus et la Gloire”

Supernatural beings also offer gifts in “Les Tentations ou Éros, Plutus et la Gloire” [The Temptations; or, Eros, Plutus, and Fame] (21). Instead of fairies, they are “Deux superbes Satans et une Diablesse” [Two magnificent Satans and a She-Devil] (OC I: 307). They appear to the narrator in a dream, each in turn proposing his specialty to him as a gift, which he refuses (in the dream, though upon waking he wishes he had not). Eros offers the ability “d’attirer les autres âmes” [to attract other souls] (OC I: 308), echoing the power of the gift the fairy gave the rich newborn, “la puissance d’attirer magnétiquement la fortune” [the power to attract wealth magnetically] (OC I: 306). But the closer parallel to that fairy’s gift is what Plutus offers, the power to obtain money. The “Diablesse” offers fame, of which she touts the “puissance” [power] (OC I: 310), a word that recalls the descriptions of two of the fairies’ gifts, “la puissance d’attirer”

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wealth and “la Puissance poétique” [poetic Power] (OC I: 306). It is difficult, and probably pointless, to try to match the three gifts in 20 with the three on offer in 21, though it is worth noting that there are three in both, and that the first fairy’s gift is identical to the second diabolical one (and poetic power is related to fame, and the gift of pleasing could be a form of the ability to draw others to oneself). In addition, the words echoing between the two sets of gifts—attirer and puissance—appear in no other poem in the collection.

“Les Tentations ou Éros, Plutus et la Gloire” / “Le Crépuscule du soir”

“Les Tentations” (21) presented two males and one female; so too does “Le Crépuscule du soir” [Evening Twilight] (22). The two men are acquain- tances of the narrator, each of whom begins to behave badly when evening twilight descends; the woman is twilight itself. The sky after sunset displays “une de ces robes étranges de danseuses, où une gaze transparente et sombre laisse entrevoir les splendeurs amorties d’une jupe éclatante, comme sous le noir présent transperce le délicieux passé” [one of those strange dresses dancers wear, in which a transparent and dark gauze affords a glimpse of the muted splendors of a scarlet skirt, as beneath the dark present the delectable past pierces through] (OC I: 312). This description parallels that of the female devil, who offered Fame: she had the “charme . . . des très-belles femmes sur le retour qui cependant ne vieillissent plus, et dont la beauté garde la magie pénétrante des ruines” [charm . . . of very beautiful women past their prime who however no longer age, and whose beauty preserves the penetrating magic of ruins] (OC I: 309). In both, the past penetrates through to the present. This section of “Le Crépuscule du soir,” where evening twilight is described as a woman resembling Fame in “Les Tentations,” is absent in the prose poem’s earlier appearance in 1855 (reproduced in OC I: 1327n). Absent too—and thus likewise added once Baudelaire began to conceive of his prose poems as a unified work of art—is the assertion that evening twilight is the moment when something hellish emerges: “les infortunés . . . prennent . . . la venue de la nuit pour un signal de sabbat” [unfortunates . . . take . . . the coming of the night as a signal for a witches’ sabbath]. They make a “sinistre ululation” [sinister ululation] that is an “imitation des harmonies de l’enfer” [imitation of the harmonies of hell] (OC I: 311). This appears at the beginning of “Le Crépuscule du soir” (22), paralleling the beginning of “Les Tentations” (21), where something else from hell put in a nocturnal appearance, the trio of temptors who “ont

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la nuit dernière monté l’escalier mystérieux par où l’Enfer donne assaut à la faiblesse de l’homme qui dort, et communique en secret avec lui” [last night mounted the mysterious stairs by which Hell conducts its assault on the weakness of the man who sleeps, and communicates with him in secret] (OC I: 307). In the only other appearance of sabbat in the volume, the first of those Satans carried a violin with which to make music “dans les nuits de sabbat” [on witches’ sabbath nights] (OC I: 308). The narrator of “Le Crépuscule du soir” informs us that his reaction to the onset of night is the opposite of that of others: “La nuit, qui mettait ses ténèbres dans leur esprit, fait la lumière dans le mien” [Night, which brought shadows to their mind, brings light to mine]. Therefore, this is one of those times, he adds, when one can see “la même cause engendrer des effets contraires” [the same cause engender contrary effects] (OC I: 312). The same cause engendered contrary effects in “Les Tentations,” too, for in his dream the narrator resisted the temptations, but when he awoke he regretted his scruples. He tried to call them back to say he had changed his mind. He is just the opposite of the two men of his acquaintance who behaved badly at night, of whom one “maltraitait, comme un sauvage, le premier venu” [mistreated, like a savage, the first person who came] and the other was “Indulgent et sociable encore pendant la journée” [indulgent and sociable still during the day] but “impitoyable le soir” [mer- ciless at evening] (OC I: 311)—for he behaved better at night than in the morning. In his dream he showed a “courageuse abnégation” [courageous abnegation] of which he had “le droit d’être fier” [the right to be proud] (OC I: 310). It was when he woke up that he wanted to misbehave—to succumb to temptation.

“Le Crépuscule du soir” / “La Solitude”

“La Solitude” (23) and “Le Crépuscule du soir” (22) first appeared in 1855 (Fontainebleau. Hommage à C. F. Denecourt). Although they bore the same separate titles then as they would in the Spleen de Paris (and publications in between), in 1855 the first words of the second referred directly back to the first: “Il me disait aussi,—le second,—que la solitude était mauvaise pour l’homme” [He—the second—told me too that solitude was bad for man] (OC I: 1329n). He meant the second of the friends who became irritable at night. In later versions (including the Spleen de Paris) the poem would begin “Un gazetier philanthrope me dit que la solitude . . . ” [A philanthropic journalist told me that solitude . . . ] (OC I: 313). Another passage in the 1855 version that would later disappear also refers specifically to what had just been said in “Le Crépuscule du soir”: “Il en serait donc

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de la solitude comme du crépuscule; elle est bonne et elle est mauvaise, criminelle et salutaire, incendiaire et calmante, selon qu’on en use, et selon qu’on a usé de la vie” [It would therefore be the same with solitude as it is with twilight: it is both good and bad, criminal and salutary, incendiary and calming, according to the use one makes of it, and according to how one uses life. This reference to the “crépuscule” was too direct an allusion to the preceding poem for Baudelaire to retain it once he decided to write a whole collection of such poems whose connections, though multifarious and persistent, would not be so obvious (although he did violate that rule, as we have seen, in “Les Veuves” [13] when he referred specifically to “Les Foules” [12] by saying “comme je l’insinuais tout à l’heure” [as I was just saying]). The two poems would still parallel each other in this way, both twilight and solitude being examples of a single cause engendering contrary effects, but the parallel would no longer be so explicitly made. The narrator would give the impression of speaking of twilight and solitude for their own sake, not because they were two instances of the same phenomenon. But at the same time Baudelaire would add additional connections. For one thing, he would put a reference to solitude in “Le Crépuscule du soir”:

Ô nuit! ô rafraichaissantes ténèbres! vous êtes pour moi le signal d’une fête intérieure, vous êtes la délivrance d’une angoisse! Dans la solitude des plaines, dans les labyrinthes pierreux d’une capitale, scintillement des étoiles, explosion de lanternes, vous êtes le feu d’artifice de la déesse Liberté!

[O night! O refreshing shadows! You are for me the signal for an inner celebration; you deliver me from anguish! In the solitude of the plains, in the stony labyrinths of a capital, sparkling of stars, explosion of street lamps, you are the fireworks of the goddess Liberty!] (OC I: 312)

The eighth of ten paragraphs in the final version of the poem, this is a reworking of the first paragraph of the 1855 version:

La tombée de la nuit a toujours été pour moi le signal d’une fête intérieure et comme la délivrance d’une angoisse. Dans les bois comme dans les rues d’une grande ville, l’assombrissement du jour et le pointillement des étoiles ou des lanternes éclairent mon esprit.

[Nightfall has always been for me the signal for an inner celebration and like deliverance from anguish. In the woods as in the streets of a great city, the darkening of the day and the emergence of the stars or of street lamps illumines my mind.] (OC I: 1327n)

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“Dans les bois” [In the woods] becomes “Dans la solitude des plaines” [In the solitude of the plains]. in the original version of “La Solitude,” although the narrator dis- agreed with the proposition that solitude was bad for all (after all, it was good for Robinson Crusoe), he did not explicitly refer to himself as a lover of solitude in the same way that in the original and subsequent versions of “Le Crépuscule du soir” he said that, contrary to its effect on certain others, evening twilight made his soul rejoice. But in the later version he would: “Je désire surtout que mon maudit gazetier me laisse m’amuser à ma guise. ‘Vous n’éprouvez donc jamais,—me dit-il, avec un ton de nez très-apostolique,—le besoin de partager vos jouissances?’” [I desire above all that my cursed journalist let me amuse myself in my own way. “So you never feel,” he said, with a very apostolic nasal tone, “the need to share your enjoyments?”] (OC I: 313). Being one of “les amoureux de la solitude” [the lovers of solitude] against whom he wishes the journalist would not make accusations, he does not feel the need to share his enjoyments with anyone else. he would certainly not want to share them with a “bavard” [talkative person] like the journalist, “dont le suprême plaisir consiste à parler du haut d’une chaire ou d’une tribune” [whose supreme pleasure consists in speaking from the height of a pulpit or a forum], a member of one of those “races jacassières . . . qui accepteraient avec moins de répugnance le supplice suprême, s’il leur était permis de faire du haut de l’échaufaud une copieuse harangue” [chattering races . . . who would accept with less repugnance the supreme penalty, if they were allowed to make from the height of the scaffold a fulsome harangue] (OC I: 313). The rare expression “du haut de,” appearing nowhere else in the prose poems, subtly links the journalist to other noisemakers, the “fous” [insane] in 22 whom twilight excites and whose sinister ululation “du haut de la montagne arrive à mon balcon . . . un grand hurlement, composée d’une foule de cris discordants, que l’espace transforme en une lugubre harmonie” [from the height of the mountain arrives at my balcony . . . a great howling, composed of a crowd of discordant cries that distance transforms into a lugubrous harmony] (OC I: 311).

“La Solitude” / “Les Projets”

The chattering of “races jacassières” continues into “Les Projets” [The Plans] (24) when a man has a daydream of living with his mistress in a cabin in the tropics from which they would hear, “au delà de la varangue, le tapage des oiseaux ivres de lumière, et le jacassement des petites négresses” [beyond the veranda, the din of birds drunk with light, and the chattering

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of little Negresses] (OC I: 315). No form of jacasser appears in any other of Baudelaire’s poems. The plan-making man had first dreamed of living with his mistress in different places—a palace, a tropical island, and a country inn—but then changed his mind: “en rentrant seul chez lui, . . . il se dit: ‘. . . Pourquoi contraindre mon corps à changer de place, puisque mon âme voyage si lestement? Et à quoi bon exécuter des projets, puisque le projet est en lui-même une jouissance suffisante?’” [returning home alone, . . . he said to himself: “ . . . Why force my body to change location, when my soul travels with such agility? And why carry out plans, since the planning is in itself a sufficient enjoyment?”] (OC I: 315). He decided in the end just to make plans and not to carry them out. His soul alone will travel; he will not be traveling with his mistress to some location or other, to share its joys with her there. He thus comes to resemble the narrator of “La Soli- tude,” whose answer to the question “Vous n’éprouvez donc jamais . . . le besoin de partager vos jouissances?” [“So you never feel . . . the need to share your enjoyments?”] (OC I: 313) is no. Both poems are about solitary jouissances. That conclusion is missing in the original 1857 version of “Les Projets,” which ended instead with a denunciation of dreaming (that is, dreaming about such things as palaces, tropical islands, and country inns) as a waste of time and a substitute for action. It would appear that when Baudelaire began to think of putting the poems in the order he adopted, he wrote the new conclusion. Likewise, while the “jacassements des petites négresses” were always a feature of “Les Projets,” the mention of “races jacassières” was not present in the original version of “La Solitude” (OC I: 1329).

“Les Projets” / “La Belle Dorothée”

“La Belle Dorothée” [Beautiful Dorothy] (25) takes the second of the three daydreams of “Les Projets” (24), in which the man full of projects imagines taking his mistress to a tropical landscape, and recycles it into a description of a beautiful woman from the tropics, as opposed to one brought there. Dorothy lives in a “petite case . . . coquettement arrangée . . . la mer . . . à cent pas de là” [little cabin . . . charmingly decorated . . . the sea . . . a hundred paces from there] (OC I: 317); the man had imagined for his mistress “Au bord de la mer, une belle case” [At the edge of the sea, a beautiful cabin] (OC I: 314). In the cabin Dorothy takes pleasure “à fumer, à se faire éventer” [in smoking, in having herself fanned] (OC I: 317); the mistress would likewise repose in her cabin, “si bien éventée, fumant” [so well fanned, smoking] (OC I: 315). No other woman in the Spleen de Paris smokes or is fanned, nor does any other “case” [cabin] appear (Nies notes

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the linkage between the seaside cabins and the women smoking and being fanned [280]). The man imagines their cabin bedroom “éclairée d’une lumière rose tamisée par les stores” [lit by a pink light filtered through the blinds]; Dorothy’s “ombrelle rouge, tamisant la lumière, projette sur son visage sombre le fard sanglant de ses reflets” [red umbrella, filtering the light, projects onto her dark face the bloody rouge of its reflections] (OC I: 316). The man with plans had imagined his mistress “descendant . . . les degrés de marbre d’un palais” [descending . . . the marble steps of a palace] (OC I: 314); when Dorothy walks on the sand, her foot is “pareil aux pieds des déesses de marbre que l’Europe enferme dans ses musées” [like the feet of marble goddesses that Europe encloses in its museums] (OC I: 316). It is no wonder that she “s’avance . . . souriant . . . comme si elle apercevait au loin dans l’espace un miroir reflétant sa démarche et sa beauté” [advances . . . smiling . . . as if she saw in the distant space a mirror reflecting her gait and her beauty], for that mirror exists in the preceding poem. It is a beautifully self-referential moment.

“La Belle Dorothée” / “Les Yeux des pauvres”

The first sentence of “La Belle Dorothée” (25)—“Le soleil accable la ville de sa lumière droite et terrible; le sable est éblouissant et la mer miroite” [The sun beats down on the city with its direct and terrible light; the sand is dazzling and the sea shimmers] (OC I: 316)—is itself mirrored in the description of the café in “Les Yeux des pauvres” [The Eyes of the Poor] (26): “Le gaz lui-même y déployait toute l’ardeur d’un début, et éclairait de toutes ses forces les murs aveuglants de blancheur, les nappes éblouissantes des miroirs” [The gaslight itself was deploying all the ardor of an opening, and illumined with all its forces the blindingly white walls, the dazzling surfaces of the mirrors] (OC I: 318). That is, miroite is mirrored in the miroirs, and éblouissant in éblouissantes. What does Baudelaire mean by this mirroring effect, which casts these two scenes—the sandy beach where Dorothy proudly walks, barefoot, to her assignation with a young officer and the new Paris café where the poet and his mistress will hear what the eyes of the poor have to say—in the same dazzling, mirrored light? i believe he means to set up, as he so often does, a symmetrical opposition between the poems—in particular, between Dorothy and the trio comprising an exhausted father and his two sons, one of whom the father must carry because he is too weak to walk. Both Dorothy and the three are poor and oppressed, though she is a member of the working poor, a prostitute piling up piasters to buy her eleven-year-old sister, already nubile, out of slavery. She will reach this goal because “le maître de l’enfant est si avare,

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trop avare pour comprendre une autre beauté que celle des écus!” [the child’s master is so greedy, too greedy to understand another beauty than that of money!] (OC I: 317). Part of the network of echoing words in the text these two poems comprise are this maître and the one the narrator’s mistress would like to call on to remove the offending sight of the poor: “‘Ces gens-là me sont insupportables avec leurs yeux ouverts comme des portes cochères! Ne pourriez-vous pas prier le maître du café de les éloi- gner d’ici?’” [Those people there are unbearable with their eyes as wide as carriage gates! Couldn’t you ask the master of the café to make them go away?] (OC I: 319). Another part of that network is the “trop [too] + adjective + pour [to] + infinitive + autre [other] + noun (infinitive’s direct object) + que [than] + noun (object compared)” found in the description of the slave owner, “trop avare pour comprendre un autre beauté que celle des écus,” and in what the narrator says of the younger brother’s expressive eyes, that they were “trop fascinés pour exprimer autre chose qu’une joie stupide et profonde” [too fascinated to express anything other than a stupified and deep joy] (OC I: 318). No similarly constructed phrase appears anywhere else in the Spleen de Paris (as can be attested by searching Cargo’s Concordance for “trop,” “pour,” and “autre”). Why would Baudelaire want to suggest a parallel between the slave master and the younger brother? Because what he is really setting up is not so much a parallel as an opposition, though one based on an underlying parallel. The younger brother parallels the younger sister (in that each is the younger of two siblings), but as one of the oppressed he is the opposite of her oppressive master. That Baudelaire chooses to speak of these two opposites in practically the same turn of phrase is startling, for it suggests that the fact that one is an oppressor and the other one of the oppressed is for him subservient to the play of the text. That play is at work even in the most pathos-filled moment, when the older brother’s eyes seem to say, as he stares at the splendor of the luxurious café, “c’est une maison où peuvent seuls entrer les gens qui ne sont pas comme nous” [it is a house where only the people who are not like us can enter]. For Baudelaire invites us to compare this older brother to the older sister, who displays precisely the opposite attitude toward the Paris Opera, the café’s equivalent as a luxurious place where, one would have thought, the poor cannot enter. Dorothy, by contrast to the boy, seems fully confident that she can. When she has her assignation with the young officier “Infailliblement elle le priera, la simple créáture, de lui décrire le bal de l’Opéra, et lui demandera si on peut y aller pieds nus . . . et puis encore si les belles dames de Paris sont toutes plus belles qu’elle” [Infallibly she will ask him, the simple creature, to describe for her the Opera Ball, and will ask him if one can go there barefoot . . . and then again if the beautiful ladies of Paris are all more beautiful than her] (OC

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I: 317). To go barefoot, the narrator had explained, was normally a sign of slavery, but “Dorothée est si prodigieusement coquette, que le plaisir d’être admirée l’emporte chez elle sur l’orgueil de l’affranchie, et, bien qu’elle soit libre, elle marche sans souliers” [Dorothy is so prodigiously flirtatious that the pleasure of being admired is more important to her than the pride of not being a slave, and even though she is free she walks without shoes] (OC I: 316). Her bare feet, the narrator says, resemble those of the marble goddesses in Europe’s museums. By contrast, those of the younger brother are in such poor shape that he must be carried, being “trop faible pour marcher” [too weak to walk] (OC I: 318). The family must keep walking because they are homeless—which is why the café seems a “maison” [house] they cannot enter; doubtless they all have tired feet. Baudelaire symmetrically opposes feet too tired to walk with feet worthy of being sculpted in marble, and a poor child who knows he cannot enter a place of luxury to a poor former slave who imagines she could, were she in Paris—and would like to do so on her own terms, barefoot.

“Les Yeux des pauvres” / “Une mort héroïque”

In “Une mort héroïque” [A Heroic Death] (27) a despotic prince condemns to death his favorite actor, noted for his “rôles muets” [mute roles] (OC I: 321), together with the rest of the conspirators who had tried to overthrow him. But the rumor spreads that a pardon is imminent, for he has arranged for Fancioulle to perform once more. The real reason, the narrator suggests, was that the prince wanted to see how the actor would perform under pressure. Fancioulle’s success that night is so great that the prince, though he joins in the thunderous applause, is jealous of his power to command the crowd. He summones a page to emit a shrill and prolonged mocking whistle that interrupts the actor, who seems to awaken from a dream, shuts his eyes, opens them again very wide, staggers, then drops dead on the stage. baudelaire inserts so many parallels between this poem and “Les Yeux des pauvres” (26) that they nearly become two versions of the same story. The father and two sons are mute, though they speak through their eyes; Fancioulle plays the scene as a mute: the narrator tells us that he excelled in “les rôles muets” and that after his death, although several “mimes” (OC I: 323) were recruited in an effort to replace him, none could match his talents. The trio’s eyes, as the narrator’s female companion complains, were “ouverts comme des portes cochères” [as wide as carriage gates] (OC I: 319); when Fancioulle opened his eyes again after the shock of the whistle, they were “démesurément agrandis” [enlarged beyond measure] (OC I: 322).

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at Fancioulle’s final performance, “la petite cour déploya toutes ses pompes, et il serait difficile de concevoir, à moins de l’avoir vu, tout ce que la classe privilégiée d’un petit État, à ressources restreintes, peut montrer de splendeurs pour une vraie solennité” [the little court deployed all its pomp, and it would be difficult to imagine, without having seen it, all that the privileged class of a small State with limited resources could show in the way of splendors for a truly solemn occasion] (OC I: 320–21). By planting some telling verbal echoes Baudelaire implies that the court corresponds to the new boulevard and the equally new café, the former “montrant déjà glorieusement ses splendeurs inachevées” [showing already gloriously its unfinished splendors], while in the latter the gaslight “déployait toute l’ardeur d’un début” [deployed all the ardor of an opening] (OC I: 318). These expressions are rare in the volume, “déployer” with “toute[s]” and “montrer” with “splendeur[s]” appearing nowhere else. The court is, as the narrator says, a privileged class; the café is open only to a privileged class, as the older brother’s eyes assert. The privileged classes in both poems are spectators, the audience for Fancioulle’s performance and the audience the narrator and his mistress become to the spectacle of the poor family standing before them in the street. Both Fancioulle and the poor family are endowed with the power to communicate without words. Although originally a friend of the Prince and thus allied with the privileged class, Fancioulle, inspired by freedom and patriotism, had abandoned that status to join in the conspiracy to overthrow the sovereign. yet the poor family are spectators themselves to the splendor of the café: “ces six yeux contemplaient fixement le café nouveau avec une admiration égale, mais nuancée diversement par l’âge. . . . Quant aux yeux du plus petit, ils étaient trop fascinés pour exprimer autre chose qu’une joie stupide et profonde” [those six eyes contemplated fixedly the new café with an equal admiration, though with diverse nuances according to their ages. . . . As for the eyes of the littlest, they were too fascinated to express anything other than a stupified and deep joy] (OC I: 318). Admiration and joy—which appear together in no other prose poem—were likewise what the spectators felt at Fancioulle’s performance: “Les explosions de la joie et de l’admiration ébranlèrent à plusieurs reprises les voûtes de l’édifice” [Explosions of joy and admiration repeatedly shook the vaults of the edifice] (OC I: 322). a detail in the café’s decor, embellishing its walls along with the gilded cornices, nymphs, goddesses, Hébés, and Ganymedes, is a sly nod at what will happen in “Une mort héröique”: “les pages aux joues rebondies traînés par les chiens en laisse” [the pages with puffed-out cheeks dragged by dogs on leashes] (OC I: 318). For the “petit page” [little page] who carried out his master’s errand by emitting the “coup de sifflet aigu, prolongé”

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[high-pitched and prolonged whistle] (OC I: 322) may well have puffed out his cheeks to do it. In any case he is the only other page in the Spleen de Paris. Seeing the expressive eyes of the poor, the narrator felt a bit ashamed “de nos verres et de nos carafes, plus grands que notre soif” [of our glasses and carafes, bigger than our thirst] (OC I: 319). Baudelaire aligns him with the prince by saying that Providence had given him “des facultés plus grandes que ses États” [faculties bigger than his States], for his great misfortune was “il n’eut jamais un théâtre assez vaste pour son génie” [he never had a theater vast enough for his genius] (OC I: 320). (The expression “plus grand que” in this sense of “too big for” appears only in these two poems.) The prince, like many of Baudelaire’s narrators (although not a narrator himself), is an artist confronted with Ennui: “véritable artiste lui-même, il ne connaissait d’ennemi dangereux que l’Ennui” [a true artist himself, the only dangerous enemy he knew was Ennui].

“Une mort héroïque” / “La Fausse Monnaie”

Mute eloquence, already visible in the eyes of the poor and in Fancioulle’s last performance, makes a third consecutive appearance in “La Fausse Mon- naie” [The Counterfeit Coin] (28) when the narrator and a friend are confronted by a beggar: “Je ne connais rien de plus inquiétant que l’éloquence muette de ces yeux suppliants, qui contiennent à la fois, pour l’homme sensible qui sait y lire, tant d’humilité, tant de reproches” [I know nothing more disturbing than the mute eloquence of those supplicant eyes, containing, for the man who knows how to read it, so much humility, so many reproaches] (OC I: 323). Both men give him money, but the friend gives a much larger amount. The narrator says to his friend, “Vous avez raison; après le plaisir d’être étonné, il n’en est pas de plus grand que celui de causer une surprise” [You were right to do that. Beyond the pleasure of being astonished, there is none greater than causing a surprise]. Here he echoes what the narrator said in “Une mort héroïque” when he remarked that “l’étonnement . . . est une des formes les plus délicates du plaisir [astonishment . . . is one of the most delicate forms of pleasure] (OC I: 320). (The words étonner / étonnement and plaisir appear together only in these two passages.) Indeed, the prince indulged in the pleasure of causing Fancioulle to be surprised in the middle of his performance. He might not have intended for the surprise to be fatal: “avait-il lui-même deviné toute l’homicide efficacité de sa ruse? Il est permis d’en douter” [had he himself anticipated the homicidal power of his ruse? There are grounds for doubt] (OC I: 323).

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but then the friend reveals that the coin he gave was counterfeit. The narrator thinks to himself that such an act could only be excused “par le désir de créer un événement dans la vie de ce pauvre diable, peut-être même de connaître les conséquences diverses, funestes ou autres, que peut engendrer une pièce fausse dans la main d’un mendiant” [by the desire to create an event in the life of the poor devil, perhaps even to find out the various consequences, catastrophic or otherwise, that a counterfeit coin in the hand of a beggar can produce] (OC I: 324). A parallel motivation, in the narrator’s opinion, lay behind the prince’s decision to have Fancio- ulle perform after he had been condemned to death. The prince “voulait juger de la valeur des talents scéniques d’un homme condamné à mort. Il voulait profiter de l’occasion pour faire une expérience physiologique d’un intérêt capital [Baudelaire’s italics], et vérifier jusqu’à quel point les facultés habituelles d’un artiste pouvaient être altérées ou modifiées par la situation extraordinaire où il se trouvait” [wanted to judge the quality of the theatrical talents of a man condemned to death. He wanted to profit from the occasion to conduct a physiological experiment of capital interest, and to see how far a performer’s normal abilities could be altered or modified by the extraordinary situation in which he found himself] (OC I: 320). What would the beggar do with the counterfeit money? Would he multiply it in real money? Would it get him arrested and thrown in prison? What would Fancioulle do on stage, “l’étrange bouffon, qui bouffonnait si bien la mort” [the strange buffoon, who buffooned death so well] (OC I: 322), when fiction became reality? but just as the whistle “interrompit Fancioulle . . . , réveillé dans son rêve” [interrupted Fancioulle . . . , awakened from his dream] (OC I: 322), so too the friend, says the narrator, “rompit brusquement ma rêverie” [abruptly shattered my reverie] (OC I: 324) to say that he agrees that there is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for. (These are the only instances in the volume of a rêve or rêverie being suddenly interrupted.) From this reply the narrator sadly concludes that his friend had not intended after all to conduct an experiment but had just wanted to do some charity on the cheap. But, thinking of what could befall the beggar were he caught passing the counterfeit coin, he says, “On n’est jamais excusable d’être méchant, mais il y a quelque mérite à savoir qu’on l’est; et le plus irréparable des vices est de faire le mal par bétise” [One can never be excused for being wicked, but there is some merit in knowing that one is; and the most irreparable of vices is to do evil out of stupidity]. This judgment should fall on the prince as well, if indeed it is true, as the narrator suspects, that he had not intended for Fancioulle to die from the interruption but only wanted to spoil his success. (Lawler agrees, finding that in this passage from “La Fausse Monnaie” the narra-

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tor “sums up the meaning of the two poems when taken together” [1997, 209n38].)

“La Fausse Monnaie” / “Le Joueur généreux”

In “Le Joueur généreux” [The Generous Gambler] (29), the narrator passes the devil on a crowded boulevard, recognizes him immediately, and, since he has always wanted to make his acquaintance, accepts his unspoken invitation to follow him to his subterranean Parisian lair. They wine and dine in the lap of luxury. In gambling for pleasure, the narrator loses his soul but feels no more emotion than if he had misplaced his calling card. As their evening comes to a close, the devil shows his generosity by announcing that he is giving him what he would have won had he not lost his soul, the possibility of overcoming Ennui. His every wish will be granted: power and adulation, pleasures, travel, women; and “l’argent, l’or, les diamants . . . vi- endront vous chercher et vous prieront de les accepter, sans que vous ayez fait un effort pour les gagner” [silver, gold, diamonds . . . will seek you out and beg you to accept them, without your having made an effort to earn them] (OC I: 327). On his way home, the narrator begins to doubt whether he had really received such a gift: “je n’osais plus croire à un si prodigieux bonheur” [I no longer dared to believe in such a prodigious good fortune] (OC I: 328). As he fell asleep in his bed, he prayed to God to make the devil keep his word. Suzanne Guerlac writes that “the ‘prodigality’ of the flâneur” who gave the beggar the counterfeit coin in “La Fausse Monnaie” “is thematically related to the ‘generosity’ of the devil.”19 Indeed it is, for the surprising “prodigalité” [prodigality] (OC I: 324) of the former is echoed in the equally surprising “prodigieux bonheur” [prodigious good fortune] (OC I: 328) in which the narrator begins to find it hard to believe. Baudelaire here invites us to compare what the narrator’s friend gave to what the devil gave, the counterfeit coin to the promise of satisfying every wish, including that of wealth. Both are based in faith and subject to doubt: the coin has value only if the person to whom the beggar pays it believes in it, without looking at it too closely; the narrator wants to believe in the sevil’s “munifi- cence” but calls on a higher power to make it good. As Murphy remarks, “‘Le Joueur généreux’ ends with an attempt to have God guarantee the Devil’s promise, a situation that makes one think of the paradox that con-

19. Suzanne Guerlac, The Impersonal Sublime: Hugo, Baudelaire, Lautréamont (Stan- ford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 113.

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stitutes ‘La Fausse Monnaie’” (563n). He also points out that the friend who gave the counterfeit coin was behaving as “a gambler” (442), though it is the beggar who would do the winning or losing, acquiring a few days’ wealth or landing in jail.

“Le Joueur généreux” / “La Corde”

In “La Corde” [The Rope] (30) a painter was charmed by a poor boy whom he had pose for him in various costumes. He persauded the boy’s parents to let him come live with him; he would feed and clothe the child and pay him to clean his brushes and run errands. The painter was con- vinced he had improved the boy’s material circumstances: “la vie qu’il menait chez moi lui semblait un paradis, comparativement à celle qu’il aurait subie dans le taudis paternel” [the life he led with me seemed to him a paradise, compared to that he would have endured in the paternal hovel] (OC I: 329). Yet the boy surprised him by fits of precocious sadness and showed an immoderate craving for sugar and liqueurs, which the painter caught him stealing. After one such theft, he threatened to send him back to his parents, and then he went out on an errand. When he returned he found that the boy had had hanged himself. Because instead of rope the boy had used twine, the painter had difficulty extracting it from his neck. When he tells the parents what happened to their child, the mother remains impassive, not shedding a tear. The painter surmises that her grief is too great to be expressed. When the body is laid out, she comes to view it and asks the painter to show her where he died. The painter then remembers, to his horror, that the nail and the twine trailing down are still there. He tries to remove the items from the mother’s sight, but she pleads with him to let her have them. Later, when neighbors write him to ask for a piece of the twine, he realizes “pourquoi la mère tenait tant à m’arracher la ficelle, et par quel commerce elle entendait se consoler” [why the mother wanted so much to tear the twine from me, and by what commerce she intended to console herself] (OC I: 351). The painter was Edouard Manet, to whom Baudelaire dedicated “La Corde,” and a boy model who appears in several of his paintings did indeed hang himself in Manet’s studio. Murphy reproduces the three known historical sources (565–66). None of them indicate that the boy lived with Manet, and none make any mention of his parents, nor of the commercial- ization of the rope (nor that it was so thin Manet had trouble removing it from his neck), nor of his interest in Manet’s liqueurs (though one source suggests he did have a sweet tooth). So we can see what Baudelaire had to

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work with and what he added. baudelaire’s sequencing of events—“je le menaçai de le renvoyer à ses parents. Puis je sortis” [I threatened to send him back to his parents. Then I went out] (OC I, 321) and during this absence the boy took his life—suggests that he may have killed himself because the painter had just threatened to send him back home. As the painter remarked, the boy felt his new residence was a “paradise” compared to hovel he had been living in with his parents. The devil’s den in “Le Joueur généreux” was likewise a paradise one never wants to leave, an “île enchantée” [enchanted island] whose atmosphere was so exquisite that it “faisait oublier presque instan- tanément toutes les fastidieuses horreurs de la vie” [made one forget almost immediately all the tedious horrors of life]. Those who visit it become “les mangeurs de lotus” [lotus-eaters] who feel welling up in them “le désir de ne jamais revoir leurs pénates, leurs femmes, leurs enfants” [the desire never to see again their household gods, their wives, their children] (OC I: 325). The boy displayed “un goût immodéré pour le sucre et les liqueurs” [an immoderate taste for sugar and liqueurs] (OC I: 329). That immoderation echoes the immoderation that characterized the narrator’s drinking with the devil: “nous bûmes outre mesure de toutes sortes de vins extraordi- naires” [we drank beyond measure from all sorts of extraordinary wines] (OC I: 326). The liqueurs correspond to the wines, and the sweets to the lotus leaves that no visitor wants to give up eating to go home. The mother’s lack of emotion at the loss of her son—“à mon grand étonnement, la mère fut impassible, pas une larme ne suinta du coin de son œil” [to my great astonishment, the mother was impassive; not a tear leaked from the corner of her eye] (OC I: 330)—corresponds to the narrator’s lack of emotion at losing his soul: “J’avais joué et perdu mon âme . . . avec une insouciance et une légèreté héroïques . . . je n’éprouvai, quant à cette perte, qu’un peu moins d’émotion que si j’avais égaré, dans une promenade, ma carte de visite” [I had gambled and lost my soul . . . with heroic heedlessness and frivolity. . . . I felt, for this loss, only a little less emotion than if I had mislaid, during a walk, my calling card] (OC I: 326). And her commercial compensation for losing her son is analogous to the compensation the devil gives the narrator for losing his soul. In an earlier version of the poem, Baudelaire was more specific about the financial payoff from the rope: “un mètre de corde de pendu, à cent francs le décimètre . . . cela fait mille francs, un réel, un efficace soulagement pour cette pauvre mère” [a meter of rope from the hanged victim, at one hundred francs per decime- ter . . . that makes a thousand francs—a real, efficacious solace for that poor mother] (OC I: 1339n).

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“La Corde” / “Les Vocations”

The painter was troubled by his memory of the hanged boy, “ce petit cadavre qui hantait les replis de mon cerveau, et dont le fantôme me fatiguait de ses grands yeux fixes” [that little corpse that haunted the folds of my brain, and whose ghost wore me down with its large staring eyes] (OC I: 331). That haunting continues into “Les Vocations” [The Vocations] (31), as if the Spleen de Paris were itself haunted by that ghost. Four boys were conversing among themselves, revealing to the reader that each has already discovered his vocation: the first is enamored with the theater, the second with religion, the third with women, and the fourth with the lifestyle of a trio of traveling musicians. Three of these vocations correspond to the costumes in which the painter dressed the boy model: “je l’ai transformé tantôt en petit bohémien, tantôt en ange, tantôt in Amour mythologique. Je lui ai fait porter le violon du vagabond, la Couronne d’Épines et les Clous de la Passion, et la Torche d’Éros” [I transformed him sometimes into a little gypsy, sometimes into an angel, sometimes in a mythological Cupid. I had him carry a vagabond’s violin, the Crown of Thorns and the Nails of the Passion, and Cupid’s Torch] (OC I: 329). The first costume corresponds to the fourth vocation (indeed, one of three vagabonds plays the violin); the second, to the passion of the second boy for God, whom he claimed to see sitting on a cloud; the third to the third boy, who found an immense pleasure in running his hand over the body of his family’s maid while she was asleep. The first boy’s passion for the theater emerged when his mother took him to see a play, and he found that “cela donne envie d’être habillé de même, de dire et de faire les mêmes choses” [it makes you want to dress the same way, to say and do the same things] (OC I: 332) as the actors on the stage. His desire to dress up in costumes and play different roles corresponds to the whole process of posing in which the painter’s model was obliged to engage; yet it is its opposite as well, for the boy in “Les Vocations” derived joy from the prospect, but the boy in “La Corde” did not, instead suffering “des crises singulières de tristesse précoce” [singular crises of precocious sadness] (OC I: 329). in addition, each description of the four boys and their vocations features a detail that seems a haunting prolongation of the events of “La Corde.” The “grands yeux fixes” [large staring eyes] of the hanged child return in the “grands yeux creux” [large hollow eyes] (OC I: 332) the first boy notices in the actresses (the expression “grands yeux” appears in no other prose poem, though it will appear again in “Les Vocations,” as we will see). The second boy stared “avec une fixité étonnante” [with an astonishing fixity] (OC I: 332) at God on a cloud, as the hanged boy’s eyes

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stared “avec une fixité effrayante” [with a frightening fixity] (OC I: 329) (only in these poems does “fixité” appear). The third boy, in bed with the sleeping maid, derived great pleasure from running his hand “sur ses bras, sur son cou et sur ses épaules. Elle a les bras et le cou bien plus gros que toutes les autres femmes” [over her arms, her neck, and her shoulders. Her arms and her neck are much bigger than all other women’s] (OC I: 333). This celebration of female fatness is uncharacteristic of Baudelaire; nothing like it appears in the Fleurs du mal. Why should it appear here? The answer to that question sends us back to “La Corde,” where the narrator also focuses on a neck: “le petit monstre s’était servi d’une ficelle fort mince qui était entrée profondément dans les chairs, et il fallait maintenant, avec de minces ciseaux, chercher la corde entre les deux bourrelets de l’enflure, pour lui dégager le cou” [the little monster had used a very thin twine that entered deeply into the flesh, and now, with thin scissors, I had to look for the string between the two swollen rolls of flesh, in order to free his neck] (OC I: 330). The boy’s neck, which was not normally fat, had nearly become so, swollen into two rolls of flesh because of his strange choice of rope—a choice that Baudelaire appears to have made up, for none of the three extant accounts of the death of Manet’s model says anything about its thinness (Murphy, 565–66). The boy who had been in bed with the maid went on to praise her flesh for having the quality of paper: “si douce qu’on dirait du papier à lettre ou du papier de soie” [so soft one would say it was letter-writing paper or tissue paper] (OC I: 333). As Kaplan remarks, “The analogy of female flesh with paper has rich connotations” (1990, 111). He does not say which connotations he has in mind, but the one that suggests itself the most strongly is that the maid herself exists only on paper, that she is essentially textual, her qualities being determined by what appears in another text, the description of the hanged boy’s neck: her neck is fat because his is swollen. The other aspect of her body that the boy enjoys is her hair, into which he plunges his head in typical Baudelairean fashion, recalling “La Chevelure” in the Fleurs du mal and “Un hémisphère dans une chevelure” in the Spleen de Paris. But even here Baudelaire plants a haunting hint of the hanged boy: “Ensuite j’ai fourré ma tête dans ses cheveux qui pendaient dans son dos” [Then I burrowed my head into her hair that was hanging onto her back] (OC I: 333). The verb pendre appears in no other prose poem than “La Corde”: “mon petit bonhomme, l’espiègle companion de ma vie, pendu au panneau de cette armoire!” [my little fellow, the mischevous companion of my life, hanging from the paneling of that wardrobe!] (OC I: 329). as the first boy was fascinated by the actresses’ “grands yeux creux” [large hollow eyes], the fourth was likewise by the “grands yeux sombres”

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[large dark eyes] (OC I: 334) of the three musicians, both of these recalling the “grands yeux fixes” [large staring eyes] of the dead boy (the expression, as I have said, appearing only in these two poems). One played the violin, repeating the image of a vagabond with a violin that was one of the poses the painter made his model adopt; another played “les cordes d’un petit piano suspendu à son cou” [the strings of a little piano hanging from his neck] (OC I, 334). This combination of “cordes,” “suspendu,” and “cou” reassembles elements from the story of the boy suspended by a “corde” attached to his neck. “L’air peu intéressé des trois autres camarades me donna à penser que ce petit était déjà un incompris” [The uninterested attitude the three other friends showed made me think that this little one was already misunderstood] (OC I: 335; Baudelaire’s itaics). One might wonder if this remark could be addressed to the reader who fails to understand, for lack of interest, the subleties going on beneath the surface here. He adds that he could see in the boy’s eyes and countenance something “pré- cocement fatal” [precociously fatal], at which point we can see the haunting ghost of the hanged boy appearing again, for the latter displayed moments of “tristesse précoce” [precocious sadness] (OC I: 329) (in no other prose poem does any form of the word appear). Having that precocious quality, the narrator continues, usually discourages sympathy but, “je ne sais pourquoi, excitait la mienne, au point que j’eus un instant l’idée bizarre que je pouvais avoir un frère à moi-même inconnu” [I know not why, excited mine, to the point that for an instant I had the bizarre idea that I could have a brother unknown to myself] (OC I: 335). But the boy has, it appears, yet another unknown brother in the boy in the preceding poem whose precocious sadness was, even more clearly than his, “fatal.”

“Les Vocations” / “Le Thyrse”

“Le Thyrse” [The Thyrsus] (32) is dedicated to Franz Liszt, who, like one of the three gypsy musicians by whom the fourth boy was enthused in “Les Vocations,” is an itinerant player of the piano, though one too large to hang from his neck. “Cher Liszt, à travers les brumes, par delà les fleuves, par- dessus les villes où les pianos chantent votre gloire, où l’imprimerie traduit votre sagesse, en quelque lieu que vous soyez, dans les splendeurs de la ville éternelle ou dans les brumes des pays rêveurs que console Cambrinus . . . je vous salue” [Dear Liszt, across the mists, beyond the rivers, above the cities where the pianos sing your glory, where the printing press translates your wisdom, wherever you may be, in the splendors of the Eternal City or in the mists of the dreaming lands Cambrinus consoles . . . I salute you] (OC

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I: 336).20 As a performer, Liszt’s travels take him from Rome (the Eternal City) to the Germanic north (consoled by the beer Cambrinus invented). The bohemian musicians in “Les Vocations” are similarly itinerant, if on a less exalted level; the boy overhears them discussing their forthcoming sojourn in Austria, where they would have met a more receptive audience, and then their decision to go to Spain instead, since winter is approaching. Spain is to Austria as Rome is to Germany and south is to north. Kaplan gives the parallel a somewhat different spin: “Liszt might typify the fourth boy of ‘Vocations’ now full grown, inspired by gypsies, many of whom are also Hungarian” (1990, 118). The narrator praises Liszt as an incarnation of the thyrsus, an ancient symbol comprising a staff entwined by arabesques of flowers and vines. “Le bâton, c’est votre volonté, droite, ferme et inébranlable; les fleurs, c’est la promenade de votre fantaisie autour de votre volonté; c’est l’élément fémi- nin exécutant autour du mâle ses prestigieuses pirouettes. Ligne droite et ligne arabesque, intention et expression, roideur de la volonté, sinuosité du verbe” [The staff is your will: upright, firm, and unshakeable; the flowers are the wandering of your fantasy around your will; they are the feminine element performing its prestigious pirouettes around the male. Straight line and arabesque, intention and expression, inflexibility of the will, sinuosity of the word] (OC I: 336). The thyrsus is all those things, but it is also yet another instance of the haunting memory of the hanged boy, most recently seen in “Les Vocations” in the “cordes” of the piano hanging from the musician’s neck. The difficulty the narrator had in disengaging the twine, a detail Baudelaire added to the original event, resurfaces here, when the narrator argues against trying such a separation between entwiner and entwined: “amalgame tout-puissant et indivisible du génie, quel analyste aura le détestable courage to vous diviser et de vous séparer?” [all-powerful and indivisible amalgam of genius, what analyst will have the detestable courage to divide and separate you?] (OC I: 336).

“Le Thyrse” / “Enivrez-vous”

The narrator in “Enivrez-vous” [Get Drunk] (33) urges us to intoxicate ourselves “De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise” [With wine, poetry,

20. The Lisztian wisdom appearing in print may include, in addition to his musical scores, the essay on Wagner that Baudelaire quotes at length and that resonates so well with his own philosophy of composition. The “noeud mélodique qui constitue tout son drame” [melodic knot that constitutes all its drama] (Liszt, quoted and italicized by Baudelaire, OC II: 801) that Liszt saw in Wagner anticipates the thyrsus Baudelaire sees in Liszt and that we see in Baudelaire’s repeated structures.

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or virtue—as you choose] (OC I: 337). The intoxicating power of art (here represented by poetry) was already evident in “Le Thyrse” when the narrator addressed Liszt (whom he also calls a poet) as a devotee of Bacchus, god of wine, “cher Bacchant de la Beauté mystérieuse et passionnée” [dear Bacchant of mysterious and passionate Beauty] and asserted, “Jamais nymphe exaspérée par l’invincible Bacchus ne secoua son thyrse sur les têtes de ses compagnes affolées avec autant d’énergie et de caprice que vous agitez votre génie sur les cœurs de vos frères” [Never did a nymph exasperated by invincible Bacchus shake her thyrsus over the heads of her crazed companions with as much force and caprice as you wield your genius over your brothers’ hearts] (OC I: 336).

“Enivrez-vous” / “Déjà!”

In “Déjà!” [Already!] (34), after a hundred-day voyage, all the ship’s passengers were delighted to make landfall except the narrator, who hated being separated from the sea, “de cette mer si monstrueusement séduisante, . . . si infiniment variée dans son effrayante simplicité” [from that sea so mon- strously seductive, . . . so infinitely varied in its frightening simplicity]. When each of the others said “‘Enfin!’ je ne pus crier que:‘Déjà!” [“At last!” all I could cry was “Already!”] (OC I: 338). This déjà marks the end of his intoxication with that from which he was forcibly separated (the sea), as another déjà marks the end of intoxication in “Enivrez-vous,” the moment when you wake up and find “l’ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue” [your drunkenness already diminished or gone]. When that happens, the narrator advises us, “demandez au vent, à la vague, à létoile, . . . à tout ce qui gémit . . . demandez quelle heure il est; et le vent, la vague, létoile . . . vous répondront: ‘Il est l’heure de s’enivrer! Pour n’être pas les esclaves marty- risés du Temps, envirez-vous . . . ’” [ask the wind, the wave, the star, . . . all that groans . . . ask what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star . . . will tell you: “It is time to get drunk! In order not to be the martyed slaves of Time, get drunk . . . ”] (OC I: 337). The wind, the waves, the stars, and the groans reappear in “Déjà!” in connection with another question: “Depuis nombre de jours, nous pouvions contempler l’autre côté du firmament et déchiffrer lalphabet céleste des antipodes” [For several days we were able to contemplate the other side of the firmament and decipher the celestial alphabet of the antipodes]—that is, they had been sailing in the Southern Hemisphere and could contemplate the stars of that sky. “Et chacun des passagers gémissait. . . . ‘Quand donc,’ disaient-ils, ‘cesserons- nous de dormir un sommeil secoué par la lame, troublé par un vent qui ronfle plus haut que nous?’” [And each of the passengers was groaning. . . .

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“When, then,” they said, “will we stop sleeping a sleep disturbed by the waves, troubled by a wind that snores louder than us?”] (OC I: 337–38). Not being enthused by the sea like the narrator, they are slaves of Time, weighed down by the hundred days of their voyage, impatient to see it end. In “Enivrez-vous” the narrator tells us to ask a question of “tout ce qui gémit” [all that groans]; in “Déjà!” those who groan ask a question. Both questions are about time: “quelle heure il est” (“Enivrez-vous); “Quand donc . . . ?” (“Déjà”). The listless passengers may be blind to the charm of the sea, but they are intoxicated by the land. In this regard they resemble the enthused Bac- chantes likened to Liszt and his listeners in “Le Thyrse.” Baudelaire links them all the more tightly by saying of both groups that they are exaspérés and affolés: “Jamais nymphe exaspérée par l’invincible Bacchus ne secoua son thyrse sur les têtes de ses compagnes affolées avec autant d’énergie” [Never did a nymph exasperated by invincible Bacchus shake her thyrsus over the heads of her crazed companions with as much force]; “On eût dit que l’approche de la terre exaspérait leur souffrance. . . . Tous étaient si affolés par l’image de la terre absente, qu’ils auraient, je crois, mangé de l’herbe avec plus d’enthousiasme que les bêtes” [One would have said that the approach of land exasperated their suffering. . . . All were so crazed by the image of the absent land that they would, I believe, have eaten grass with more enthusiasm than animals] (“Le Thyrse,” OC I: 336). It is as if they were following the advice of the narrator of “Enivrez-vous,” despite their difference from the narrator of “Déjà.” They were getting intoxicated with something.

“Déjà!” / “Les Fenêtres”

The narrator of “Les Fenêtres” [Windows] (35) looks out over “des vagues de toits” [waves of roofs], as if he were looking out to sea, and then focuses on a woman glimpsed in a window. “Il n’est pas d’objet plus profond, plus mystéreux, plus fécond, plus ténebreux, plus éblouissant qu’une fenêtre éclairée d’une chandelle” [There is no object more profound, more mysterious, more fertile, more shadowy, more dazzling than a window lit by a candle] (OC I: 339). Two of those adjectives were associated with the land in “Déjà” that obsessed everyone on the ship but the narrator: “c’était une terre magnifique, éblouissante” [it was a magnificent, dazzling land] that emitted “un mystérieux parfum” [a mysterious perfume] (OC I: 338). These two qualities among those that passengers other than the narrator of “Déjà” found in land the narrator of “Les Fenêtres” finds in what he sees over the waves of roofs. Indeed, if we superimpose one poem over the

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other, we will find that land in one corresponds to sunlight in the other, of which he says, “Ce qu’on peut voir au soleil est toujours moins intéressant que ce qui se passe derrière une vitre” [What one can see in the sunlight is always less interesting than what takes place behind a window] (OC I: 339). Land in “Déjà” and what can be seen in sunlight in “Les Fenêtres” are what everyone but the narrator pays attention to; the sea and what is behind a window are what he finds more interesting. “Dans le trou noir ou lumineux” [in the black or luminous hole] of a window “vit la vie, rêve la vie, souffre la vie” [life lives, life dreams, life suffers]; similarly, the sea seems to contain and to represent by its games, its allures, its angers, and its smiles “les humeurs, les agonies et les extases de toutes les âmes qui ont vécu, qui vivent et qui vivront!” [the moods, the agonies, and the ecstasies of all the souls who have lived, who are living, and who will live!].21 By staring at and listening to the sea he can experience the same pleasure he finds in looking into a distant window, for in both he can discover the lives of other people. The sea is “infiniment variée dans son effrayante simplicité” [infinitely varied in its frightening simplicity] (OC I: 338) but nevertheless seems to contain and represent all those lives; similarly, what the window contains for the narrator is “presque rien” [almost nothing] (OC I: 339), nothing more than the face, the clothing, and the gestures of the woman he sees there. But from that almost nothing, reminiscent of the extreme simplicity of the sea, he has reconstructed her life story: “j’ai refait l’histoire de cette femme, ou plutôt sa légende, et quelquefois je me la raconte à moi-même en pleurant” [I have reconstructed that woman’s history, or rather her legend, and sometimes I tell it to myself in weeping] (OC I: 339). yet he makes no guarantee that it is accurate. It is more fiction than history, as his correction of “histoire” by “légende” indicates, and as he reveals in his reply to an imagined question: “‘Es-tu sûr que cette légende soit la vraie?’ Qu’importe ce que peut être la réalité placée hors de moi, si elle m’a aidé à vivre, à sentir que je suis et ce que je suis?” [“Are you sure that this legend is the true one?” What does it matter what the reality located outside of me is, if it helps me to live, to feel that I am and what I am?]. In other words, the focus here is not on his discovery of the truth but on his composing a legend. As Kaplan remarks, “His ‘empathy’ for the old woman is, in fact, projection exploited in the service of fiction. . . . After all, his fabricated tale, not the woman’s domestic toil, provoked his tears” (1990, 124). Kaplan goes on to point out that when the narrator says that the legend helps him know not only that he is but also what he is [“ce que je suis”], he means that he is a writer (ibid., 125). And as Sima

21. nies notes this echo (280).

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Godfrey reminds us, “légende” means not just “legend” but “text”: one of its meanings in French is “caption,” a written text to accompany a picture, and it comes from the Latin future passive participle of the verb legere, “to read,” meaning “that which must be read.”22

“Les Fenêtres” / “Le Désir de peindre”

Since by depicting her he makes a work of art, it is appropriate, as Godfrey suggests (95), that this poem be followed by one about depicting another woman in another kind of work of art. In “Le Désir de peindre” [The Desire to Paint] (36) the narrator tells us, “Je brûle de peindre celle qui m’est apparue si rarement et qui a fui si vite” [I burn to paint the one who appeared to me so rarely and who fled so quickly] (OC I: 340). This “celle” corresponds to the woman in the window, and his desire to paint her corresponds to the other narrator’s desire to write that other woman’s legend. The particular woman he wants to paint, by contrast to the “femme mûre, ridée déjà” [mature woman, already wrinkled] (OC I: 339) in the window, is beautiful. Nevertheless, she has certain qualities that were also seen in that window: “Elle est belle. . . . En elle le noir abonde: et tout ce qu’elle inspire est nocturne et profond. Ses yeux sont deux antres où scintille vaguement le mystère. . . . Je la comparerais à un soleil noir, si l’on pouvait concevoir un astre noir versant la lumière” [She is beautiful. . . . Black abounds in her, and everything she inspires is nocturnal and profound. Her eyes are two caves where mystery dimly shines. . . . I would compare her to a black sun, if one could imagine a black star that poured forth light] (36, OC I: 340). Compare this to what the window makes visible: “Il n’est pas d’objet plus profond, plus mystérieux . . . qu’une fenêtre éclairée d’une chandelle. Ce qu’on peut voir au soleil est toujours moins intéressant que ce qui se passe derrière une vitre . . . ce trou noir ou lumineux” [There is no object more profound, more mysterious . . . than a window lit by a candle. What one can see in the sunshine is always less interesting that what happens behind a window . . . that black or luminous hole] (35, OC I: 339). In comparing her to a black sun in 36, he is uniting what had been two opposites in 35, the sun and the window. Though by calling the window a hole that is alternately black and luminous, he makes it the same and yet the opposite of the black sun, which is at the same time black and luminous.

22. Sima Godfrey, “Baudelaire’s Windows,” L’Esprit Créateur 22, no. 4 (Winter 1982): 93, hereafter cited in text.

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“Le Désir de peindre” / “Les Bienfaits de la lune”

Having said that he would compare the woman he wishes to paint to a black sun, he adds: “Mais elle fait plus volontiers penser à la lune, qui sans doute l’a marqueé de sa redoutable influence” [But she makes one think more willingly of the moon, which has doubtless marked her with its fearful influence] (OC I: 340). This is about the midpoint of the poem, in most of the rest of which he continues the lunar comparison. The next poem, “Les Bienfaits de la lune” [The Moon’s Benefits] (37), is all about the moon, with the result that “Le Désir de peindre” (36) is a clear instance of the heads-and-tails phenomenon Baudelaire spoke of in the letter to Houssaye: its “head” (its first half) is connected to the poem that precedes it, its “tail” (its second half) to the next. The women in both 36 and 37 are under the moon’s fearful influence. The one in 36, as we have just seen, is “marquée de sa redoutable influence”in 36. In 37 the moon tells her, “Tu subiras éter- nellement l’influence de mon baiser” [You will undergo eternally the influence of my kiss] (OC I: 341); later, the narrator tells her he is “cherchant dans toute ta personne le reflet de la redoutable Divinité” [seeking in your entire person the reflecton of the fearful Divinité] (OC I: 342), meaning the moon. (The word redoutable appears in no other prose poem.)

“Les Bienfaits de la lune” / “Laquelle est la vraie?”

“Laquelle est la vraie?” [Which Is the True One?] (38) begins like a story by Edgar Allan Poe (which seems to have led Kaplan [1990, 128] to conclude, erroneously, that Poe wrote a poem with the same title as the name of the woman in the poem):

J’ai connu une certaine Bénédicta, qui remplissait latmosphère d’idéal. . . . Mais cette fille miraculeuse était trop belle pour vivre longtemps; aussi est-elle morte quelques jours après que j’eus fait sa connaissance, et c’est moi-même qui l’ai enterrée, un jour que le printemps agitait son encensoir jusque dans les cimetières.

[I knew a certain Bénédicta, who filled the atmosphere with the ideal. . . . But this miraculous girl was too beautiful to live long, and thus she died a few days after I met her, and it was I myself who buried her, on a day when springtime was shaking its censers even in the cemeteries.] (OC I, 342)

The only other prose poem where encensoirs appear is “Les Bienfaits de la

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lune” (37), where as here they are associated with flowers (in 38 by metaphor, in 37 by simile): “les fleurs sinistres qui ressemblent aux encensoirs d’une religion inconnue” [the sinister flowers that resemble censers of an unknown religion] (OC I: 341). In addition, that Bénédicta “remplissait l’atmosphère” [filled the atmosphere] reminds us of how “la Lune remplissait toute la chambre comme une atmosphere phosphorique, comme un poison lumineux” [the Moon filled the whole bedroom like a phosphorescent atmosphere, like a luminous poison] (OC I: 341). The story becomes even more Poe-like when the narrator, standing by Bénédicta’s grave, suddenly saw “une petite personne qui ressemblait sin- gulièrement à la défunte, et qui, piétinant sur la terre fraîche avec une violence hystérique et bizarre, disait en éclatant de rire: ‘C’est moi, la vraie Bénédicta!’” [a little person who bore a singular resemblance to the departed, and who, stamping on the fresh earth with hysterical and bizarre violence, said as she burst out in a laugh: “It is I, the true Bénédicta!”] and demanded that he love her “telle que je suis” [just as I am] (OC I: 342). Hence the title: which Bénédicta is the real one? The second’s singular resemblance to the first itself parallels another resemblance, the extensive and detailed one whose elaborate description takes up most of “Les Bien- faits de la lune” (37). It is the resemblance between the narrator’s beloved, once she will have been transformed by the moon’s redoubtable influence, and her lovers (which include the narrator; in fact, especially the narrator). To draw out the resemblances I will list them singly:

• “Tu aimeras ce que j’aime et ce qui m’aime”[You will love what I love and what loves me]; “tu seras aimée de mes amants” [you will be loved by my lovers] (OC I: 341). • (You will love) “la mer immense et verte; l’eau informe et multiforme” [the immense green sea, the formless and multiform water]; (your lovers will be men who love) “la mer, la mer immense, tumultueuse et verte, l’eau informe et multiforme” [the sea, immense, tumultuous and green sea, the formless and multiform water] • (You will love) “le lieu où tu ne seras pas” [the place where you will not be]; (they will love) “le lieu où ils ne sont pas” [the place where they are not] • (You will love) “l’amant que tu ne connaîtras pas” [the lover whom you will not know]; (they will love) “la femme qu’ils ne connaissent pas” [the woman they do not know] • (You will love) “les fleurs monstrueuses; les parfums qui font délirer” [monstrous flowers; perfumes that cause delirium] (OC I: 341); (they will love) “les fleurs sinistres, qui ressemblent aux encensoirs d’une religion inconnue, les parfums qui troublent la volonté” [sinister flow-

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ers that resemble the censers of an unknown religion, perfumes that trouble the will] (OC I: 341–42) • (You will love) “les chats qui se pâment sur les pianos, et qui gémis- sent comme les femmes, d’une voix rauque et douce” [cats that faint on pianos, moaning like women, in a hoarse and gentle voice] (OC I: 341); (they will love) “les animaux sauvages et voluptueux qui sont les emblèmes de leur folie” [wild and voluptuous animals that are the emblems of their madness] (OC I: 342)

In “Laquelle est la vraie?” (38) a resemblance is simply asserted (“une petite personne qui ressemblait singulièrement à la défunte”); in “Les Bienfaits de la lune” (37) a resemblance is spelled out in almost excruciating detail (there are at least eleven parallels between the moon-influenced beloved and her lovers). The resemblance in 37 is between a beloved woman and her lover(s); in 38 it is between two versions of the beloved woman, in her lover’s eyes. Actually, it is between two competing versions, the second of which denies the first, while the lover (the narrator) rejects the second: “Mais moi, furieux, j’ai répondu :‘Non! non! non!’” [But I, furious, replied: “No! No! No!”] (OC I: 342).

“Laquelle est la vraie?” / “Un cheval de race”

“Un cheval de race” [A Thoroughbred] (39) follows the case of two Béné- dictas of whom the second contradicts the first, in yet another mirror reversal, with one woman having two contradictory qualities: “Elle est bien laide. Elle est délicieuse pourtant! . . . Elle est vraiment laide . . . mais . . . elle est exquise” [She is quite ugly. Yet she is delectable! . . . She is truly ugly . . . but . . . she is exquisite] (OC I: 343). Kaplan tries to relate 38 and 39 on a different basis, oddly asserting that the second Bénédicta is an “ugly little monster” (1990, 129). Thus in his estimation the ugly yet exquisite woman in 39 resembles the combination of beautiful and ugly Bénédictas in 38. But while the second Bénédicta is little (“une petite personne”), nothing in the poem gives us any reason to conclude she is ugly.

“Un cheval de race” / “Le Miroir”

The play of mirrors and the theme of ugliness continue (as Nies remarks [281–82]) with “Le Miroir” [The Mirror] (40), in which an ugly man looks at his reflection: “Un homme épouvantable entre et se regarde dans la glace” [A frightful man enters and looks at himself in the mirror]. The

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narrator asks him, “Pourquoi vous regardez-vous au miroir, puisque vous ne pouvez vous y voir qu’avec déplaisir?” [Why do you look at yourself in the mirror, since it is only with displeasure that you can see yourself there?]. He replies that “d’après les immortels principes de 89, tous les hommes sont égaux en droits; donc je possède le droit de me mirer; avec plaisir ou déplaisir, cela ne regarde que ma conscience” [according to the immortal principles of 1789, all men are equal in rights; therefore I possess the right to look at my reflection. Whether it is with pleasure or displeasure is my business] (OC I: 344).

“Le Miroir” / “Le Port”

The egalitarian pleasure, or displeasure, of looking at an image in a piece of glass is followed in “Le Port” [The Port] (41) by a combination of the same and the opposite, the aristocratic pleasure of looking at another kind of glass: “il y a une sorte de plaisir mystérieux et aristocratique” [there is a sort of mysterious or aristocratic pleasure] in looking at the “prisme” [prism] comprising the “ampleur du ciel, l’architecture mobile des nuages, les colorations changeantes de la mer, le scintillement des phares” [vastness of the sky, the mobile achitecture of the clouds, the changing colors of the sea, the twinkling of the lighthouses] (OC I: 344) in a maritime port. The prism corresponds to the mirror (although, by way of opposition, in 40 the image is seen through the mirror but in 41 the image is the prism); the ugliness seen in 40 is countered by “la beauté” [the beauty] seen in 41; the egalitarian pleasure is followed by the aristocratic pleasure; the pleasure of contemplating oneself is answered by that of seeing others, “tous ses mouvements de ceux qui partent et de ceux qui reviennent, de ceux qui ont encore la force de vouloir, le désir de voyager ou de s’enrichir” [all those movements of those leaving and those returning, of those who still have the strength to will, the desire to travel or get rich] (OC I: 344–45).

“Le Port” / “Portraits de maîtresses”

The narrator who observes this ambitious coming and going in the prism of the port himself “n’a plus ni curiosité ni ambition” [no longer has neither curiosity nor ambition] (OC I: 344). The first of the four depictions in “Portraits de maîtresses” [Portraits of Mistresses] (42) is likewise an instance of ambition perceived through glass: the woman had “une ambition malsé- ante et difforme . . . entre ma bouche et la sienne je trouvai . . . un masque de verre” [an unseemly and misshapen ambition . . . between my mouth

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and hers I found . . . a mask of glass] (OC I: 346). The last of the four mistresses made her lover suffer the most of all because being with her was like living with a mirror always before him:

L’histoire de mon amour ressemble à un interminable voyage sur une surface pure et polie comme un miroir, vertigineusement monotone, qui aurait réfléchi tous mes sentiments et mes gestes avec l’exactitude ironique de ma propre conscience, de sorte que je ne pouvais pas me permettre un geste ou un sentiment déraisonnable sans apercevoir immédiatement le reproche muet de mon inséparable spectre.

[The history of my love affair resembles an endless voyage on a surface pure and polished like a mirror, vertiginously monotonous, that reflected all my feelings and gestures with the ironic precision of my own conscience, so that I could not allow myself an unreasonable gesture or feeling without immediately seeing the silent reproach of my inseparable specter.] (OC I: 348)

This, the culmination of the seeing-through-glass motif of the past several poems (the prism of 41, the mirror of 40, itself related to the mirroring taking place without benefit of glass in 39, 38, and 37), climaxes in murder.

“Portraits de maîtresses” / “Le Galant Tireur”

The fourth man’s murder of his mistress is paralleled, or parodied, by a husband’s symbolic murder of his wife in “Le Galant Tireur” [The Gal- lant Marksman] (43). Irked by her laughter when he misses the target at a shooting range, he tells her to look at a doll to the right of the target that, he informs her, he is pretending is her. With eyes shut he fires and neatly decapitates the doll, then thanks her for inspiring his aim. The murder in the preceding poem took place in a wood: “Un soir, dans un bois . . . ” [One evening, in a wood . . . ] (OC I: 348; the ellipsis is Baudelaire’s). Likewise did the symbolic murder in this one, as we learn in the poem’s first sentence: “Comme la voiture traversait le bois, il la fit arrêter dans le voisinage d’un tir, disant qu’il lui serait agréable de tirer quelques balles pour tuer le Temps” [As the carriage was traveling through the woods, he had it stop near a shooting range, saying that it would be pleasant to shoot some bullets to kill Time] (OC I: 349). This first sentence, the “head” of 43, repeats in a quite literal way (as Nies notes [282]) the “tail,” the last sentence, of 42: “Ensuite on fit apporter de nouvelles bouteilles, pour tuer

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le Temps qui a la vie si dure, et accélérer la Vie qui coule si lentement” [Then they had new bottles brought in, to kill Time, whose life is so resis- tant, and speed up Life, which flows so slowly] (OC I: 349).

“Le Galant Tireur” / “La Soupe et les nuages”

The tables are turned in “La Soupe et les nuages” [The Soup and the Clouds] (44), where a wife directs her violence against her husband. She is serving him dinner; he is looking out the dining room window at clouds in the sky, “les mouvantes architectures que Dieu fait avec les vapeurs, les merveilleuses constructions de l’impalpable” [the mobile architectures God makes with vapor, the marvelous constructions of the impalpable], saying to himself that “Toutes ces fantasmagories sont presque aussi belles que les yeux de ma belle bien-aimée” [All these phantasmagorias are almost as beautiful as the eyes of my beautiful beloved] (OC I: 350), when suddenly she gives him a violent punch in the back and tells him to eat his soup instead of staring at clouds. Not only is the violence directed here from wife to husband instead of from husband to wife, as it was in 43, but in both poems the husband speaks of seeing a resemblance between something else—the doll, the clouds—and her.

“La Soupe et les nuages” / “Le Tir et le cimetière”

As the clouds visible from the dining room offered a distraction from the soup, a cemetery visible from the tavern in “Le Tir et le cimetière” [The Shooting Range and the Cemetery] (45) offers a distraction to a customer in a tavern who, when he approached it, had been puzzled by the strange sign it bore: “À la vue du cimetière, Estaminet” [Cemetery View, Tavern] (OC I: 351). He “but une verre de bière en face des tombes” [drank a glass of beer facing the tombs] and then “la fantaisie le prit de descendre dans ce cimetière, dont l’herbe était si haute et si invitante” [the whim took him to go down into the cemetery, whose grass was so high and inviting]. He contemplated the intense sunlight, the carpet of flowers fertilized by the decomposing corpses, and the “immense bruissement” [immense buzzing] of life in the air that was interrupted at regular intervals by “des coups de feu d’un tir voisin” [gunshots from a neighboring shooting range]. These “coups” parallel the “violent coup de poing dans le dos” [violent blow of a fist in the back] (OC I: 350) the wife gave the cloud-distracted husband in the poem before. In other words, the dining room is to the clouds as the tavern is to the cemetery; the clouds are to the “coup de poing” as the

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cemetery is the “coups de feu.” Murphy, noting some of the same recur- rences, finds the sequence “Portraits de maîtresses” / “Le Galant Tireur” / “Le Tir et le cimetière” “obviously meaningful” [de toute évidence sig- nificative] (472n).

“Le Tir et le Cimetière” / “Perte d’auréole”

“À la vue du cimetière, Estaminet”in 45 is an “enseigne” [sign] (OC I: 351); the halo lost in “Perte d’auréole” [Loss of Halo] (46) had been the narrator’s “insignes” [insignia] (OC I: 352) (neither word appears in any other prose poem). The protagonist of 45 was so intrigued by the sign, which struck him as “Curieux” [Curious] (OC I: 351), that after visiting the tavern he was drawn to the cemetery from which it derived its name. The relationship of 46’s narrator to his insignia is just the opposite: he was already intimately acquainted with his “insignes,” and the halo holds so little interest for him that when it falls from his head in the rush of Paris traffic, he does not pick it up from the mud. “J’ai jugé moins désagréable de perdre mes insignes que de me faire rompre les os” [I judged it less distressing to lose my insignia that to get my bones broken] in the “chaos mouvant où la mort arrive au galop de tous les côtés à la fois” [moving chaos where death arrives at a gallop from all sides at once] (OC I: 352). A friend suggests, “Vous devriez au moins faire afficher cette auréole” [You should at least post a notice about that halo], which would transform the halo into something even more resembling the sign on the tavern. The tavern’s sign was an invitation to drink: “bien faite pour donner soif!” [well chosen to induce thirst] (OC I: 351), the traveler exclaims; the narrator’s insignia designated him as a particular sort of a drinker, “le buveur de quintessences” [the imbiber of quintessences] (OC I: 352), as his friend remarks. As Richard Klein points out, the prose poem reminds us of the poet of “Bénédiction,” who in all that he drinks finds “le nectar vermeil” [the vermillion nectar] (l. 24) and for whom heaven reserves a “couronne mystique” [mystic crown] (l. 67).23 as he sits on a tomb in the cemetery, the traveler in 45 hears a voice from beneath him complaining of the racket coming from the shooting range nearby: “Maudites soient vos ambitions, maudits soient vos calculs, mortels impatients, qui venez étudier l’art de tuer auprès du sanctuaire de la Mort!” [Cursed be your ambitions, cursed be your calculations, impatient mortals, who come to study the art of killing near the sanctuary of Death!]

23. richard Klein, “‘Bénédiction’ / ‘Perte d’Auréole’: Parables of Interpretation,” MLN 85, no. 4 (May 1970): 519.

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(OC I: 351). Having abandoned his insignia, the narrator can become like other mortals: “Je puis maintenant me promener incognito, faire des actions basses, et me livrer à la crapule, comme les simples mortels” [Now I can walk incognito, carry out foul deeds, and give myself over to debauchery, like ordinary mortals] (OC I: 352). Thus the protagonist of 45, in apparent sympathy with the suffering voice from the tomb, distinguishes himself from other mortals, but the protagonist of 46 does the opposite, now able to blend in with other mortals, having relinquished his distin- guishing sign.

“Perte d’auréole” / “Mademoiselle Bistouri”

While in “Perte d’auréole” (46) the narrator wants to conceal or lose his identity, in “Mademoiselle Bistouri” [Miss Scalpel] (47) the narrator acquires, in the eyes of the title character, an identity that is not his. Made- moiselle Bistouri takes him for a doctor and try as he might, he cannot dissuade her. She collects pictures of doctors, and she invites him to look at them with her.

“Tiens! le reconnais-tu celui-ci? —Oui! c’est X. Le nom est au bas d’ailleurs; mais je le connais person- nellement. —Je savais bien! Tiens! voilà Z. . . .”

[“Look! Do you recognize this one?” “Yes! It’s X. The name is on the bottom besides, but I know him per- sonally.” “I knew it! Look! There is Z. . . . ”] (OC I: 354)

At the end of “Perte d’auréole” the narrator spoke of the poets who might now pick up the abandoned halo and wear it, and he referred to them in precisely the same way, by the capital letters X and Z: “je pense avec joie que quelque mauvais poète la ramassera et s’en coiffera impudemment. Faire un heureux, quelle jouissance! et surtout un heureux qui me fera rire! Prensez à X, ou à Z!” [I think with joy that some bad poet will pick it up and shamelessly put it on his head. To make someone happy, what joy! And especially a happy man who will make me laugh! Think of X, or of Z!] (OC I: 352). Baudelaire could hardly have been more obvious than this in encouraging his readers to take up the poems two by two. The stain on the halo, which fell into “la fange du macadam” [the mire of the street], is paralleled by that on the physician’s insignia according to Mademoiselle

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Bistouri’s fantasy: “Je voudrais qu’il vînt me voir avec sa trousse et son tablier, même avec un peu de sang dessus” [I would like him to come see me with his instrument case and his apron, even with a little blood on it] (OC I: 355).

“Mademoiselle Bistouri” / “Any where out of the world —N’importe où hors du monde”

“Any where out of the world — N’importe où hors du monde” [Baudelaire gives the title in two languages] (48) begins with an obvious allusion to the hospital that figures so prominently in “Mademoiselle Bistouri” (47): “Cette vie est un hôpital où chaque malade est possédé du désir de changer de lit. Celui-ci voudrait souffrir en face du poêle, et celui-là croit qu’il guérirait à côté de la fenêtre” [This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed by the desire to change beds. One wants to suffer by the stove; another believes he would get well by the window] (OC I: 356). When Mademoiselle Bistouri invites the narrator into her home, she tells him that it “vous rappellera l´hôpital” [will remind you of the hospital] (OC I: 353). Later, she will speak of a doctor who denounced to the government the insurgents he was treating “à son hôpital” [in his hospital] (OC I: 354) (the word appears only in these two prose poems). Hospitals and doctors are the consuming passion of her life. The narrator asks her about this obsession—Why do you take me for a doctor? How long have you had this idée fixe?—but only after repeated attempts does he get her to respond: “Dif- ficilement je me fis comprendre; enfin j’y parvins” [With difficulty I made myself understood; at last I succeeded] (OC I: 355), although her answer even then was that she did not know. The narrator’s conversation with his soul in “Any where out of the world” is similarly one-sided. First, he asks his soul if Lisbon would be a better place for them to live in. “Mon âme ne répond pas” [My soul does not answer] (OC I: 356). Then he proposes Holland. “Mon âme reste muette” [My soul remains silent] (OC I: 357). How about Batavia? “Pas un mot” [Not a word]. Torneo, perhaps? “Allons plus loin encore, à l´extrême bout de la Baltique” [Let’s go farther still, to the extreme end of the Baltic], paralleling the first words of “Mademoiselle Bistouri,” which situated the narrator’s encounter with her, and consequently the residence into which she invited him and that she said would remind him of the hospital, “à l´extrémité du faubourg” [at the extremity of the city’s outskirts] (OC I: 353). Still thinking of extremities, he proposes the Pole, “encore plus loin de la vie” [still farther from life] (OC I: 357), where darkness reigns for six months of the year. “Enfin, mon âme fait explosion, et sagement elle me

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crie: ‘N’importe où! n’importe où! pourvu que ce soit hors de ce monde!’” [At last, my soul explodes, and quietly cries out to me: “Anywhere! Any- where! Provided it be outside of this world!”]. The narrator’s attempt in both poems to get his partner in conversation to answer his question succeeds “enfin” [at last]. Poems 46, 47, and 48 are instructive instances of how Baudelaire can couch what is particular to one poem in the language and situation of another. Poem 47 is about a woman’s strange obsession with doctors, which takes the form of giving the narrator a new identity, which is precisely what the narrator of 46 is happy to obtain; in 47 he is unhappy at having it forced upon him. Poem 48 expresses Baudelaire’s oft-repeated desire to escape the ennui of where he is by traveling somewhere else, either in reality (as in the two poems titled “L’Invitation au voyage”) or virtually (as in “Parfum exotique” or “La Chevelure”), but here he does that by adapting the language (“Cette vie est un hôpital”) and the plotline (a conversation in which the narrator repeatedly attempts and enfin succeeds in provoking an answer from his interlocutor) of the preceding poem.

“Any where out of the world — N’importe où hors du monde” / “Assommons les pauvres!”

A similar plotline undergirds “Assommons les pauvres!” [Let’s Beat Up the Poor!] (49). In 48 the narrator keeps asking questions of his soul, who does not respond until “Enfin, mon âme fait explosion” [At last my soul explodes] (OC I: 357) with an answer. In 49 the narrator keeps beating a beggar until at last he responds, with a sudden explosion of violence— ‘Tout à coup,—ô miracle! . . . —je vis cette antique carcasse se retourner, se redresser avec une énergie que je n’aurais jamais soupçonnée” [Sud- denly—O miracle! . . . —I saw that ancient carcass turn over, raise himself up with a force I would never have suspected] (OC I: 359)—and do to the narrator what he had done to him. Although the narrator does not explicitly say that the beggar was unresponsive during the time he beat him, as the narrator of 48 did say of his soul, it is clear that he was. For first the narrator punched him in the eye, then he broke two of his teeth, then he repeatedly crashed his head against a wall, then he kicked him in the back, then he grabbed a branch of a tree and beat him as if he were tenderizing a steak; only after the last of these five assaults does the man respond. The narrator beat the beggar in order to get a response, to provoke him into responding in kind, so that when he did he could call him his equal. he did it for the beggar’s own good: “Par mon énergique médication, je lui avais donc rendu l’orgueil et la vie” [By my forceful medication, I had

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thus restored his pride and his life] (OC I: 359). By calling it medication, he continues the medical motif begun when the narrator in 47 was mis- taken for a doctor and continued in 48 when life is described as a hospital full of the sick, and that travel to foreign lands is the cure. This sentence was added to the manuscript at a later date, in smaller handwriting (Mur- phy, 395n), perhaps to increase the connections between this poem and the two that precede it. The mostly one-sided conversation between the narrator of 48 and his soul is paralleled in 49 by another one-sided conversation, though its one- sidedness goes in the opposite direction. This time it is the narrator who remains silent, while his Angel or Demon does all the talking. Socrates’s daemon only spoke to dissuade him from committing a certain act, while the narrator’s “daigne conseiller, suggérer, persuader” [deigns to advise, suggest, persuade] (OC I: 358). When the narrator, coming out of a bar, saw the beggar holding his hat, the Angel whispered in his ear, “Celui-là seul est l’égal d’un autre, qui le prouve, et celui-là seul est digne de la lib- erté, qui sait la conquérir” [He alone is the equal of another who proves it, and he alone is worthy of freedom who can conquer it] (OC I: 358). So he beat him up to make him fight back and thereby prove he was his equal.

“Assommons les pauvres!” / “Les Bons Chiens”

While in his bizarre way the narrator of “Assommons les pauvres!” wants to restore dignity to the poor, the narrator of “Les Bons Chiens” [The Good Dogs] (50) wants to pay honor to their dogs. The good dogs alluded to in the title are not those of the rich, who sleep in a “niche soyeuse et capiton- neé” [silky and cushioned kennel] (OC I: 361) but the poor bedraggled ones that everyone shuns “excepté le pauvre dont ils sont les associés, et le poète qui les regarde d’un œil fraternel” [except the poor man whose associates they are, and the poet who looks at them with a brotherly eye] (OC I: 360). “Que de fois j’ai contemplé, souriant et attendri, tous ces philosophes à quatre pattes, esclaves complaisants, soumis ou dévoués, que le dictionnaire républicain pourrait aussi bien qualifier d’officieux, si la république, trop occupée du bonheur des hommes, avait le temps de ménager l’honneur des chiens!” [How often have I contemplated, smiling and moved, all those four-footed philosophers, obliging slaves, submissive or devoted, whom the republican dictionary could have just as well described as minis- tering, if the republic, too preoccupied with the happiness of men, had the time to concern itself with the honor of dogs!] (OC I: 362). The italics are Baudelaire’s, but for the purpose of analysis I would have italicized esclaves, dictionnaire, and bonheur, for those are important words in the passage at

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the beginning of “Assommons les pauvres!” (49) in which the narrator says that for two weeks he had done nothing but read books of different politi- cal persuasions,

les élucubrations de tous ces entrepreneurs de bonheur public,—de ceux qui conseillent à tous les pauvres de se faire esclaves, et de ceux qui leur per- suadent qu’ils sont tous des rois détrônés. . . . Il m’avait semblé seulement que je sentais, confiné au fond de mon intellect, le germe obscur d’une idée supérieure à toutes les formules de bonne femme dont j’avais récemment parcouru le dictionnaire.

[the wild imaginings of all those who busied themselves with public happiness, of those who counsel all the poor to make themselves slaves, and those who persuade them that they are dethroned kings. . . . It just seemed to me that I felt, deep within my intellect, the dark seed of an idea better than all the old wives’ tales whose dictionary I had recently perused.] (OC I: 357–58)

Instead of dictionnaire Baudelaire in the manuscript had originally written catalogue (Murphy, 393n), which would have made more sense, but he evidently wished to have this dictionnaire match the one in “Les Bons Chiens” (the only other one in the Spleen de Paris) in the passage quoted above. In that passage from 50, it is the republic that concerns itself with the bonheur of men; in 49 it is the authors of the books the narrator has just read that do so. Were it not for that difference, the passage in 50 might be taken to allude directly to the one in 49 in the same way that the narrator of “Les Veuves” (13) alludes to what he had just said in “Les Foules” (12) (“comme je l’insinuais tout à l’heure . . . ”) (OC I: 292). The idea, however, that 49’s narrator dimly perceives, and that he will grasp more clearly when his Demon speaks, leads him to the opposite conclusion with regard to poor men from what 50’s narrator says about poor dogs. The latter are deserving of honor because they are slaves (“esclaves complaisants, soumis ou dévoués” [obliging, submissive, or devoted slaves] [OC I: 362]), while the former are meritorious when they refuse that status: “celui-là seul est digne de la liberté, qui sait la conquérir” [he alone is worthy of freedom who can conquer it] (OC I: 358). The poor who fight for their liberty, and thereby refuse to be slaves, can actually convey honor. After the poor man beats him up more severely than the narrator had beaten him (knocking out four teeth instead of two, blackening two eyes instead of one), the narrator proclaims him his equal and asks, “veuillez me faire l’honneur de partager avec moi ma bourse” [deign to do me the honor of sharing my purse] (OC I: 359)—as the dogs honored

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in 50 come to “partager le repas que leur a préparé la charité de certaines pucelles sexagénaires” [share the meal prepared for them by the charity of certain sexagenarian maidens] (OC I: 361), who by their age have something in common with the assaulted beggar, “ce sexagénaire affaibli” [that weakened sexagenarian] (OC I: 359). The request the narrator of 49 makes to the man he has assaulted to do him the honor of sharing his purse also finds its mirror opposite in the request that poor dogs make: “Je chante les chiens . . . qui ont dit à l’homme abandonné, avec des yeux clignotants et spirituels: ‘Prends-moi avec toi, et de nos deux misères nous ferons peut- être une espèce de bonheur!’” [I sing of the dogs . . . who have said to the abandoned man, with blinking and intelligent eyes, “Take me with you, and from our two miseries we can maybe forge a sort of happiness!”] (OC I: 361). The assult on the sexagenerian’s back, “un coup de pied lancé dans le dos” [a kick aimed at his back] (OC I: 359), followed by the tree branch with which he tenderized that same part of his anatomy, finds its mirror opposite in the vest that the narrator “endosse” [puts on his back] as a reward for having honored dogs:

Aucun de ceux qui étaient présents dans la taverne de la rue Villa-Hermosa n’oubliera avec quelle pétulance le peintre s’est dépouillé de son gilet en faveur du poète, tant il a bien compris qu’il était bon et honnête de chanter les pauvres chiens. . . . Et toutes les fois que le poète endosse le gilet du peintre, il est contraint de penser aux bons chiens. . . .

[None of those who were present in the tavern on Villa-Hermosa Street will forget with what impetuosity the painter stripped himself of his vest in favor of the poet, so well that he truly understood that it was good and honorable to sing the praises of poor dogs. . . . And every time the poet puts the painter’s vest on his back, he has to think of the good dogs. . . . ] (OC I: 363)

Auguste Poulet-Malassis, Baudelaire’s friend and the publisher of the Fleurs du mal, gives an interesting insight into the “pétulance” with which Baude- laire’s narrator says that Stevens removed his vest: “At the instant, with all imaginable vivacity, Stevens took off his coat, to the great astonishment of the habitués of the place . . . who, considering the impetuosity [la pétu- lance] of his gesture, were hoping for a fistfight.”24 Thus it makes even

24. Cited in Charles Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris, ed. Robert Kopp (Paris: Gallimard/ Poésie, 2006), 330; hereafter cited in text as Kopp 2006.

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more sense that by saying of the vest that it is something one “endosse,” by implying that it is exchanged between the painter’s back and the poet’s, Baudelaire alludes to the exchange involving backs in the pugilistic scene carried on between 49’s narrator and the beggar who became his equal (if, as it seems, it was to the narrator’s back that the beggar applied the branch, just as the narrator had to his). The painter was the Belgian Joseph Stevens, known for his animal pictures, particularly of dogs. Baudelaire described one of them thus: “Misérable logis de saltimbanques. Tableau suggestif. Chiens habillés. Le saltimbanque est sorti et a coiffé un de ses chiens d’un bonnet de houzard pour le contraindre à rester immobile devant le miroton qui chauffe sur le poêle” [Saltimbanks’ miserable lodgings. Suggestive painting. Costumed dogs. The saltimbank has gone out and has put a Hussard’s hat on one of the dogs to make him remain immobile before the beef stew cooking on the stove] (OC II: 964).25 Baudelaire rewrites that scene in “Les Bons Chiens”:

Permettez-moi de vous introduire dans la chambre du saltimbanque absent. Un lit, en bois peint, sans rideaux, des couvertures traînantes et souillées de punaises, deux chaises de paille, un poële de fonte, un ou deux instruments de musique détraqués. Oh! le triste mobilier! Mais regardez, je vous prie, ces deux personnages intelligents, habillés de vêtements à la fois érail- lés et somptueux, coiffés comme des troubadours ou des militaires, qui surveillent, avec une attention de sorciers, l’œuvre sans nom qui mitonne sur le poële allumé, et au centre de laquelle une longue cuiller se dresse, plantée comme un de ces mâts aériens qui annoncent que la maçonnerie est achevée.

[Allow me to invite you into the abode of the absent saltimbank. A bed, in painted wood, without curtains, covers dragging on the floor and infested with bedbugs, two straw chairs, a cast-iron stove, one or two broken musical instruments. What depressing furniture! But please look at these two intelligent personages, dressed in costumes both ragged and sumptuous, wearing troubadour or soldier hats, who keep watch with the attention of sorcerers over the nameless work simmering on the lit stove, and in the middle of which a long spoon stands upright, planted like one of those aerial masts that announce that the masonry is finished.] (OC I: 362; Baudelaire’s italics)

25. a photograph of the painting is reproduced in Wolfgang Drost, “L’Inspiration plastique chez Baudelaire,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 49 (May–June 1957): 333.

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Among the details in the poem but not present in Baudelaire’s earlier description of the painting are “un ou deux instruments de musique détra- qués” [one or two broken musical instruments], which bring to mind what the beggar became after the narrator beat him up, “une machine si singu- lièrement détraquée” [a machine so singularly broken] (the adjective détra- qué appears in no other poem). There is one musical instrument (not two) in the painting, a drum, but it gives no appearance of being broken. So Baudelaire evidently added it to the poem to set up a connection with “Assommons les pauvres.” in Baudelaire’s first description there are costumed dogs in the plural but only one is wearing a hat and watching the pot, while in the poem there are two wearing hats and watching the pot. In the painting, however, there are three dogs, though only one—the middle of the three—is watching the pot. He wears a military hat, as does the dog to his right, who is looking off to his right instead of at the pot. The third dog, not in costume, “is looking down at the ground,” as Yann Mortelette notes.26 Another addition, present neither in the first description nor the painting, is the transformation of the dogs into “sorciers.” Baudelaire remembered the spoon sticking up in the middle of the pot from the painting, though he did not mention it in his earlier description. It is only in the poem that he calls what is cooking “l’œuvre sans nom” and likens it to a construction project that is finally finished. Margery A. Evans writes: “The ‘œuvre sans nom’ which simmers on the saltimbank’s stove is open to being read as a metaphor for the Petits Poèmes en prose themselves” as “an extraordinary or unspeakable work” (108). Maria C. Scott concurs with Evans but gives an additional reason: the nameless work alludes to the collection “because no consensus exists as to its most appropriate title.”27 Baudelaire gave no collective title to the handwritten list of fifty poems on which Asselineau and Banville based their edition (Kopp 2006, 271), and he alternated between Petits poèmes en prose and Spleen de Paris during the time he was writing them (Kopp 1969, lxiv–lxv). Murphy, however, approves of Pichois’s decision to adopt Le Spleen de Paris as the title in the Pléiade edition, arguing that newly published letters by Baudelaire confirm it (37n). in any case, as Jérôme Thélot discovered,28 Baudelaire is alluding to Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 1, where Macbeth asks the witches what they are cooking up in their cauldron and they reply, “A deed without a name.” The

26. yann Mortelette, “Les Bons Chiens, Macbeth et ‘l’œuvre sans nom,’” Bulletin baudelairien 31, no. 2 (1996): 105. 27. maria C. Scott, Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris: Shifting Perspectives (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 128. 28. Jérôme Thélot, “Une citation de Shakespeare dans Les Bons Chiens,” Bulletin baudelairien 24, no. 2 (1989): 61–66.

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two dogs watching over the pot “avec une attention de sorciers” are behaving like Shakespeare’s sorcières [witches]. The spoon is upright because the cooking has advanced to the point that the pot’s contents have lost their liquidity, becoming “une soupe puissante et solide” [a powerful and solid soup]. The narrator also describes it as a “maçonnerie . . . achevée,” which Evans takes to be an allusion to Free- masonry: “the edifice completed, . . . the secret, quasi-masonic understanding between poet and reader is at an end” (108). Kaplan even translates it as alluding only to that: “like one of those aerial masts announcing that the freemasonry is complete” (1989, 127). But Kaplan, Evans, and Scott, who seconds Evans’s masonic reading, are not paying enough attention to the more obvious sense of “maçonnerie,” as Bescherelle’s dictionary, con- temporary with Baudelaire, defined it: “Construction où ont été employés les pierres ou les briques et le mortier” [Construction in which stones or bricks and mortar have been employed]. In fact, that entry makes no mention of Freemasonry at all, defining it only under Franc-Maçonnerie. Evans goes on to write, “Of all the prose poems it is arguable that ‘Les Bons Chiens’ alone must be read in the order of presentation, at the end of the collection” (108). “Les Bons Chiens” certainly belongs where Baudelaire put it, but it is not alone in having that quality. As Baudelaire here reveals, the Spleen de Paris is solidly built masonry, each of whose stones is placed where its author intended, each fitting tightly with the ones on either side in a solid and permanent structure which with “Les Bons Chiens” is at last “achevée.” Soon after this point in the poem Baudelaire reveals another secret of his volume’s construction: “Les bergers de Virgile et de Théocrite attendaient, pour prix de leurs chants alternés, un bon fromage, une flûte du meilleur faiseur ou une chèvre aux mamelles gonflées. Le poète qui a chanté les pauvres chiens a reçu pour récompense un beau gilet . . . ” [The shepherds of Virgil and Theocritus would expect, as a prize for their alternating songs, a good cheese, a flute from the best maker or a goat with swollen breasts. The poet who sang of poor dogs received for reward a fine vest . . . ] (OC I: 362). As we know already, the poet who receives the prize for singing the praises of poor dogs is the narrator, and it will turn out to be the painter of the scene of the saltimbank’s two dogs who awards it. In this allusion to the shepherds’ “chants alternés” [alternating songs] in Theocritus and Virgil, coming significantly at the conclusion of the Spleen de Paris, Baude- laire reveals the classical basis for the peculiar structure of his collection, the tradition out of which come not only the Spleen de Paris but also the Fleurs du Mal. We recall that he had also said that the prose poems were related to each other by alternation when he told Houssaye that everything is “à la fois tête et queue, alternativement et réciproquement” [at the same

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time head and tail, alternatively and reciprocally]. The alternating songs in Theocritus’s Idylls and Virgil’s Eclogues are the loci classici of “amoebaean verses (‘responsive verses’) whereby verses, couplets, or stanzas are spoken alternately by two speakers. The second speaker is expected not only to match the theme introduced by the first but also to improve upon it in some way.”29 Not only is the theme repeated but so are specific words, as Baudelaire does in poems 49 and 50 with “esclaves,” “dictionnaire,” “bonheur public” / “bonheur des hommes,” “sexagénaire,” “partager,” “détraqué,” and “dos” / “endosse.” according to James B. Pearce,

The term amoebaean implies an exchange in which there are two sing- ers singing in opposition. The one presents a “lead-off” song on a topic of his own choosing. . . . The “second” singer then would be expected to respond to the lead-off song in some way; he might give an opposing view, produce a song on a similar theme, or simply add information. His real task of course would be to outdo his opponent in some fashion. The lead-off singer would then begin the second round of the contest with a theme of his own choosing and the entire process would be repeated. It is felt by some, however, that if the lead-off singer were in some manner to build his song upon the previous response, he would “score more points,” so to speak, with the judge.30

Virgil’s Eclogue 3 is an adaptation of Theocritus’s Idyll 5. As R. W. Gar- son explains, “Both poems are in the form of an amoebaean contest in couplets preceded by abuse and followed by an umpire’s verdict, and the number of verbal borrowings” on Virgil’s part from Theocritus “is very great indeed.”31 In effect (this is my observation, not Garson’s), Virgil is the second singer here; he is to Theocritus as Lacon is to Comatas, the younger (as Lacon was) to the older. Garson (195) cites a number of verbal borrowings from the Greek of Idyll 5 into the Latin of Eclogue 3 (e.g., “deka mala” becomes “aurea mala decem”) and adds that “Virgil could take couplets from two different poems and make them responsive,” not only from other Idylls than the fifth, which was his principal source, but also by combining “two elements which occur in balancing couplets in his model” (196). That is, he took one element from what Comatas said (Idyll

29. “Pastoral,” in The New Princeton Encylopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 885. 30. James B. Pearce, “Theocritus and Oral Tradition,” Oral Tradition 8, no. 1 (1993): 63–64. 31. r. W. Garson, “Theocritean Elements in Virgil’s Eclogues,” Classical Quarterly, New Series, 21, no. 1 (May 1971): 192, hereafter cited in text.

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5. 125) and another from what Lacon said (Idyll 5. 126) and combined them into what a single speaker in his poem says (Eclogue 3. 89). In addition, Damoetas, Virgil’s second speaker, on one occasion repeats an entire line of verse first spoken by his opponent, Menalcas: “necdum illis labra admovi sed condita servo” [Nor have I yet put my lips to them, but keep them in store] (ll. 3. 43 and 3. 47);32 the last exchange in Virgil’s Eclogue 3 provides another example: “DAMOETAS: Dic, quibus in terris (et eris mihi magus Apollo) / tris pateat Caeli spatium non amplius ulnas” [Tell me in what land—and you shall be my great Apollo—Heaven’s space is but three ells broad]. “MENALCAS: Dic, quibus in terris inscripti nomina regum / nascantur flores, et Phyllida solus habeto” [Tell me in what land spring up flowers with royal names written thereon—and have Phyllis to yourself!]. Both of these repetitions are noted by Walter Moskalew, who goes on to point out that usually Virgil’s are less obvious because of their more frag- mentary and dispersed nature.33 That Baudelaire was familiar with the amoebaean structure in Theocri- tus and Virgil is clear not only from his allusion in “Les Bons Chiens” to their shepherds’ “chants alternés” but also in a remark he once made critical of “Les Deux Amours,” a poem by Hégésippe Moreau: “Les deux amours alternent, comme des bergers de Virgile, avec une symétrie mathé- matique désolante. C’est là le grand malheur de Moreau. Quelque sujet et quelque genre qu’il traite, il est élève de quelqu’un” [The two loves alternate, like Virgil’s shepherds, with a depressing mathematical symmetry. That is Moreau’s great misfortune: whatever subject or genre he treats, he is always someone’s student] (OC II: 160). Though by his allusion to his two predecessors in “Les Bons Chiens” Baudelaire reveals that his poems are part of the amoebaeaen tradition, he is hardly content to be their mere imitator; he surpasses them. Instead of a closed symmetry between two speakers in which the second speaker continually caps the first (and the first sometimes the second), what he provides in the sequential symmetry of the Spleen de Paris and the Fleurs du mal is an open process, a potentially endless progression, the second poem capping the first, the third the second, the fourth the third, and so forth, in a series that will stop only when he wants it to. Here we can see the relevance of at least part of his letter to Houssaye, for the poet can “couper” [interrupt] his “rêverie,” as he said, where he wishes. In 1857 the Fleurs du mal ended with “La Mort des artistes”; in 1861 they went past that point to end with “Le Voyage.” Similarly, the Spleen de Paris might have gone on for another fifty poems

32. virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI, vol. 1, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965). 33. Walter Moskalew, Formular Language and Poetic Design in the Aeneid (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982), 43.

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had he lived to write them—to write them, that is, in such a way that, like the first fifty, they would fit together like stones in masonry, a difficult project that takes much longer to achieve than to simply write them without regard for their place in the fabric. Yet he either knew that he would not live to do that, and therefore said in “Les Bon Chiens” that the masonry was complete, or perhaps he would have put that poem, with its revelation that he was writing amoebaean “chants alternés,” at the end of whatever the book turned out to be, with attendant other changes, leading us to see how many of the poems such as “Assommons les pauvres” that precede it now would have had to come before it at the end of the sequence. Stevens and Baudelaire both praised poor dogs, in painting and poetry, respectively. Like Comatas and Lacon (and Theocritus and Virgil), they performed in alternation, Stevens first painting three dogs, Baudelaire in “Les Bons Chiens” reducing them to two attentively watching the work in progress. By that change in number, he wrote himself and Stevens into the scene, wrote in his alternating poems as well, watching over the unnamed work coming to completion between them, reminding his readers that the real œuvre emerges not in his poems but between them.

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The Order of the Poems in the 1857 and 1861 Editions i

1857 1861 Au Lecteur Au Lecteur 1. Bénédiction 1. Bénédiction 2. Le Soleil (1861: 87) 2. L’Albatros 3. Élévation 3. Élévation 4. Correspondances 4. Correspondances 5. Jaime le souvenir . . . 5. Jaime le souvenir . . . 6. Les Phares 6. Les Phares 7. La Muse malade 7.La Muse malade 8. La Muse vénale 8. La Muse vénale 9. Le Mauvais Moine 9. Le Mauvais Moine 10. L’Ennemi 10. L’Ennemi 11. Le Guignon 11. Le Guignon 12. La Vie antérieure 12. La Vie antérieure 13. Bohémiens en voyage 13. Bohémiens en voyage 14. L’Homme et la mer 14. L’Homme et la mer 15. Don Juan aux enfers 15. Don Juan aux enfers 16. Châtiment de l’orgueil 16. Châtiment de l’orgueil 17. La Beauté 17. La Beauté 18. L’Idéal 18. L’Idéal 19. La Géante 19. La Géante 20. Les Bijoux 20. Le Masque 21. Hymne à la beauté

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21. Parfum exotique 22. Parfum exotique 23. La Chevelure 22. Je tádore . . . 24. Je tádore . . . 23. Tu mettrais lúnivers . . . 25. Tu mettrais lúnivers . . . 24. Sed non satiata 26. Sed non satiata 25. Avec ses vêtements . . . 27. Avec ses vêtements . . . 26. Le Serpent qui danse 28. Le Serpent qui danse 27. Une charogne 29. Une charogne 28. De profundis clamavi 30. De profundis clamavi 29. Le Vampire 31. Le Vampire 30. Le Léthé 31. Une nuit que j´étais . . . 32. Une nuit que j´étais . . . 32. Remords posthume 33. Remords posthume 33. Le Chat: Viens . . . 34. Le Chat: Viens . . . 35. Duellum 34. Le Balcon 36. Le Balcon 37. Le Possédé 38. Un fantôme I. Les Ténèbres II. Le Parfum III. Le Cadre IV. Le Portrait 35. Je te donne ces vers . . . 39. Je te donne ces vers . . . 40. Semper eadem 36. Tout entière 41. Tout entière 37. Que diras-tu ce soir . . . 42. Que diras-tu ce soir . . . 38. Le Flambeau vivant 43. Le Flambeau vivant 39. À celle qui est trop gaie 40. Réversibilité 44. Réversibilité 41. Confession 45. Confession 42. L’Aube spirituelle 46. L’Aube spirituelle 43. Harmonie du soir 47. Harmonie du soir 44. Le Flacon 48. Le Flacon 45. Le Poison 49. Le Poison 46. Ciel brouillé 50. Ciel brouillé 47. Le Chat: Dans ma cervelle . . . 51. Le Chat: Dans ma cervelle . . . 48. Le Beau Navire 52. Le Beau Navire 49. L’Invitation au voyage 53. L’Invitation au voyage 50. L’Irréparable 54. L’Irréparable 51. Causerie 55. Causerie 56. Chant d’automne

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57. À une Madone 58. Chanson d’après-midi 59. Sisina 52. L’Héautontimoroumenos (1861: 83) 53. Franciscae meae laudes 60. Franciscae meae laudes 54. À une dame créole 61. À une dame créole 55. Moesta et errabunda 62. Moesta et errabunda 63. Le Revenant (1857: 72) 64. Sonnet d’automne 65. Tristesses de la lune (1857: 75) 56. Les Chats 66. Les Chats 57. Les Hiboux 67. Les Hiboux 68. La Pipe (1857: 77) 69. La Musique (1857: 76) 70. Sépulture (1857: 74) 71. Une gravure fantastique 72. Le Mort joyeux (1857: 73) 73. Le Tonneau de la Haine (1857: 71) 58. La Cloche fêlée 74. La Cloche fêlée 59. Spleen: Pluviôse, irrité . . . 75. Spleen: Pluviôse, irrité . . . 60. Spleen: J´ai plus de souvenirs . . . 76. Spleen: J’ai plus de souvenirs . . . 61. Spleen: Je suis comme le roi . . . 77. Spleen: Je suis comme le roi . . . 62. Spleen: Quand le ciel . . . 78. Spleen: Quand le ciel . . . 79. Obsession 80. Le Goût du néant 63. Brumes et pluies (1861: 101) 81. Alchimie de la douleur 82. Horreur sympathique 83. L’Héautontimorouménos (1857: 52) 64. L’Irrémédiable 84. L’Irrémédiable 85. L’Horloge 86. Paysage 87. Le Soleil (1857: 2) 65. À une mendiante rousse 88. À une mendiante rousse 89. Le Cygne 90. Les Sept Vieillards 91. Les Petites Vieilles 92. Les Aveugles

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93. À une passante 94. Le Squelette laboureur 66. Le Jeu (1861: 96) 67. Le Crépuscule du soir 95. Le Crépuscule du soir 96. Le Jeu (1857: 66) 97. Danse macabre 98. L’Amour du mensonge 99. Je n´ai pas oublié . . . (1857: 70) 100. La servante au grand cœur . . . (1857: 69) 101. Brumes et pluies (1857: 63) 102. Rêve parisien 68. Le Crépuscule du matin 103. Le Crépuscule du matin 69. La servante au grand cœur . . . (1861: 100) 70. Je n´ai pas oublié . . . (1861: 99) 71. Le Tonneau de la Haine (1861: 73) 72. Le Revenant (1861: 63) 73. Le Mort joyeux (1861: 72) 74. Sépulture (1861: 70) 75. Tristesses de la lune (1861: 65) 76. La Musique (1861: 69) 77. La Pipe (1861: 68) 104. L’Âme du vin 105. Le Vin des chiffonniers 106. Le Vin de l’assassin 107. Le Vin du solitaire 108. Le Vin des amants (1857: 93–97) 78. La Destruction 109. La Destruction 79. Une martyre 110. Une martyre 80. Lesbos 81. Femmes damnées: À la pâle clarté . . . 82. Femmes damnées: Comme un 111. Femmes damnées: Comme un bétail pensif . . . bétail pensif . . . 83. Les Deux Bonnes Sœurs 112. Les Deux Bonnes Sœurs 84. La Fontaine de sang 113. La Fontaine de sang 85. Allégorie 114. Allégorie 86. La Béatrice 115. La Béatrice 87. Les Métamorphoses du vampire 88. Un voyage à Cythère 116. Un voyage à Cythère

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89. L’Amour et le crâne 117. L’Amour et le crâne 90. Le Reniement de saint Pierre 118. Le Reniement de saint Pierre 91. Abel et Caïn 119. Abel et Caïn 92. Les Litanies de Satan 120. Les Litanies de Satan 93. L’Âme du vin 94. Le Vin des chiffonniers 95. Le Vin de l’assassin 96. Le Vin du solitaire 97. Le Vin des amants (1861: 104–8) 98. La Mort des amants 121. La Mort des amants 99. La Mort des pauvres 122. La Mort des pauvres 100. La Mort des artistes 123. La Mort des artistes 124. La Fin de la journée 125. Le Rêve d’un curieux 126. Le Voyage

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The Order of the Poems in Le Spleen de Paris i

1. L’Étranger 2. Le Désespoir de la vieille 3. Le Confiteor de l’artiste 4. Un plaisant 5. La Chambre double 6. Chacun sa chimère 7. Le Fou et la Vénus 8. Le Chien et le flacon 9. Le Mauvais Vitrier 10. À une heure du matin 11. La Femme sauvage et la petite-maîtresse 12. Les Foules 13. Les Veuves 14. Le Vieux Saltimbanque 15. Le Gâteau 16. L’Horloge 17. Un hémisphère dans une chevelure 18. L’Invitation au voyage 19. Le Joujou du pauvre 20. Les Dons des fées 21. Les Tentations, ou Éros, Plutus et la gloire 22. Le Crépuscule du soir 23. La Solitude

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24. Les Projets 25. La Belle Dorothée 26. Les Yeux des pauvres 27. Une mort héroïque 28. La Fausse Monnaie 29. Le Joueur généreux 30. La Corde 31. Les Vocations 32. Le Thyrse 33. Enivrez-vous 34. Déjà! 35. Les Fenêtres 36. Le Désir de peindre 37. Les Bienfaits de la lune 38. Laquelle est la vraie? 39. Un cheval de race 40. Le Miroir 41. Le Port 42. Portraits de maîtresses 43. Le Galant Tireur 44. La Soupe et les nuages 45. Le Tir et le cimetière 46. Perte d’auréole 47. Mademoiselle Bistouri 48. Any where out of the world—N’importe où hors du monde 49. Assommons les pauvres! 50. Les Bons Chiens

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Baudelaire, Charles. Correspondance. Edited by Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler. 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard/Pléiade, 1973. ———. Les Fleurs du mal. Edited by Jacques Crépet and Georges Blin. Paris: José Corti, 1942. ———. Les Fleurs du mal. Edited by Antoine Adam. Paris: Garnier, 1961. ———. Les Fleurs du mal. Edited by Jacques Dupont. Paris: GF Flammarion, 2006. ———. Œuvres complètes. Edited by Claude Pichois. 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard/Plé- iade, 1975–76. ———. The Parisian Prowler: Le Spleen de Paris / Petits Poèmes en prose. Trans- lated by Edward K. Kaplan. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989. ———. Petits Poèmes en prose. Edited by Henri Lemaitre. Paris: Garnier, 1962. ———. Petits Poèmes en prose. Edited by Robert Kopp. Paris: José Corti, 1969. ———. Le Spleen de Paris: Petits poèmes en prose. Edited by Yves Florenne. Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1998. ———. Le Spleen de Paris. Edited by Robert Kopp. Paris: Gallimard/Poésie, 2006. Berger, Anne. “‘À une mendiante rousse’: variations sur le don d’un poème.” In Lectures des Fleurs du mal, edited by Steve Murphy, 315–30. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2002. Bescherelle, Louis-Nicolas. Dictionnaire universel de la langue française. Paris: Garnier frères, 1856. Blood, Susan. “Mimesis and the Grotesque in ‘L’Albatros.’” In Understanding Les Fleurs du Mal: Critical Readings, edited by William J. Thompson, 1–15.

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Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1997. Burton, Richard D. E. “Baudelaire’s S/Z: ‘Sisina’ and the Domestication of the Feminine.” Modern Philology 92, no. 1 (1994): 64–72. Cargo, Robert T. A Concordance to Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965. ———. Concordance to Baudelaire’s Petits Poèmes en Prose. University: Univer- sity of Alabama Press, 1971. Chambers, Ross. “Recycling the Ragpicker: ‘Le Vin des chiffonniers.’” In Under- standing Les Fleurs du Mal: Critical Readings, edited by William J. Thomp- son, 176–91. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1997. ———. “Trois paysages urbains: Les Poèmes liminaires des Tableaux parisiens.” Modern Philology 80, no. 4 (May 1983): 372–89. Drost, Wolfgang. “L’Inspiration plastique chez Baudelaire.” Gazette des Beaux- Arts 49 (May–June 1957): 321–36. Evans, Margery A. Baudelaire and Intertextuality: Poetry at the Crossroads. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Françon, Marcel. “L’unité des Fleurs du mal.” PMLA 60, no. 4 (December 1945): 1130–37. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated and edited by James Strachey. New York: Avon Books, 1965. Garson, R. W. “Theocritean Elements in Virgil’s Eclogues.” Classical Quarterly, New Series, 21, no. 1 (May 1971): 188–203. Godfrey, Sima. “Baudelaire’s Windows.” L’Esprit Créateur 22, no. 4 (Winter 1982): 83–100. Guerlac, Suzanne. The Impersonal Sublime: Hugo, Baudelaire, Lautréamont. Stan- ford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990. Hansen, William. “Foam-Born Aphrodite and the Mythology of Transforma- tion.” American Journal of Philology 121, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 1–19. Hiddleston, J. A. Baudelaire and Le Spleen de Paris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. ———. “‘Chacun son Spleen’: Some Observations on Baudelaire’s Prose Poems.” Modern Language Review 86, no. 1 (January 1991): 66–69. ———. Review of Lawler, James. Poetry and Moral Dialectic: Baudelaire’s “Secret Architecture.” French Studies 54, no. 1 (2000): 98–99. Johnson, Barbara. Défigurations du language poétique. Paris: Flammarion, 1979. Kaplan, Edward K. Baudelaire’s Prose Poems: The Esthetic, the Ethical, and the Reli- gious in The Parisian Prowler. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990. Klein, Richard. “‘Bénédiction’/‘Perte d’Auréole’: Parables of Interpretation.” MLN 85, no. 4 (May 1970): 515–28. Kuin, Roger, and Anne Lake Prescott. “The Wrath of Priapus: Rémy Belleau’s ‘Jean qui ne peult’ and Its Traditions.” Comparative Literature Studies 37, no. 1 (2000): 1–17.

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Larousse, Pierre. Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle. Paris: Pierre Larousse, 1866–77. Lawler, James. Poetry and Moral Dialectic: Baudelaire’s “Secret Architecture.” Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. ———. “The Prose Poem as Art of Anticlimax: Baudelaire’s ‘Kaléidoscope.’” Australian Journal of French Studies 36, no. 3 (1999): 327–38. Leakey, F. W. Baudelaire and Nature. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1969. ———. Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du Mal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. Translated by John Weightman and Doreen Weightman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966. Originally published as La Pensée sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1962). Littré, Émile. Dictionnaire de la langue française. Paris : Hachette, 1877. Avail- able at http://françois.gannaz.free.fr./Littre. Lloyd, Rosemary. Baudelaire’s World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. Lucan. Pharsalia. Translated by Edward Ridley. Originally published as The Phar- salia of Lucan (London: Longmans, Green,. 1896. Available at The Online Medieval and Classical Library at http://omacl.org/Pharsalia/. Mahuzier, Brigitte. “Profaned Memory: A Proustian Reading of ‘Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ’” In Understanding Les Fleurs du Mal: Critical Readings, edited by William J. Thompson, 160–75. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1997. Milner, Max. “Introduction.” In Le Spleen de Paris, by Charles Baudelaire, 9–47. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1979. Mortelette, Yann. “Les Bons Chiens, Macbeth et ‘l’oeuvre sans nom.’” Bulletin baudelairien 31, no. 2 (1996): 100–105. Moskalew, Walter. Formular Language and Poetic Design in the Aeneid. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982. Murphy, Steve. Logiques du dernier Baudelaire: Lectures du Spleen de Paris. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2007. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Edited by Alex Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Nies, Fritz. Poesie in prosaischer Welt. Untersuchungen zum Prosagedicht bei Aloy- sius Bertrand und Baudelaire. Heidelberg: Winter, 1964. Pearce, James B. “Theocritus and Oral Tradition.” Oral Tradition 8, no. 1 (1993): 59–86. Pichois, Claude, and Jean Ziegler. Baudelaire. Paris: Julliard, 1987. Plutarch. “The Oracles at Delphi No Longer Given in Verse.” In Plutarch’s Moralia, translated by Frank Cole Babbitt, vol. 5: 255–345. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University/Loeb Library, 1957.

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Porter, Laurence M., ed. Approaches to Teaching Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil. New York: Modern Language Association, 2000. Quesnel, Michel. Baudelaire solaire et clandestin. Paris: PUF, 1987. Raitt, A. W. “On Le Spleen de Paris.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 18, nos. 1–2 (1989–90): 150–64. Richter, Mario. Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal: Lecture intégrale. Geneva: Slatkine, 2001. Robb, Graham. “Érotisme et obscénité des ‘Fleurs du mal.’” Europe, nos. 760– 61 (August–September 1992): 69–78. Runyon, Randolph Paul. The Art of the Persian Letters: Unlocking Montesquieu’s “Secret Chain.” Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. ———. The Braided Dream: Robert Penn Warren’s Late Poetry. Lexington: Uni- versity Press of Kentucky, 1990. ———. “The Circus in the Attic.” In The Taciturn Text: The Fiction of Robert Penn Warren, 117–32. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1990. ———. “The Double Discourse of I:21–25 and I:37–33.” In Montaigne and the Gods: The Mythological Key to the “Essays,” edited by Daniel Martin, 131–54. Amherst, MA: Hestia Press, 1993. ———. “Dreams and Other Connections Among Carver’s Recovered Stories.” Journal of the Short Story in English 46 (Spring 2006): 63–73. ———. Ghostly Parallels: Robert Penn Warren and the Lyric Poetic Sequence. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006. ———. In La Fontaine’s Labyrinth: A Thread through the Fables. Charlottesville, VA: Rookwood Press/EMF Monographs, 2000. ———. “‘It’s like, but not like, a dream’: On Reading Ultramarine.” In New Paths to Raymond Carver, edited by Sandra Kleppe and Robert Miltner, 20– 34. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008. ———. “Montaigne bis.” In Renaissance et Nouvelle Critique: quatrième sym- posium sur la Renaissance, edited by Raymond Ortali, 117–34. Jávea, Spain: Artes Gráficas Soler, 1978. ———. “Montaigne’s Larceny: Book III’s Symmetrical Intertexts.” In The Order of Montaigne’s “Essays,” edited by Daniel Martin, 58–76. Amherst, MA: Hes- tia Press, 1989. ———. “Notes on the Tales.” In La Fontaine’s Complete Tales in Verse: An Illustrated and Annotated Translation, 225–59. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009. ———. “The ‘Oblique Gaze’: Some Evidence of Symmetry in Montaigne’s Essais (I: 1–6, 57–52).” In Essays in European Literature for Walter A. Strauss, edited by Alice N. Benston and Marshall C. Olds, 13–26. Manhattan, KS: Studies in Twentieth Century Literature, 1990. ———. “La parole gênée: Genèse et palinodie.” Change 16/17 (1973): 248– 64.

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———. Reading Raymond Carver. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992. ———. “La séquence et la symétrie comme principes d’organisation chez Mon- tesquieu, La Fontaine et Montaigne.” In Le Recueil littéraire: Pratiques et théorie d’une forme, edited by Irène Langlet, 177–86. Rennes: Presses Uni- versitaires de Rennes, 2003. ———. “The Vanishing Center.” In Freedom Over Servitude: Montaigne, La Boé- tie, and “On Voluntary Servitude,” edited by David Lewis Schaefer, 87–113. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Scève, Maurice. The Délie of Maurice Scève. Edited by I. D. McFarlane. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966. Scott, Maria C. Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris: Shifting Perspectives. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. Starobinski, Jean. “‘Je n’ai pas oublié . . .’ (Baudelaire: poème XCIX des Fleurs du mal).” In Au bonheur des mots: mélanges en l’honneur de Gérald Antoine, 419–29. Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1984. Stephens, Sonya. Baudelaire’s Prose Poems: The Practice and Politics of Irony. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Thélot, Jérôme. “Une citation de Shakespeare dans Les Bons Chiens.” Bulletin baudelairien 24, no. 2 (1989): 61–66. Virgil. Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI, vol. 1. Translated by H. Rushton Fair- clough. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. Wright, Barbara. “Baudelaire’s Poetic Journey in Les Fleurs du Mal.” In The Cambridge Companion to Baudelaire, edited by Rosemary Lloyd, 31–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

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Verse poems “Bohémiens en voyage,” 29–30, 106, 175 “Abel et Caïn,” 105–8 “Brumes et pluies,” 78–80, 176–78 “À celle qui est trop gaie,” 56–58, “Causerie,” 69–71, 138–40, 148 137, 195 “Chanson d’après-midi,” 142–45 “L’Albatros,” 120–22, 161, 162 “Chant d’automne,” 138–42 “Alchimie de la douleur,” 157–58 “Une charogne,” 43–47 “Allégorie,” 98–101 “Le Chat: Dans ma cervelle . . . ,” 9, “L’Âme du vin,” 108–13, 180–81 63–65 “L’Amour du mensonge,” 9, 84–85, “Le Chat: Viens . . . ,” 51–52, 64, 130 172–76 “Châtiment de l’orgueil,” 31–33 “L’Amour et le crâne,” 102–5 “Les Chats,” 72–74, 147, 149–50 “L’Aube spirituelle,” 8, 58–60, 178 “La Chevelure,” 126–29, 213–15, “Au Lecteur,” 17–21, 195 236, 252 “À une dame créole,” 71–72, 146 “Ciel brouillé,” 9, 62–63, 64 “À une madone,” 140–43, 146 “La Cloche fêlée,” 74–76, 154–55 “À une mendiante rousse,” 15, 80– “Confession,” 58–59 81, 120, 162–65 “Correspondances,” 21–23 “À une passante,” 168–69 “Le Crépuscule du matin,” 82–83, “Avec ses vêtements . . . ,” 40–43, 45 179–81 “Les Aveugles,” 167–69 “Le Crépuscule du soir,” 81–83, 170, “Le Balcon,” 27–28, 52–54, 130–32 174, 179 “La Béatrice,” 99–101, 183–84, “Le Cygne,” 15, 163–66 194–95 “Danse macabre,” 170–75 “Le Beau Navire,” 9, 64–67 “De profundis clamavi,” 45–47 “La Beauté,” 33–35 “La Destruction,” 10, 91–92, 181–83 “Bénédiction,” 17–21, 120–22, 163, “Les Deux Bonnes Soeurs,” 10, 194, 249 96–99, 181 “Les Bijoux,” 35–37, 49, 123–25 “Don Juan aux Enfers,” 30–33

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“Duellum,” 130–31 “Les Métamorphoses du vampire,” “Élévation,” 20–21, 86, 120–22, 163 100–102, 183–84, 195 “L’Ennemi,” 27–28 “Moesta et errabunda,” 72–74, “Un fantôme,” 51, 132–35, 137 145–47 “Femmes damnées: À la pâle “La Mort des amants,” 117–18, clarté . . . ,” 41, 94–96 184–85 “Femmes damnées: Comme un “La Mort des artistes,” 119, 185 bétail . . . ,” 95–97, 183 “La Mort des pauvres,” 118–19 “La Fin de la journée,” 185–87 “Le Mort joyeux,” 88–89, 146, “Le Flacon,” 8–9, 15, 59–62 153–54 “Le Flambeau vivant,” 56–57, 60, “La Muse malade,” 23–26 137–38, 195 “La Muse vénale,” 25–26 “La Fontaine de sang,” 10, 97–99 “La Musique,” 90, 149, 150–51, “Franciscae meae laudes,” 71–72, 145 153–54, 156 “La Géante,” 35–37, 123–24 “Une nuit que j’étais . . . ,” 15, 48– “Le Goût du néant,” 156–57 51, 52, 128–30, 194 “Une gravure fantastique,” 151–53 “Obsession,” 155–56, 157 “Le Guignon,” 27–30 “Parfum exotique,” 37–38, 125–29, “Harmonie du soir,” 8, 15, 59–61 252 “L’Héautontimorouménos,” 70–71, “Paysage,” 120, 159–62 145, 158–59 “Les Petites Vieilles,” 166–68 “Les Hiboux,” 73–75, 150 “Les Phares,” 23–26 “L’Homme et la mer,” 30–31 “La Pipe,” 90–91, 150 “L’Horloge,” 159–61 “Le Poison,” 9, 61–63 “Horreur sympathique,” 157–58 “Le Possédé,” 131–34 “Hymne à la beauté,” 123–26 “Que diras-tu ce soir . . . ,” 55–56 “L’Idéal,” 34–35 “Remords posthume,” 50–52, 64 “L’Invitation au voyage,” 9, 65–69, “Le Reniement de saint Pierre,” 214–16, 218, 252 103–7 “L’Irrémédiable,” 79–80, 158–60 “Le Rêve d’un curieux,” 185–88 “L’Irréparable,” 67–70, 164 “Rêve parisien,” 177–80 “J’aime le souvenir . . . ,” 21–24, 26, “Le Revenant,” 87–88, 145–48 175 “Réversibilité,” 57–58, 137–38, 195 “Je n’ai pas oublié . . . ,” 9–10, 83– “Sed non satiata,” 39–41, 93 87, 98, 172–76, 178 “Semper eadem,” 54, 135–37 “Je t’adore à l’égal . . . ,” 38–39, “Les Sept Vieillards,” 15, 165–67 127–29 “Sépulture,” 88–89, 149–53, 156 “Je te donne ces vers . . . ,” 18, 52– “Le Serpent qui danse,” 9, 41–45 55, 61, 134–36 “La servante au grand coeur . . . ,” 10, “Le Jeu,” 81–82, 170–75 83–86, 174–77, 179 “Lesbos,” 41, 93–96, 183 “Sisina,” 143–45 “Le Léthé,” 47–50, 129, 194 “Le Soleil,” 19–21, 98, 110, 120, “Les Litanies de Satan,” 10, 107–9, 161–63 184–85 “Sonnet d’automne,” 145–49 “Une martyre,” 91–94, 182, 183 “Spleen: J’ai plus de souvenirs . . . ,” “Le Masque,” 123–25 76–77 “Le Mauvais Moine,” 25–27 “Spleen: Je suis comme le roi . . . ,”

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76–78 “Les Dons des fées,” 219–21 “Spleen: Pluviôse, irrité . . . ,” 51, “Enivrez-vous,” 238–40 75–76, 85, 164 “L’Étranger,” 196–97 “Spleen: Quand le ciel bas . . . ,” “La Fausse Monnaie,” 230–33 77–80, 155–56 “La Femme sauvage et la petite-maî- “Le Squelette laboureur,” 169–70 tresse,” 205–7 “Le Tonneau de la Haine,” 87–88, “Les Fenêtres,” 12, 240–42 145, 146, 153–55 “Le Fou et la Vénus,” 13, 200–203 “Tout entière,” 53–56, 61, 136–37 “Les Foules,” 12, 206–9, 223, 254 “Tristesses de la lune,” 89–90, 146, “Le Galant Tireur,” 247–48 148–51 “Le Gâteau,” 12, 13, 15, 210–13 “Tu mettrais l’univers . . . ,” 38–40 “Un hémisphère dans une chevelure,” “Le Vampire,” 15, 47–48, 50, 128– 213–16, 218 30, 194 “L’Horloge,” 13, 211–14 “La Vie antérieure,” 28–30 “L’Invitation au voyage,” 214–19, “Le Vin de l’assassin,” 113–16, 181 252 “Le Vin des amants,” 116–18, “Le Joueur généreux,” 232–34 181–83 “Le Joujou du pauvre,” 216–20 “Le Vin des chiffonniers,” 15, 110– “Laquelle est la vraie?” 243–45 16, 181 “Mademoiselle Bistouri,” 250–53 “Le Vin du solitaire,” 116–17 “Le Mauvais Vitrier,” 201–5, 206 “Le Voyage,” 187–88, 194, 196 “Le Miroir,” 245–46 “Un voyage à Cythère,” 101–4, “Une mort héroïque,” 228–32 183–84, 195 “Perte d’auréole,” 249–52 “Un plaisant,” 198–99 “Le Port,” 246–47 Prose poems “Portraits de maîtresses,” 246–48, 249 “Les Projets,” 12, 13, 224–26 “Any where out of the world.— “La Solitude,” 222–25 N’importe où hors du monde,” “La Soupe et les nuages,” 248–49 251–53 “Les Tentations, ou Éros, Plutus et la “Assommons les pauvres!,” 252–61 gloire,” 220–22 “À une heure du matin,” 203–6 “Le Thyrse,” 15, 41, 237–40 “La Belle Dorothée,” 12, 13, 15, “Le Tir et le cimetière,” 248–50 225–28 “Les Veuves,” 12, 207–10, 223, 254 “Les Bienfaits de la lune,” 243–45 “Le Vieux Saltimbanque,” 12, 209–12 “Les Bons Chiens,” 8, 253–61 “Les Vocations,” 235–38 “Chacun sa chimère,” 199–204 “Les Yeux des pauvres,” 15, 226–30 “La Chambre double,” 198–200 “Un cheval de race,” 245–46 “Le Chien et le flacon,” 13, 201–4 Other prose works “Le Confiteor de l’artiste,” 197–98 “La Corde,” 233–37 “Canevas de la dédicace,” 203 “Le Crépuscule du soir,” 221–24 Du vin et du hachisch, 110–13 “Déjà!,” 12, 239–42 “Hégésippe Moreau,” 260 “Le Désespoir de la vieille,” 196–98 “L’Ivrogne,” 115 “Le Désir de peindre,” 242–43 Letter to Arsène Houssaye about the

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poems in prose, 11–12, 189–95, mal,” 14 203, 207, 243, 258–60 “Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à “Morale du joujou,” 216–19 Paris,” 5–6, 17, 149, 192–94 “Projet de préface pour Les Fleurs du Salon de 1846, 22

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Adam, Antoine, 9, 10, 24, 36, 41, Evans, Margery, 2n3, 203, 257, 258 57, 61, 67, 68, 71, 90, 97, 98, 105–6, 116, 141, 142, 152, 156, Flaubert, Gustave, 120 159 Florenne, Yves, 205 Asselineau, Charles, 11n16, 257 Françon, Marcel, 3 Aupick, Caroline (Baudelaire’s Freud, Sigmund, 111 mother), 84, 175 Garson, R. W., 259 Balzac, Honoré de, 147, 205 Gautier, Théophile, 4, 101, 194 Banville, Théodore de, 11n16, 141, Godfrey, Sima, 241–42 257 Goltzius, Hendrick, 102 Barbey d’Aurevilly, Jules, 2–5 Goya, Francisco, 130 Baudelaire, François (Baudelaire’s Gray, Thomas, 28, 30 father), 86 Guerlac, Suzanne, 232 Belleau, Rémy, 147 Berger, Anne, 80 Hansen, William, 49n6 Blood, Susan, 120 Hiddleston, J. A., 9, 12, 191, 203 Burton, Richard D. E., 144n2 Hugo, Victor, 41

Carver, Raymond, 15 Johnson, Barbara, 204, 213n17 Chambers, Ross, 111, 179n6 Kaplan, Edward K., 13, 195, 196, Dante, 100 236, 238, 241, 243, 245, 258 Daubrun, Marie, 61, 64, 67, 89, 141, Klein, Richard, 249 142 Kopp, Robert, 196, 207 Drost, Wolfgang, 256n25 DuBellay, Joachim, 175 La Fontaine, Jean de, 15 Dupont, Jacques, 93, 130 Lawler, James, 8–11, 13, 31, 67, Duval, Jeanne, 36–37, 40, 54, 61 196–97, 203, 231–32

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Leakey, F. W., 1–6, 22 Plutarch, 94 Lemaitre, Henri, 196 Poe, Edgar Allan, 7, 243 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1, 8, 203 Poulet-Malassis, Auguste, 173–74, Liszt, Franz, 5, 6, 17, 192–94, 175, 255 237–40 Lloyd, Rosemary, 110–11 Quesnel, Michel, 6, 32, 139, 178 Lucan, 154–55 Raitt, A. W., 12 Mahuzier, Brigitte, 85 Richter, Mario, 9–10, 13, 22n2, 33, Mallarmé, Stéphane, 44n5 34, 42, 58n7, 70, 71, 80, 84–85, Manet, Edouard, 233–34, 236 96, 104, 105, 116, 121, 163 Michelangelo, 34–35 Rimbaud, Arthur, 147 Milner, Max, 11–12, 11n16 Robb, Graham, 147 Molière, 31 Montaigne, Michel de, 15 Sabatier, Apollonie-Aglaé, 9, 54, 57, Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, 61 baron de, 15 Scève, Maurice, 179 Mortelette, Yann, 257 Scott, Maria C., 257 Mortimer, John Hamilton, 152 Shakespeare, 34, 35, 100, 257 Moskalew, Walter, 260 Starobinski, Jean, 86n10 Murphy, Steve, 191, 192, 195, 202, Stephens, Sonya, 207–8 205, 219, 232–33, 249, 257 Stevens, Joseph, 255–56, 261

Nies, Fritz, 12–13, 198–99n9, 201, Thélot, Jérome, 257 207, 212n15, 225–26, 241n21, Theocritus, 258–61 245, 247 Vigny, Alfred de, 3, 22, 194 Ovid, 40, 158 Virgil, 100, 258–61 Voltaire, 88 Pearce, James B., 259 Pichois, Claude, 5, 10, 21, 22–23, 25, Wagner, Richard, 5–6, 17, 149, 192– 30, 38, 40–41, 49, 64, 69, 71, 94, 238n20 92, 93, 97, 98, 100, 105, 109, Warren, Robert Penn, 15 116, 127, 134, 141, 145, 152, Wright, Barbara, 7–8 154, 159, 162, 166, 168, 257

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