English 2850
Professor Smith
Background: Symbolism and Charles Baudelaire
Romanticism is a literary movement of the 19th century that celebrated the spirit of the
individual over the norms of society. It developed as a reaction to Classicism and the strict
social demands of the Age of Reason, which promoted logic over emotion.
A sub-movement of Romanticism was the Symbolist movement. Most of its leading
proponents were French: Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Gautier, and Laforgue.
Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative
power of words to express the feelings, sensations, and states of mind that lie beyond everyday
awareness. Common themes among symbolist writers included the inner self and a fascination
with the gap between imagination and reality; the supernatural; and the connection between
images and the concepts they represent, including "synaesthesia,” which is the idea that
various senses are unconsciously linked (so, for instance, a sound may also be associated with a
color in a person’s mind). Rhetorical modes of comparison, either explicit (similes) or implicit
(metaphors), were the Symbolists’ chief literary devices, and the association between inner
feelings and outer phenomena became the focus of the symbols they used.
Many of the Symbolist artists felt a tension between their imagined lives—with lush imagery,
faraway exoticism, and idealized existence—and their humdrum real lives—with poverty, vices,
and the pressures of urban living. An idea that emerged among Symbolists was the image of the
poete maudit (cursed poet): an outcast from society who, despite his exclusion, knows the
deepest truths about it. These poets projected an image of wild-living people who were poor
and lived in the inner city, dressed strangely and rebelled against social rules, often used drugs
(absinthe and opium), had scandalous sex lives, and often died young from lack of self care.
They rejected bourgeois values, challenged the Establishment, refused to conform and lived
what was termed “la vie bohème.” These Bohemians were also called “Decadents” and
“Libertines” because they took so many social and moral liberties and deviated from accepted
social norms. In addition, they took artistic pleasure in shocking their audiences, always pushing
the envelope, risking censure and even imprisonment for indecency for celebrating their
decadence and the decay of life in the city. Their work often went unappreciated (ignored or
banned) during their lifetimes.
Charles Baudelaire was a Symbolist poet who was fascinated by the darker side of nature. While
so many Romantic poets celebrated nature's beauty as the revelation of God's goodness,
Baudelaire, like famous nineteenth-century American writer Edgar Allen Poe, examined
nature's less beautiful aspects such as death and decay. Likewise, while many Romantics
examined the spiritual or divine supernatural, Baudelaire— like Poe and Irving in America or
Stoker and Shelley in Europe—was more fascinated with supernatural monsters. Unleashing a
wild and vivid imagination, he explored the extreme confines of human nature and empathized
with such marginal characters as criminals, prostitutes, derelicts, outcasts, gamblers, as well as
madmen, acrobats, widows, and all kinds of old, poor, sick, or dying people.
Baudelaire employed standard poetic forms (such as sonnets or quatrains) and traditional
rhetorical figures (such as metaphors and allegories), but also radically altered them with new
and suprising representations. He focused on human nature, especially life in the city. His book
English 2850
Professor Smith
of poetry called Les Fleurs du Mal, which can be translated as "The Flowers of Evil" or "The
Flowers of Sickness," was censored for sexual explicitness and obscenity, and six poems were
banned from publication. Baudelaire was identified as a "poète maudit" (cursed poet) and at
one point even imprisoned for immorality.
Questions for your consideration:
1. Romanticism, a literary movement of the 19th century, developed as a reaction against
the strict social demands and emphasis on logic characterized by the Enlightenment.
Romantic poets like Keats celebrated the value of personal, emotional experience; the
beauty and divine magnificence of nature; and the power of the individual over the
norms and strictures of society. How does Baudelaire fit in with Romantic values? What
connections do you see in his images or themes to those of Keats?
2. How are the themes and characteristics of Symbolism different from those of
Romanticism?
3. Remember how we discussed Keats’ “To a Nightingale” as being organized around
opposing qualities, or dichotomies, such as awake/asleep and pain/pleasure? What
dichotomies does Baudelaire explore in “A Carcass” and what do you think the poem
says about these conflicting qualities?
4. In “To the Reader,” why does Baudelaire call the reader his “double” and “brother”?
What qualities does the reader share with the poet, in Baudelaire’s view? Why would
the reader be a “hypocrite”?
5. What are some of the ugly images Baudelaire uses in this poem? How does he describe
our lives? What does he think is the worst part of all?
6. The selections from Paris Spleen are commonly called “prose poems,” pieces written in
prose form (without the line breaks of poetry), but having certain qualities associated
with poetry, such as attention to rhythm, repetition, rhyme, and imagery. The spleen,
an organ that removes disease-causing agents from the bloodstream, was traditionally
associated with malaise; spleen is a synonym for ill-temper. For Baudelaire, spleen
signifies everything that is wrong with the world: death, despair, solitude, murder, and
disease.
a) How does Baudelaire characterize the life and work of “the poet” in the pieces
from Paris Spleen?
b) What are some of the striking images you notice in these pieces and what do
they mean or symbolize for Baudelaire?
7. Listing her favorite books in O Magazine some years ago, actress Jodie Foster includes
Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil, calling it “a must-read for any depressed adolescent.” What
are the qualities we usually associate with adolescence and/or depression? What
emotional need might Baudelaire’s work fulfill or what orientation toward life might it
validate—especially for the “depressed adolescent”?