Reframing Baudelaire: Literary History, Biography, Postcolonial Theory, and Vernacular
Languages
Author(s): Françoise Lionnet
Source: Diacritics, Vol. 28, No. 3, Doing French Studies (Autumn, 1998), pp. 62-85
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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REFRAMINGBAUDELAIRE
LITERARYHISTORY,BIOGRAPHY,
POSTCOLONIALTHEORY,AND
VERNACULARLANGUAGES
FRAN9OISELIONNET
In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf quips: "Historyis too much about wars;
biographytoo muchaboutgreatmen;"literaryhistory,she mighthaveadded,is too much
about sons murderingtheirfathers.Canonicalreadingsof the canon have often insisted
on the vaguely Freudian(if not biblical) model of literarycreationsusceptible both to
"anxieties of influence" and to creative revisions imposed by strong misreadings.
Criticismhas followed the same reactivepatternin orderto clear new groundfor further
research:the debatebetween"traditionalists"
andproponentsof "culturalstudies"all but
this
familiar
and
combative
dialectic.
Between formalist and sociopolitical
repeats
French
texts
have
been
mined
readings,
by many different critical trends; but the
perspectivesthatdo not fit neatly into one or the otherof these agonisticmoves tend to
be left out. DominickLaCaprahas suggestedthat"oneissue for readerstodayis whether
a different, 'noncanonical'readingof the canon, which resists symbolic resolutionsas
well as narrowlyformalisticinterpretations,maybe one force in reopeningtexts to the[ir]
broadersociopolitical effects" [731].
In the case of Baudelaire,the way to do this "noncanonical"readingmight well be
to go back to a discursivefield which includesbiographyand oralhistories,and to resist
the temptationeitherto eulogize the innovationsof the poet of modernityor to denounce
the patentracismof his images. The challenge today is to returnto the scene of writing
and the conditionsof productionof the early poetry-in otherwords,to look at the text
fromoutsideof conventionalliterary,criticalor culturalhistory,to reclaimit for our side,
that of a more globalfrancophonie. To do so might mean to map out once again the
contestedterrainof culturallyandpolitically sensitivereadingssuch as the ones Christopher Miller and GayatriSpivak claim to do. Their readings,however, do not take into
account the residualculturalelement of the poetry, that is, the vernacularlanguage it
appropriates.This languageis all butburiedbeneaththe emergenttheoreticalpracticesof
postcolonialcriticismandits vaguely nationalistagendas.'Criticshavetendedto look for
I wish to thankthe AmericanPhilosophical Society,the Social Science ResearchCouncil,and the
FulbrightFoundationfor their generous grants, which made it possible for me to travel and do
researchin theIndianOceanandMascarenesin 1988 andin 1997-98. Ialso thankMireilleRosello,
Ross Chambers,SidonieSmith,andSylvie Romanovskifortheircarefulreadingsof earlier versions
of this paper. Myfeminist readinggroup at NorthwesternUniversityhas providedmuch support
over theyears: thanksespecially to SusanManningforbringingus all togetheron a quarterlybasis,
and to Hollis Clayson,TracyDavis, MargaretDrewal, MadhuDubey,SandraRichards,and Jane
Winston. This paper was first read to audiences at the Universityof Iowa, the University of
Pennsylvania, Duke University, UCLA, and Cornell University. I thank colleagues at those
institutionsfor invitingme to share my workandfor their very useful criticismsand comments.
1. Myuse ofthe terms"residual"and "emergent"followsthatofRaymondWilliams,Marxism
andLiterature
[121-27].
diacritics / fall 1998
diacritics28.3:63-85
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63
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Parts: Avenuze dPrisgidtk
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Wilso , la
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plac
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symbolic resolutions and to settle cultural scores at the expense of historical and
geographicalspecificity, despite claims to the contrary.
The facts of Baudelaire's youthful travels in the Indian Ocean have remained
relativelyobscure.While doing researchin the islandsof Mauritiusand Reunionon two
separate occasions during the past few years, I came across written documents and
watercolorsthat helped me reconstructthe historicaland visual contexts that appearto
have been Baudelaire'sin 1841. By re-examiningthe criticisms that have been lodged
againstthe exoticizing rhetoricof his poetry,I want to foregroundthe links betweenthe
Creole culture with which Baudelairebecame familiarand the now canonical texts he
produced. These links can allow us to bypass the sterile opposition between "literary
studies"and "culturalstudies"or between aestheticsand politics; they demonstratethe
urgencyof re-visioningthe canon notjust fromthe perspectivesof its margins,but as an
importantsource of mutedculturalknowledge.The questions with which I begin, then,
arethe following: wheredid Baudelaireactuallygo on his travelsin 1841?andwhy does
this matterto the field of Frenchstudies?
Il faut en finir avec la l~gende de l'Inde parcouruepar Baudelaire.Elle itait
siduisante, GautierI'a adoptie, Banvillene I'a pas negligde..... Mais la veriti
vraie est que Baudelaire,embarquemalgre lui, briila la politesse a'l'Inde....
Peut-etre Baudelaire abandonnait-ilcomplaisammentau communpublic ces
bruitsde longuesperegrinationsenpaysfabuleux,parce qu'il en tirait,avec des
couleursde mystire,I'airde revenirdeloin. Dans tousles cas, il ne nousparlait
jamais de ces voyages. A peine, a'son retour,nous dit-il quelquesmots d'une
station dans I'ile Mauriceou 'fileBourbon.2
[It is time to put a stop to the legend of Baudelaire's trip throughIndia.It was
seductive, Gautieradopted it, Banville did not neglect it.... But the real truth
is thatBaudelaire,embarquedin spiteofhimself avoidedIndia.... It ispossible
that Baudelaire obliginglyfed the public rumorsof his long peregrinationsin
fabulous countries because it gave him the mysteriousappearance of having
returnedfromfaraway places. In any case, he never talkedabout his voyages.
Upon his return,he scarcely mentionedto us his brief stays in Mauritiusand
Reunion.]
This comment made by ErnestPrarond,a friendfrom Baudelaire'syouth, sums up
the facts: Baudelairenever went "enpays fabuleux,"that is, he did not set foot in those
legendarycontinentswhich have nourishedthe imaginationof Europeanssince Marco
Polo. He was, however, careful to constructhis own myths aroundthese travels.
Who can blame him? India, Africa: these were the stuff of his youthful dreams.
Having settled for Mauritiusand R6union,exotic but little-known islands instead of
fabulous continents, he must have felt that his experiences did not live up to his
contemporaries'expectations. For the inhabitantsof island colonies, the feeling is a
familiar one: islands are "duston the ocean"and "confettisof Empire"[Morissetand
Waddell89], and theirpeoples sufferfrom "traumataof insignificance."3Islandsdo not
2. Letterdated1886byErnestPrarondtoEugineCripet,thepoet'sfirstbiographer,
as cited
in
inDayreandPichois[76-77].Although"LaReunion"
becametheofficialnameof "Bourbon"
1793,thelocalscontinuedto referto it underthepreviousnamewellintothetwentieth
century.
Voices
See mydiscussionin Autobiographical
3. Thephraseis PatrickBellegarde-Smith's.
[6].
64
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have the same statusimaginativelyor politically as the largercontinentsof Africa and
Asia. Islands do not bestow on the travelerthe same aura of acquiredknowledge or
esoteric wisdom;they are mythical, seem unreal,and tendto be seen as places of escape
and rest, hideawaysonto which an infinite numberof desires can be projected.They do
not appearto have any culturalintegrityof theirown, unlikeoldercivilizations.They are
seen as the residuesof Europe'sdreamof empire,tabulaerasae, which need not be taken
very seriously.
Baudelaire'sstrategiesof avoidance("il ne nous parlaitjamaisde ces voyages")can
perhapsbe explainedby the fear of ridicule. His journey dead-endedin exotic tropical
islands which profoundlyinfluenced his sensibility, but the traces of Africa and India
which he found there would have been hardto explain withouta general theory and a
historyof metissage as would be developed by twentieth-centurythinkers[see Bernand
andGruzinsky;Glissant,Poitique; Amselle; Bhabha;andLionnet].His lack of precision
regardinghis destinationshas led bothhis contemporariesandhis criticsto contructtheir
own imaginarygeographiesof the "farawaylands"he visited.ChristopherMillerhaseven
collapsed dissimilarlocations and their inhabitantsinto vaguely substitutableentities.
Miller engages twice with Baudelaire'swritings,and twice errsin his understandingsof
the poet's strategiesof representation,first in his 1985 book, BlankDarkness:Africanist
Discourse in French, and then in a 1995 essay, "Hallucinationsof Franceand Africa in
the ColonialExhibitionof 1931 andOusmaneSoce's Miragesde Paris."Millerdiscusses
two poems, which I will call Baudelaire'sIndianOceanpoems:"A une damecreole"and
"La belle Dorothee;"he also focuses on "A une Malabaraise"and "Le cygne," as does
Gayatri Spivak, and they both misread crucial elements of the text. Miller fails to
discriminateamong distinct places while proceedingto expose what he perceives to be
Baudelaire'scontributionsto nineteenth-centuryexoticism and other myths of alterity
and femininity. GayatriSpivak, in "Imperialismand Sexual Difference,"chooses "Le
cygne" as a pretextfor uncovering"acurioustale"[230], thatof thedisappearanceof the
"Malabaraise"or Indian woman behind a vaguely "African"one. Like Miller, she
denouncesBaudelaire'smisnamingsand his use of Europeanpoetic conventionswhich
subsume historically specific female subjects; but she, too, fails to address the exact
historicaldetails of Baudelaire's IndianOcean voyage and the people he encountered
there. Her strategy, which is to "reveal the degree to which imperialist discourse
homogenizes andmisnamesits others ... risks the very carelessnessfor which it indicts
Baudelaire,"as LauraChrismanputs it [499-500]. This approachis symptomaticof a
largerproblem,thatof the statusof local historiesin the productionof knowledge, of the
erasure, neglect, or sheer invisibility of local knowledges in mainstreamacademic
discussions of topics which relate to "marginal"areas of investigation-such as the
southwesternIndianOcean and its "poussiered'fles," the Mascareneislands, of which
Mauritiusand Reunionare part.
Inthispaper,I wantto suggestthatthe poetcontributedmoreto makingothercultures
andlanguagesvisible andpresentwithinmainstreamFrenchliteraturethanhis criticsare
willing to grant, and that he is more importantto francophonestudies than either
ChristopherMilleror GayatriSpivakunderstand.I will arguethatthe Mascareneislands
are the repressedof Baudelaire'stravels, and that they returnin the form of a feminine
voice to which these critics are not attuned.Miller mistakenlytakes this voice to be
linguistic "noise,"whereasSpivak's rushto renderthe Indianwomanvisible behindthe
Africandenomination(the word "nrgresse"in "Le cygne") impairsher ability to focus
on the specificitiesof these insularregions.Thisresultsin bothcritics'failureto dojustice
to the oralcontextsof the Mascarenesandto the regionalrealitiesthatBaudelaireechoes.
I wantto stress,like Miller or Spivak,thatnineteenth-centuryEuropeanliteraturecannot
be fully understoodwithoutin-depthknowledgeof the geographiesandhistorico-cultural
arenaswhich markedandinspiredthe writersand travelersof thatepoch. But my goal is
diacritics / fall 1998
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65
to add a greaterdensity of details and specificity to that context. Though Spivak is
sensitive to this particularissue, her approacheliminatesthe possibilitythata poemcan
be the site of a multiplicityof voices, includingthe reportedor indirectspeechof the local
women. Spivakthus loses an opportunityto recognize and honorthose voices, however
mediatedthey may be. Finally, I will make a plea for a more sustainedand historicized
one withoutwhich literarycriticism of classic texts runs the risk of
"multiculturalism":
creatingembarrassingmisunderstandingsand wiping out islands as cruciblesof globalization from the historyof interculturalexchanges.
Let me then rehearsesome of the neglected facts of Baudelaire'sbiographybefore
demonstratingthe ways in whichtheCreoleculturesof the IndianOceanmadetheirmark
on his poetry.
On 18 April 1839,atthe age of 18,Baudelairewas suspendedfromthe college LouisLe-Grandin Paris,where, as an interne,he was preparingthe bachot. He hadto enrollin
anotherschool, andhe spentthe summerstudying.He becamebachelierin August.Free
at last, he startedliving a dissolute life in the QuartierLatinin the companyof a young
Jewish prostitutenamed Sara, also known as "La Louchette,"while making his first
contactswith writersand artists,includingNerval and Balzac [Pichois andZiegler 126].
His bourgeoise motherwas worried;his stepfather,the strict G6neralAupick, was not
pleased with this bohemianlifestyle. Aupick had many contactsin the merchantmarine
and arrangedto have the young Charlesembarkon a ship thatwas sailing to India.The
family hoped thatthe change of scene and l'air du large (the sea air) would cure him of
his "melancholia"andhis excessive interestin literature:the purposeof the voyage is to
interesthim in "reality,"to blunthis excessive love of words.The Paquebotdes Mersdu
Sud set sail fromBordeauxto Calcuttaon 9 June 1841. Underthe watchfuleye of Captain
Saliz, Baudelaireremaineda recalcitrantpassenger:he did not respondto the cure as
planned.As Saliz writes to Aupick:
Des notredepartde France,nousavonspu voira bordqu'il itait troptardpour
esperer faire revenir M. Beaudelaire [sic] soit de son goat exclusif pour la
littirature telle qu'on l'entendaujourd'hui,soit de sa diterminationde ne se
livrera aucune autre occupation. [Pichois and Ziegler 150-51; Roy v]
[We could see on boardthe ship thatit was too late to hope to change eitherM.
Beaudelaire's exclusivetastefor literatureas it is definedtodayor his determination to engage in no other occupation.]
Afteralmostthreemonthsat sea, thePaquebotarrivedin Mauritiuson 1 September1841.
There, in Pamplemousses,the young Charleswas the guest of a magistrateand planter
namedGustave-AdolpheAutardde Bragardandof his wife Emmeline,who was famous
for her beauty.On September18, the Paquebot set sail for Bourbon.On September19,
Baudelaire disembarked in Saint-Denis with all of his belongings. The Feuille
hebdomadaireof Saint-Denisdated21 September1841, recountsthefollowing anecdote:
Aumomentdeddbarquerduvaisseauancrden rade,lejeune CharlesBaudelaire
n 'agrippepas assez rapidementl'&chellede cordedu ddbarcad re. Gindpar les
livres qu'il porte sous les bras, et dont il n'a pas vouluse sdparer,il est happ!
par une lameau momentoa il surplombela mer,et tombea l'eau. On le repiche
non sans mal et surtoutnon sans dommagespour ses pricieux livres. [see fig.
1] [qtd. in Maurinand Lentge 446]
[As he was attemptingto disembarkfrom the ship anchoredin the harbor, the
young Charles Baudelaire fails to grasp quickly enough the rope ladder
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deSaint-Denis"
adocument
(c.1830),from
Fig.1: "Dibarcadire
fromtheArchives
ddpartementales
dela Rdunion,
andpublishedinProsperEve,"D'unecolonieagricolea'unecolonieindustrielle,"
LaNouvelleR6union[St-Denis:ConseilGeneral,1996],ed. WilfridBertil,31.
connectingto the wharf.Impairedby the bookshe was carryingunderhis arms,
and which he would not entrustto anyone else, he is caught by a wave at the
momentwhenhe is suspendedover the sea, andfalls in the water.He is rescued
with some difficultyand with muchdamage to his precious books.]
Anotherversionof these incidentsis relatedin La chroniquede Paris dated13 September
1867:
A l'arrivie Bourbon,il sepassa unfait quipeintbien les alluresde Baudelaire.
Onsait qu'a Saint-Denisde Bourbon,a%
cause de la rudessehabituellede la mer
et des difficultis qu'offrele seul point possible d'atterissage, le dibarquement
s'opdraitjadisau moyend'une ichelle de corde suspendue,a l'extrdmitgd'une
unesortede gigantesquepotence.Pourddbarquer,ilfaut saisir
jetde enpilotis,a%
les dchelonsau momentoi%
la vague qui se soulkveet s 'abaisse alternativement
est a%
sa plus grande dlivation.
Bien que renseigndsur cetteprdcautionndcessaire,Baudelaires'obstinaa
montera l'dechelleavec des livres sous le bras ... et gravit l'dchelle lentement,
gravement,poursuivi par la vague remontante.Bient6t la vague l'atteint, le
submerge,le couvre de douze i quinzepieds d'eau et l'arracheal'%dchelle.On
le repecheaigrand'peine;mais, chose inoui'e,il avait toujoursses livres sous le
bras.Alors seulementil consentita les laisser dans le canot quise tenaitaupied
de l'dchelle, mais en remontantil se laissa encore unefois atteindrepar la
vague, ne ldchapas prise, arrivasur la rive etprit le cheminde la ville, calme,
froid, sans avoir l'air de s'apercevoir de l'dmoides spectateurs.Son chapeau
seul avait itd la proie des requins. [qtd.in Pichois and Ziegler 149-50]
diacritics / fall 1998
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67
[The circumstances surrounding the arrival in Bourbon clearly revealed
Baudelaire's demeanor. It is well known that in Saint-Denis de Bourbon,
becauseof roughseas and thedifficultiespresentedby theonlypossible landing
spot, disembarkmentused to proceed by means of a rope ladder tied to a kind
of gigantic gallows builtat the extremityof a peer built on piles. Todisembark,
one needs to catch a rungof the ladderjust when the wave which goes up and
down is at its highest elevation.
Though informed of this necessary precaution, Baudelaire obstinately
resolved to climb the ladder with his books under his arm . .. and he climbs
slowly, solemnly, while the next wave approaches. It soon reaches him, submerges him,covering him undertwelve tofifteenfeet of waterand makinghim
fall off the ladder.He is rescuedwithgreat difficulty;and incredibly,he is still
holdingon to his books.Onlythendid he consentto leave those in the canoe still
ropedto thefoot of the ladder,but while climbing,he was hit by anotherwave,
did notfall off, arrivedashore, and made his way to town, calm, cold, without
appearingto notice theemotionsof thespectators.Onlyhis hat hadbecomefood
for the sharks.]
The scene describedin thesepapersevokes verywell therecalcitrantyoung traveler,
the loner,ill atease, butstubborn,refusingassistanceandunableto adaptto theexigencies
of the moment. Baudelairegot off the Paquebot des Mers du Sud, and he abandoned
CaptainSeliz andhis crew becausehe hadthefirmintentionof catchingthe nextshipback
to France-rather thancontinueon to Indiaas originallyplanned.But he would have to
wait for some forty-five days, until 4 November 1841, for the next ship-L'Alcidewhich wouldreturnfromIndia-to set sail fromSaint-Denison its way backto Bordeaux.
Baudelaire'sfirstcontactwith Bourbonwas a very wet andunpleasantone-and he will
laterdeny ever having set foot there.In a letterto the Parnassianpoet Leconte de Lisle,
a native of the island, with whom he will correspondlateron in Paris,he declares:
Je n 'aijamais mis les pieds dans votrecage a moustiques,sur votreperchoira'
perroquets.J'ai vu de loin des palmes, du bleu, du bleu, du bleu, du bleu....
[Maurinand Lentge 446]
[I have never set foot in your mosquito-riddencage, in your nest of parrots. I
have only seen palm treesfrom afar, and vast expansesof blue, blue, blue .. .]
Whereasin MauritiusBaudelairewas welcomed with open armsby the local elite,
in Bourbon,he seems to have spenthis weeks frequentingblackprostitutesand writing.
On 20 October 1841, Baudelairesent the poem "A une dame creole," dedicated to
Emmelinede Bragard,in a letterto herhusband.Thisoriginalversiondiffersslightlyfrom
the laterone publishedin Paris,first in L'artiste in 1845 and then in the 1857 edition of
Lesfleurs du mal:
Le 20 octobre 1841
Monbon monsieurA.,vousm'avezdemand quelquesvers&Mauricepour
votrefemme,etje n'ai pas oubli. Commeil est bon, dicent et convenableque
des vers adressis a une damepar unjeune hommepassentpar les mainsde son
mari avant d'arriver&elle, c'est a vous queje les envoie, afin que vous ne les
lui montriezque si cela vousplait.
Depuis queje vous ai quittL,j'ai souventpensd h vous et a vos excellents
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amis.-Je n'oublieraipas certes les bonnesmatineesque vous m 'avezdonnies,
vous, MadameA., et M. B.
Si je n 'aimais et si je ne regrettais pas tant Paris, je resterais le plus
longtempspossible aupresde vous, etje vousforceraia'm 'aimeret a'me trouver
un peu moins baroquequeje n 'en ai l'air.
II est peu probable queje retournea' Maurice,a moins que le navire sur
lequelje pars pour Bordeaux(I'Alcide)n 'y aille chercherdes passagers.
Voici mon sonnet:
Au pays parfumeque le soleil caresse
J'ai vu dans un retraitde tamarinsambres
Et de palmiers d 'ojipleut sur les yeux la paresse,
Une dame Creole aux charmesignores.
Son teint est pale et chaud; la bruneenchanteresse
A dans le cou des airs noblementmaniedrs;
Grande et svelte, en marchantcommeune chasseresse,
Son sourire est tranquilleet ses yeux assures.
Si vous alliez, Madame,au vrai pays de Gloire,
Sur les bords de la Seine ou de la verte Loire,
Belle, digne d'orner les antiques manoirs,
Vousferiez, aIl'abri des mousseuses retraites,
Germermille sonnets dans le coeur des poetes,
Que vos regards rendraientplus soumis que des noirs.
Donc je vais vous attendreen France.
Mes complimentsbien respectueuxa' MadameA.
C. Baudelaire.
[20 October1841
Mydear MonsieurA.,you askedme, in Mauritius,for a few versesfor your
wife, and I did not forget you. Since it is good, decent, and appropriatethat
verses addressed to a lady by a young man should be handed to her husband
before reachingher, I am sending themto you, so thatyou may only show them
to her if you so desire.
Ever since leaving you, I have often thoughtabout you and your excellent
friends.-I shall certainlyneverforgetthe wonderfulmorningsthatyou granted
me, you, MadameA., and M. B.
Ifl did not love and miss Paris so much,I wouldstay as long as possible in
your company,and I wouldforceyou to love meand tofind mea bit less baroque
than I seem.
It is unlikelythatI will ever returnto Mauritius,unlesstheship thatis taking
me back to Bordeaux(the Alcide) should need tofetch passengers there.
Here is my sonnet:...
[Theoriginalpoem differsfromthelaterversionsin afew smalldetails: notably,
in lines 4 and 9, the words "Crdole"and "Gloire"are capitalized.]
So I will be waitingfor you in France.
diacritics / fall 1998
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69
My respectfulcomplimentsto MadameA.
C. Baudelaire]4
The published version (1845) readsas follows:
A Une Dame Creole
Au pays parfum"que le soleil caresse,
J'ai connu sous un dais d'arbres tout empourprds
Et de palmiers d'oi pleut sur les yeux la paresse,
Une dame creole aux charmesignores.
Son teint est pale et chaud; la brune enchanteresse
A dans le cou des airs noblementmanie're's;
Grandeet svelte en marchantcomme une chasseresse,
Son sourire est tranquilleet ses yeux assures.
Si vous alliez, Madame,au vrai pays de gloire,
Sur les bords de la Seine ou de la verte Loire,
Belle digne d'orner les antiques manoirs,
Vousferiez, a l'abri des ombreusesretraites,
Germermille sonnets dans le coeur des poetes,
Que vos grandsyeux rendraientplus soumis que vos noirs.
[For A Creole Lady
Off in a perfumedland bathedgently by the sun,
Underwide trees tinged with a crimson trace,
A place where indolencedrops on the eyes like rain,
I met a Creole lady of unstudiedgrace.
This brownenchantress'sskin is warmand light in tone;
Her neck is noble, proud, her mannerdignified;
Slenderand tall, she goes with huntress's easy stride;
Her smile is tranquil,and her eyes are confident.
Madame,if you should come to the trueplace of pride and gloryBeside the green Loire, or by the pleasant Seine,
Adorningancient mansionswith your stately waysTherein the shelter of the shady groves, you'd start
A thousandsonnets bloomingin the poet's hearts,
Whomyour great eyes would rendermore servile thanyour slaves.]
4. Letterpublishedin Lecernmen,
22juin 1866.Reprinted
in PichoisandZiegler[153-54].
whenitwanders
ThepoemsarefromBaudelaire,
Lesfleursdumal.I havemodifiedthetranslation
toofar fromthe literalmeaningI am interestedin stressing.All translationsare mine,unless
indicatedotherwise.
70
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The poems "Bien loin d'ici" and "Labelle Dorothee"both publishedlaterin Paris,
arespecifically abouthis experiencesin Bourbon.5Inthis slave-owningplantationculture
of the French colony, the still adolescent and rebellious poet was not an attractiveor
sought-afterguest. Very differenthistoricalcircumstancesfrom those of Mauritiuscan
help explain why the bourbonnaishad a dim view of Frenchintruders.At the time, the
Franco-Mauritians-like the Autardde Bragards-were living under British rule and
made every effort to hold on to any vestige of Frenchculture.Visitors fromFrancewere
always welcome, even sought after. In 1841, the francophoneelite was already fast
becoming a culturalas well as a numericalminority:the surrenderto the Britishcrown
in 1814 hadresultedin emancipationin 1835 followed by the arrivalof largenumbersof
indenturedlaborersfrom India.6In Bourbon,by contrast,slavery still existed, and the
local planterswere suspiciousof intellectuals,rebels, and libres-penseurs(freethinkers)
fromFrance.The RevolutionaryConventionhaddecreedthe abolitionof slaveryon the
16 Pluviose An II (4 February1790). But the local Colonial Assembly had refused to
comply with the decree, andin 1801 it threatenedto secede from Franceif the rulingwas
imposed. Revolutionaryideas, and the intellectualswho are always undersuspicion of
transportingthem, were not welcome on the island, nor were they in Martiniqueand
Guadeloupe.Unlike Haiti, which became the first independentblack nationin 1804, the
Mascarenesdid not embraceany kindof revolutionaryagenda.The ColonialAssembly's
aim was primarilyto protectthe interestsof the landowners-mostly white plantersbut
comprisingalso a certainnumberof freebornmitis. OutsidersfromFrance-nicknamed
the "zoreilles"-were perceivedas potentialtroublemakers,especially if they were, like
Charles,too visibly bohemian,rebellious,and at loose ends. The planterswere worried
abouttheirfuture,hauntedby the specterof emancipation.The slave revolt of 1811 had
been severely repressed,but the phenomenonof marronnagewas becoming more and
morewidespread.The mountainousinteriorof the islandprovidedideal hidingplaces for
maroons(or runaways).When Baudelairearrivedin 1841, abolition was a mere seven
years away, and figures like Sarda Garriga-the counterpartof abolitionist Victor
Schoelcherin Martinique-were causing plantersplenty of worry.Despite the fact that
Baudelairespent twice as long in Reunionas he did in Mauritius,he seems to have been
completelyignoredby thelocals. The 1840scorrespondto a periodof intenseendocentric
and endogenousattitudeson theirpart,and theirchilly receptionmay well have caused
the poet's denials.
These denials may explain why critics like Miller are confused by the colonial
cartographiesthatemergefromthe poetry,or why they aregiven to blurredchronologies
and hazy geographies. Baudelairesets up his readersfor critical confusion, "fogs" or
"mirages,"to use Miller's critical vocabulary[see "Hallucinations"].But such denials,
and the resultingblindnessof the critic, is morepointedlya symptomof the difficulty in
thinkingaboutFrenchliteraryhistoryin termsof local knowledges and the impactthey
may have had on the conditions of productionof the literature.This problemis made
manifest by the persistent inability to theorize what Mireille Rosello has called "the
insularizationof identities," and to invent new identifications on the basis of those
fragmentsof local stories which help to underminethe problematicsearchfor unity that
EdouardGlissanthas called the "obsessionof the One."'The unfinishedandfragmentary
quality of the colonial past and the epistemologies that derive from it can begin to be
5. See Claude Pichois's commentaryin Baudelaire,Oeuvres completes [I 119].
6. By 1850, one-thirdof the totalpopulationof 180,000 was Indian. Today,about 68% of the
population of 1.2 million is Indo-Mauritian.
7. Thecontrast between "insularity"as static essentialized identityand "insularization"as
dynamic, provisional, and tactical identity formation is discussed in Rosello, "Caribbean
Insularizationof Identities"[see esp. 571-77]. Thecritiqueof homogeneityand the "One"is in
Glissant, Le discours antillais[see esp. 28-321.
diacritics / fall 1998
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71
contextualizedonce we shed light on the historicalframeworksand the motivationsof
writerslike Baudelaire.Whenone looks at the culturalhistoryof the 1840s, it becomes
fascinatingto realize that Baudelairehimself is an "exote"-a young man from postRevolutionaryFrance-in the eyes of endogamousplantersandtheirentourage,andthis
"exote"will be viewed differentlyin the contextof each of the two islands.The direction
of the exoticizing gaze is not initiallywhat we have assumed,whatwe have been trained
to see: it is in fact Baudelairewho has been putin the place of an "other"fromacrossthe
seas. His own reversal of this exoticizing gaze, his focus on the black cultures of the
islands, reflects an initial identificationthat cannot be understoodin terms of simple
binarismsas critics have done.
Thus, when Miller discusses "A une dame creole"in a chapterof BlankDarkness,
he shows how the rhetoricof nineteenth-century"Africanistdiscourse"functions to
negateCreolerealitiesandto constructabsenceandvoid as the paradigmaticthemesand
motifs emergingfromencounterswith non-Europeans.His generalargumentis valid and
convincing.However,he negatesBaudelaire'sactualencounterwith the Creolerealities
and prejudicesthat the poetry actually conveys very well. Miller misreadsthe poem's
context, stating:
Thepoem is aboutambiguityand thepossibilityofmovingalong a scale ofcolors
andplaces,from thepurpleislands whereignorancerainsfrom the trees, to the
banksof the Seine and the green Loire:from the lile de la Reunion,where the
sonnet was written,to the Ile de France, the center of the center. [101]
Oddly,Millerneveronce mentionsMauritius,which hadbeen knownas theIle de France
before 1814, when it was ceded by Napoleon to the British,who changedits name back
to Mauritius,the name given by the earlier Dutch colonists. But in Miller's reading,
Mauritiushas disappearedfrom history. He actuallyconfuses and conflates Mauritius,
Reunion,andthe kindof imaginaryAfricathathe takesthe poetryto be representing.He
assumesthatM. andMme.Autardde Bragardwere Baudelaire'shosts in R6union(rather
than Mauritius-[Blank 98]) and does not distinguish between the different kinds of
places thatare eitherevoked or actuallymentionedby the poet.
Nowhere in this poem does Baudelairemention the "Ile de France"by name. Yet
Miller extrapolatesand infers a comparisonbetween "purpleislands"and "the Ile de
France,the centerof the center,"thatis, the areaaroundParis,"surles bordsde la Seine"
where Baudelairereturnedsoon afterleaving the Mascarenearea.But, as I have pointed
out, "Ile de France"was also the earliername of Mauritiusgiven by the Frenchsettlers
between 1715 and 1814. So when Baudelairewrites aboutthe "vraipays de Gloire / Sur
les bordsde la Seine," the irony for his didicataire, Mme de Bragard,must have been
obvious,becausebehindthe"vraipaysde Gloire,"themetropolitanIlede France,we have
an implicitreference,in filigree, to the otherIle de France,its namesakein the antipodes
where the "dameCreole"resides, and where the Franco-Mauritians,now defeatedand
subjugatedto the British,are holding on to theirconnectionto France,the "vraipays de
Gloire."Here we see that local history resists marginalization,and meaning emerges
along a chainof significationsthatincludedifferentialunderstandingsof "France"or "Ile
de France"as nodes in a complex networkof linguistic correspondencesthatcould not
have been lost on the authorof "Correspondances,"
nor on his destinataires.
The prose poem "Labelle Doroth6e"also offers a precise instanceof culturaland
linguistic hybridizationthat critics have failed to recognize and that reinforces the
specificities of the geographicalareathatinspiredit. The next-to-lastparagraphreadsas
follows:
Peut-itre a-t-elle un rendez-vousavec quelquejeuneofficierqui, surdes plages
72
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lointaines, a entendu parler par ses camarades de la cdlebre Dorothee.
Infailliblementelle le priera, la simplecreature,de lui dicrire le bal de l'Opira,
et lui demanderasi on peut y aller pieds nus, commeaux danses du dimanche,
oi les vieilles Cafrineselles-m mes deviennentivres etfurieuses dejoie; etpuis
encore si les belles dames de Paris sont toutesplus belles qu 'elle.
[Perhaps she is going to meet some young officer, who onfar-off shores heard
of thefamous Dorothyfrom his mates. Withoutfailthe simple creaturewill beg
him to describe the Opera,and will ask him if one can go there withbarefeet,
like at the Sunday dances, where the old Cafrines themselvesget drunkand
furious with joy; and again, if the most beautiful ladies of Paris are more
beautifulthan she.]
Millerpicks up on Baudelaire'suse of the term"Cafrine."He speculatesthatit "mayhave
beenBaudelaire's invention."He searchesforclues aboutthe word"cafrine"in theGrand
Larousse,the Littr&,andthe GrandRobert,where,he notes, the word"is not to be found"
[Blank 120n35], adding, "[The word] represents an unnecessary insistence on the
feminine gender" [120]. According to the French dictionaries Miller consults, the
adjectivecafre serves both as the masculineand feminine forms of the noun cafre from
the Arabic kafir or "infidel"[see fig. 2]. Miller speculates that the suffix -ine would
thereforeappearto addanexcessively femininequalityto thedescription.He deducesthat
the rhetoric of the poem thus devalorizes and overracializesthe black woman. "The
double feminine," he explains, "coincides with [Baudelaire's]most franklyAfricanist
scene" [122], thus buttressingthe generalargumentof his book thatthe Africanisttopos
in Baudelaireis coded as absenceand void-as also happensto be the case in Gobineau
and in a long Westerntraditionwithin which Africa is representedas a feminized void.
But this argumentbypasses any understandingof the local cultureswhich Baudelaireis
in fact able to communicateto his readers,despitehis refusalto acknowledgehavingever
"set foot" in those countries.
In fact, I wantto suggest thatthe word"Cafrine"in the prosepoem actuallygives us
the sound of the voice of the black womanherself, a voice Baudelaireknew, had heard,
and thathe lets us hearin the reportedspeech or indirectdiscourseof the sentence:"elle
... lui demanderasi on peut y aller pieds nus, comme aux danses du dimanche,ohiles
vieilles Cafrineselles-memes deviennentivres et furieuses de joie... [she will ask him
if one can go there with bare feet, like at the Sunday dances, where the old Cafrines
themselves get drunkand furiouswith joy]." Indeed,if Miller had looked for clues in a
different archive from the ones producedin France-the French dictionarieshe consults-he might have found out that"Cafrine"is a word from the local Creole language
thatis still spokentoday,andhe thuswould not have dismissed it as "noise"producedby
Baudelaire'sexotic imagination.RobertChaudenson'sLe lexiquedu parler creole de la
Reuniongives the following explanation:
les ndologismescrdolesformispar suffixation[-e] et [-in] [comprennentle mot]
cafrine/[kafrin]:femme de race noire, de type africain; le mot sert de fminin
B "cafre," prononciationcrdole: [kaf]. [Chaudenson2:1041]
[Creole neologismsproducedbyaddingthesuffix[-e] or [-in] includethe word
cafrine/[kafrin]: woman of the black race, of African type; the word is the
feminine of "cafre,"creole pronunciation:[kaf].]
Duringmy researchin theIndianOcean,I foundtwo seriesof watercolorswhichwere
acquiredby the ArchivesD6partmentalesde La R6unionin the early 1990s. The firstwas
diacritics / fall 1998
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73
Fig. 2: "FemmeCaffre," from Francois Levaillant's
1791 Voyage dans l'interieur de I'Afrique and reprinted in Miller's Blank Darkness[121]. Baudelaire
wasfamiliar with this work.
Fig. 3: "UneCafrineet sonpetit,"watercolorbyHyppoliteCharles-NapoleonMortier,Marquisde Trivise,whotraveled to Ile Bourbon in 1861 and 1865-66 while he was
Secretaryof the Embassyand attache'to the Mission in
China (Archivesdipartmentalesde La Reunion).
I7M...
Fig. 4: "Malabarecreole, Malgache," watercolorsby Jean-BaptisteLouisDumas, Directeurdes
Ponts et Chaussdes,Ile Bourbon, 1829-31 (Archivesdipartementalesde La Reunion). Theyare
both dated 1830.
74
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MON
LALEDOUKOM
LETSI
i KAFRINE
PE ... PA BEZOIN
OULAONT.VIEN
GOUTE
!...
Fig. 5: I picked up thepostcard in a bookstorein Saint-Denis,La Reunion,in September1996. It
reads: "Mylichees are sweet like our nativegirls... don't be shy, come and taste!... " Thesexual
thepurposes
innuendoes
showthedegreeto whichthenativewomancontinuestobeexoticizedfor
ofglobal tourism.Thisdoes not, however,takeaway thefact that "tikafrine"(in Creole)continues
to be a termof endearment.
paintedin the 1860s by HyppoliteMortier,Marquisde Tr6vise,Secr6taired'Ambassade
in China,who made severaljourneys to Reunion.The second is by Jean-BaptisteLouis
Dumas,anengineerwho was directorof the Pontset Chauss6esin R6unionbetween 1829
and 1831. They illustrate the different female "types" that Baudelaire would have
encounteredduringhis stay there[see figs. 3 and4]. I also foundpostcardspublishedfor
the mass touristmarketthatuse the words"tikafrinep6i"(nativeblackgirl) to referto an
exoticized young female figure who is offering sweet fruitsas she welcomes the tourists
with her alluringsmile [fig. 5]. It is interestingto note herethatthe image is thatof a very
young, childlike figure, who is wearinga cook's apron:her youthfulnessand domestic
appearanceare belied by the alluringCreole caption.One wonderswhetherthe intentis
to lureWesternadultmales into blissful domesticitywith underagefemales?Wouldthis
be what Baudelairehimself saw in the young black women he encounteredin Bourbon?
Women of his own age, he who had barelyturnedtwenty thatyear?
Be thatas it may, Creolelanguages,as they appearin the poetryandin the postcards,
are the productof a creativeencounterbetween Africanand Indianlanguagesand those
of the masters.The site of this encounteris the site of productionof both subjectivityand
agency. "Cafrine"in Baudelaire'spoem is the point of emergenceof the other's voice in
his text, the site of heteroglossiaand hybridityin language,"le lieu parexcellence de la
capturede l'autre [the very site at which the otheris containedin the text]" [Felman,La
folie 128], or "le lieu oii le poete se laisse traverserparde l'autre[thesite at which the poet
is traversedby otherness]"[Cixous 158], the place whereBaudelaireis both seducedby
the voice of the woman andenshrinesher,imprisonsher self-designationwithinhis own
discourse.If, as ShoshanaFelmanargues,"laplace du sujet ... ne se d6finitpas parce
qu'il dit, ni parce dont il parle,mais parle lieu aipartir d'ouiil parle"[thelocation of the
subject... is not definedby whathe/she says, nor by what he/she talksabout,but by the
diacritics / fall 1998
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75
site of enunciation-the place from which he/she speaks]"[Lafolie 50], then the word
"Cafrine"registersa locus of enunciationthatis geographicallyquite specific andat the
same time hybrid."Cafrine"is the trace of the encounterbetween two subjectivities,a
masculineone and a feminine one, the latterechoing across the centuriesthanksto the
poetry of a rebellious young traveler who immortalizesher while screening out the
dominantvoices of the Frenchcolony-the ones thathadsketchedhim in theirchronicles
as an awkward,nerdy,bookwormfrom beyondtheirshores.In so doing, he containsthe
"Cafrine"withinhis representationof her,buthe also deliversherto posterityin her own
Creole language-something no historiographyhas yet done.8
To recognize the Creole origin of "Cafrine"in this classic 1841 text is to engage in
whatPeterHulmehas called a formof "localremembering."In his readingof JeanRhys's
WideSargassoSea, Hulmeinsistson the needto find"geoculturalframeworkswhichwill
allow us to make connectionsthattranscendthe usuallynationalor colonial categories.
... Local history[he adds]... still remainslargelyuntold,andits connectionswithliterary
productionlargely unexplored"[15-17]. Hulme calls for a "politics of locality" that
remainssensitive to two needs: "to treatthe historyof 'local' places like Dominica [the
setting of Wide Sargasso Sea] as worthy of serious historical investigation"and "to
recoverthe colonial and imperialdimensions of... canonicalliterature"[17]. Only by
attendingto both of these needs will we reachan understandingof the local as partof "a
networkwhich is anythingbut local," he concludes.
The word "Cafrine"is a node in just such a networkof signifying practicesthatcan
help us arriveat a more global understandingof "French"literaryhistory.Baudelaire's
use of the local dialect in this prose poem is an undeniableclue about the conditionsof
productionof the poem and the contexts within which it acquiresmeaning.By allowing
local history,geography,andgenderedlanguageto persist(andto resistlimiteddefinition
from withinthe pages of the Larousseor the Littre),Baudelaireis betterable to validate
the existence of local political realitiesthanare his contemporarycritics. Even if, in a fit
of angerat the white Creoles who snubbedhim, Baudelairedenies ever havingset foot in
Bourbon, his text speaks a different truth, transgressinghis wish to disavow his
experiences and serving instead as a rare locus of memory for the colonized female
subjects of the island. As Felman states, "Le scandaleen litteraturec'est que l'alterit6
surgit,se donne'avoir,la1oihon s'y attendle moins [Thescandalin literatureis thatalterity
emerges, becomes visible, where you expect it the least]."' The othernessof the local
vernacularproduceshybriditywithinthe poetic text. The irony in Miller's interpretation
is thathe misses the deconstructionof standardFrenchthatBaudelaireperformsin "La
belle Dorothee" more than a century before such deconstructionwill become the
trademarkof francophonewriters (like Ahmadou Kourouma,Simone Schwarz-Bart,
Axel Gauvin,andPatrickChamoiseau)in theirliterarypractice.If HediAbdel-Jaouadcan
arguethatIsabelleEberhardtis theprecursorof severalgenerationsof Maghrebianwriters
because of her "linguistic 'corps-h-corps'with Frenchto make it express a [different]
ontology" [116-17], then we can perhapsclaim Baudelaireas the elusive precursorof
many francophonewriterswho search for a thematicsand a stylistic practicethat will
correspondto their hybrididentitiesand thus generatea new ontology.
Ten years after the publicationof Blank Darkness, in his 1995 essay, Miller once
againrehearsesthe colonial topos in Baudelaire'spoetry.This time, he makesreference
8. 1 am well aware that the etymologicalorigins of cafre,kafiror"infidel," do not point to a
"positive"view of the African "infidel"as definedby the Islamicconquerorand thentakenup by
the Europeancolonizer. Nonetheless,this is the case ofa termwhichhas been reappropriatedand
transformedby the logic of Creolegrammarinto afeminine termstill used by Creolewomentoday
in La Reunion.See also Lorraine.
9. Statementmade during the discussion after her lecture "RereadingFemininity"at the
Universityof Michigan, March 1980. See also Felman, "RereadingFemininity."
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both to what he termsthe "Africanist"poems ("Le cygne," "Labelle Doroth6e,""A une
dame cr6ole"),and to the one titled "A une Malabaraise."
from "Le cygne"
Un cygne qui s'dtait vadi de sa cage,
Et, de ses pieds palmis frottant le pave sec,
Sur le sol raboteuxtrainaitson blanc plumage. .... [lines 17-19]
Je pense aimon grand cygne, avec ses gestesfous,
Commeles exilds, ridicule et sublime,
Et rong"d'un disir sans treve! ... [lines 34-36]
Je pense a la negresse, amaigrie et phthisique,
Pigtinantdans la boue, et cherchant,I'oeil hagard,
Les cocotiers absents de la superbeAfrique
Derridrela muraille immensedu brouillard; [lines 41-44]
from "TheSwan"
A swan who had escapedfrom his captivity,
And scuffing his splayedfeet along the paving stones,
He trailed his white array offeathers in the dirt. ...
I thinkof my great swan, his gestures pained and mad,
Likeother exiles, both ridiculousand sublime,
Gnawedby his endless longing! ...
I thinkof a negress, thin and tubercular,
Treadingin the mire, searching with haggard eye
For palm trees she recallsfrom splendidAfrica,
Somewherebehinda giant barrier offog;]
from "Aune Malabaraise"
Pourquoi,I'heureuseenfant,veux-tuvoir notre France,
Ce pays troppeuple quefauche la souffrance,[lines 17-18]
Commetu pleurerais tes loisirs doux etfrancs,
Si, le corset brutal emprisonnanttesflancs,
II tefallait glaner ton souper dans nosfanges
Et vendre le parfumde tes charmesitranges,
L'oeil pensif, et suivant,dans nos sales brouillards,
Des cocotiers absents lesfantdmes dpars! [lines 23-28]
[from "To a MalabarWoman"
O happychild, why do you want to see
Our France, a countryreaped by misery,
How you will cry, regretfulof the trip,
diacritics / fall 1998
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77
If in the brutalcorset's crushinggrip,
Youhave to sell your beauty in the street,
Out of this muckto glean somefood to eat,
Whilethroughourfilthy mists your vision sees
Thephantomspars of absent coco-trees.]
Referringto these passages, Miller claims that:
In 'Le Cygne,' cultural and temporal barriers are everywhere,exile is pandemic, and the African woman is enfolded within an apparently universal
problem. Difference is everyone's proccupation and labour. In 'A une
Malabaraise,'a single culturalbarrieris builtup betweenFranceanda colony
(in this case the Frenchenclave on the coast oflndia); the worldis bisectedand
differenceis a matterof categories and exclusions. ["Hallucinations"41]
Quoting the following lines from "A une Malabaraise":"Pourquoi,I'heureuseenfant,
veux-tu voir notreFrance/ Ce pays troppeupl6que fauche la souffrance,"Miller adds:
"Thesingle Malabaresewoman is an alien, while the speakeris a natural/national
(from
the same root) belonging to notre France. The woman is advised to stay where she
belongs"[41]. I do not wantto quarrelhere withMiller's interpretationof the exclusions
to which immigrantsare subjectedin Franceand that,in his reading,the poem prophetically outlines. I do wantto proposea somewhatdifferentarticulationof the oppositions
that the poem constructs.For Miller, these exclusions are revealed throughthe binary
oppositionbetweena "citizen"and an "alien."Because his goal is to makeBaudelaire's
poetryfunctionas an instrumentforhis critiqueof hybridity,"m6tissageculturel,"andthe
"fog of interculturalspace" that the encounterbetween France and Africa generates,
Milleraddsthat"nationalismclaims to blow [the fog] ... away in orderto establishclear
boundariesand claim 'Africa for Africans"'[41].
Two clarificationsare in order:first of all, as I have alreadyindicated,Baudelaire's
referentin his IndianOceanpoems is neitherAfricaper se nor"theFrenchenclave on the
coast of India,"as Millerputs it. This Frenchenclave was, to be precise,Pondicherry,on
the southeasterncoast. It becamea legal partof Indiain 1963. The poet neverwent there,
and he indicates no connection to that colony. The islands with which he was familiar
were-and aretoday-inhabited by womenof AfricanandIndiandescentsuchas theone
describedin the poem. Secondly, the malabaraisemay ethnically be from the Malabar
coast (on the west andnotthe east coast of India),the pointof originof manyof the Indian
immigrantsof Dravidianbackground.Accordingto ClaudePichois's annotededition of
the "Malabaraise"
poem, it refersto a womanwho workedas a kitchenmaidin theAutard
de Bragards'house in Mauritius.The referenceto the "Malabaraise"who wants to see
"notreFrance,"I wouldpropose,does not implyan oppositionbetween"them"and"us,"
the alien woman and the national subject from France, the colonized figure and the
French-bornpoetic voice. Instead,I think we should read "notreFrance"as an implicit
oppositionto somethinglike "tonIle de France,"in thesame way that"Aunedamecr6ole"
opposes the two "Iles de France"in a subversive counterpointthat underminesthe
distinctionbetween the centerand the margin,the metropoleand its periphery,between
the local meaningof "France"andthe imperialor global one. Justas "Labelle Doroth6e"
does, this poem performsa deconstructionof stablemeaningby puttingintoquestionall
continentalformsof identity,be they French,African,or Indian,andreconstructingthem
as hybrid,insular,and local.
GayatriSpivakmakes specific referenceto the Mascareneislands in herdiscussion
of ~"AuneMalabaraise"and"Lecygne,"butgoes on to say that"theoriginalof the negress
in 'Le Cygne' is a textualpalimpsestof the originalof the agonistof 'A uneMalabaraise,'
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one of two women Baudelaire encountered in Mauritius and the island of R6union
respectively"[230]. She rightlypoints out thatlines 41-44 of "Lecygne"echo lines 2728 of "A une Malabaraise,"and this, she argues, is sufficient indicationthatbehindthe
"negress"of the first poem is in fact the "Malabaraise"or Indianwomanof the second,
a "vaguewoman,encounteredon either one of the two colonial possessions, mis-named
by whiteconvention"since Indianimmigrantsto theMascarenes"arenotnecessarily,not
even largely,fromIndia'sMalabarcoast"[230]. She critiquesBaudelairefor shiftingthe
originof the "negress""onan imaginednativeplace as generalizedas 'Africa',"and she
seems unawarethatBaudelairewould have indeed encounteredwomen of both African
and Indianorigin in the Mascareneislands. For Spivak,the "negress"is only a figure for
"generalizedotherness"[Chrisman500], or more specifically "generalizeddarkness,"or
as Miller puts it more suggestively, "blankdarkness."That these dark females figure
rhetoricallyas darkothersof an exotic femininityhas been amplydemonstrated.But my
pointis thatthese "figures"correspondto actualhistoricalsubjectswhose visualpresence
had been recordedby chroniclersof the time [see figs. 3 and 4]. There is indeed an
intertextualecho between "Le cygne" and "A une Malabaraise,"but the geographical
referentsare plain and simple: Africa is mentionedonly in "Le cygne,"and Baudelaire
puts in relationthe plightof two women, one possibly fromAfrica(or fromMadagascar?
[see fig. 4, right]),theotherfromIndia[fig. 4, left]. In bothcases, however,it is most likely
thatthey would have been "Creoles,"thatis, bornandraisedin the colony.10They might
also be of mixed parentage:African and Indian.The only thing we know for sure is that
these "dark"women who fascinated Baudelaire were Creole-speaking,and that the
Malabaraise lived in Mauritius.When one looks at the visual representationsin figures
4 and5, whatis strikingis that,in every case, the actualorigin-African orIndian-is not
easy to determine.Thusin the postcardprintedfor the 1990stouristmarket,the "tikafrine
pei" has straighthairand could be partIndian.In the 1830 watercolorrepresentationby
Jean-BaptisteDumas of the "MalabareCreole" [fig. 4], the woman's featuresand her
headdresssuggest "creolite"ratherthan "indianit6.""
Furthermore,fromwithintheMauritianhistoricalandcolonialcontext,thepoem "Le
cygne" has a specific connotationwhich may justify a readingof its bird and female
allegoriesas anothersite of hybridimagery.In the courseof its colonialhistory,Mauritius
was brieflysettledby the Portuguese,who called the islandIlhado Cirne,or Islandof the
Swan. They occupiedthe areafor a time duringthe sixteenthcenturyanddiscoveredthe
indigenousdodo birds,a now extinctcreaturewhichlooked like a short-wingedswan [fig.
6]. They namedthe island after this unusualand flightless bird.12In the late eighteenth
century,andthroughoutthe nineteenthandtwentiethcenturies,themainnewspaperof the
island echoed this Portuguesenaming:it was called Le cerneen (from cirne, swan) and
it had a pictureof a swan on its front page, above the title which was followed by the
10. Spivakstates that "the islands of Mauritiusand Reunion, terrainsof military colonial
exchangebetweenFranceand Britain,have a sizeablepopulationoflndian originas a resultof the
Britishimportof indenturedlabour"[230]. But thefact is thatalready underFrenchrule, Indian
slaves werebeingbroughtto Mauritius.In 1806, therewere6162 christianizedIndianson theisland
[see Lehembre41n14 and Beejadhur].My point is that the "Malabar"woman encounteredby
Baudelaire in 1841 could well have been born and raised on the island.
11. Or "coolitude,"as KhalTorabullyhas recentlyput it, makingreferenceto thecoolies who
emigratedas indenturedlaborersin the nineteenthcentury.For an understandingofcreolit6 in the
islandsof the Caribbean(andtoa lesser degree, thoseof theMascarenes),see themanifestobyJean
Bernabc, Patrick Chamoiseau,and Raphael Confiant,Eloge de la creolite.
12. See the entryon the "Dodo"in the 1911 editionof theEncyclopediaBritannica[370-72].
Whencaptureddodo birds made their way to Europe, they were exhibitedin cages. Sir Hamon
Lestrange recounts how he saw such a bird while walkingaround London in 1638. Is this the
inspirationfor the "cygneevadi de sa cage"?
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79
Fig. 6: Dodo, as exhibitedin the Museumof Natural History in Port-Louis.
aa
at
+
t
+Wa
Lutfl -ltfl,
-r- A
'LTI7W: REI'UE ftlues~i
....,..,....
.. .
-.,,•
..,
Ilxi:
in*m,
r_
.. . ..
....
Fig. 7: Frontpage of Le cern6endated 29 Feb. 1833.
80
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Port-Louis,1855.
Fig. 8: Mapof Mauritius,
publishedbyJ. Maisonneuve,
subtitle"Petiterevue africaine"[fig. 7], since Mauritiushas always been includedin the
generalgeographicareaof the Africancontinent[fig. 8]. Le cerneen began as a weekly
in 1773, stoppedpublicationin 1790, resumedin 1832 and became a daily in 1852. We
can speculate that Baudelairemight have seen it. It was widely read by all those who
consideredthemselveseducated,andit is very likely thatBaudelaire's hosts, the Autards,
mighthave sharedits contentswith theirguest andthathis choice of poeticimagerywould
later echo these experiences.
In "Lecygne,"the poetic associationbetweena swan, "uncygne qui s'6tait6vad6de
sa cage [a swan who had escaped from his captivity],"anda black woman, "lan6gresse,
amaigrieet phthisique[a negress, thin and tubercular],"both exiled in Europe,finds its
counterpartin the "matelotsoubli6s dansune Hle[sailorsleft forgottenon an isle]," men
like Baudelaire,who lived his sojournin the IndianOceanas anextendedprisonsentence,
feeling caged and flightless in the antipodes. Canonical readings of this poem have
stressed its allegorical elements, and shown how the plight of the bird and that of the
negress are linked, both becoming figures for the lost sailors and for the poet's own
anxieties. Rejecting those interpretations,Spivak notes that
whereasBaudelaire,inscribinghimselfaspoet withinthe traditionofEuropean
poetry, is meticulous about the specificity of that tradition,the inscriptionof
himselfas an admirerofnegresses can onlybe decipheredbyguessworkoutside
of the boundariesof the poem. It is seemingly irrelevantto thepoem's proper
functioning. And it is mired in a conventionallysanctionedcarelessnessabout
identities. [230, my emphasis]
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81
She adds that what "troubles"her the most is EdwardAhearn's suggestion that "the
negressis somehow Baudelaire'sdarkdouble."This reading,she says "perform[s]a lie"
[231], and she goes on to discuss AndrewBush's Bloomianreading,which, in her view,
is "perfunctory"[see Spivak 239n15; Ahearn;Bush]. Her point is thatthe actualIndian
women who were encounteredby Baudelairein 1841 are being falsely representedas
"African"or as figures for JeanneDuval, his blackmistressin Paris,and thus theirvery
existence is negatedby this namingprocess, which conflates all of them as "productsof
hegemonic false cartography"[230].
As my researchshows, however, the swan/dodobirdpoints to a precise but hybrid
geographicallocus, one in which the dodo mightbe legible only as a swan, andthe swan
only as a dodo, dependingon which perspectiveone adopts:the poetic or the historical
one. Yet even this distinctionbetweenthe "poetic"andthe"historical"becomesunstable,
as the swan is buta historicalpalimpsestfor the dodo bird,andan embellishedversionof
the indigenous fauna. The instabilityof this referentfurtherpoints to the hybridlocal
identities of the colonial subjects, and to the colonial wish to transformand "purify"
Creole realities as a means of dealing with the fear of degenerationconnoted by the
concepts of m6tissage and hybridity.Baudelaire'spoetry reveals an acute (if implicit)
understandingof the complicatedgenealogies thathave been the legacy of slavery and
indenturedlaborin New Worldcolonies. The intertextuallink between "Lecygne"and
"A une Malabaraise"thus simply underscoresthe fluidity of identities shaped by the
impositionof colonial rule within these insularregions of the Mascarenes.
Did Baudelaire'simaginationtransformthe somewhatgrotesquedodo into a poetic
swan, as the Portuguesehad? He does refer to this swan as a creatureboth "ridiculeet
sublime [ridiculousand sublime],"thus "signifying"(as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. would
say) on the Portuguesecolonizers' namingof the island[see Gates].If indeedBaudelaire
signifies on the Portuguesewordcirne, thecanonicalinterpretationsof the poemcan now
be seen in a different historical light which allows us to reinscribe the geographical
contextsof the "negress"withinthe rhetoricaltextureof the poem. The poet's identification with the birdand the womandoes not reveal his "carelessnessaboutidentities"but
his astuteunderstandingof the visual anddiscursivefields within which his experiences
as a poetanda travelertook shapeandaboutwhichhe was historicallyandculturallyquite
"meticulous."
My point is not to recover"someconcealedradicalmessage from ostensiblyreactionary
writing,"as Spivak says, quotingLisa Jardine[23 1]. Baudelaire'srhetoricof exoticism
is distortingand serves a particular"Africanist"purposewithin the field of European
literaryrepresentation.Thanks to feminist cultural critiques, postcolonial studies of
imperialismsuch as Spivak's and EdwardSaid's, and Miller's analysis of Africanist
discourses,we have learnedto suspectboththe causesand the effects of representational
structuresthatoverlapwith imperialandcolonialagendas.ButI can readBaudelairetoday
andknowthathe speaksto Mauritiansof realitiesthathistorianshave failedto record,and
that his poetry is a valuable interventionwhich ought to give critics pause when they
carelessly assume that its residual cultural images have no historicalor geographical
validity. It is the critics' epistemologicalstandpointwhich turnsout to be more limited
thanBaudelaire's.
Just as Shakespeare's Caliban has been part of the imaginaire of anglophone,
hispanophone,and francophone Caribbeanwriters, fragments of Baudelaire's texts
continueto become partsof the narrativeswe tell in the literaryand culturaldiscourses
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of francophonie. Think, for instance, of Aim6 C6saire's use of the phrase"comiqueet
laid"in the Cahier[Notebookofa return.. .], a phrasefromBaudelaire'sL'albatrosthat
he slips intohis text anduponwhichhe thensignifies [Rosello, "OneMoreSea" 182-84].
Thinkalso of C6saire's Unetempiete,RobertoFernandezRetamar's Caliban,andGeorges
Lamming'sThePleasuresofExile. Figuresinventedby BaudelaireandShakespearemap
a location that we keep on visiting and analyzing, although "critical"distance and
cognitive grounding are sometimes hard to achieve when you are yourself closely
implicatedin the imaginativediscourses (and the exotic fantasies they spin) that have
become substitutesfor historicalknowledge.
We might do well to learnfrom Baudelaireto discriminatebetweencontinentsand
islands,betweenAfrica,India,the East Indies,andtheMascareneislands,in otherwords,
between continental nationalistagendas, and the status of island-nationswhich have
always had "hybrid"identities. The interculturalspace that is the familiarterritoryof
island-nations(in the Caribbeanas well as the Mascarenes)is not coded as "fog" or
"mirage"by theirinhabitantsandwriters.It is a spaceof painfullucidity:one in which one
is forced both to recognize the differences among differentlocal communitiesand to
articulateanew the hybrid,heteroglossic site of their encountersand theirpracticesof
everydaylife.
The nationalist agendas of these islands have been articulatedaround a set of
vernaculardiscoursesdeveloped by FrantzFanon and C6saire,Glissantand Lamming,
FernandoOrtizandC. L. R James,Benftez-Rojo,Dev Virahsawmy,andKhalTorabully.
The vocabularyof these theoristsincludestermssuch as transculturacion,contrapunteo,
mitissage, antillaniti, creolite, indianiti, andmost recently,coolitude.Thesewordshave
become instrumentsfor describing the processes that obtain in those islands. This
vocabularypresages recentdevelopmentsin postcolonialtheoryin generalwhich have
foregroundedthese models as possible approachesto an emancipatorypolitics. Miller
arguesthathybridityand mitissage are coded as "mirage"by some Africanwritersand
critics of the assimilationist ideologies of French colonial and post- or neocolonial
discourses.I do not quarrelwith that.But Baudelairewas andcontinuesto be the wrong
place to begin if one wants to analyze the rhetoricof "Africanist"discourses and the
"manifestationsof the 'fog' between cultures that French colonialism engendered"
["Hallucinations"41]. On the other hand, Spivak's accusationthat Baudelaire's "carelessness aboutidentities"mustbe counteredby "astrategyratherthana theoryof reading
thatmight be a critiqueof imperialism"[230] does little to illuminatethe complex and
multifaceted identities that were taking shape in this outpost of the empire and that
Baudelaire'spoetryechoes.
Whenproperlycontextualized,Lesfleurs du malcan actuallyhelpto dispelthe "fog"
created by critical discourses that fail to discriminatebetween distinct geographical
entities where a varietyof continentalidentitieshave come togetherto createthe island
peoples andthe island-nationsthatwere a partof Baudelaire's own imaginaire.As Ileana
Rodriguez has recently shown, hybrid insular spaces have generally been coded as
feminine,andhence negative,in relationto more "virile"-masculine andcontinentalformsof nationalismthatinsist on the separateanddistinctidentitiesof theirsubjects.In
her analysis of Simone Schwarz-Bart'sPluie et vent sur ThlumieMiracle, Rodriguez
writes,
Thedenationalizationof the representationof womanin these narrativesis the
consequence of their exclusion as subjects of law in liberal republics,and of
plotting the constructionof nation as a series of male acts....
In these senses, the only one who can claim to belong is... paradoxically, the
destitute Thlumde[we might read "Dorothie" here] for she has absolutely
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83
nothingto claim. [196, my emphasis]
The island as hybrid locus of the feminine is a very old topos of exotic poetry that
contemporaryfrancophonewriterslike C6saireandEdouardMaunickreactivate.Butthe
surpriseis thatcontemporarycritics also fall into this trap-and emphasizethe virtuesof
nationalidentityas negationsof hybridity,as "denationalizations"
of insularor feminine
identitiesthat they subsumeundermore muscular"continental"rubrics.The answerto
these agonisticcriticaldebatesis to be foundin the elementsof the poet's biographysuch
as they appear in his own poetic rhetoric. Perhapsthe time has come to reconsider
Baudelaire's poetryas one of the firstplaces of emergenceof the nativeCreolewoman's
voice, a ventriloquizedvoice to be sure,butthe only one we have fromthe firsthalf of the
nineteenthcentury.
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