Reading Notes W7: Baudelaire, Part X

Charles Baudelaire, “The Flowers Of Evil” (466-480)

Baudelaire:

·         Produced shocking and painful material in poetry

·         French poet

·         One of the more widely read poets

·         Rather negative outlooks towards human nature

·         Born in 1821, Paris

·         “The Flower of Evil” was intended to scandalize

·         Died in 1867

·         Was typical in his writing; most poets wrote in “the noble style”

·         Shocked people, for example: the poem “A Carcass”; “horrified to find him connect sexual desire to the horrors of sadism and putrefaction” (467). Putrefaction is the process of decay in a body.

·         He used shocking factors but also used traditionally lovely factors.

·         He experimented with prose poems

Irony:

·         “his willingness to undermine one perspective with another more-knowing, cynical point of view” (468). Basically, looking more negatively towards things in his poetry.

·         For example: “Bitter knowledge that traveling brings! The globe, monotonous and small, today, yesterday, tomorrow, always, throws us our image: an oasis of horror in a desert of boredom!” (479). He takes things that could be seen in a positive light, like knowledge and traveling; and twists it into a more cynical view. This also ties into his existential boredom through his last statement in this passage.

·         Irony is used to mock human nature by using cynical/negative views like the quote.

Juxtaposition:

·         “Even the very title of his volume, The Flowers of Evil, signals the juxtaposition of beauty with corruption” (467).

·         Juxtaposition is used the same way Irony is used, with cynical thoughts towards the beauty of the world and human nature.

·         Juxtaposition-two things being seen or placed near each other with contrasting effect, like beauty with corruption in Baudelaire’s work.

·         For example: “All of winter will gather in my soul: hate, anger, horror, chills, the hard forced work; and, like the sun in his hell by the north pole, my heart will be only a red and frozen block” (473). He takes beautiful things in nature, like the changes in seasons; and makes it sound horrible and cynical.