Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Charles Baudelaire, a life in writing
- 2 Baudelaire’s politics
- 3 Baudelaire’s poetic journey in Les Fleurs du Mal
- 4 Baudelaire’s versification: conservative or radical?
- 5 The prose poems
- 6 Baudelairean ethics
- 7 Baudelaire’s Paris
- 8 Baudelaire and intoxicants
- 9 Art and its representation
- 10 Music and theatre
- 11 Baudelaire’s literary criticism
- 12 Baudelaire’s place in literary and cultural history
- 13 A woman reading Baudelaire
- 14 Translating Baudelaire
- 15 The stroll and preparation for departure
- Afterword
- Appendix Titles of individual poems and prose poems referred to in the text
- Guide to further reading
- Index
- Index to Baudelaire’s works
- Series list
13 - A woman reading Baudelaire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 August 2006
- Frontmatter
- 1 Charles Baudelaire, a life in writing
- 2 Baudelaire’s politics
- 3 Baudelaire’s poetic journey in Les Fleurs du Mal
- 4 Baudelaire’s versification: conservative or radical?
- 5 The prose poems
- 6 Baudelairean ethics
- 7 Baudelaire’s Paris
- 8 Baudelaire and intoxicants
- 9 Art and its representation
- 10 Music and theatre
- 11 Baudelaire’s literary criticism
- 12 Baudelaire’s place in literary and cultural history
- 13 A woman reading Baudelaire
- 14 Translating Baudelaire
- 15 The stroll and preparation for departure
- Afterword
- Appendix Titles of individual poems and prose poems referred to in the text
- Guide to further reading
- Index
- Index to Baudelaire’s works
- Series list
Summary
Mind the gap
(Announcement on the London Underground)Making a binary move: all too easy with Baudelaire. On every level, in every genre. Political and social and moral: men against women; or perhaps the dark muse Jeanne Duval, available, and the white marble Madonna Mme Sabatier, available or not. These two women are both grandly illustrated in the poems in prose and verse, too clear to bear pointing out, especially, for Jeanne, the prose poems of sadistic clarity, and, for Mme Sabatier, the highly visual details in 'A une madone', as opposed to the woman in the prose poem 'La Belle Dorothée', in which the blazing sun and the complexion work in opposition against and for each other: 'Her red sunshade, filtering the light, projects on to her dark face the blood-red rouge of its reflections' (PP 66) ['Son ombrelle rouge, tamisant la lumière, projette sur son visage sombre le fard sanglant de ses reflets' (OC I 316)]. (See the specific details in 'A une madone', 'Les Bijoux', 'Le Serpent qui danse', and the concrete visuality of the 'sea of ebony' ['mer d'ébène'], 'blue head of hair' ['cheveux bleus'], 'your heavy mane' ['ta crinière lourde'], 'mingled scents / Essence of cooa-oil, pitch and musk' ['des senteurs confondues / De l'huile de coco, du musc, et du goudron'], in 'La Chevelure', as opposed to the unspecific canals, cities, vessels ['canaux', 'villes', 'vaisseaux'] of 'L'Invitation au voyage'). You think: there is a split everywhere: between rich child and poor ('Le Joujou du pauvre') or then between the noble impoverished lady in black walking outside the amusement park, holding her child by the hand - the price of the entrance would of course mean one less comfort or pleasure for the child - as opposed to the gaiety and bright dresses within ('Les Veuves').
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- The Cambridge Companion to Baudelaire , pp. 186 - 192Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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