Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry

XXIV

I am bored in France, especially as every one resembles Voltaire.

Emerson forgot Voltaire in his "Representative Men." He could have made a fine chapter entitled Voltaire or The Antipoet, the king of boobies, the prince of the shallow, the anti-artist, the preacher of innkeepers, the father who "lived in a shoe" of the editors of the century.

XXV

In the "Ears of the Earl of Chesterfield," Voltaire jokes at the expense of that immortal soul which resided, for nine months, in the midst of excrement and urine. Voltaire, like all the slothful, hates mystery.

(At least, he might have divined in that environment the malice or satire of Providence against love, and, in the process of generation, a sign of original sin. In fact, we can make love only with excretory organs.)

Unable to suppress love, the Church wished at least to disinfect it, and created marriage.

XXVI

Portrait of the literary riff-raff. Doctor Tavernus Crapulosus Pedantissimus. His portrait in the manner of Praxiteles. His pipe, his opinions, his Hegelianism, his filth, his ideas of art, his spleen, his jealousy. A fine picture of modern youth.

XXVII

Theology. What is the fall? If it is unity become duality, it is God who has fallen. In other words, is not creation the fall of God?

Dandyism. What is the superior man? It is not the specialist. It is the man of leisure and broad education. To be rich and to love labor.

XXVIII

Why does the man of parts prefer maidens to women of the world, though they are equally stupid? Find this out.

XXIX

There are women who are like the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. They are wanted no more, because they have been sullied by certain men. Just as I would not put on the breeches of a mangy fellow.

What is annoying in love, is that it is a crime in which one cannot do without an accomplice.

XXX

Study of the great disease of horror of the home. Reasons for the disease.

Indignation at the universal fatuity of all classes, of all beings, of both sexes, of every age.

Man loves man so much that when he flees the city, it is still to seek the crowd, that is, to rebuild the city in the country.

XXXI

Of love, of the predilection of the French for military metaphors. Here every metaphor wears a moustache.

Militant literature. – To man the breach. – To bear the standard aloft. – To maintain the standard high and firm. – To hurl oneself into the thick of the fight. – One of the veterans. All these fine phrases apply generally to the college scouts and to the do-nothings of the coffee-house.

XXXII

To add to the military metaphors: Soldier of the judicial press (Bertin). The poets of strife. The littérateurs of the advance guard. This habitude of military metaphors denotes minds not military, but made for discipline, that is, for conformity, minds born domesticated, Belgian minds, which can think only in society.

XXXIII

Desire of pleasure binds us to the present. Care for our health suspends us on the future.

He who attaches himself to pleasure, that is, to the present, is to me as one who, rolling down an incline, and trying to cling to the shrubs, uproots them and bears them away in his fall.

Before all to be a great man and a saint for one's self.

XXXV

In the end, before all history and before the French people, the great glory of Napoleon III will have been to prove that the first comer, by seizing the telegraph and the national press, can govern a great nation.

Imbeciles are those who think that such things can be accomplished without the permission of the people, – and those who believe that glory can be founded only on virtue!

XXXVI

What is love? The need of coming out of one's self.

Man is an animal of worship. To worship is to sacrifice one's self and to prostitute one's self.

Thus all love is prostitution.

The most prostituted being is the being beyond compare, is. God, since he is the soul supreme for every individual, since he is the common, inexhaustible reservoir of love.

PRAYER

Do not chastise me in my mother, you chastise my mother because of me. – I commend to you the souls of my father and Mariette. – Give me each day strength to perform the present duty and thus to become a hero and a saint.

XXXVII

A chapter on the indestructible, eternal, universal and ingenious human ferocity. Of the love of blood, of the intoxication of blood, of the intoxication of crowds. Of the intoxication of the executed criminal (Damiens).

XXXIX

I have always been astonished that women are allowed to enter church. What conversation can they have with God?

The eternal Venus (caprice, hysteria, whim) is one of the seductive forms of the devil.

XL

Woman cannot separate the soul from the body. She is simple, like the animals. – A satirist would say it is because she has only a body.

XLII

Veuillot is so coarse and such an enemy of the arts that one would think all the democracy of the world was harbored in his breast.

Development of the portrait. Supremacy of the pure idea in the Christian as in the Babouvian communist.

Fanaticism of humility. Not even to aspire to understand religion.

XLIV

In love, as in almost all human affairs, the entente cordial is the result of misunderstanding. The misunderstanding is pleasure. The man cries: "Oh my angel!"

The woman coos: "Mamma! Mamma!" And the two imbeciles are persuaded that they are thinking in concert. – The insuperable gulf, which bars communication, remains unabridged.

XLV

Why is the spread of the sea so infinitely and so eternally agreeable?

Because the sea conveys the thought both of immensity and of movement. Six or seven leagues are for man the radius of the infinite. 'Tis a diminutive infinite. What matter, if it suffice to suggest the whole? Twelve or fourteen leagues of liquid in movement are enough to convey the highest ideal of beauty which is offered to man in his transitory habitation.

XLVI

There is naught interesting on earth save its religions.

There is a universal religion made for the alchemists of thought, a religion which is disengaged from man, considered as a heavenly reminder.

XLVII

Saint-Marc Girardin has spoken one word that will endure: "Let us be mediocre!" Set that beside this of Robespierre: "Those that do not believe in the immortality of their being, do themselves justice." The word of Saint-Marc Girardin implies a bitter hatred of the sublime.

XLVIII

Theory of true civilization. It lies not in gas, nor in steam, nor in tilting tables. It lies in the diminution of the traces of original sin.

Nomad peoples, shepherds, hunters, farmers, even cannibals, all can rise superior in energy, in personal dignity, to our races of the West. We perhaps shall be destroyed.

XLIX

It is through leisure, in part, that I have grown, – to my great detriment; for leisure, without wealth, increases debts; but to my great gain, in regard to sensibility, meditation, and the faculty of dandyism and of dilettantism.

L

The young girl of editors. The young girl of editors in chief. The young girl, scarecrow, monstrous, assassin of art.

The young girl, what she really is. A little stupid and a little slovenly; the greatest imbecility combined with the greatest depravity.

There is in the young girl all the abjection of the cad and of the school-boy.

LI

Advice to non-communists: all is common, even God.

LII

The Frenchman is a backyard animal so domestic that he dare not leap any fences. See his tastes in art and literature.

He is an animal of the Latin race; filth does not displease him; in his home, and in literature, he is scatophagous. He dotes on excrement. The litterateurs of the coffee-house call that the gallic salt.

LIII

Princes and generations. There is equal injustice in attributing to reigning princes the virtues and the vices of the people they actually govern.

Those virtues and those vices should almost always, as statistics and logic will show, be attributed to the atmosphere of the preceding government.

Louis XIV inherits the men of Louis XIII, glory. Napoleon I inherits the men of the Republic, glory. Louis-Philippe inherits the men of Charles X, glory. Napoleon III inherits the men of Louis-Philippe, dishonor.

It is always the preceding government that is responsible for the customs of the following, in so far as a government can be responsible for anything.

The sudden suppressions that circumstances bring to a reign do not allow of absolute exactitude in this law, in regard to time. One cannot, say precisely where an influence ends, but an influence will endure in all the generation that was subjected to it in youth.

LIV

Of the hatred of youth toward those who quote. The quoter is their enemy.

"I would place spelling itself in the hands of the hangman."

(Th. Gautier.)

Immovable desire of prostitution in the heart of man, whence springs his horror of solitude. – He wishes to be two. The genius wishes to be one, hence alone. Glory is in remaining one, and in prostituting one's self in a particular way.

It is that horror of solitude, the need of forgetting his ego in the outer flesh, that man nobly calls the need of love.

Two fine religions, immortally planted on the mature, eternal obsessions of the people: the ancient phallus, and "Vive Barbés!" or "A bas Philippe!" or "Vive la République!"

LV

To study, in all its moods, in the works of nature and in the works of man, the eternal and universal law of gradation, by degrees, little by little, with forces progressively increasing, like compound interest in finance.

It is the same with artistic and literary ease; it is the same with the variable treasure of the will.

LVI

The rout of little littérateurs to be seen at funerals, distributing handshakes and commending themselves to the memory of the letter writer. Of the funerals of famous men.

Molière. – My opinion of Tartuffe is that it is not a comedy, but a pamphlet. An atheist, if only he is well-bred, would think, in connection with the play, that serious questions should never be betrayed to the riff-raff.

LVII

To glorify the worship of images (my great, my one, my primitive passion). To glorify vagabondage and what may be called bohemianism. Worship of sensation, multiplied and expressing itself in music. Refer this to Liszt.

Of the need of beating women.

One can chastise what one loves. Thus with children.

But that implies the misery of scorning what one loves.

Of cuckoldom and of cuckolds. The misery of the cuckold. It springs from his pride, from a false conception of honor and of happiness, and from a love foolishly turned from God to be attributed to creatures. It is ever the worshipping animal deluded with its idol.

LVIII

Music conveys the idea of space. All the arts, more or less; since they are number and number is a translation of space.

Daily to wish to be the greatest of men!

LXI

Nations have great men only in spite of themselves.

Apropos of the actor and of my childish dreams, a chapter on what constitutes, in the human soul, the calling of the actor, the glory of the actor, the art of the actor and his situation in the world.

The theory of Legouvé. Is Legouvé a cold farceur, a Swift, who tried whether France would swallow a new absurdity? His choice. Good, in the sense that Samson is not an actor.

Of the true greatness of pariahs. Perhaps even, virtue harms the talents of pariahs.

LXII

Commerce is, in its essence, satanic. Commerce, is the loan returned, it is the loan with an understanding: Return more than I gave you.

– The spirit of everything commercial is completely depraved.

– Commerce is natural, hence it is infamous.

– The least infamous of tradesmen is he who says: "Let us be virtuous that we may gain much more money than the fools who are vicious." For the tradesman, honesty itself is a speculation. Commerce is Satanic, because it is one of the forms of egoism, the lowest, and the most vile.

LXIII

When Jesus Christ said: "Blessed are they that hunger, for they shall be filled!" Jesus Christ was gambling on probabilities.

LXIV

The world progresses only through misunderstanding. It is by universal misunderstanding that all the world agrees. For if, unfortunately, they understood one another, people could never agree.

The man of wit, he who will never agree with any one, ought to strike up a liking for the conversation of idiots and the reading of bad books. He will draw from this bitter joys that will largely compensate for his fatigue.

LXV

Any officeholder whatsoever, a minister, a manager of a theater or magazine, can sometimes be an estimable being; but he can never be admirable. He is a person lacking personality, a being without originality, born for the office, that is to say, for public domesticity.

LXVI

God and his profundity. One can be not lacking in wit and find in God the accomplice and friend who is always wanting. God is the eternal confidant in that tragedy where every one is the hero. There are perhaps usurers and assassins who say to God: "Lord, let my next operation succeed!" But the prayer of these rascally folk does not disturb the honor and the pleasure of mine.

LXVII

All idea is, in itself, endowed with immortal life, like a person. All form, even created by man, is immortal. For form is independent of matter, and it is not molecules that constitute form.

LXVIII

It is impossible to glance through any newspaper at all, no matter of what day, what month, what year, without finding in every line the most frightful signs of human perversity, together with the most astonishing boasts of probity, of goodness, of charity, and the most shameless affirmations in regard to the progress of civilization.

Every paper, from the first line to the last, is but a tissue of horrors. War, crime, theft, lewdness, crimes of princes, crimes of nations, crimes of individuals, a universal intoxication of atrocity.

And it is with this disgusting appetizer that civilized man accompanies his every morning meal. Everything in this world sweats crime: the magazine, the wall, the face of man. I cannot see how a pure hand can touch a paper without a convulsion of disgust.

LXIX

The strength of the amulet demonstrated by philosophy. Bored coins, talismans, every one's keepsakes. Treatise on moral dynamics. Of the power of the sacraments. Of my childhood, tendency to mysticism. My conversations with God.

LXX

Of obsession. Of Possession, of Prayer and of Faith. Moral dynamics of Jesus. (Renan thinks it ridiculous to suppose that Jesus believed in the omnipotence, even materially, of Prayer and of Faith.) The sacraments are the means of this dynamics.

Of the infamy of the printing-shop, great obstacle to the development of beauty.

LXXI

In order for the law of progress to exist, every one must wish to create it; that is, when every individual applies himself to progress, then, and only then, humanity will be in progress.

This hypothesis serves to explain the identity of two contradictory ideas, free will and predestination. – Not only is there, in the case of progress, identity of free will and predestination, but that identity has always existed. That identity is history, the history of nations and of men.

LXXII

Hygiene. Projects.– The more one wills, the better one wills.

The more one works, the better one works, and the more one wants to work. The more one produces, the more fertile one grows.

Morally as physically, I have always had the sensation of the gulf, not only of the gulf of sleep, but the gulf of action, of revery, of memory, of desire, of regret, of remorse, of beauty, of number, etc.

I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror. Now, I always have vertigo, and to-day, January 23, 1862, I felt a strange warning. I felt pass over me a gust from the wing of imbecility.

LXXIII

How many presentiments and signs already sent by God, that it is high time to act, to regard the present moment as the most important moment, and to make my perpetual joy of my usual torment, that is, of work!

LXXIV

Hygiene, Conduct, Morals.– Every moment, we are crushed by the idea and sensation of time. And there are only two means of escaping that nightmare, of forgetting it: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work fortifies us. Let us choose.

The more we make use of one of these means, the more the other fills us with repugnance.

One can forget time only by using it.

Everything is accomplished bit by bit.

De Maistre and Edgar Poe taught me to reason.

There is no long work but that which one dares not begin. It becomes a nightmare.

LXXV

Hygiene.– By putting off what one has to do, one runs the risk of never being able to do it. By postponing conversion, one risks being damned.

To heal everything, misery, disease and melancholy, absolutely nothing is needed but the love of work.

LXXVI

Precious Notes. – Do every day what prudence and duty dictate. If you work every day, life will be more endurable. Work six days without a let-up. To find fields, Know thyself. Always to be a poet, even in prose. Grand style (nothing is more beautiful than the commonplace). First begin, then make use of logic and analysis. Any hypothesis whatsoever tends to its conclusion. Find the daily frenzy.

LXXVII

Hygiene, Conduct, Morals.– Debts. Friends (my mother, friends, myself). Thus, 1000 francs should be divided into two parts of 500 francs each, and the second divided into three.

LXXVIII

– To do one's duty every day and trust in God for the morrow.

The one way to make money is to work in a disinterested fashion.

– Concentrated wisdom. Toilet, prayer, labor.

Prayer: charity, wisdom and strength.

Without charity, I am but a clashing cymbal.

– My humiliations have been mercies of God.

Is my egoistical phase at an end?

The gift of responding to the moment's need, exactitude, in a word, should infallibly bring its recompense.

LXXIX

Hygiene, Conduct, Morals.– Jean 300, my mother 200, myself 300, – 800 francs a month. To work from six in the morning, on an empty stomach, till noon. To work blindly, aimlessly, like a madman. We shall see the result.

I suppose I base my destiny on a few hours' uninterrupted toil.

All is reparable. There is still time. Who knows even if new pleasure…?

I have not yet known the pleasure of a project carried out.

Power of the fixed idea, power of hope.

The habit of doing one's duty drives out fear.

One must wish to dream and know how to dream. The summoning of inspiration. The Art of Magic. To set myself immediately to writing. I reason too much.

Immediate work, even poor, is worth more than dreams.

A procession of little wishes makes a mighty end.

Every recoil of the will is a particle of lost substance. How prodigal, then, is hesitation! And judge of the greatness of the final effort needed to repair so many losses!

The man who prays in the evening, is a captain who posts his sentinels. He can sleep.

Dreams of death and warnings.

Up to now I have enjoyed my memories alone; they must be shared with another. Make a passion of the joys of the heart.

Because I comprehend a glorious existence, I believe myself capable of realizing it. O Jean-Jacques!

Work forcibly engenders good habits, sobriety and chastity, consequently health, wealth, successive and progressive genius, and charity. Age quod agis.

Fish, cold baths, showers, lichen, lozenges, occasionally; in addition, suppression of everything exciting.

Steep the lichen, for twelve or fifteen hours, in a sufficient quantity of cold water, then drain the water. Boil the lichen in two liters of water, on a slow and continuous flame, until the two liters have dwindled to one, remove the scum once; then add the 250 grams of sugar and allow it to thicken to the consistency of syrup. Allow it to cool again. Take a large tablespoonful three times daily, morning, noon, and night. Do not be afraid to increase the dose, if the crises become too frequent.

LXXX

Hygiene, Conduct, Method.– I swear to myself henceforth to take the following rules as eternal rules of my life:

Every morning to pray to God, reservoir of all strength and all justice, to my father, to Mariette, and to Poe, as intercessors; to pray to them to grant me the necessary strength always to do my duty, and to grant to my mother a life long enough to enjoy my transformation; to work all day, or at least while my strength remains; to trust in God, that is, in Justice itself, for the success of my projects; to make, every evening, a new prayer to God, asking life and strength for my mother and for myself; to divide all I earn into four parts, – one for current expenses, one for my creditors, one for my friends and one for my mother; – to obey the precepts of strictest sobriety, of which the first is the suppression of everything exciting, whatever it may be.