Abstract
The meaning that attaches to the title Correspondances suggests a likely but overlooked source of Baudelaire's sonnet, the occult science of animal magnetism. Baudelaire's interest in the subject goes back to June 1838 when he discusses it in a letter to his mother. His first Poe translation, in 1848, was Révélation magnétique. In addition, allusions to animal magnetism are found in such poems as La Voix, Bénédiction, and La Mort des pauvres. Baudelaire was probably aware of, and may have attended, a series of lectures on animal magnetism given in 1844 or 1845 by a certain Alphonse Teste. In the printed text of these lectures the word correspondance is used in a sense closer to Baudelaire's than one finds in any other known source of the sonnet. Evidence of the influence of animal magnetism on Baudelaire's works tends to confirm Jean Pommier's belief that Correspondances was composed during the period 1845-46. (In French)
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