Abstract
The essay explores Baudelaire's application of synesthesia as a figure of fusion on the vertical and horizontal planes in order to demonstrate that the figure's extensions develop both spiritual and psychophysical dimensions of his work as literary self-portrait. The integration of different types of synesthesia is shown to contribute to the creation of a “total” autotelic artwork of which the lyric subject is at once the core and the perimeter. The analysis concerns the self-referential technique of mise en abyme because it installs the “self” as center even when the subject of the text appears to be an “other.” The role of rhetoric, symbolism, and the poet's creative imagination are also examined because they incorporate various “others” including famous artists, philosophers, and aspects of mysterious, faraway lands. Thus a “sociospiritual synesthesia” and a “synesthetic exoticism” combine to expand the lyric subject's sphere of self-reference.
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