Baudelaire's World

Abstract

This is an evocation of Baudelaire's world for the whole of the English-speaking world. It is a tour de force, in that it leaves no area untouched — the poetry, the prose, the prose poetry, the criticism of art and literature, the correspondence, the unfinished projects — and yet it maintains a lightness of touch, which conceals the lifetime of erudition underpinning it. Claude Pichois is quoted as remarking that, with the published work of Baudelaire, we see only the tip of the iceberg; indeed no-one was better placed than he to make such an observation, given the Herculean task which he completed, just before his death, in relation to the diplomatic edition of Les Fleurs du mal. The depth and shifting complexity of the area beneath the Baudelairean surface are brought out so effectively by Lloyd because, eschewing more obvious potential presentations in terms of chronology, theme or form, she has opted instead for a kaleidoscopic pattern, inspired by that of Baudelaire himself in Le Spleen de Paris. This is coupled with close readings of some central poems, notably ‘Le Cygne’, recurring in different and mutually enriching contexts. Such an approach yields handsome dividends, especially in the chapter on ‘The Art of Transposition’, where the boundaries between critical and creative writing are rejected, the subtleties of light effects in painters' skies are translated into prose and sculpture is studied for its effects of anamorphosis — all features which herald the twentieth century. Throughout the different ‘worlds’ evoked in this lucid and beautifully written book — the worlds of childhood, women, friends, dreams, city life — the emphasis is twofold: bringing out the importance of creative participation on the part of the reader and highlighting the combination of the eternal and the contingent in Baudelaire's modernism.