Abstract
Scholars have indicated several possible sources for Baudelaire's prose poem 'Mademoiselle Bistouri': a journalistic piece by Adrien Marx, a poem by Mathurin Régnier, and even extracts from Madame Bovary. This essay will argue that the poet uses these intertextual references to rewrite his own history. Not only does he recall his own early and rather obscure writings, but he also re-enacts one of the most painful events in his career: the mutilation of his Fleurs du mal, condemned in 1857. Indeed, multiple elements in 'Mademoiselle Bistouri' refer to Baudelaire's own first steps as a writer — allusions that allegorize, through the figure of Mademoiselle Bistouri, the 'surgical' intervention that disfigured his only collection of verses.
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