From “The Raven” to “Le Cygne” Birds, Transcendence, and the Uncanny in Poe and Baudelaire

Abstract

Abstract Birds are centrally emblematic in both Baudelaire's and Poe's work. During his lifetime Poe was already known as “the author of ‘The Raven’” (this poem was the only one of Poe's poems Baudelaire translated [or rather, paraphrased, in prose], making it the focus for subsequent French readers); while Baudelaire's “L'Albatros” and especially “Le Cygne” encapsulate both his own position as an artist and a wider alienation within, and from, modernity. Taking as its point of contrast the traditional, beatific connotations of birds in the poets’ predecessors and contemporaries, this article seeks to situate the specificity of avian images in Poe and Baudelaire, placing these images within the dualism of presence and absence, plenitude and abjection, relativity and transcendence central to both authors.