Abstract
This chapter examines the ‘endings’ of ‘Spleen et idéal’ and Les Fleurs du Mal. After discussion of ‘Hymne à la Beauté’, which in 1861 completes the evolution from tradition to innovation in the poet’s thinking about beauty (poems 1–21), it is argued that whereas in 1857 the final seven poems of ‘Spleen et idéal’ allowed this section to mirror the overall structure of the collection as a movement from upward aspiration towards downbeat acceptance and ironic repose, the last seven (different) poems in the 1861 ‘Spleen et idéal’—from ‘Obsession’ to ‘L’Horloge’—express a full-blooded embrace of melancholy as the means to a new form of poetry (as then exemplified by ‘Tableaux parisiens’). It is then shown how this new structure is mirrored in the new ending given to ‘La Mort’ (and thus to Les Fleurs du Mal), and in particular by ‘Le Voyage’.
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