Vom Spleen de Paris zum spleenigen Paris

Abstract

The prose poem as modernist achievement in order to cross boundaries between the genres is basically associated with Charles Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris. It has been subject to various refinements such as Rimbaud’s Illuminations or the surrealist prose experiments. However, Baudelaire’s breakthrough is far from being sole literary history when we consider contemporary French poetry. Deconstructionist philosopher Michel Deguy, one of its leading figures since the 1960’s, >recycles< Baudelaire into a Spleen de Paris whose spleen has turned into critical inquiry about the globalized metropolis; and whose flâneur has become, if anything at all, a mere cyclist.