It's Baudelaire's birthday today - happy 188th, Charlot! It's a long time since I read him, and I must admit I feel little inclination to return to his work. Is it just me, or is there something faintly absurd about all that self-conscious, overwrought 'decadence'? Yet he was certainly, as T.S. Eliot noted, a fine craftsman... I don't know, I think in the end - like so much of literary taste - it's a matter of mood. Baudelaire suited the mood of my younger self, always eager for a morbid thrill - dammit, I even read Maldoror - but that was then... Still, any excuse for a Nadar photograph. Even more remarkable is the one of Gerard de Nerval.
Never read any Baudilaire. quite frankly the thought of it scares me a little
ReplyDeleteHe looks a little like Michael Palin, and definitely not about to break out into "The Lumberjack Song". Gerard de Nerval looks capable of just about anything. Much enjoyed Baudelaire, Verlaine et al when I was a student. Perhaps that's the right time to read them. Suspect that Baudelaire today might be a keen blogger. All that stuff about misunderstood genius in a cruel, uncaring world - the stuff of legion fragile flowers on the net. And if this mood is a kind of rite de passage, I guess Baudelaire's genius was that he captured it better than anyone.
ReplyDeleteI loved the French Symbolists when I was late teens & early 20s. I was overwrought and self-absorbed, too, and it really spoke to me!
ReplyDeleteI, too, cannot bring myself to return to Baudelaire, and I never liked his work as much as I do Nerval's and - dare I say it? - Verlaine's.
ReplyDelete@ will- how could u be scared if never read any ???? scared of what ? it won't bite u, nevermind that...
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