Chapter 3

Gustave Courbet, 1848

Les paradis artificiels: opium et haschisch(1860), which I have before me, is the most wonderful book that Baudelaire ever wrote. It has that astonishing logic which he possessed supremely, which unravels, with infinite precautions, every spider's web of this seductive drug, which enslaves the imagination, which changes the will, which turns sounds into colours, colours into sounds; which annihilates space and time; and, often at its crises, even one's own individuality. To Baudelaire, as to me, it has, and had, the divinity of a sorcerous, a dangerous, an insidious mistress. It produces morbid effects on one's senses; wakens mysterious visions in our half-closed eyes. And this, like every form of intoxication, is mysterious, malign, satanical, diabolical. And, subjugated by it, part of oneself is dominated, so that, in Baudelaire's words:Il a vouloir faire l'ange, il est devenu une bête.

With some this poison carries them to the verge of the abyss, over which one looks fascinated by the abrupt horror of the void. In some their ideas congeal: even to the point of imagining oneself "a fragment of thinking ice." One sits, as in a theatre, seeing a drama acted on the stage, where one's senses perceive subtle impressions, but vague, unreal, ghost-like; where at moments one's eyes envisage the infinite. "Then," says Baudelaire, "the grammar, the arid grammar itself, becomes something like an evoked sorcery, the words are alive again in flesh and in blood, the substantive, in its substantial majesty, the adjective, a transparent vestment that clothes it and colours it like a glacis, and the verb, angel of movement, that gives the swing to the phrase."

With the hallucinations all exterior forms take on singular aspects; are deformed and transformed. Then come the transpositions of ideas, with unaccountable analogies that penetrate the spirit. Even music, heard or unheard, can seem voluptuous and sensual. It is Baudelaire who speaks now, evokes an enchantment: "The idea of an evaporation, slow, successive, eternal, takes hold of your spirit, and you soon apply this idea to' your proper thoughts, to your way of thinking. By a singular equivocation, by a kind of transportation, or of an intellectualquid pro quo,you find yourself evaporating, and you attribute to your pipe (in which you feel yourself crouching and heaped together like tobacco) the strange faculty ofsmoking yourself." The instant becomes eternity; one is lucid at intervals; the hallucination is sudden, perfect, and fatal. One feels an excessive thirst; one subsides into that strange state that the Orientals callKief.

Certainly haschisch has a more vehement effect on one than opium; it is more troubling, more ecstatic, more malign, malignant, insinuating, more evocative, more visionary, more unseizable; it lifts one across infinite horizons, it carries us passionately over the passionate waves of seas in storms—of unknown storms on unseen seas—into not even eternities, nor into chaos, nor into Heaven nor into Hell (though these may whirl before one's vision), but into incredible existences, over which no magician rules, over which no witch presides. It can separate ourselves from ourselves; change our very shapes into shapeless images; drown us in the deep depths of annihilation, out of which we slowly emerge; bury us under the oldest roots of the earth; give us death in life and life in death; give us sleep that is not sleep, and waking dreams that are not waking dreams. There is nothing, human or inhuman, moral or immoral, that this drug cannot give us.

Yet, all the time, we know not what it takes from us; nor what deadly exchange we may have to give; nor what intoxication can be produced beyond its intoxication; nor if, as with Coleridge, who took opium, it might not become "almost a habit of the Soul."

Imagine a universe in disorder, peopled by strange beings, that have no relation with each other, whose speech one supposes is jargon; where such houses as there are are built in different ways—none with straight lines, many in triangles; where the animals are unlike ours, some smaller than ants; where there are no churches, no apparent streets; but innumerable brothels. When one sees fires the smoke goes downward; flames leap out of the soil and turn into living serpents. Now one sees a serpent return into his proper flame. There seem to be no gods, nor idols nor priests nor shrines.

The seas storm the skies and swallow up Hell; and all that lives and all that dies seems indistinguishable. Suppose that—in an opium dream—Satan turns God. The soil might wither at his touch; Lesbians lament the loss of Lesbianism; and the word of God be abolished.

I have used the word vehement in regard to Haschisch. It violates the imagination, ravishes the senses; can disturb one physically; but never, if taken in measure, prove destructive. This green drug can create unheard-of excitations, exasperations; can create contagious laughter, evoke comical images, supernatural and fantastic.

Now take a world created by Opium. The soil wavers, moves always, in void space; a soil in which no seed nor weed grows. The men and women are veiled—none see their faces. There is light, but neither sun nor stars nor night. The houses have no windows; inside are no mirrors; but everywhere opium dens; everywhere the smoke—incessant—of pipes; everywhere a stench produced by opium and by their moral degradation. The streets are thick with grass; such animals as there are are stupefied. In fact, this inexorably moving world that has no foundations exhales—worse than pestilence—an inexplicable stupefaction.

And, symbolical as it must be, these excitable poisons are to a certainty one of the most terrible means employed by the Prince of the Powers of the Air to enslave deplorable humanity; but by no means to give him, what the drug can give him, the monstrous sense of the suddenness of space and time, as if one were hurled between them by two opposing whirlwinds.

Now appears suddenly the Women—furious, formidable—one calls Mephistophila, who having gazed on the Medusa becomes Medusa; who, rouged and pale as the dead, gives one the idea of that eternal minute which must be hell. Her very name trails like a coffin-lid. Abnormal, she is sinister. She is one of my hallucinations. Can she ever count the countless sins she has committed? Occult, she adores the Arcana. Her kisses on women's lips are cruel. Perhaps she is the modern Messalina.Elle est l'impératrice blême d'un macabre Lesbos.

She admits—I give here simply her confessions—to no abominations, nor does she specialize her vices. As certain of her damnation as of her existence—real, imaginary—she lives and loves and lies and forgives. She knows she has abandoned herself to all the impossible desires endured by such souls as hers, who expect annihilation.Elle est la reine, pas présente, mais acceptée, de la cour des miracles femelles du Mal.

She is not of those the Furies hate eternally, nor has she knowledge of man's mingled fates; yet certain Circes have shown her how to weave webs of spiritual spiders; she knows not where those are that turn the Wheels of Destiny. Whirlwinds have shaken her in her perfumed room as she lies in perfumed garments, considering her nakedness as sacred: she the impure, never the pure! She is so tired of having ravished souls from bodies and bodies from souls, that all she desires is sleep, sleep without dreams. Did sleep ever come to those who most desired it? Messalina, Helen of Troy, Faustina knew this; dust has closed their lips, the very dust they have trodden under foot, the dust that knows not whither it is drifting: none thinking of the inevitable end.

Has not this poisonous drug shown to me, as to her, shadows hot from hell? Not the shadows the sun casts on our figures as we walk on the grass; not the moon's shadows that make mockery of us; but the veritable heat and fire and flame and fumes of uttermost hell.

In her eyes persists an ardent and violent life, hateful and bestial. Depraved by insensible sensations, she imagines Caligula before her and maledictions not her own. I know her now in vision—she is more insatiable than Death—more ravenous after ravishment than Life. No vampire, no Lamia, she knows not that her body has been drenched with so many poisons that her breath might poison a man with one kiss. And now, now, her eyes are so weary, her eyeballs ache with such tortured nerves, that she desires nothing—nothing at all.

In the very essence of Haschisch I find a disordered Demon whose insanities make one's very flesh ache. Under his power symbols speak—you can become yourself a living symbol. Under its magic you can imagine black magic, and music can speak your passion: for is not music as passionate as man's love for woman, as a woman's love for a man? It can turn your rhythm into its rhythm, can change every word into a sound, a word into a note of music: it cannot change the substance of your soul.

Finally, the drugged man admires himself inordinately; he condemns himself, he glorifies himself; he realizes his condemnation; he becomes the centre of the universe, certain of his virtue as of his genius. Then, in a stupendous irony, he cries:Je suis devenu Dieu!One instant after he projects himself out of himself, as if the will of an intoxicated man had an efficacious virtue, and cries, with a cry that might strike down the scattered angels from the ways of the sky:Je suis un Dieu!

One of Baudelaire's profoundest sayings is: "Every perfect debauch has need of a perfect leisure:Toute débauche parfaite a besoin d'un parfait loisir"He gives his definition of the magic that imposes on haschisch its infernal stigmata; of the soul that sells itself in detail; of the frantic taste for this adorable poison of the man whose soul he had chosen for these experiments, his own soul; of how finally this hazardous spirit, driven, without being aware of it, to the edge of hell, testifies of its original grandeur.

In their later work all great poets use foreshortening. They get greater subtlety by what they omit and suggest to the imagination. Browning, in his later period, suggests to the intellect, and to that only. Hence his difficulty, which is not a poetic difficulty; not a cunning simplification of method like Shakespeare's, who gives us no long speeches of undiluted undramatic poetry, but poetry everywhere like life-blood.

Browning's whole life was divided equally between two things: love and art. He subtracted nothing from the one by which to increase the other; between them they occupied his whole nature; in each he was equally supreme.Men and Womenand the love-letters are the double swing of the same pendulum; at the centre sits the soul, impelled and impelling. Outside these two forms of his greatness Browning had none, and one he concealed from the world. It satisfied him to exist as he did, knowing what he was, and showing no more of himself to those about him than the outside of a courteous gentleman. Nothing in him blazed through, in the uncontrollable manner of those who are most easily recognized as great men. His secret was his own, and still, to many, remains so.

Édouard Manet, 1862

I have said above, of Browning: "His secret was his own, and still, to many, remains so." Exactly the same thing must be said of Baudelaire. He lived, and died, secret; and the man remains baffling, and will probably never be discovered. But, in most of his printed letters, he shows only what he cares to reveal of himself at a given moment. In the letters, printed in book form, that I have before me, there is much more of the nature of confessions. Several of his letters to his mother are heart-breaking; as in his agonized effort to be intelligible to her; his horror of hercuré; his shame in pawning her Indian shawl; his obscure certainty that the work he is doing is of value, and that he ought not to feel shame. Then comes his suggestion that society should adjust these difficult balances. Again, in his ghastly confession that he has only sent Jeanne seven francs in three months; that he is as tired of her as of his own life: there is shown a tragic gift for self-observation and humble truthfulness. It would have taken a very profound experience of life to have been a good mother to Baudelaire: or she should have had a wisercure.Think of thecuréburning the only copy ofLes Fleurs du Malthat Baudelaire had left in "papier d'Hollande," and the mother acquiescing.

I give two quotations, which certainly explain themselves if they do not explain Baudelaire:

"I must leave home and not return there, except in a more natural state of mind. I have just been rewriting an article. The affair kept me so long that when I went out I had not even the courage to return, and so the day was lost. Last week I had to go out and sleep for two days and nights in a hideous little hotel because I was spied on. I went out without any money for the simple reason that I had none.

"Imagine my perpetual laziness, which I hate profoundly, and the impossibility of going out on account of my perpetual want of money. After I had been seeking money for three days, on Monday night, exhausted with fatigue, with weariness and with hunger, I went into the first hotel I came on, and since then I have had to remain there, and for certain reasons. I am nearly devoured, eaten by this enforced idleness."

In a letter written in Brussels, March 9, 1868, he says: "I have announced the publication of three fragments:Chateaubriand et le Dandysme littéraire, La Peinture didactique,andLes fleurs du mal jugées par l'auteur lui-même.I shall add to these a refutation of an article of Janin, one onHenri Heine et la jeunesse des poètes,and the refutation ofLa Préface de la vie de Jules César par Napoléon III." Besides these, on the cover of hisSalon de1848 are announced: "De la poésie moderne; David, Guérin et Gerodet; Les Limbes, poésies; Catéchisme de la femme aimée." On the paper cover of my copy of hisThéophile Gautier(1861), under the title of "Sous Presse," are announced:Opium et Haschisch, ou l'Idéal Artificiel(which was printed in 1860 asLes paradis artificiels: opium et haschisch), Curiosités esthétiques(which were printed in 1868);Notices littéraires;andMachiavel et Condorcet, dialogue philosophique.Of these,Les Limbesappeared asLes fleurs du mal(1857);Les Notices littérairesat the end ofL'Art Romantique(1868); none of the others were printed, nor do I suppose he had even the time to begin them.

He might have written on Machiavelli a prose dialogue as original, from the French point of view, as one of Landor's Imaginary Conversations, such as those between Plato and Diogenes, the two Ciceros, Leonora d'Este with Father Panigarole. Both had that satirical touch which can embody the spirit of an age or of two men in conversation. Both had a creative power and insight equal to that of the very greatest masters; both had the power of using prose with a perfection which no stress of emotion is allowed to discompose. Only it seems to me that Baudelaire might have made the sinister genius, the calculating, cold observation of Machiavelli, who wrote so splendidly on Cesare Borgia, give vent to a tremendous satire on priests and Kings and Popes after the manner of Rabelais or of Aristophanes; certainly not in the base and ignoble manner of Aretino.

It is lamentable to think how many things Baudelaire never did or never finished. One reason might have been his laziness, his sense of luxury, and, above all, his dissatisfaction with certain things he had hoped to do, and which likely enough a combination of poverty and of nerves prevented him from achieving. And as he looks back on the general folly incident to all mankind—hisbête noire—on his lost opportunities, on his failures, a sack of cobwebs, a pack of gossamers, wave in the air before his vision; and he wonders why he himself has not carved his life as those fanciful things have their own peculiar way of doing.

Baudelaire was inspired to beginMon cœur mis à nuin 1863 by this paragraph he had read in Poe'sMarginalia,printed in New York in 1856: "If an ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own—the road to immortal renown lies straight open and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple—a few plain words—My Heart Laid Bare."

With all his genius, Poe was never able to write a book of Confessions, nor was Baudelaire ever able to finish his. Poe, who also died tragically young, throws out a sinister hint in these last words: "No mancouldwrite it, even if he dared. The paper would shrivel and blaze at every touch of the fiery pen."

Baudelaire's Confessions are meant to express his inmost convictions, his most sacred memories, his hates and rages, the manner in which his sensations and emotions have fashioned themselves in his waking self; to express that he is a stranger to the world and to the world's cults; to express, also, as he says, thatce livre tout rêvé sera un livre de rancunes.It cannot in any sense be compared with the Confessions of Saint Augustine, of Rousseau, of Cellini, of Casanova. Still, Baudelaire had none of Rousseau's cowardice, none of Cellini's violent exultations over himself and the things he created: none of Casanova's looking back over his past life and his adventures: those of a man who did not live to write, but wrote because he had lived and when he could live no longer.

In Baudelaire's notes there is something that reminds me of Browning's lines:

"Men's thoughts and loves and hates!Earth is my vineyard, these grew there;From grapes of the ground, I made or marredMy vintage."

For so much in these studies in sensations are the product of a man who has both made and marred his prose and poetical vintage. He analyses some of his hideous pains; and I cannot but believe—I quote these words from a letter I have received from a man of sensitive nerves—that he may have felt: "Itisso beautifül to emerge after the bad days that one is almost glad to have been through them, and I can quite truthfully say I am glad to have pain—it makes one a connoisseur in sensations, and we only call it pain because it is something that we don't understand." Without having suffered intensely no poet can be a real poet; and without passion no poet is supreme. And these lines of Shelley are not only meant for himself, but for most of us who are artists:

"One who was as a nerve over which do creepThe else unfelt oppressions of this earth."

There is also something Browning says of Shelley which might be applied to Baudelaire's later years: "The body, enduring tortures, refusing to give repose to the bewildered soul, and the laudanum bottle making but a perilous and pitiful truce between these two." He was also subject to that state of mind in which ideas may be supposed to assume the force of sensations, through the confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and excess of passion animating the creations of the imagination.

How very commonly we hear it remarked that such and such thoughts are beyond the compass of words. I do not believe that any thought, properly so called, is out of the reach of language. I fancy, rather, that where difficulty in expression is experienced, there is, in the intellect which experiences it, a want either of deliberateness or of method. For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it: for thought is logicalized by the effort at written composition. There is, however, a class of fancies, of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt language. Yet, so entire is my faith in the power of words, that at times I have believed it possible to embody even the evanescences of fancies such as I have described. Could one actually do so, which would be to have done an original thing, such words might have compelled the heaven into the earth.

Some of these qualities Baudelaire finds in Gautier; to my mind there are many more of these strange and occult qualities to be found in Baudelaire. I have said somewhere that there is no such thing, properly speaking, as a "natural" style; and it is merely ignorance of the mental process of writing which sometimes leads one to say that the style of Swift is more natural than that of Ruskin. Pater said to me at Oxford that his ownImaginary Portraitsseemed to him the best written of his books, which he qualified by adding: "It seems to be the mostnatural." I think then he was beginning to forget that it was not natural to him to be natural.

Gautier had a way of using the world's dictionary, whose leaves, blown by an unknown wind, always opened so as to let the exact word leap out of the pages, adding the appropriate shades. Both writers had an innate sense of "correspondences," and of a universal symbolism, where the "sacredness" of every word defends one from using it in a profane sense. To realize the central secret of the mystics, from Protagoras onwards, the secret which the Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes betrays in its "As things are below, so are they above;" which Boehme has classed in his teaching of "signatures;" and which Swedenborg has systematized in his doctrine of "correspondences," one arrives at Gérard de Nerval, whose cosmical visions are at times so magnificent that he seems to be creating myths, as, after his descent into hell, he plays the part he imagines assigned to him in his astral influences.

Among these comes Hoffmann. In hisKreislerione,that Baudelaire read in the French translation I have before me, printed in 1834, he says: "The musician whose sense of music is conscious swims everywhere across floods of harmony and melody. This is no vain image, nor an allegory devoid of sense, such as composers use when they speak of colours, of perfumes, of the rays of the sun that appear like concords." "Colour speaks," says Baudelaire, "in a voice evocatory of sorcery; animals and plants grimace; perfumes provoke correspondent thoughts and memories. And when I think of Gautier's rapidity in solving all the problems of style and of composition, I cannot help remembering a severe maxim that he let fall before me in one of his conversations: 'Every writer who fails to seize any idea, however subtle and unexpected he supposes it to be, is not a writer.L'Inexprimable n'existe pas.'"

It is either Delacroix or Baudelaire who wrote: "The writer who is incapable of saying everything, who takes unawares and without having enough material to give body to an idea, however subtle or strange or unexpected he may suppose it to be, is not a writer." And one has to beware of the sin of allegory, which spoils even Bunyan's prose. For the deepest emotion raised in us by allegory is a very imperfectly satisfied sense of the writer's ingenuity in overcoming a difficulty we should have preferred his not having attempted to overcome.

Then there is the heresy of instruction—l'hérésie de l'enseignement—which Poe and Baudelaire and Swinburne consider ruinous to art. Art for art's sake first of all; that a poem must be written for the poem's sake simply, from whatever instinct we have derived it; it matters nothing whether this be inspired by a prescient ecstasy of the beauty beyond the grave, or by some of that loveliness whose very elements appertain solely to eternity. Above all, Verlaine'sPas de couleur, rien que la nuance!

The old war—not (as some would foolishly have it defined) a war between facts and fancies, reason and romance, poetry and good sense, but simply between imagination which apprehends the spirit of a thing and the understanding which dissects the body of a fact—the strife which can never be decided—was for Blake the most important question possible. Poetry or art based on loyalty to science is exactly as absurd (and no more) as science guided by art or poetry. Though, indeed, Blake wrought hisMarriage of Heaven and Hellinto a form of absolute magnificence, a prose fantasy full of splendid masculine thought and of a diabolical or infernal humour, in which hells and heavens change names and alternate through mutual annihilations, which emit an illuminating, devouring, and unquenchable flame, he never actually attained the incomparable power of condensing vapour into tangible and malleable form, of helping us to handle air and measure mist, which is so instantly perceptible in Balzac's genius, he who was not "a prose Shakespeare" merely, but rather perhaps a Shakespeare in all but the lyrical faculty.

Even when Baudelaire expresses his horror of life, of how abject the world has become, how he himself is supposed to be "une anomalie," his sense of his own superiority never leaves him. "Accursed," as I have said, such abnormally gifted artists are, he declares his thirst of glory, a diabolical thirst of fame and of all kinds of enjoyments—in spite of his "awful temperament, all ruse and violence"—and can say: "I desire to live and to have self-content. Something terrible says to menever,and some other thing says to metry. Moi-même, le boulevard m'effraye."

Baudelaire's tragic sense of his isolation, of his intense misery, of his series of failures, of his unendurable existence—it was and was not life—in Brussels finds expression in this sentence, dated September, 1865:

"Les gens qui ne sont pas exilés ne savent pas ce que sont les nerfs de ceux sont cloués à l'étranger, sans communications et sans nouvelles." What he says is the inevitable that has no explanation: simply the inevitable that no man can escape. To be exiled from Paris proves to be, practically, his death-stroke. And, in the last letter he ever wrote, March 5, 1866, there is a sense of irony, of vexation, of wounded pride, and in the last "sting in the tail of the honey" he hisses: "There is enough talent in these young writers; but what absurdities, what exaggerations, and what youthful infatuations! Curiously, only a few years ago I perceived these imitators whose tendencies alarmed me. I know nothing of a more compromising nature than these: as for me, I love nothing more than being alone. But this is not possible for me,et il paraît que l'école Baudelaire existe."

And, to all appearances, it did; and what really annoyed Baudelaire was the publication of Verlaine'sPoèmes saturniensand their praise by Leconte de l'Isle, Banville, and Hugo; Hugo, whom he had come to hate. It is with irony that he says of Hugo: "Je n'accepterais ni son génie, ni sa fortune, s'il me fallait au même temps posséder ses énormes ridicules."

Here are certain chosen confessions of Baudelaire. "For my misery I am not made like other men. I am in a state of spiritual revolt; I feel as if a wheel turns in my head. To write a letter costs me more time than in writing a volume. My desire of travelling returns on me furiously. When I listen to the tingling in my ears that causes me such trouble, I can't help admiring with what diabolical care imaginative men amuse themselves in multiplying their embarrassments. One of my chief preoccupations is to get the Manager of the Théâtre Porte-Saint-Martin to take back an actress execrated by his own wife—despite another actress who is employed in the theatre." It is amusing to note that the same desire takes hold of Gautier, who writes to Arsène Houssaye, the Director of the Comédie-Française, imploring him to take back a certain Louise if there is a place vacant for her.

"I can't sleep much now," writes Baudelaire, "as I am always thinking.Quand je dis que je dormirai demain matin, vous devinerez de quel sommeil je veux parler." This certainly makes me wonder what sort of sodden sleep he means. Probably the kind of sleep he refers to in his Epilogue to thePoèmes en Prose,addressed to Paris:

"Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapours full,Sodden with day, or, new apparelled, standIn gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,I love thee, infamous city! Harlots andHunted have pleasures of their own to give,The vulgar herd can never understand."

The question comes here: How much does Baudelaire give of himself in his letters? Some of his inner, some of his outer life; but, for the most part, "in tragic hints." Yet in the whole of his letters he never gives one what Meredith does inModern Love,which, published in 1862, remains his masterpiece, and it will always remain, beside certain things of Donne and of Browning, an astonishing feat in the vivisection of the heart in verse. It is packed with imagination, but with imagination of so nakedly human a kind that there is hardly an ornament, hardly an image, in the verse: it is like scraps of broken—of heart-broken—talk, overheard and jotted down at random. These cruel and self-torturing lovers have no illusions, and their tragic hints "are like a fine, pained mockery of love itself as they struggle open-eyed against the blindness of passion. The poem laughs while it cries, with a double-mindedness more constant than that of Heine; with, at times, an acuteness of sensation carried to the point of agony at which Othello sweats words like these:

"O thou WeedWho art so lovely fair, and smell'st so sweetThat the sense aches at thee, would thou had'st ne'er beenborn."

Another question arises: How can a man who wrote his letters in acafé,anywhere, do more than jot down whatever came into his head? Has he ever given an account of one day in his life—eventful or uneventful? You might as well try to count the seconds of your watch as try to write for yourself your sensations during one day. What seems terrible is the rapidity of our thoughts: yet, fortunately, one is not always thinking. "Books think for me; I don't think," says Lamb in one of his paradoxes. There is not much thought in his prose: imagination, humour, salt and sting, tragical emotions, and, on the whole, not quite normal. How can any man of genius be entirely normal?

The most wonderful letters ever written are Lamb's. Yet, as in Balzac's, in Baudelaire's, in Browning's, so few of Lamb's letters, those works of nature, and almost more wonderful than works of art, are to be taken on oath. Those elaborate lies, which ramify through them into patterns of sober-seeming truth, are in anticipation, and were of the nature of a preliminary practice for the innocent and avowed fiction of the essays. What began in mischief ends in art.

The life of Baudelaire, like the lives of Balzac and of Villiers and of Verlaine, was one long labour, in which time, money, and circumstances were all against him. "Sometimes," Balzac cries, "it seems to me that my brain is on fire. I shall die in the trenches of the intellect." It is his genius, his imagination, that are on fire, not so much as his sleepless brain. This certainly Baudelaire never felt. Yet, in one sentence written in 1861, I find an agony not unlike Balzac's, but more material, more morbid: "La plupart des temps je me dis: si je vis, je vivrai toujours de même, en damné, et quand la mort naturelle viendra, je serai vieux, usé, passé de mode, criblé de dettes; ajoute à cela que je trouve souvent qu'on ne me rend pas justice, et que je vois que tout réussit à souhait pour les sots." This, with his perpetual nervous terrors, his hallucinations, his drugs, his miseries, his women, his wine, his good and bad nights, his sense of poisonous people, his disorders, his excitability, his imagination that rarely leaves him, his inspiration that often varies, his phrase, after a certain despair: "Je me suis précipité dans le travail: alors j'ai reconnu que je n'avais perdu aucune faculté;" his discouragements, his sudden rages, not only against fame, but when he just refrains from hitting a man's face with his stick; after all this, and after much more than this, I have to take his word, when he says—not thinking of these impediments in his way—"What poets ought to do is to know how to escape from themselves." In 1861 he writes: "As my literary situation is more than good, I can do all I want, I can get all my books printed; yet, as I have the misfortune in possessing a kind of unpopular spirit, I shall not make much money, but I shall leave a great fame behind me—provided I have the courage to live." "Provided "That word sounds a note of nervous distress. He continues: "I have made a certain amount of money; if I had not had so many debts,and if I had had more fortune, I might have been rich"The last five words he writes in small capitals. And this lamentable refrain is part of his obsession; wondering, as we all do, why we have never been rich. Then comes this curious statement: "What exasperates me is when I think of what I have received this year; it is enormous; certainly I have lived on this money like a ferocious beast; and yet how often I spend much less than that in sheer waste!"

In 1861 Poulet-Malassis showed Baudelaire the manuscript ofLes Martyrs ridiculesof Léon Cladel, who was so excited as he read it, so intrigued by his antithetical constructions and by the mere singularity of the title, and so amazed by this writer's audacity, that he made his acquaintance, went over his proofs, and helped to teach him the craft of letters. So, in his sombre and tragic and passionate and feverish novels, we see the inevitable growth out of the hard soil of Quercy, and out of the fertilizing contact of Paris and Baudelaire, of this whole literature, so filled with excitement, so nervous, so voluminous and vehement, in whose pages speech is always out of breath. And one finds splendid variations in his stories of peasants and wrestlers and thieves and prostitutes: something at once epic and morbid.

Baudelaire, in his preface, points out the solemn sadness and the grim irony with which Cladel relates deplorably comic facts; the fury with which he insists on painting his strange characters; the fantastic fashion in which he handles sin with the intense curiosity of a casuist, analysing evil and its inevitable consequences. He notes "la puissance sinistrement caricatural de Cladel." But it is in these two sentences that he sums up, supremely, the beginning and the end of realistic and imaginative art. "The Poet, under his mask, still lets himself be seen. But the supremacy of art had consisted in remaining glacial and hermetically sealed, and in leaving to the reader all the merit of indignation. (Le poète, sous son masque, se laisse encore voir. Le supreme de l'art eût consisté à rester glacial et fermé, et à laisser au lecteur tout le mérite de l'indignation.)"

Édouard Manet, 1865.

Certain of these pages are ironical and sinister and cynical; as, for instance, in this sentence: "Quant aux insectes amoureux, je ne crois pas que les figures de rhétorique dont ils se servent pour gémir leurs passions soient mesquines; toutes les mansardes entendant tous les soirs des tirades tragiques dont la Comédie Française ne pourra jamais bénéficier." And it is in regard to this that I give certain details of an anecdote related by Cladel of Baudelaire, which refers to the fatal year when he left Paris for Brussels.

Both often went to the Café de la Belle-Poule; and, one night, when Cladel was waiting for Baudelaire, a very beautiful woman seated opposite him asked him to present her to Baudelaire. He laughed and they waited, and Baudelaire was presented, who, after giving them the usual drinks, at the end of an hour went away. This went on for a whole month; when Baudelaire, after her incessant assiduities to him, brought her home with him, Cladel also. They talk. The woman becomes lascivious. Baudelaire answers that he has a passion for beautiful forms and does not wish to expose himself to a deception. She undresses slowly. She is magnificent, and her tresses are so long that, with leaning over a little, she could put her naked feet on the ends of them. She assumes, being probably aware of it, the exact pose of Mademoiselle de Maupin when she stands naked before d'Albert. Cladel goes out. He has not quite closed the door when he hears Baudelaire, prematurely old and worn out, say: "Rhabille-toi." Still vital, he has no more the abstract heat of rapture of the passionate lover in Gautier's famous self-confessions; for, in that wonderful book, there is nothing besides a delicately depraved imagination and an extreme ecstasy over the flesh and the senses. And he also realized, as Baudelaire did not always, that the beauty of life was what he wanted, and not the body, that frail and perishable thing, that has to be pitied, that so many desire to perpetuate.

Yet never in Baudelaire, as in Gautier, did the five senses become articulate, as if they were made specially for him; for he speaks for them with a dreadful unconcern. All his words are—never Baudelaire's—in love with matter, and they enjoy their lust and have no recollection. Yet neither were absolutely content with the beauty of a woman's body: for the body must finally dwindle and expand to some ignoble physical condition, and on certain women's necks wrinkles will crawl, and the fire in one's blood sometimes loses some of its heat; only, one wants to perpetuate the beauty of life itself, imperishable at least in its recurrence.

In his preface Baudelaire compares Murger with Musset, both Bohemian classics, only one spoke of Bohemia with a bitter bantering, and the poet, when he was not in his noble moods, had crises of fatuity. "All this evil society, with its vile habits, its adventurous morals, was painted by the vivid pencil-strokes of Murger; only he jested in his relations of miserable things." Yes, Murger is a veracious historian; believe him, if you do not know or have forgotten, that such are the annals of Bohemia. There, people laugh just so lightly and sincerely, weep and laugh just as freely, are really hungry, really have their ambitions, and at times die of all these maladies. It is the gayest and most melancholy country in the world. To have lived there too long, is to find all the rest of the world in exile. But if you have been there or not, read Murger's pages; there, perhaps, you will see more of the country than anything less than a lifetime spent in it will show you.

In April, 1864, Baudelaire left Paris for Brussels, where he stayed in the Hôtel du Grand-Miroir, rue de la Montagne. Before then his nerves had begun to torment him; they played tricks with his very system; he wrote very little prose and no verse. It was with a kind of desperate obstination—a more than desperate obstinacy—that he strove to prevent himself from giving way to his pessimistic conceptions of life, to his morbid over-sensibility that ached as his flesh ached. Unsatiated, unsatisfied, for once in his existence irresolute in regard to what he wanted to do, watching himself with an almost casuistical casuistry, alone and yet not alone in the streets of Paris, he wandered, anoctambule,night after night, sombre and sinister. So a ghost self-obsessed might wander in desolate cities seeing ever before him the Angel of Destruction.

Did he then know that he was becoming more and more abnormal? This I ignore. This, I suppose, he alone knew; and hated too much knowledge of his precarious condition. He was veritably more alone than ever, before he plunged—as one who might see shipwreck before him—into that gulf that is no gulf, that extends not between hell and heaven, but that one names Brussels.

Autograph Letter of Baudelaire to Charles Asselineau, 1865.

Still he frequented his favourite haunts, the Moulin-Rouge, the Casino de la rue Cadet, and other cabarets. He saw then, as I saw many years afterwards, pass some of his Flowers of Evil—some who knew him and had read his verses, most of whom he ignored—macabre, with hectic cheeks and tortured eyes and painted faces; these strange nocturnal birds of passage that flit to and fro, the dancers and the hired women; always—so Latin an attitude of their traditional trade!—with enquiring and sidelong glances at men and at women.

I can see him now, as I write, sit in certain corners of the Moulin-Rouge—as I did—drinking strange drinks and smoking cigarettes; hearing with all his old sensuality that adorable and cynical and perverse and fascinatingValse des Rosesof Olivier Métra: a maddening music to the soundless sound of the mad dances of theChahut—danced by dancers of both sexes, ambiguous and exotic and neurotic—that, as the avid circle forms hastily around them, set their fevers into our fevers, their nerves into our nerves.

It was in May, 1892, that, having crossed the streets of Paris from the hotel where I was staying, the Hôtel Corneille, in the Latin Quarter (made famous by Balzac in his superb story,Z. Marcas,) I found myself in Le Jardin de Paris, where I saw for the first time La Mélinite. She danced in a quadrille: young and girlish, the more provocative because she played as a prude, with an assumed modesty;décolletéenearly to the waist, in the Oriental fashion. She had long, black curls around her face; and had about her a depraved virginity.

And she caused in me, even then, a curious sense of depravity that perhaps comes into the verses I wrote on her. There, certainly, on the night of May 22nd, danced in her feverish, her perverse, her enigmatical beauty, La Mélinite, to her own image in the mirror:

"A shadow smilingBack to a shadow in the night,"

as she cadenced Olivier Métra'sValse des Roses.

It is a fact of curious interest that in 1864 Poulet-Malassis was obliged to leave Paris—on account of his misfortunes as a publisher, in regard to money, and for various other reasons—and to exile himself in Brussels: still more curious that Baudelaire—drawn, perhaps, by some kind of affinity in their natures—followed him sooner than he had intended to go. Malassis lived in rue de Mercedes, 35bis,Faubourg d'Ixilles. In those years both saw a great deal of the famous, perverse, macabre Félicien Rops.

Malassis, naturally, was obliged, in his expedients for living as he used to live, to publish privately printed obscene books; some no more than erotic. As Baudelaire hated, with his Parisian refinement, that kind of certainly objectionable literature, on May 4th, 1865, he writes to Sainte-Beuve: "As for Malassis, his terrible affair arrives on the 12th. He believes he will be condemned for five years. What there is grave in this is that that closes France for him for five years. But that cuts him for a time from his ways of living. I see in it no great evil. As for me, who am no fool, I have never possessed one of these idiotic books, even printed in fine characters and with fine engravings." As a matter of fact, Malassis was condemned in May, 1866, to one year's imprisonment for having privately printedLes Amiesof Paul Verlaine—a book of sonnets, attributed to an imaginary Pablo de Herlaguez.

Baudelaire, as I have said, had many reasons for going to Brussels. Among these was his urgent desire of finding a publisher to print his collected works—having failed to find any publisher for them. Another was that of giving lectures—a thing he was not made for—and for two other reasons: one of making immediate money, one of adding to his fame as a writer. Then, to write a book on Belgium.

He writes to Manet (who has written to him: "Do return to Paris! No happiness can come to you while you live in that damned country!"): "As for finishing herePauvre Belgique,I am incapable of it: I am near on dead. I have quite a lot ofPoèmes en Proseto get printed in magazines. I can do no more than that.Je souffre d'un mal qui je n'ai pas, comme j'étais gamin, et que je vivais au bout du monde."

His book was to have been humorous, mocking, and serious—his final separation from modern stupidity. "People may understand me, perhaps, then." "Nothing," he confesses, "can console me in my detestable misery, in my humiliating situation, nor especially in my vices."

In February, 1865, he writes: "As for my present state, it is an absolute abdication of the will. (C'est une parfaite abdication de la volonté.)" What reason, I wonder, was there for him to "abdicate" the one element in our natures by which we live at our greatest, the very root of our passions (as Balzac said), "nervous fluids and that unknown substance which, in default of another term, we must call the will?" Man has a given quality of energy; each man a different quality: how will he spend it? That is Balzac's invariable question. All these qualities were always in Baudelaire.

Had he finally, after so many years in which his energy was supreme, lost some of his energy, struggling, as he seems to do, against insuperable difficulties that beset him on either side, like thieves that follow men in the dark with the intention of stabbing you in the back? Does he then try to conjecture what next year might bring him of good or of evil? He has lived his life after his own will: what shall the end be? He dares neither look backward nor forward. It might be that he feels the earth crumbling under his feet; for how many artists have had that fear—the fear that the earth under their feet may no longer be solid? There is another step for him to take, a step that frightens him; might it not be into another more painful kind of oblivion? Has something of the man gone out of him: that is to say, the power to live for himself?

In the summer of 1865 Baudelaire spent several days in Paris, seeing Banville and other friends of his. They found him unchanged; his eyes clear; his voice musical; he talked as wonderfully as ever. They used all their logic to persuade him to remain in Paris. He refused, even after Gautier had said to him: "You are astonishing: can one conceive your mania of eternalizing yourself in a land where one is only bored to extinction?" He laughed; promised to return: he never did; it was the last day when his friends possessed him entirely.

In his years of exile he printed Poe'sHistoires grotesques et sérieuses(1864);Les nouvelles fleurs du malinLa Parnasse contemporaine(1866). In 1865 Poulet-Malassis printedLes épaves de Charles Baudelaire.Avec une eau-forte de Félicien Rops. Amsterdam. A l'enseigne du Coq. 1865. 165 pages.

"Avertissement de l'Éditeur.

"Ce recueil est composé de morceaux poétiques, pour la plupart condamnés ou inédits, auxquels M. Charles Baudelaire n'a pas cru devoir faire place dans l'édition définitive desFleurs du mal.

"Cela explique son titre.

"M. Charles Baudelaire a fait don, sans réserve, de ces poëmes, à un ami qui juge à propos de les publier, parce qu'il se flatte de les goûter, et qu'il est à un âge où l'on aime encore à faire partager ses sentiments à des amis auxquels on prête ses vertus.

"L'auteur sera avisé de cette publication en même temps que les deux cents soixantes lectures probables qui figurent—à peu près—pour son éditeur bénévole, le public littéraire en France, depuis que les bêtes y ont décidément usurpé la parole sur les hommes."

I have before me two copies of this rare edition, printed on yellow Holland paper; one numbered 100, the other 194. The second has inscribed in ink:A Monsieur Rossetti pour remplir les intentions de l'auteur avec les civilités de l'éditeur A. P. Malassis.This was sent on the part of Baudelaire to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It is superbly bound in a kind of red-purple thick leather binding, with pale gold squares, in the form of the frame of a picture; done, certainly, with great taste.

On January 3, 1865, Baudelaire writes a letter to his mother; a letter that pains one as one reads it: so resigned he seems to be, yet never in his life less resigned to his fate. He fears that God might deprive him of even happiness; that it is more difficult to think than to write a book; that if only he were certain of having five or six years before him he might execute all that remained for him to do; that he has the fixed idea of death; that he has suffered so much already that he believes many things may be forgiven him (sins of concupiscence, sins of conscience, sins one never forgets) as he has been punished so much.

I pass from this to the beginning of March, 1866. He stays with Rops at Namur, where (certainly by bad luck) he enters again l'Église Saint-Loup, which he had spoken of as "this sinister marvel in the interior of a catafalque—terrible and delicious—broidered with gold, red, and silver." As he admires these richly sculptured confessionals, as he speaks with Rops and Malassis, he stumbles, taken by a kind of dizziness in the head, and sits down on a step in the church. They lift him up; he feigns not to be frightened, says that his foot had slipped accidentally. Next day he shows signs of a nervous trouble, not a mental one; asking them in the train to Brussels to have the window opened; it is open. That is the first sign of his loss of speech, and the last letter that he ever wrote (dated March 30th, 1866), ends:Je ne puis pas bouger.It is strange to set beside this Balzac's last words, that end a letter written June 20th, 1856:Je ne puis ni lire ni écrire.It is written to Théophile Gautier.

Swinburne, having heard the fatal news in regard to Baudelaire, added to his book on Blake these magnificent words: as pure, as fervent a tribute to the memory of a fellow-artist as Baudelaire might have wished to have been written on himself, as Swinburne might have desired to have been written on himself: "I heard that a mortal illness had indeed stricken the illustrious poet, the faultless critic, the fearless artist; that no more of fervent yet of perfect verse, no more of subtle yet of sensitive comment, will be granted us at the hands of Charles Baudelaire. We may see again as various a power as was his, may feel again as fiery a sympathy, may hear again as tragic a manner of revelation, as sad a whisper of knowledge, as mysterious a music of emotion; we shall never find so keen, so delicate, so deep an unison of sense and spirit. What verse he could make, how he loved all fair and felt all strange things, with what infallible taste he knew at once the limit and the licence of his art, all may see at a glance. He could give beauty to the form, expression to the feeling, most horrible and most obscure to the senses or souls of lesser men. The chances of things parted us once and again; the admiration of some years, at least in part expressed, brought him near to me by way of written or transmitted word; let it be an excuse for the insertion of this note, and for a desire, if so it must be, to repeat for once the immortal words which too often return upon our lips:

Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale!"

And I, who have transcribed these words, have before me a book that Swinburne showed me, that he had richly bound in Paris, and that I bought at the sale of his library on June 19th:Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris.Par Charles Baudelaire. Paris, 1861; with, written in pencil, on the page before the title-page, these words:

"A Mr. Algernon C. Swinburne. Bon Souvenir et mille Remerciements. C. B."

From April 9, 1866, to August 31, 1867, Baudelaire endures the slow tortures of a body and a soul condemned to go on living; living, what else can it be called, than a kind of living death? To remain, in most senses, himself; to be, as always, Charles Baudelaire; to have in his mind one desire, the desire, the vain desire, of recovery; to be unable to utter one word; to think, to sleep, to conceive imaginary projects, for his near future, for his verse, for his prose: to walk, to eat, to drink; to be terribly conscious of his dolorous situation; to be, as ever, anxious for a new edition ofLes fleurs du mal;to mark a date in an almanac, counting three months, when he imagined he would be in a state to superintend the impression of his final edition; to have finally given up all hope, all illusion; to have gazed out of his wonderful eyes, at his friend's faces, eyes shadowed by an expression of infinite sadness, eyes that endured his last tragedy: that is how Baudelaire survived himself to the end.

He died on Saturday, August 31, 1867, at eleven o'clock in the morning, at the age of forty-six and four months. So died, simply and without any trace of suffering, this man of genius. Had he been thoroughly understood by the age in which he lived? Blake, who said the final truth on this question: "The ages are all equal; but genius is always above the ages:" was not understood in his age.

1.Salon de1845. Pax Baudelaire-Dufays. Paris, Jules Labitte, 1845. 72 pp.

2.Salon de1846. Par Baudelaire-Dufays. Paris, Michel Lévy, 1846. 132 pp.

3.Histoires extraordinaires.Par Edgar Poe. Traduction de Charles Baudelaire. Paris, Michel Lévy, 1856.

1. Edgar Poe, La vie et ses œuvres, pp. vii-xxxi. 2. Translations, 323 pp.

4.Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires.Par Edgar Poe. Traduction de Charles Baudelaire. Michel Lévy, 1857.

1. Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe, pp. v-xxiv. 2. Translations, 288 pp.

5.Les fleurs du mal.Par Charles Baudelaire. Paris, Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 4 rue de Buci, 1857. 252 pp.

1. Dédicace. 2. Au Lecteur.SPLEEN ET IDÉAL.—1. Bénédiction. 2. Le Soleil. 3. Élévation. 4. Correspondances. 5.J'aime le souvenir de ces époques nues.6. Les Phares. 7. La Muse malade. 8. La Muse vénale. 9. Le Mauvais Moine. 10. L'Ennemi. 11. Le Guignon. 12. La Vie intérieure. 13. Bohémiens en voyage. 14. L'Homme et la mer. 15. Don Juan aux enfers. 16. Châtiment de l'orgueil. 17. La Beauté. 18. L'Idéal. 19. La Géante. 20. Les Bijoux. 21. Parfum exotique. 22.Je t'adore à l'égal de la voûte nocturne.23.Tu mettre l'univers entier dans ta ruelle.24.Sed non satiata.25.Avec ses vêtements ondoyants et nacrés.26. Le Serpent qui danse. 27. La Charogne. 28.De profundis clamavi.29. Le Vampire. 30. Le Léthé. 31.Une nuit que j'étais près d'une affreuse Juive.32. Remords posthume. 33. Le Chat. 34. Le Balcon. 35.Je te donne ces vers afin que si mon nom.36. Tout entière. 37.Que diras-tu ce soir, pauvre âme solitaire.38. Le Flambeau vivant. 39. A Celle qui est trop gaie. 40. Réversibilité. 41. Confession. 42. L'Aube spirituelle. 43. Harmonie du soir. 44. Le Flacon. 45. Le Poison. 46. Ciel brouillé. 47. Le Chat. 48. Le beau navire. 49. L'Invitation au voyage. 50. L'Irréparable. 51. Causerie. 52. L'Héautontimouroménos. 53. Franciscae meae laudes. 54. A une Dame Créole. 55. Moesta et Errabunda. 56. Les Chats. 57. Les Hiboux. 58. La cloche fêlée. 59. Spleen. 60. Spleen. 61. Spleen. 62. Spleen. 63. Brumes et pluies. 64. L'Irrémédiable. 65. A une mendiante rousse. 66. Le Jeu. 67. Le Crépuscule du soir. 68. Le Crépuscule du matin. 69.Le servante au grand cœur dont vous étiez jaloux.70.Je n'ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville.71. Le Tonneau de la haine. 72. Le Revenant. 73. Le Mort joyeux. 74. Sépulture. 75. Tristesses de la lune. 76. La Musique. 77. La Pipe.FLEURS DU MAL.—78. La Destruction. 79. Une Martyr. 80. Lesbos. 81. Femmes damnées (Delphine et Hippolyte). 82. Femmes damnées. 83. Les deux bonnes sœurs. 84. La fontaine de sang. 85. Allégorie. 86. La Beatrice. 87. Les métamorphoses du vampire. 88. Un voyage à Cythère. 89. L'Amour et le crâne.RÉVOLTE.—90. Le reniement de Saint Pierre. 91. Abel et Caïn. 92. Les Litanies de Satan.LE VIN.—93. L'âme du vin. 94. Le vin des chiffonniers. 95. Le vin de l'assassin. 96. Le vin du solitaire. 97. Le vin des amants.LA MORT.—98. La mort des amants. 99. La mort des pauvres. 100. La mort des artistes.

1. Dédicace. 2. Au Lecteur.

SPLEEN ET IDÉAL.—1. Bénédiction. 2. Le Soleil. 3. Élévation. 4. Correspondances. 5.J'aime le souvenir de ces époques nues.6. Les Phares. 7. La Muse malade. 8. La Muse vénale. 9. Le Mauvais Moine. 10. L'Ennemi. 11. Le Guignon. 12. La Vie intérieure. 13. Bohémiens en voyage. 14. L'Homme et la mer. 15. Don Juan aux enfers. 16. Châtiment de l'orgueil. 17. La Beauté. 18. L'Idéal. 19. La Géante. 20. Les Bijoux. 21. Parfum exotique. 22.Je t'adore à l'égal de la voûte nocturne.23.Tu mettre l'univers entier dans ta ruelle.24.Sed non satiata.25.Avec ses vêtements ondoyants et nacrés.26. Le Serpent qui danse. 27. La Charogne. 28.De profundis clamavi.29. Le Vampire. 30. Le Léthé. 31.Une nuit que j'étais près d'une affreuse Juive.32. Remords posthume. 33. Le Chat. 34. Le Balcon. 35.Je te donne ces vers afin que si mon nom.36. Tout entière. 37.Que diras-tu ce soir, pauvre âme solitaire.38. Le Flambeau vivant. 39. A Celle qui est trop gaie. 40. Réversibilité. 41. Confession. 42. L'Aube spirituelle. 43. Harmonie du soir. 44. Le Flacon. 45. Le Poison. 46. Ciel brouillé. 47. Le Chat. 48. Le beau navire. 49. L'Invitation au voyage. 50. L'Irréparable. 51. Causerie. 52. L'Héautontimouroménos. 53. Franciscae meae laudes. 54. A une Dame Créole. 55. Moesta et Errabunda. 56. Les Chats. 57. Les Hiboux. 58. La cloche fêlée. 59. Spleen. 60. Spleen. 61. Spleen. 62. Spleen. 63. Brumes et pluies. 64. L'Irrémédiable. 65. A une mendiante rousse. 66. Le Jeu. 67. Le Crépuscule du soir. 68. Le Crépuscule du matin. 69.Le servante au grand cœur dont vous étiez jaloux.70.Je n'ai pas oublié, voisine de la ville.71. Le Tonneau de la haine. 72. Le Revenant. 73. Le Mort joyeux. 74. Sépulture. 75. Tristesses de la lune. 76. La Musique. 77. La Pipe.

FLEURS DU MAL.—78. La Destruction. 79. Une Martyr. 80. Lesbos. 81. Femmes damnées (Delphine et Hippolyte). 82. Femmes damnées. 83. Les deux bonnes sœurs. 84. La fontaine de sang. 85. Allégorie. 86. La Beatrice. 87. Les métamorphoses du vampire. 88. Un voyage à Cythère. 89. L'Amour et le crâne.

RÉVOLTE.—90. Le reniement de Saint Pierre. 91. Abel et Caïn. 92. Les Litanies de Satan.

LE VIN.—93. L'âme du vin. 94. Le vin des chiffonniers. 95. Le vin de l'assassin. 96. Le vin du solitaire. 97. Le vin des amants.

LA MORT.—98. La mort des amants. 99. La mort des pauvres. 100. La mort des artistes.

6.Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym.Par Edgar Poe. Traduction de Charles Baudelaire. Paris, Michel Lévy, 1858. 200 pp.

7.Théophile Gautier.Par Charles Baudelaire. Notice littéraire précédée d'une lettre de Victor Hugo. Paris, Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 9 rue des Beaux-Arts, 1859.

1. A M. Charles Baudelaire de Victor Hugo, pp. i, iii. 2. Théophile Gautier, 68 pp.

8.Les paradis artificiels: opium et haschisch.Par Charles Baudelaire. Paris, Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, 9 rue des Beaux-Arts, 1860.

1. Dédicace à J. G. F., pp. i-iv. 2. Le poème du haschisch, pp. 1-108. 3. Un mangeur d'opium, pp. 109-304.

On the back of the cover is this announcement:

"Sous Presse, du même auteur:Réflexions sur quelques-uns, de mes Contemporains;un volume contenant: Edgar Poe, Théophile Gautier, Pierre Dupont, Richard Wagner, Auguste Barbier, Leconte de Lisle, Hégésippe Moreau, Pétrus Borel, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Gustave le Vavasseur, Gustave Flaubert, Philibert Rouvière; la famille desDandies,ou Chateaubriand, de Custine, Paul de Molinès, and Barbey d'Aurévilly."

This volume appeared in part inL'Art Romantique(1868); several of these essays were never written, such as the one on Barbey d'Aurévilly. Seconde Édition, 1861.

9.Les Fleurs du Malde Charles Baudelaire.

Seconde Édition augmentée de trente-cinq poëmes nouveaux et orné d'un Portrait de l'Auteur dessiné et gravé par Bracquemond. Paris, Poulet-Malassis et de Broise, Éditeurs, 97 rue de Richelieu et Passage Mirés, 1861. 319 pp.

1. L'Albatros. 2. Le Masque. Statue Allégorique dans le goût de la Renaissance. 3. Hymne à la Beauté. 4. La Chevelure. 5. Duellum. 6. Le Possédé. 7. Un Fantôme: (1) Les Ténèbres. (2) Le Parfum. (3) Le Cadre. (4) Le Portrait. 8. Sempre eadem. 9. Chant d'Automne. 10. A une Madone. Ex-Voto dans le goût Espagnol. 11. Chanson d'Après-Midi. 12. Sisina. 13. Sonnet d'automne. 14. Une Gravure fantastique. 15. Obsession. 16. Le Goût du néant. 17. Alchimie de la Douleur. 18. Horreur Sympathique. 19. L'Horloge. 20. Un Paysage. 21. Le Cynge. 22. Les Sept Vieillards. 23. Les Petites Vieilles. 24. Les Aveugles. 25. A une passante. 26. Le Squelette laboureur. 27. Danse macabre. 28. L'Amour du mensonge. 29. Rêve Parisien. 30. La Fin de la journée. 31. Le Rêve d'un curieux. 32. Le Voyage.

10.Richard Wagner et Tannhäuserà Paris. Par Charles Baudelaire. Paris, E. Dentu, Palais-Royale, 13 et 17, Galerie d'Orléans, 1861. 70 pp.

11.Euréka.Par Edgar Poe. Traduction par Charles Baudelaire. Paris, Michel Lévy, 1864. 252 pp.

12.Histoires Grotesques et Sérieuses.Par Edgar Poe. Traduction par Charles Baudelaire. Paris, Michel Lévy, 1865. 372 pp.

13. Les épaves de Charles Baudelaire. Avec une Eau-forte. Frontispiece de Félicien Rops. Amsterdam, à l'Enseigne du Coq, 1865.

1. Avertissement de l'Éditeur, pp. i-iii. 2. Les épaves, 163 pp.

14.Les épavesde Charles Baudelaire. Avec une Eau-forte de Félicien Rops. Amsterdam, à l'Enseigne du Coq, 1865. Numéro 194.

15.Les épavesde Charles Baudelaire. Avec une Eau-forte de Félicien Rops. Amsterdam, à l'Enseigne du Coq, 1865. Numéro 100.

A Monsieur Rossetti pour remplir les intentions de l'auteur, avec les civilités de l'Editeur. A. P. Malassis.

Édition Définitive des œuvres de Charles Baudelaire.Paris, Michel Lévy et Frères, Libraires Éditeurs, rue Vivienne, 2bis,et Boulevard des Italiens, 15. A la Librairie Nouvelle, 1868-1869.

VolumeI. LES FLEURS DU MAL.414 pp.

VolumeII. CURIOSITÉS ESTHÉTIQUES.440 pp.

1. Salon de 1845. 2. Salon de 1846. 3. Le Musée Classique du Bazar Bonne Nouvelle (1846). 4. Exposition Universale de 1855. Beaux Arts (1855). 5. Salon de 1850? 6. De l'Essence du Rire, et généralement du Comique dans les Arts Plastiques. 7. Quelques Caricaturistes Français: Carle Vernet. Pigal. Charlet. Daumier. Henri Monnier. Grandville. Gavami. Trimolet. Traviès. Jacque (1857). 8. Quelques Caricaturistes Étrangers: Hogarth. Cruikshank. Goya. Pinelli. Breughel (1857).

VolumeIII. L'ART ROMANTIQUE.

1. L'œuvre et la vie d'Eugène Delacroix (1862). 2. Peintures murales d'Eugène Delacroix à Saint-Sulpice (1861). 3. Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne. Constantin Guys (1862). 4. Peintres et Aqua-fortistes (1862). 5. Vente de le Collection de M. E. Piot (1864). 6. L'Art Philosophique. 7. Morale des Joujou (1854). 8. Théophile Gautier (1859-1861-1862). 9. Pierre Dupont (1852-1861-1862). 10. Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris. Encore quelques Mots (1861). u. Philibert Rouvière (1855). 12. Conseils aux jeunes Littérateurs (1846). 13. Les Drames et les Romans honnêtes (1850). 14. L'École Païenne (1851). 15.Réflexions sur quelques-uns de mes Contemporaines:(1) Victor Hugo (1861). (2) Auguste Barbier (1861). (3) Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1861). (4) Théophile Gautier (1861). (5) Pétrus Borel (1861). (6) Hégéssipe Moreau (1861). (7) Théodore de Banville (1861). (8) Pierre Dupont (1852). (9) Leconte de Lisle (1861). (10) Gustave Levavasseur (1861).CRITIQUES LITTÉRAIRES.—1. Les Misérables, par Victor Hugo (1862). 2. Madame Bovary, par Gustave Flaubert. (1857). 3. La double vie, par Charles Asselineau (1859). 4. Les martyrs ridicules, par Léon Cladel (1861).

CRITIQUES LITTÉRAIRES.—1. Les Misérables, par Victor Hugo (1862). 2. Madame Bovary, par Gustave Flaubert. (1857). 3. La double vie, par Charles Asselineau (1859). 4. Les martyrs ridicules, par Léon Cladel (1861).

VolumeIV. 1. PETITS POEMES EN PROSE.

A ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE.—1. L'Étranger (1862). 2. Le Désespoir de la vieille (1862). 3. LeConfiteorde l'artiste (1862). 4. Un Plaisant (1862). 5. Le Chambre double (1862). 6. Chacun sa chimère (1862). 7. Le fou et la Vénus (1862). 8. Le Chien et le Flacon (1862). 9. Le Mauvais Vitrier (1862). 10. A une heure du matin (1862). 11. Le Femme sauvage et le Petite Maîtresse (1862). 12. Les Foules (1861). 13. Les Veuves (1861). 14. Le Vieux Saltimbanque (1861). 15. Le Gâteau (1862). 16. L'Horloge (1857). 17. Un Hémisphère dans une chevelure (1857). 18. L'Invitation au voyage (1857). 19. Le Joujou du pauvre (1862). 20. Les Dons des fées (1862). 21. Les Tentations, ou Éros, Plutus et la Gloire (1863). 22. Le Crépuscule du Soir (1855). 23. La Solitude (1855). 24. Les Projets (1857). 25. La Belle Dorothée (1863). 26. Les Yeux des Pauvres (1864). 27. Une Mort Héroïque (1863). 28. La Fausse Monnaie (1864). 29. Le Joueur généreux (1864). 30. La Corde, à Edouard Manet (1864). 31. Les Vocations (1864). 32. Le Thyrse. A Franz Liszt (1863). 33. Enivrez-vous (1864). 34. Déjà! (1863). 35. Les Fenêtres (1863). 36. Le Désir de peindre (1863). 37. Les Bienfaits de la lune (1863). 38. Laquelle est la vraie? (1863). 39. Un Cheval de race (1864). 40. Le Miroir (1864). 41. Le Port (1864). 42. Portraits de maîtresses (1867). 43. Le galant Tireur (1867). 44. La Soupe et les Nuages (1864). 45. Le Tir et la Cimetière (1867). 46. Porte d'Auréole (1867). 47. Mademoiselle Bistouri (1867). 48. (Anywhere out of the world): N'importe où hors du monde (1867). 49. Assommons les pauvres (1867). 50. Les Bon Chiens à M. Joseph Stevens (1865).Epilogue(1860).

2.LES PARADIS ARTIFICIELS.

A. J. G. F. LE POÈME DU HASCHISCH.

1. Le Goût de l'Infini. 2. Qu'est-ce que le Haschisch? 3. Le Théâtre du Séraphin. 4. L'Homme-Dieu. 5. Morale.UN MANGEUR D'OPIUM.—1. Précautions oratoires. 2. Confessions préliminaires. 3. Voluptés d'opium. 4. Tortures d'opium. 5. Un Faux Dénouement. 6. Le Génie enfant. 7. Chagrins d'enfance. 8. Visions d'Oxford: (1) Le Palimpseste. (2) Levana et nos Notre-Dame des Tristesses. (3) Le Spectre du Brocken. (4) Savannah-la-Mer. 9. Conclusion.

1. Le Goût de l'Infini. 2. Qu'est-ce que le Haschisch? 3. Le Théâtre du Séraphin. 4. L'Homme-Dieu. 5. Morale.

UN MANGEUR D'OPIUM.—1. Précautions oratoires. 2. Confessions préliminaires. 3. Voluptés d'opium. 4. Tortures d'opium. 5. Un Faux Dénouement. 6. Le Génie enfant. 7. Chagrins d'enfance. 8. Visions d'Oxford: (1) Le Palimpseste. (2) Levana et nos Notre-Dame des Tristesses. (3) Le Spectre du Brocken. (4) Savannah-la-Mer. 9. Conclusion.

DU VIN ET DU HASCHISCH, COMPARÉS COMME MOYENS DE MULTIPLICATION DE L'INDIVIDUALITÉ, 1851, 1858.

1, 2, 3. Le Vin. 5, 6, 7. Le Haschisch.

LA FANFARLO, 1847.

LE JEUNE ENCHANTEUR. HISTOIRE TIRÉE D'UN PALIMPSESTE DE POMPÉIA, 1846.

Volume V.HISTOIRES EXTRAORDINAIRES. Par Edgar Poe. Traduction de Charles Baudelaire.

1. Edgar Poe: sa vie et ses œuvres. 2. Double assassinat dans la rue Morgue. 3. La lettre volée. 4. Le scarabée d'or. 5. Le canard au ballon. 6. Aventure sans pareille d'un certain Hans Pfaall. 7. Manuscrit trouvé dans une bouteille. 8. Une descente dans le Maelstrom. 9. Le vérité sur le cas de M. Valdemar. 10. Révélation magnétique, 11. Les souvenirs de M. Auguste Bedloe. 12. Morella. 13. Ligeia. 14. Metzengerstein. 15. Le Mystère de Marie Roget.

Volume VI.NOUVELLES HISTOIRES EXTRAORDINAIRES.Par Edgar Poe. Traduction de Charles Baudelaire.

1. Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe. 2. Le Démon de la Perversité. 3. Le Chat noir. 4. William Wilson. 5. L'homme des foules. 6. Le cœur révélateur. 7. Bérénice. 8. La chute de la maison Usher. 9. Le puits et la pendule. 10. Hop-Frog. 11. La Barrique d'Amontillado. 12. Le Masque de la Mort rouge. 13. Le Roi Peste. 14. Le Diable dans le beffroi. 15. Lionnerie. 16. Quatre bêtes en une. 17. Petite discussion avec une momie. 18. Puissance de la Parole. 19. Colloque entre Monos et Una. 20. Conversation d'Eiros avec Charmion. 21. Ombre. 22. Silence. 23. L'île de la Fée. 24. Le Portrait Ovale.

Volume VII.AVENTURES D'ARTHUR GORDON PYM. EURÉKA.Par Edgar Poe. Traduction de Charles Baudelaire.

III

1.ESSAIS DE BIBLIOGRAPHIE CONTEMPORAINE: CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. Par A. de Fizelière et Georges Decaux. Paris, Académie des Bibliophiles, rue de la Bourse, 10, 1868. Numéro 178.

2.CHARLES BAUDELAIRE: SA VIE ET SON ŒUVRE. Par Charles Asselineau. Paris, Alphonse Lemerre, Editeur, Passage Choiseul, 47, 1869.

3.CHARLES BAUDELAIRE: SOUVENIRS. CORRESPONDANCES—BIBLIOGRAPHIE—suivie de pièces inédités.Par Charles Cousin. La Bibliographie par le Vicomte Spoelberck de Lovenjoul. Paris, Chez René Pincebourde, 14 rue de Beaume (quai Voltaire), 1872.

4.CHARLES BAUDELAIRE: ŒUVRES POSTHUMES ET CORRESPONDANCE INÉDITS—précédée d'une Étude Biographique.Par Eugène Crépet. Paris, Maison Quantin, Compagnie-Générale d'impression et d'Édition, 7 rue Benoît, 1887.

5.LE TOMBEAU DE CHARLES BAUDELAIRE—précédée d'une Étude sur les Textes de les Fleurs du Mal, Commentaire et Variantes.Par le Prince Ourousof. Paris, Bibliothèque Artistique et Littéraire (La Plume,) 1896.

6.CHARLES BAUDELAIRE(1821-1867). Par Féli Gautier. Orné de 26 Portraits différents du Poète et de 28 Gravures et Reproductions. Bruxelles, E. Deman, 1904. Tirage à 150 Exemplaires numérotés. Exemplaire No. 74.

7.VERSIFICATION ET MÉTRIQUE DE BAUDELAIRE. Par Albert Cassagne. Paris, Hachette, 1906.

8.LETTRES(1841-1866)DE CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. Paris, Mercure de France, 1908.

9.ŒUVRES POSTHUMES DE CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. Paris, Mercure de France, 1908.

10.LE CARNET DE CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 1911.

Publié avec une Introduction et des Notes par Féli Gautier et orné d'un dessin inédité de Baudelaire. Paris, J. Chevrel, Libraire 29 rue de Seine. Cette plaquette non mise dans le commerce à été tirée à cent exemplaires sur papier velin d'arches. Numéro 27.

Thispetit carnot vert,which contains seven quires of twenty-four pages—the last two have been torn out—was used by Baudelaire for noting down certain private details, details of almost every kind, which he began in 1861 and ended in 1864. There are lists of his debts, of his friends, of his enemies, of his projects, of his proofs, of his books, of his articles, of the people he has to see and to write to, of the etchings and drawings he buys or intends to buy, of the money he owes and of the money he is in the utmost need of. On one page is the original text of his dedication of the "Poems on Prose." On one page he reckons forty days in which to execute some of his translations, his prose, and his poems. On another page he gives a list of his hatreds, underliningVilainies, Canailles; then his plans for short stories and dramas. These notes are of importance. "Faire en un an 2 vols,de NouvellesetMon cœur mis à nu." "Tous les jours cinq poèmes et autre chose." Then this sinister note: "Pour faire du neuf, quitter Paris, ou je me meurs." After this come long lists of the women he frequents and of their addresses, such as 29 rue Neuve Bréda, 36 rue Cigalle. After this comes Swinburne's verses, with the list of the few friends he possesses: Villiers, Noriac, Manet, Malassis, his mother; together with Louise, Gabrielle, and Judith.

11.LETTRES INÉDITÉS A SA MÈRE(1833-1866). Par Charles Baudelaire. Louis Conard, Libraire Editeur, 6 Place de la Madeleine, Paris, 1918. Numéro 182.

12.JOURNEAUX INTIMES DE CHARLES BAUDELAIRE: TEXTE INTEGRAL. Paris, Georges Crès, 21 rue Hautefeuille, 1919.

This edition is founded on the original manuscripts of Baudelaire, now in the possession of Gabriel Thomas.

FUSÉES. A manuscript of fifteen pages, containing twenty-two sections numbered in red ink; the pagination is also in red ink. The notes have, often enough, the aspect of mere fragments, scrawled angrily. One of them, numbered 53, and two paragraphs of another (the note 17:Tantôt il lui demandait; Minette) are written in pencil; note 12 is written in blue ink. Certain phrases in the text are used twice over.

MON CŒUR MIS À NU. A manuscript of 91 pages, containing 197 articles numbered in red ink; the pagination used in the same way as in the other. Every note is preceded with the autograph mention:Mon Cœur mis à nu.The text is written rapidly; the notes numbered 26, 31, 44, 48, 51, 54, 60, 68, 69, 72, 75 (the last three in italics), 80 are written with a black pencil, the note 62 with a black pencil on blue paper, and the note 83 written with a red pencil.

Fascinated by sin, Baudelaire, as I have said in these pages, is never the dupe of his emotions; he sees sin as the original sin; he studies sin as he studies evil, with a stern logic; he finds in horror a kind of attractiveness, as Poe had found it; rarely in hideous things, save when his sense of what I call a moralist makes him moralise, as in his terrible poem,Une Charogne.

Baudelaire's original manuscript, that is to say, the copy he makes for his final text, I have recently bought. It covers two and a half folio pages, folded four times across, as if he had carried it about with him; it is written on thin, half-yellow paper, yellowed with age, and on both sides; it is copied at tremendous speed with a quill pen that blots the dashes he puts under every stanza. The title is underlined; the only revision is where he obliterates "comme une vague" (which he had used in the first line) and changes it to "d'un souffle, vague." He uses a tremendous amount of capital letters; as in the first stanza: "L'Objet, Mon Cœur, Matin, Doux, Détour, d'un Sentier, Une Charogne, Cailloux." In the next: "Femme Lubrique, Les Poisons, D'une Façon Nonchalant et Cynique, Ventre, Exhalations." At the end of the last stanza but one he writes:

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