"Quand vous irez sous l'herbe et les floraisons grassesVivre parmi les monuments;"
which he changes in the text of hisFleurs du malinto:
"Quand vous irez sous l'herbe et les floraisons grassesMoisir parmi les ossements."
The change makes an enormous improvement to the stanza.
To possess this manuscript written by Baudelaire is to possess one of the most magnificent poems he ever wrote: the whole thing is copied in a kind of unholy rapture, in a kind of evil perversion.
I am, fortunately, the possessor of a copy of the first edition ofLes Fleurs du Mal.The title-page is as follows:LES FLEURS DU MAL|| par Charles Baudelaire. || Paris: || Poulet-Malassis et de Broise: || Libraire-Éditeurs. || 4 rue de Buci. || 1857.
This copy is signed, in brown Parisian ink:"à mon ami Champfleury, Ch. Baudelaire" His signature is fantastic: the B. curled backward like a snake's tail in an Egyptian hieroglyphic, the straight line like an enchanter's wand. It is "grand-12; 252 pages." It contains one hundred poems, the perfect number. It is printed onpapier vergé.It is one of the twenty copies, thus specially printed, that Baudelaire ordered for himself and for certain of his friends. The rest of the edition was printed on common white paper. Taken as a whole, this is certainly one of the most perfectly printed books done in France, or anywhere, in the past century.
Poulet-Malassis came from Alençon to Paris, and began by printing theOdes Funambulesquesof Théodore de Banville early in 1857, before he completed the publication ofLes Fleurs du Malin July of that year. Baudelaire wrote to him, saying that he did not want popularity, "mais un bel éreintage général qui attirera la curiosité."He asked him to be sparing in blank spaces on the pages; and to use certain archaisms and touches of red. These touches of red are given on the title-page; they have a decorative effect. He said that he had a natural horror of the over-use of inverted commas, which have a way of spoiling the text. He must have a unique system of his own. "I must have," he insists, "in this kind of production, the one admissible thing, that is, perfection." There one sees his unerring instinct; his sense of the exact value of words. Yet he writes to his publisher, underlining the phrase: "You know certain things better than I do, but whenever there is, on my part, no radical repulsion, follow your taste." He rages against de Broise's perpetual reproaches with regard toles surcharges de M. Baudelaire—the "author's corrections." He points out certain printer's mistakes, page 44 for page 45, andguèresrhyming withvulgaire.There was no time to correct these errors; they remain so in the printed pages of my copy.
It is interesting, in regard to this question, to find in the first text ofLe Vin de l'Assassinthese lines:
"Ma femme est morte, je suis libre!Je puis donc boire tout mon saoul"
In the second edition one reads "soûl." I find in Brachet'sDictionnaire Étymologiquethis definition of the word "soûl,ancien français,saoul.Latinsatallus,d'où l'ancien françaissaoul." Therefore Baudelaire was right, traditionally, in using the original form of the word.
His worst trouble is in getting the famous dedication to Gautier printed and spaced as it had to be. It must be composed in a certain solemn style. Then he writes: "The magician has made me abbreviate the dedication; it must not be a profession of faith, which might have the fault of attracting people's eyes 'sur le côté scabreux du volume.'" As it is, strangely enough for him, Baudelaire made a mistake in syntax, using "au magicien ès-langue française"instead of "au parfait magicien ès-lettres françaises," which he corrected in the edition of 1861.
On July 11, 1857, he writes to Malassis: "Quick, hide the edition, the whole edition. I have saved fifty here. The mistake was in having sent a copy toLe Figaro! As the edition was sold out in three weeks we may have the glory of a trial, from which we can easily escape." The trial came; he was obliged to suppress six poems (supposed to contain "obscene and immoral passages"). Baudelaire never ceased to protest against the infamy of this trial. A copy of the second edition (not nearly so well printed as the first) is before me:LES FLEURS DU MAL. || Par Charles Baudelaire. || Seconde Edition. || Augmentée de trente-cinq poèmes nouveaux || et ornée d'un portrait de l'auteur dessiné et gravé par Bracquemont. || Paris: || Poulet-Malassis et de Broise. || Editeurs. || 97. Rue de Richelieu, et Beaux-Arts, 56. || 1861. || Tout droits réservés. || Paris: Imp. Simon Raçon et Comp. || Rue d'Erfurth.
In comparing the text of 1857 with that of 1861 I find several revisions of certain verses, not always, I think, for the best. For instance, in thePréface,the first edition is as follows:
"Dans nos cervaux malsains, comme un million d'helminthes,Grouille, chante et ripaille un peuple de Démons."
He changes this into "verre fourmillant;" "dans nos cervaux ribote." On page 22, he writes:
"Sent un froid ténébreux envelopper son âmeA l'aspect du tableau plein d'épouvantementDes monstruosités, que voile un vêtement;Des visages masqués et plus laids que des masques."
In the later text he puts a full stop after "épouvantement," and continues:
"O monstruosités pleurant leur vêtement!O ridicules troncs! torses dignes des masques."
This reading seems to me infinitely inferior to the reading of the first version.
Again, there are certain other changes, even less happy, such as "quadrature" into "nature," "divin élixir" into "comme un élixir," "Mon âme se balançait comme un ange joyeux," into "Mon cœur, comme un oiseau, voltigeant tout joyeux."Baudelaire, in sending a copy ofLes fleurs du mal(1861) to Alfred de Vigny, wrote that he had marked the new poems in pencil in the list at the end of the book. In my copy—1857—he has marked, with infinite delicacy, in pencil, only three poems: "Lesbos," "Femmes Damnées," "Les Métamorphoses du Vampire." He underlines, in "Une Charogne," these words in the text: "charogne lubrique, cynique, ventre, d'exhalaisons."At one side of the prose note on "Franciscae meae laudes" he has made, on the margin, a number of arrows.
InLe Corsaire-Satan,January, 1848, Baudelaire reviewed three books of short stories by Champfleury. On the first,Chien-Caillou,he writes: "One day a quite small, quite simple volume,Chien Caillou,was printed; the history simply, clearly, crudely related, of a poor engraver, certainly original, but whose poverty was so extreme that he lived on carrots, between a rabbit and a girl of the town; and he made masterpieces," I have before me this book: "Chien-Caillou, fantaisies d'hiver.Par Champfleury. Paris, A la Libraire Pittoresque de Martinon, Rue du Coq-Saint-Martin, 1847," It is dedicated to Victor Hugo. "I dedicate to you this work, in spite of the fact that I have an absolute horror of dedications—because of the expressionyoung manthat it leaves in readers' minds. But you have been the first to signalizeChien-Caillouto your friends, and your luminous genius has suddenly recognized the reality of the second title:This is not a Story."
In the same year came outLe Gâteau des rois.Par M. Jules Janin. Ouvrage entièrement inédit. Paris. Libraire d'Amyot, 6 rue de la Paix, 1847. I have my own copy of this edition, bound in pale yellow-paper covers.
On January 26th, 1917, there came to me from Paris an original manuscript, written by Charles Baudelaire on three pages of note-paper, concerning these two books of Champfleury and Jules Janin. Being unfinished, it may have been the beginning of an essay which he never completed. Certainly I find no trace of this prose in any of his printed books. From the brown colour of the ink that he used I think it was written in 1857, as the ink and the handwriting are absolutely the same as in his signedFleurs du malsent to Champfleury. There are several revisions and corrections in the text of the MS. that I possess.
At the top of the first page are nearly obliterated the words:remplacez les blancs.It begins: "Pour donner immédiatement au lecteur non initié dans les dessous de la littérature, non instruit dans les préliminaires des réputations, une idée première de l'importance littéraire réille de ces petits livres, gros d'esprit, de poésie et d'observations, qu'il sache que le premier d'entre nous,Chien-Caillou,Fantaisies d'hiver, fut publié en même temps qu'un petit livre d'un homme très célèbre, qui avait, en même temps que Champfleury, l'idée de ces publications en trimestrielles." It ends: "Où est le cœur? Où est l'âme, où est la raison?"
Here is my translation:
"To convey to the reader who has not penetrated into the back-parlours of literature, who has not been instructed in the preliminaries of reputations, an immediate idea of the real literary importance of these little books, fat in wit, poetry, and observations, it should be stated that the first among them,Chien-Caillou.Fantaisies d'hiver, was published at the same time as another small book by a famous man who had, simultaneously with Champfleury, started these quarterly publications.
"Now, for these people whose intelligence, daily applied to the elaboration of books, is hardest to please, Champfleury's work absorbed that of the famous man. All those of whom I speak have knownLe Gâteau des rois.Their profession is to know everything.Le Gâteau des rois,a kind of Christmas book, or 'Livre de Noël,' showed above all a clearly asserted pretention to draw from "the language, by playing infinite variations on the dictionary, all the effects which a transcendental instrumentalist draws from his chords. Shifting of forces, error of an unballasted mind! The ideas in this strange book follow each other in haste, dart with the swiftness of sound, leaning at random on infinitely tenuous connections. Their association with one another hangs by a thread according to a method of thought similar to that of people in Bedlam.
"Vast current of involuntary ideas, wild-goose chase, abnegation of will! This singular feat of dexterity was accomplished by the man you know, whose sole and special faculty consists in not being master of himself, the man of encounters and good fortunes.
"Assuredly there was talent. But what abuse! What debauchery! And, besides, what fatigue and what pain!
"No doubt some respect is due or, at least, some grateful compassion, for the tireless writhing of an old dancing girl. But, alas! worn-out attitudes, weak methods, boresome seductivities!
"The ideas of our man are but old women driven crazy with too much dancing, too much kicking off the ground.Sustalerunt sæpius pedes.
"Where is the heart? Where the soul? Where reason?"
Here the manuscript comes to an abrupt end, and one is left to wonder how much more Baudelaire had written; perhaps only one more page, as he had a peculiar fashion of writing fragments on bits of note-paper. Certainly this prose has the refinement, the satire, the exquisite use of words, the inimitable charm and unerring instinct of a faultless writer. Not only is there his passion forles danseusesand for the exotic, but a sinister touch inl'abdication de la volontéwhich recurs finally in a letter written February 8, 1865; for, when one imagines himself capable of an absolute abdication of the will, it means that something of the man has gone out of him.
It is often said, not without a certain kind of truth, that the likeness is precisely what matters least in a portrait. That is one of the interesting heresies which Whistler did not learn from Velasquez. Because a portrait which is a likeness, and nothing more than a likeness, can often be done by a second-rate artist, by a kind of sympathetic trick, it need not follow that likeness is in itself an unimportant quality in a masterly portrait, nor will it be found that likeness was ever disregarded by the greatest painters. But there are many kinds of likenesses, among which we have to choose, as we have to choose in all art which follows nature, between a realism of outward circumstance and a realism of inner significance. Every individual face has as many different expressions as the soul behind it has moods. When we talk, currently, of a "good likeness," we mean, for the most part, that a single, habitual expression, with which we are familiar, as we are familiar with a frequently worn suit of clothes, has been rendered; that we see a man as we imagine ourselves ordinarily to see him. But, in the first place, most people see nothing with any sort of precision; they cannot tell you the position and shape of the ears, or the shape of the cheek-bones, of their most intimate friends. Their mental vision is so feeble that they can call up only a blurred image, a vague compromise between expressions, without any definite form at all. Others have a mental vision so sharp, retentive, yet without selection, that to think of a person is to call up a whole series of precise images, each the image of a particular expression at a particular moment; the whole series failing to coalesce into one really typical likeness, the likeness of soul or body. Now it is the artist's business to choose among these mental pictures; better still, to create on paper, or on his canvas, the image which was none of these, but which these helped to make in his own soul.
The Manet portrait of Charles Baudelaire, dated 1862, is exquisite, ironical, subtle, enigmatical, astonishing; He has arrested the head and shoulders of the poet in an instant's vision; the outlines are definite, clear, severe, and simple. One sees the eager head thrust forward, as if the man were actually walking; the fine and delicate nose, voluptuously dilated in the nostrils, seems to breathe in vague perfumes; the mouth, half-seen, has a touch of his malicious irony; the right eye shines vividly in a fixed glance, those eyes that had the colour of Spanish tobacco. Over the long, waving hair, that seems to be swept backward by the wind, is placed, with unerring skill, at the exact angle, that top-hat that Baudelaire had to have expressly made to fit the size of his head. Around his long neck is just seen the white soft collar of his shirt, with a twisted tie in front. In this picture one sees the inspired poet, with distinct touches of this strong piece of thinking flesh and blood. And Manet indicates, I think, that glimpse of the soul which one needs in a perfect likeness.
In the one done in 1865, the pride of youth, the dandy, the vivid profile, have disappeared. Here, as if in an eternal aspect, Baudelaire is shown. There is his tragic mask; the glory of the eyes, that seem to defy life, to defy death, seems enormous, almost monstrous. The lips are closed tightly together, in their long, sinuous line, almost as if Leonardo da Vinci had stamped them with his immortality. The genius of Manet has shown the genius of Baudelaire in a gigantic shadow; the whole face surging out of that dark shadow; and the soul is there!
In the portrait by Carjat, his face and his eyes are contorted as if in a terrible rage; the whole face seems drawn upward and downward in a kind of convulsion; and the aspect, one confesses, shows a degraded type, as if all the vices he had never committed looked out of his eyes in a wild revolt.
It is in the mask of Baudelaire done by Zachari Astruc that I find almost the ethereal beauty, the sensitive nerves, the drawn lines, of the death-mask of Keats; only, more tragic. It looks out on one as a carved image, perfect in outline, implacable, restless, sensual; and, in that agonized face, what imagination, what enormous vitality, what strange subtlety, what devouring energy! It might be the face of a Roman Emperor, refined, century by century, from the ghastly face of Nero, the dissolute face of Caligula, to this most modern of poets.