Telling Stories in Baudelaire's Spleen De Paris.(Critical Essay)
2002; University of Nebraska Press; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1536-0172
Autores Tópico(s)French Literature and Poetry
ResumoStorytelling plays a role equally conspicuous and disturbing in Baudelaire's Spleen de Paris. Indeed, all but a handful of the collection's fifty prose poems read as stories or anecdotes, told or retold in the first person by the narrator/ flaneur. Yet in his dedication letter to Arsene Houssaye, Baudelaire expressed disdain for such narrative features as the thread of superfluous plot: Nous pouvons couper ora nous voulons, moi ma reverie, vous le manuscrit, le lecteur sa lecture; car je ne suspends pas la volonte retive de celui-ci au fil interminable d'une intrigue superflue. Enlevez une vertebre, et les deux morceaux de cette tortueuse fantaisie se rejoindront sans peine. (I:275) (1) Baudelaire is referring to the collection as a whole in this much-discussed characterization of the text and its prospective reader(s). Still, despite the amount of critical attention given to this ambiguous dedication/preface/ manifesto, it remains puzzling that such an adamant rejection of plot should preface the reading of fifty pieces notorious for their narrative, and often prosaic features. Baudelaire provides no model for reading the thread of plot within each prose poem, a thread that would seemingly unravel the poeticity of the genre. The metaphorical serpent and thread only perpetuate the enigma of the prose poem genre, rendering suspect the blatant use of anecdote, plot, and narrative devices in general within the individual prose poems. From its uncertain provenance, to its multiple titles, (2) to the equivocal nature of its hybrid genre, Le Spleen de Paris raises more questions about Baudelaire's poetics than it has resolved. Generically speaking, Baudelaire's prose poems fall into two categories: the handful of pieces rely heavily on recognized conventions of lyric poetry (rhythm, repetition, tropes and figures), while the ubiquitous narrative pieces contain disturbingly large doses of plot and discursive elements (dialogue, description, narrative progression and intervention). In earlier scholarship on Baudelaire, these more narrative prose poems were treated as anomalies, or dismissed with some degree of disapproval, and even hostility: readers have seldom considered lengthy narration to be the mark of good poetry. In her encyclopedic 1959 study of the genre, Suzanne Bernard quotes Jacques Riviere to justify her own uneasiness with Baudelaire's more heavily plotted prose poems: Dans un beau pomme, il n'y a jamais progression: la fin est toujours au meme niveau que le commencement [...] Les vers forment un cercle; ils sont tournes les uns vers les autres, ils se regardent, ils nous enferment dans leur ronde. C'est qu'ils travaillent a nous desorienter sur place; ils tachent de nous inspirer l'oubli du temps [...]. L'emotion poeique est une sorte de tournoiement par lequel se reforme en nous au milieu de la fuite meme des choses, une fiaque d'eternite (442) (3) In other words, poetry distinguishes itself from prose through its evocation of an eternal present, and through its evasion of a time-boundedness implicit in storytelling. (4) As lean-Paul Sartre more bluntly states: Si le poete raconte, explique ou enseigne, la poesie devient prosaique, il a perdu la partie (88). Admirers of Baudelaire's Fleurs du real often observe with disappointment that many of his prose poems tell stories. Bernard's comments still ring true for many contemporary readers: Certains poemes de Spleen de Paris sont, a peu chose pres, des nouvelles (Le Mauvais vitrier, Une Mort heroi'que, Le Joueur genereux, Assomons les pauvres!) ... (109). She recognizes the poetic value of some of these poems, but for the most part, finds not only that they fail to measure up to Baudelaire's usual caliber, but worse, that they in fact inspired other poets to pursue low-quality writing. …
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