Charles Baudelaire: Mon coeur mis a nu (review)

Claude Pichois's new facsimile edition of the manuscript of Mon cœur mis à nu is an essential and engrossing reference for any Baudelaire scholar. It offers a compelling look at the poetic process in a work of discreet scholarship, attractive presentation and easy access. On facing pages of this large (26 x 36 cm) book, the reader can easily compare the diplomatic transcription of the manuscript (on the left) with its facsimile edition (on the right). This format makes it effortless for the non-specialist reader to decipher Baudelaire's handwriting and, more importantly, it is more fascinating to the scholar interested in Baudelaire's creative process than an analysis of the variants relegated to the back of a standard edition. This facsimile edition is thus a useful complement to the Pléiade edition, in which the annotations for Mon cœur mis à nu under the heading Journaux intimes follow the primary text in the "Notice, Notes et Variantes" section.

In a brief introduction, Pichois draws attention to the virulence that characterizes this text, "[l'un des] plus explosifs des lettres françaises." Pichois reminds us that Baudelaire was inspired to write his rancor by a daring comment in Edgar Allan Poe's Marginalia (cited on the back jacket flap), but he also posits that, "Pour arriver à tant de violence, jusqu'à la haine, oui, il faut beaucoup de Charité" (9). Other than the introduction in which he traces the genesis of the text and the history of the manuscript's owners, Pichois makes few editorial comments in the form of notes to the manuscript. One must go to Pichois's article on Baudelaire's manuscripts in Travaux de littérature (1998) to find out more about the general context of publication, or to the Pléiade or Crépet-Blin editions for more detailed commentary on Mon cœur mis à nu.

This edition of Mon cœur mis à nu will be of interest to textual and genetic critics, amateurs and specialists of Baudelaire alike. Mon cœur mis à nu lends itself to a facsimile edition given that its non-linear and raw nature resists the finalizing impulse of commercial publication. The edition reveals that Baudelaire wrote many of these fragments in one go, as there are few deletions. The rhythm of the writing is palpable. In fragment 27 (xvii) ("Le Diable et George Sand"), for instance, the double underline of the heading, the underlined words ("grosse bête"), and the very flow of the writing render tangible Baudelaire's animosity against the femmeauteur. Repeated deletions of the phrase "ma fureur au Coup d'Etat" and the unorthodox spelling of "Bonapparte" in fragment 8 (v) may be signs of the intensity of Baudelaire's political views. (The palpable difficulty Baudelaire had writing the p's in this proper name is invisible in the Pléiade edition, which corrects the "error.") Fragment 23 (xiv) ("Observons que les abolisseurs de solidus [la] peine de mort . . .") is one of the few with multiple corrections: the facsimile plainly shows which words are omitted, crossed out or penciled in. Indeed, seeing the manuscript makes clear that no attempt was made to refine the creative process. Oftentimes, the same piece of paper contains unrelated aphorisms, as in the third fragment:

Je comprends qu'on déserte une
cause pour savoir ce qu'on
éprouvera à en servir une autre.

Il serait peut-être doux d'être
alternativement victime et bourreau. (i)

Pichois's edition offers a wealth of possibilities for reading the semiotics of the writing.

The spontaneity of the writing is also visible in the incoherent assembly of the different sized fragments, written in various inks, on assorted types of paper. (Pichois provides a catalogue of this information in his introduction since ink and paper quality do not show up in the black and white facsimile...