Baudelaire’s Reputation

BAUDELAIRE'S REPUTATION' The evolution of literary reputations is a fascinating but neglected field, fascinating because the reasons for revisals of public esteem are full of surprises , neglected because of the difficulties to be surmounted in revealing those reasons. There is also the problem of choosing the right moment for such a study. The evolution of Anatole France's reputation, for instance, is full of interest but the time is obviously unpropitious for presenting a study of it. Despite the fact that Gerard de Nerval, who was considered "un petit romantique" is now often called Hnon seulement Ie plus grand, mais Ie seul des romantiques fran~is/) it is equally obvious that, for the present, a study of his reputation's growth would be premature. On the other hand, the reputation of the long unpopular d'Annunzio is now being subjected to the most critical scrutiny. In his study of the evolution of Baudelaire's reputation A. E. Carter has not only selected one of the most interesting examples in the whole of French literature, but he has chosen to treat it at the timeliest moment possible. For Baudelaire's work constitutes the most important of the various revolutions in the realm of poetry during the nineteenth century, one that has had lasting repercussions down to the present. Yet it is precisely now, when many people are beginning to ask whether Baudelaire's poetry does not look more backward than forward, that Mr. Carter's analysis affords a definite answer to their question. A continuation of M. W. T. Bandy's Baudelaire Judged by his Contemporaries , which deals with the period preceding the poet's death, Mr. Carter's book examines. the progressive transformation, between 1868-1917, of the decadent dandy of the Second Empire into the heroic figure we are familiar with today. That transformation is studied at five key points: 1868-1887, the reaction to the CEuvres completes, its novel feature being the emphasis on the modernity of Baudelaire's decadence; 1887-1892, the reception of the CEuvres posthumes, during which the legend of the poseur is gradually replaced by the portrait of a man at bay with life yet determined not to let it kill his spirit nor his work; 1892-1902, a period of debate before the raising of a statue to a poet still regarded by older critics as decadent but by younger ones as the spiritual father of their generation; 1902-1916, the effects of the publication of Baudelaire's correspondence: a turning against the denunciations of such critics as Brunetiere and Faguet, stress on Baudelaire's decadence being lessened and replaced by a stress on his classic and Christian characteristics ; 1917, the fiftieth anniversary of the poet's death, when, despite the dire situation, several new editions of his works appeared, also numerous articles, none of them hostile, the majority of which consecrated his estalr lishment as a classic, a Christian, and the founder of a new kind of poetry neither decadent nor symbolist but modern. The legendary figure was at last "'Alfred Edward Carter. Baudelaire et la Critique Fraw;aise, 1868-1917. Columbia, S.C., University of South Carolina Press. 1963. Pp. 298, $5.00. Volume XXXIV, Number 2, January, 1965 202 ROBERT FINCH abolished and Baudelaire emerged as fundamentally sincere, even more so, according to some, than any of his contemporaries. Theophile Gautier, whose original Notice to Baudelaire's poems had been responsible for the legend, was discredited as having been incapable of understanding "Les Fleurs" or their author. As Mr. Carter points out, at a moment when war was bringing about a reassessment of values, those of literature were included. Romanti· cism, symbolism, decadence, naturalism, neoclassicism were found to be dead~ "Les FIeurs du Mal" more tenaciously alive than ever. The five key points are examined by the author with numbered references to citations from Baudelaire's critics, placed after each section. The benefit of this arrangement is that it reduces footnotes to a minimum and at the same time pennits the reader, at will, to look over the supporting evidence in chronological order, quite apart from the author's text. Having dealt with a half-century of critical articles...