Seeing Double: Baudelaire's Modernity (review)

Recalling the economical, technical, architectural, and social changes that are the hallmark of modernity, and the seemingly ambivalent range of sensations that invades Baudelaire's writings as a result, this study builds on apparently familiar terrain by arguing that the poet is 'obsessed with dualities and oppositions at every level' (p. 20). However, Françoise Meltzer's reflections on the contrasts and contradictions in Baudelaire's work, and their assumed links to the rapid, often bewildering transformations of modern life, take us in a radical new direction and quickly challenge the reader's perspective. 'How, in this crisis', she asks, 'to present a coherent narrative that makes sense, that is sequential?' (p. 240). In an imaginative, carefully argued reading of prose poem, verse poem, and essay, Meltzer demonstrates that, far from giving shape and some degree of coherence to the chaotic processes of modernity through his use of diametric contrasts, as many critics have assumed, Baudelaire's texts embody the conflicting worlds of past and present simultaneously, leaving an unresolved (and irresolvable) tension at the heart of his work. The disorientation that emerges, Meltzer proposes, is the result of the poet's bifurcated vision — or what she terms a 'double vision' — that at once looks back to an idealized past and forward to an uncertain future, denying the poet any possibility of ontic or temporal consistency. As the title implies, the visual dimension of Baudelaire's writings is brought to the fore here. A concise, well-framed Introduction contextualizes the links between modernity and vision before outlining a clear definition of the book's overarching theory of 'double vision'. Four aspects of Baudelaire's thinking that inform his 'double vision' give a focus to the chapters that follow: the 'doubled and contradictory' (p. 59) influences of Proudhon and Maistre that motivate the political and spiritual ideas in his poems; a poetics of imagery that has at its foundation a series of disparate visions; an ambiguous view of capitalism and the emerging market economy; and a double viewpoint that looks forward and back at the same time, leaving the poet hopelessly detached from the present. Each takes as its centrepiece the close analysis of a poem — 'Assommons les pauvres!', 'À une passante', 'La Chambre double', and 'Harmonie du soir' respectively. What emerges clearly from this compelling study is that the rapidly changing world in which Baudelaire lived was utterly incomprehensible to the poet. Vision is blurred, time is doubled, and space is non-contiguous, so that any possibility of synthetic unity is ultimately denied. In this way, Meltzer's book performs two valuable functions: it dispels the myth that the poet's frequent use of binary oppositions means that he had a clear appreciation of the contours of modernity; and it provides a new way of considering his complex, burdensome relationship with the nineteenth century.