Sex and Spleen: Fetish in Baudelaire's "Les Bijoux"

In Baudelaire and Freud, Leo Bersani argues that “woman exists for Baudelaire, not in order to satisfy his desires, but in order to produce them,” describing the “fantasy-machine” at work in Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil). This article develops Bersani’s argument in order to propose that there is evidence not only of fantasy but of fetish in Baudelairean desire, and that, although the term was not coined until 1887-8, fetishism offers a psycho-sexual construct for understanding both the image-making of these poems and the autoeroticism (and depletion) of poetic creativity itself. With reference to “Les Bijoux” (The Jewels), I argue that this fetishism both derives from and participates in a visual culture, as well as a literary one, playing out the symbolism of the “bijou” in both sexual and textual ways. While the poem might represent a transpositional impulse on the part of Baudelaire—hence Pirard’s description of it as “une peinture lascive” (a lewd painting)—it has also subsequently invited illustration. The interpretive slippage that occurs in such illustrated editions draws attention to persistent fetishistic themes, and to the way in which these become visual phenomena, circulating in a constantly evolving culture of desire. While it is possible—and, indeed, plausible—to read “Les Bijoux” as a sexual (genital) encounter, examining it as a fetish strategy brings into sharp focus the spectatorship that such visual phenomena imply, as well as the power of the imagination to transform the erotic signifier into the desiring text—and image.