Formal Revolution in the Work of Baudelaire and Flaubert
Formal Revolution in the Work of Baudelaire and Flaubert
Kathryn Oliver Mills
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE PRESS
Newark
Published by University of Delaware Press
Co-published with The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom
Copyright 2012 by Kathryn Oliver Mills
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mills, Kathryn Oliver.
Formal revolution in the work of Baudelaire and Flaubert / Kathryn Oliver Mills.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61149-394-8 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-61149-395-5 (ebook)
1. Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867.Criticism and interpretation. 2. Flaubert, Gustave, 1821-1880.Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
PQ2191.Z5M48 2012
841'.8dc23
2011053327
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
For my husband Wil (19692011), with enduring love, respect, and gratitude.
But to be able to fall down in such a way that the same second it looks as if one were standing and walking, to transform the leap of life into a walk, absolutely to express the sublime in the pedestrianthat only the knight of faith can doand this is the one and only prodigy.
Johannes de Silentio (Kierkegaard), Fear and Trembling
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Formal Revolution in the Work of Baudelaire and Flaubert
| 1 | Le Voyage: The End of Les Fleurs du mal and of Poetry in Verse |
| 2 | Historical Contexts: The Sketch Artist, the Philosopher, and Painting Modern Life |
| 3 | The Midas Touch of Verse: Les Fleurs du mal and Modern Life |
| 4 | Le Peintre de la vie moderne and Le Spleen de Paris : The Albatross Takes Flight |
| 5 | Deux bonshommes distincts [Two Distinct Fellows]: Flauberts Novels and Aesthetics in the 1860s |
| 6 | Toward a Modern Form: La Tentation de saint Antoine , Trois contes , and Bouvard et Pcuchet |
Conclusion: Crpuscule
Appendix: The Voyage (LXXVI)
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the University of the South and my colleagues there for the employment, sabbatical, and research funding that made this pursuit possible; the Appalachian College Association for a grant that allowed me an extra semester of leave; Dr. Peter Brooks, whose sponsorship for that grant made the award possible; Gallimard, Classiques Garnier, Librairie Gnrale FranaiseLe Livre de Poche, and Slatkine Reprints for granting permission to reprint the French texts; Romance Quarterly for allowing me to reprint previously published articles of mine; the readers at the University of Delaware Press for their comments and support; my parents, Ray and Mary Anne Oliver, for their encouragement; my children, Benjamin and Phoebe-Agns, for their patience with a working mother; and most of all, my husband, Wil Mills, who never stopped believing in me and urging me on.
Abbreviations
| Ce | Curiosits esthtiques |
| Corr | Correspondance (for either Baudelaire or Flaubert) |
| Oc | Oeuvres compltes (for either Baudelaire or Flaubert) |
Introduction
Formal Revolution in the Work of Baudelaire and Flaubert
the nature of the nouveau [the new] they ultimately found, and represented, has been a subject of some debate. Formal Revolution in the Work of Baudelaire and Flaubert approaches the problem of these two writers novelty by bringing formal, thematic, and historical considerations to bear on Baudelaires Le Spleen de Paris and Flauberts Trois contes, as well as by setting those two works in the context of their authors other works of literature and literary criticism. My contention is that Baudelaire and Flauberts reconfiguration of the generic boundaries between poetry and prose (in their aesthetics for modern art as well as in Le Spleen de Paris [ Parisian Spleen ] and Trois contes [ Three Tales ]) highlights as it nuances these major authors literary responses and contributions to modernity.
In the second edition of his invaluable work, The Uses of Uncertainty (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985, 2006) , Jonathan Culler remarks that his own critical work was lacking in cultural context (242). And yet, as Culler observes, both period and form are of the essence in understanding the artistic preoccupations of Baudelaire and Flaubert as well as in assessing the achievements of Le Spleen de Paris and Trois contes . Elissa Marder adds some degree of historical context to the French literary tradition, and specifically to the study of Baudelaire together with Flaubert; the temporal structures she considers are generally psychological rather than conventionally historical, however. It is obviously beyond the scope of a book of literary criticism to represent a historical period in full. It is, however, possible to look in more depth at the relationship between the interest of Baudelaire and Flaubert in form and their artistic relationship with a changing period.
Although Baudelaires poems in verse often hold out art as an escape from real life (from LInvitation au Voyage, [Invitation to a Voyage]: L, tout nest quordre et beaut,/Luxe, calme et volupt, [Everything there is nothing but order and beauty, luxury, calm, and sensuality] Oc 53), he was highly conscious of his periods new realities, and he believed they had implications for art.
The realities of this transitional world, in Flauberts view, should be seen and recorded as they are. Emphasizing the reciprocity he perceived between art and world with his depiction of the world as a work of art and of art as works, Flaubert wrote: Donc cherchons voir les choses comme elles sont et ne voulons pas avoir plus desprit que le bon Dieu.... habituons-nous considrer le monde comme une oeuvre dart dont il faut reproduire les procds dans nos oeuvres [italics mine] [And so let us strive to see things as they are, and not compete with God... let us get used to considering the world as a work of art , the dynamics of which we must reproduce in our works] ( Corr II 284). Despite his private contempt for the banalit resulting from modern society, Flaubert, like Baudelaire, believed that art and its context had to reflect each other. Thus, in a drastically changing era, art had to take a new direction.
Elissa Marder goes one better than Walter Benjamins famous statement by declaring that Baudelaire is not so much the last lyric poet (Benjamins epithet) as lyric poetrys simulacrumits first stuttering ghost ( Dead Time 78). Arguing for Baudelaires nostalgia for things past in Le Spleen de Paris , Cheryl Krueger posits: As if to slow it down, to dilute it, or to mitigate its process, Baudelaire carefully situates his own description of la vie moderne [modern life] in the painting of former, picturesque time. Baudelaires obsessive ideal may involve updating an older text (Bertrands), yet any description of modern city life in Baudelaires own prose will be anchored in the wake of a former, strangely picturesque art and time (16).
