Baudelaire, between the pleasure of evil and the desire for God

This article is taken from the

Figaro Hors-Série "Baudelaire, le spleen de la modernité"

Le Figaro Hors-Série "Baudelaire, the spleen of modernity" Le Figaro

One evening, the soul of wine sang in the bottles ”.

Charles Baudelaire's grandfather was a winegrower. His father had been a priest ... Did he draw from this double inheritance the living consciousness of the soul of things, of the infinite which beats in the heart of man? Like an inextinguishable desire or like an abyss that draws it towards nothingness? Deprived of any vocation, François Baudelaire had renounced the priesthood in 1793 and officially left the functions of Catholic worship, which he had never exercised. Widowed after his marriage to Jeanne Justine Rosalie Janin, a painter, he was married for a second time to Caroline Dufaÿs, who would be Charles' mother, and he died when her son was only five years old. Hosted for a time by friends in Neuilly,his mother had been all his at the time,

made of

“I haven't forgotten, neighbor of the city, / Our white house, small but quiet”

(

“

”).

Read also Baudelaire, the spleen of modernity: the revolt of the South Seas

The romance would only last a few months.

After the death of his father, an idealized figure of an elegant and educated eighteenth century man, his mother's remarriage with General Aupick would constitute the first wound that would put an end to the

There would remain in the heart of the poet an infinite nostalgia and, between immense shadows and fleeting light, a diffuse hope.

"The deep calling the deep" (Ps 41)

At the origin of all creation is the experience of an abyss, of a

in which passes the breath of the angel, the creative genius. From an incurable wound can spring a bright light, a

(Corneille,

) like a fallen angel falls. The poet is this condemned angel, this prophet

says the Psalm,

'Man is only a lie.'

(Psalm 115). Did Baudelaire believe? Did he have faith? God alone examines the kidneys and hearts ... But he suffered

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