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87-615: Fear of lawsuits by the Goncourts' friends and their heirs prevented publication of anything but carefully chosen selections from the Journal for many years, but a complete edition of the original French text appeared in the 1950s in 22 volumes, and there have been several selective translations into English. The Goncourt brothers formed a very close literary partnership. Not only were all of their novels, dramas and non-fiction works written in collaboration until Jules' death but, more surprisingly, so

174-491: A French ambassador to various noble courts. Baudelaire's biographers have often seen this as a crucial moment, considering that finding himself no longer the sole focus of his mother's affection left him with a trauma, which goes some way to explaining the excesses later apparent in his life. He stated in a letter to her that, "There was in my childhood a period of passionate love for you." Baudelaire regularly begged his mother for money throughout his career, often promising that

261-593: A Funeral Committee was being set up on Edmond's behalf. Excrement was sent to him through the post. On the other hand Anatole France wrote that "this perfectly private journal is at the same time perfectly literary", and absolved the Goncourts of indiscretion because "[t]hey neither heard nor saw except in art and for art". To American critics the Goncourts' indiscretion naturally seemed less immediately alarming than to most of their French colleagues. The Atlantic Monthly thought that in fifty years time it would be "the most fascinating and vivid history in existence of

348-417: A career in law or diplomacy, but instead Baudelaire decided to embark upon a literary career. His mother later recalled: "Oh, what grief! If Charles had let himself be guided by his stepfather, his career would have been very different ... He would not have left a name in literature, it is true, but we should have been happier, all three of us." His stepfather sent him on a voyage to Calcutta, India in 1841 in

435-407: A dramatically different perspective. Benjamin translated Baudelaire's Tableaux Parisiens into German and published a major essay on translation as the foreword. In the late 1930s, Benjamin used Baudelaire as a starting point and focus for Das Passagenwerk , his monumental attempt at a materialist assessment of 19th-century culture. For Benjamin, Baudelaire's importance lay in his anatomies of

522-579: A group of intellectuals, writers, journalists, and artists. These included George Sand , Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve , Flaubert, Ernest Renan , and Paul de Saint-Victor. From 1863, the brothers would systematically record the comments made at these dinners in the Journal . In 1865, the brothers premiered their play Henriette Maréchal at the Comédie-Française , but its realism provoked protests and it

609-524: A letter as "the king of poets, a true God". In 1895, Stéphane Mallarmé published "Le Tombeau de Charles Baudelaire", a sonnet in Baudelaire's memory. Marcel Proust , in an essay published in 1922, stated that, along with Alfred de Vigny , Baudelaire was "the greatest poet of the nineteenth century". In the English-speaking world, Edmund Wilson credited Baudelaire as providing an initial impetus for

696-532: A lucrative publishing contract or journalistic commission was just around the corner. Baudelaire was educated in Lyon , where he boarded. At 14, he was described by a classmate as "much more refined and distinguished than any of our fellow pupils ... we are bound to one another ... by shared tastes and sympathies, the precocious love of fine works of literature." Baudelaire was erratic in his studies, at times diligent, at other times prone to "idleness". Later, he attended

783-898: A massive stroke in 1866 and paralysis followed. After more than a year of aphasia , he received the last rites of the Catholic Church. The last year of his life was spent in a semi-paralyzed state in various "maisons de santé" in Brussels and in Paris, where he died on 31 August 1867. Baudelaire is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse , Paris. Many of Baudelaire's works were published posthumously. After his death, his mother paid off his substantial debts, and she found some comfort in Baudelaire's emerging fame. "I see that my son, for all his faults, has his place in literature." She lived another four years. Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of

870-452: A melody by Weber." Delacroix, though appreciative, kept his distance from Baudelaire, particularly after the scandal of Les Fleurs du mal . In private correspondence, Delacroix stated that Baudelaire "really gets on my nerves" and he expressed his unhappiness with Baudelaire's persistent comments about "melancholy" and "feverishness". Baudelaire had no formal musical training, and knew little of composers beyond Beethoven and Weber . Weber

957-449: A new urban sensibility, an awareness of individual moral complexity, an interest in vice (linked with decadence ) and refined sensual and aesthetic pleasures, and the use of urban subject matter, such as the city, the crowd, individual passers-by, all expressed in highly ordered verse, sometimes through a cynical and ironic voice. Formally, the use of sound to create atmosphere, and of "symbols" (images that take on an expanded function within

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1044-452: A now little-known book, Idées et Sensations (1866; new edition 1877). In 1886 Edmond published in Le Figaro some extracts from the Journal dating from the years before Jules' death, and the following year a more substantial selection of letters from the same years appeared in book form under the title Journal des Goncourt: Mémoires de la vie littéraire . Eight more volumes were published at

1131-468: A page, and each chapter is a separate notation of some significant event, some emotion or sensation which seems to throw sudden light on the picture of a soul. To the Goncourts humanity is as pictorial a thing as the world it moves in; they do not search further than "the physical basis of life," and they find everything that can be known of that unknown force written visibly upon the sudden faces of little incidents, little expressive moments. The soul, to them,

1218-652: A rap about all these imbeciles, and I know that this book, with its virtues and its faults, will make its way in the memory of the lettered public, beside the best poems of V. Hugo, Th. Gautier and even Byron." Baudelaire, his publisher and the printer were successfully prosecuted for creating an offense against public morals. They were fined, but Baudelaire was not imprisoned. Six of the poems were suppressed, but printed later as Les Épaves ( The Wrecks ) (Brussels, 1866). Another edition of Les Fleurs du mal , without these poems, but with considerable additions, appeared in 1861. Many notables rallied behind Baudelaire and condemned

1305-408: A record of resentment and suffering, and to this circumstance they attribute many causes; but we suspect that the real cause is for them too the inconvenience from which we suffer as readers – simply the want of space and air." After Edmond's death Proust paid the Journal the tribute of including a pastiche of it in his À la recherche du temps perdu , and indeed the Journal's obsessive collecting of

1392-480: A short period of time. During this time, Jeanne Duval , a Haitian born actress became his mistress. She was rejected by his family. His mother thought Duval a "Black Venus" who "tortured him in every way" and drained him of money at every opportunity. Baudelaire made a suicide attempt during this period. He took part in the Revolutions of 1848 and wrote for a revolutionary newspaper. However, his interest in politics

1479-428: A sizable inheritance but squandered much of it within a few years. His family obtained a decree to place his property in trust, which he resented bitterly, at one point arguing that allowing him to fail financially would have been the one sure way of teaching him to keep his finances in order. Baudelaire became known in artistic circles as a dandy and free-spender, going through much of his inheritance and allowance in

1566-492: A talent which will stand the test of time. But he has a weak character. He seems to me crushed and stunned by shock." In his painting Music in the Tuileries , Manet includes portraits of his friends Théophile Gautier , Jacques Offenbach , and Baudelaire. While it's difficult to differentiate who influenced whom, both Manet and Baudelaire discussed and expressed some common themes through their respective arts. Baudelaire praised

1653-408: A while at Honfleur . Baudelaire was productive and at peace in the seaside town, his poem Le Voyage being one example of his efforts during that time. In 1860, he became an ardent supporter of Richard Wagner . His financial difficulties increased again, however, particularly after his publisher Poulet Malassis went bankrupt in 1861. In 1864, he left Paris for Belgium, partly in the hope of selling

1740-405: A wide range of subjects, drawing criticism and outrage from many quarters. Along with Poe, Baudelaire named the arch-reactionary Joseph de Maistre as his maître à penser and adopted increasingly aristocratic views. In his journals, he wrote: "There is no form of rational and assured government save an aristocracy . […] There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and

1827-415: Is Baudelaire's use of imagery of the sense of smell and of fragrances, which is used to evoke feelings of nostalgia and past intimacy. The book, however, quickly became a byword for unwholesomeness among mainstream critics of the day. Some critics called a few of the poems "masterpieces of passion, art and poetry," but other poems were deemed to merit no less than legal action to suppress them. J. Habas led

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1914-484: Is a series of moods, which succeed one another, certainly without any of the too arbitrary logic of the novelist who has conceived of character as a solid or consistent thing. Their novels are hardly stories at all, but picture-galleries, hung with pictures of the momentary aspects of the world. They are buried together (in the same grave) in Montmartre Cemetery . Edmond de Goncourt bequeathed his entire estate for

2001-471: Is clad, as you will see, in a cold and sinister beauty. It was created with rage and patience. Besides, the proof of its positive worth is in all the ill that they speak of it. The book enrages people. Moreover, since I was terrified myself of the horror that I should inspire, I cut out a third from the proofs. They deny me everything, the spirit of invention and even the knowledge of the French language. I don't care

2088-418: Is less true than their journals", though André Gide , who thoroughly enjoyed the Journal's accounts of conversations, retorted that that would make the Goncourts' achievement as original artists all the greater. The Goncourts' Journal was started on the same day that they published their first novel, 2 December 1851, which was unluckily also the day that Louis-Napoleon launched his coup d'état , leading to

2175-407: Is regarded with such indulgent admiration, were signed with the name of Goncourt, what a slating it would get all along the line." Zola was one friend who came in for especially barbed comment, since the Goncourts felt that his subject matter and literary techniques had been borrowed from theirs. "The critics may say what they like about Zola, they cannot prevent us, my brother and myself, from being

2262-462: The Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, studying law, a popular course for those not yet decided on any particular career. He began to frequent prostitutes and may have contracted gonorrhea and syphilis during this period. He also began to run up debts, mostly for clothes. Upon gaining his degree in 1839, he told his brother "I don't feel I have a vocation for anything." His stepfather had in mind

2349-801: The Symbolist movement by virtue of his translations of Poe. In 1930, T. S. Eliot , while asserting that Baudelaire had not yet received a "just appreciation" even in France, claimed that the poet had "great genius" and asserted that his "technical mastery which can hardly be overpraised ... has made his verse an inexhaustible study for later poets, not only in his own language". In a lecture delivered in French on "Edgar Allan Poe and France" (Edgar Poe et la France) in Aix-en-Provence in April 1948, Eliot stated that "I am an English poet of American origin who learnt his art under

2436-560: The 1850s, and denouncing it as an art form, advocated its return to "its real purpose, which is that of being the servant to the sciences and arts". Photography should not, according to Baudelaire, encroach upon "the domain of the impalpable and the imaginary". Nadar remained a stalwart friend right to Baudelaire's last days and wrote his obituary notice in Le Figaro . Many of Baudelaire's philosophical proclamations were considered scandalous and intentionally provocative in his time. He wrote on

2523-583: The Arts, 1851–1896 (1971). Goncourt brothers The Goncourt brothers ( UK : / ɡ ɒ n ˈ k ʊər / , US : / ɡ oʊ ŋ ˈ k ʊər / , French: [ɡɔ̃kuʁ] ) were Edmond de Goncourt (1822–1896) and Jules de Goncourt (1830–1870), both French naturalism writers who, as collaborative sibling authors, were inseparable in life. Edmond and Jules were born to minor aristocrats Marc-Pierre Huot de Goncourt and his second wife Annette-Cécile de Goncourt (née Guérin). Marc-Pierre

2610-450: The French literary society of the later 19th century. Their career as writers began with an account of a sketching holiday together. They then published books on aspects of 18th-century French and Japanese art and society. Their histories ( Portraits intimes du XVIIIe siècle (1857), La Femme au XVIIIe siècle (1862), La du Barry (1878), and others) are made entirely out of documents, autograph letters, scraps of costume, engravings, songs,

2697-420: The Goncourts is made up of an infinite number of details, set side by side, every detail equally prominent. While a novel of Flaubert , for all its detail, gives above all things an impression of unity, a novel of the Goncourts deliberately dispenses with unity in order to give the sense of the passing of life, the heat and form of its moments as they pass. It is written in little chapters, sometimes no longer than

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2784-767: The John-the-Baptists of modern neurosis." Some few friends did come in for sympathetic treatment, notably Princess Mathilde Bonaparte , Paul Gavarni , Théophile Gautier , Alphonse Daudet and, initially at least, Gustave Flaubert and Paul de Saint-Victor . The critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve regularly appeared in the Journal, as did the painter Edgar Degas and the sculptor Auguste Rodin . Appearances are also made by Heinrich Heine , Charles Baudelaire , Victor Hugo , Ernest Renan , Hippolyte Taine , Joris-Karl Huysmans , Guy de Maupassant , Alexandre Dumas père and fils , Stéphane Mallarmé , Georg Brandes , Ivan Turgenev and Oscar Wilde . Not surprisingly,

2871-563: The Journal is "an immense machine for transforming lived experience into documentary form", to be used as raw material by the Goncourts when writing their novels. In the 21st century the Journal's repute is as high as ever. The German satirist Harald Schmidt has called it "the greatest gossip in world literature – it's sensational!", and for the historian Graham Robb it is "one of the longest, most absorbing, and most enlightening diaries in European literature". The critic Adam Kirsch attributes

2958-527: The Journal, but he took it up again in time to give a detailed description of life during the Franco-Prussian War , the siege of Paris , and the Commune . Some critics find that the Journal improved when Edmond resumed it without Jules. The many accounts of conversations in the Journal were aided by Edmond's excellent memory, and, according to Flaubert , by Jules' habit of jotting notes on his shirt-cuff on

3045-688: The National Assembly between 1848 and 1851. In 1860, the brothers applied to the Keeper of the Seals for the exclusive use of the noble title "de Goncourt", but their claim was refused. They formed a partnership that "is possibly unique in literary history. Not only did they write all their books together, they did not spend more than a day apart in their adult lives, until they were finally parted by Jules's death in 1870." They are known for their literary work and for their diaries, which offer an intimate view into

3132-469: The Romantic painter Delacroix , Baudelaire called him "a poet in painting". Baudelaire also absorbed much of Delacroix's aesthetic ideas as expressed in his journals. As Baudelaire elaborated in his "Salon of 1846", "As one contemplates his series of pictures, one seems to be attending the celebration of some grievous mystery...This grave and lofty melancholy shines with a dull light.. plaintive and profound like

3219-523: The aegis of Baudelaire and the Baudelairian lineage of poets." Eliot also alluded to Baudelaire's poetry directly in his own poetry. For example, he quoted the last line of Baudelaire's "Au Lecteur" in the last line of Section I of The Waste Land . At the same time that Eliot was affirming Baudelaire's importance from a broadly conservative and explicitly Christian viewpoint, left-wing critics such as Wilson and Walter Benjamin were able to do so from

3306-423: The best. These were published as Histoires extraordinaires ( Extraordinary stories ) (1856), Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires ( New extraordinary stories ) (1857), Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym , Eureka , and Histoires grotesques et sérieuses ( Grotesque and serious stories ) (1865). Two essays on Poe are to be found in his Œuvres complètes ( Complete works ) (vols. v. and vi.). A strong supporter of

3393-451: The charge against Baudelaire, writing in Le Figaro : "Everything in it which is not hideous is incomprehensible, everything one understands is putrid." Baudelaire responded to the outcry in a prophetic letter to his mother: "You know that I have always considered that literature and the arts pursue an aim independent of morality. Beauty of conception and style is enough for me. But this book, whose title ( Fleurs du mal ) says everything,

3480-452: The conversation recorded, and in 1971 the Goncourts' translators George J. Becker and Edith Philips wrote of the emotional detachment, even heartlessness, to be found everywhere in the journal except in those passages that depict Edmond's relationship with his brother and with Daudet. In more recent years Jacques Noiray called it "a modern Comédie humaine of the republic of letters", while according to another literary scholar, David Baguley,

3567-457: The crowd, of the city and of modernity. He says that, in Les Fleurs du mal , "the specific devaluation of the world of things, as manifested in the commodity, is the foundation of Baudelaire's allegorical intention." François Porché published a poetry collection called Charles Baudelaire: Poetry Collection in memory of Baudelaire. The novel A Singular Conspiracy (1974) by Barry Perowne

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3654-400: The earlier 19th century, although its attention to the formal features of verse connects it more closely to the work of the contemporary "Parnassians". As for theme and tone, in his works we see the rejection of the belief in the supremacy of nature and the fundamental goodness of man as typically espoused by the romantics and expressed by them in rhetorical, effusive and public voice in favor of

3741-494: The event, the Académie did neither of these things in 1916, fearing libel actions, though the public were finally allowed to see the manuscripts in 1925. In 1935-1936 the Académie did produce an " édition définitive ", albeit a selective one, in nine volumes, and in 1945 they announced that a complete edition would appear the following year. This proved to be far too optimistic, the first editor, Robert Burnand, still having not brought

3828-597: The first Modernist . Baudelaire was born in Paris, France, on 9 April 1821, and baptized two months later at Saint-Sulpice Roman Catholic Church . His father, Joseph-François Baudelaire (1759–1827), a senior civil servant and amateur artist, who at 60, was 34 years older than Baudelaire's 26-year-old mother, Caroline (née Dufaÿs) (1794–1871); she was his second wife. Joseph-François died during Baudelaire's childhood, at rue Hautefeuille, Paris, on 10 February 1827. The following year, Caroline married Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Aupick  [ fr ] , who later became

3915-413: The following decades. Gautier , writer and poet, earned Baudelaire's respect for his perfection of form and his mastery of language, though Baudelaire thought he lacked deeper emotion and spirituality. Both strove to express the artist's inner vision, which Heinrich Heine earlier stated: "In artistic matters, I am a supernaturalist. I believe that the artist can not find all his forms in nature, but that

4002-811: The foundation and maintenance of the Académie Goncourt . Since 1903, the académie has awarded the Prix Goncourt , probably the most important literary prize in French literature . The first English translation of Manette Salomon , translated by Tina Kover , was published in November 2017 by Snuggly Books . Novels and, by Edmond alone: Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire ( UK : / ˈ b oʊ d ə l ɛər / , US : / ˌ b oʊ d ( ə ) ˈ l ɛər / ; French: [ʃaʁl(ə) bodlɛʁ] ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867)

4089-470: The future theories of the Impressionist painters. In 1846, Baudelaire wrote his second Salon review, gaining additional credibility as an advocate and critic of Romanticism . His continued support of Delacroix as the foremost Romantic artist gained widespread notice. The following year Baudelaire's novella La Fanfarlo was published. Baudelaire was a slow and very attentive worker. However, he often

4176-497: The history of works of Balzac ) (1880), originally an article "Comment on paye ses dettes quand on a du génie" ("How one pays one's debts when one has genius"), in which his criticism turns against his friends Honoré de Balzac , Théophile Gautier , and Gérard de Nerval . By 1859, his illnesses, his long-term use of laudanum , his life of stress, and his poverty had taken a toll and Baudelaire had aged noticeably. But at last, his mother relented and agreed to let him live with her for

4263-419: The hope of ending his dissolute habits. The trip provided strong impressions of the sea, sailing, and exotic ports, that he later employed in his poetry. Baudelaire later exaggerated his aborted trip to create a legend about his youthful travels and experiences, including "riding on elephants". On returning to the taverns of Paris, he began to compose some of the poems of "Les Fleurs du Mal". At 21, he received

4350-416: The imposition of martial law in Paris. In this turmoil the novel passed almost unnoticed. The Goncourts' disappointment over this failure was duly recorded in the Journal, thereby setting the dominant tone for the remaining 45 years. Poor sales, poor reviews, and the undeserved successes of their literary friends are recorded in meticulous detail. "Oh, if one of Dostoyevsky 's novels, whose black melancholy

4437-557: The laboured mannerisms that characterize their novels. Edmond himself admitted that because the journal entries were "hastily set down on paper and not always re-read, our syntax is sometimes happy-go-lucky and not all our words have passports", and they particularly delighted in accurately recording the slanginess and vulgarity of ordinary speech. The collaboration came to an end with Jules' decline and early death from syphilis, recorded by his brother in excruciating detail. When that story drew to its close Edmond initially decided to abandon

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4524-468: The literary and artistic life of Paris during the last half of [the 19th] century", but that its portrait of the close partnership of the Goncourts themselves was of still greater interest. Henry James , writing in The Fortnightly Review , thought that both the Journal and its authors would have been improved if they had not restricted their social life to a narrow coterie: "The Journal…is mainly

4611-604: The long Journal des Goncourt from 1851, which gives a view of the literary and social life of their time. In 1852, the brothers were arrested, and ultimately acquitted, for an "outrage against public morality" after they quoted erotic Renaissance poetry in an article. From 1862, the brothers frequented the salon of the Princess Mathilde , where they mixed with fellow writers like Gustave Flaubert , Théophile Gautier , and Paul de Saint-Victor . In November 1862, they began attending bi-monthly dinners at Magny's restaurant with

4698-407: The mid-19th century. Baudelaire's original style of prose-poetry influenced a generation of poets including Paul Verlaine , Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé . He coined the term modernity ( modernité ) to designate the fleeting experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience. Marshall Berman has credited Baudelaire as being

4785-427: The miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness. This obsessive idea is above all a child of giant cities, of the intersecting of their myriad relations. Baudelaire is one of the major innovators in French literature. His poetry is influenced by the French romantic poets of

4872-584: The modern age's interest in late-19th century French literary life to the Goncourt Journal. By Edmond's will, the manuscripts of the Journal were bequeathed to the Académie Goncourt , itself a creation of the same will, with instructions that they be strictly protected from public scrutiny for 20 years in the vaults of the Bibliothèque nationale de France , after which they were to be made public either by allowing access to them or by publication in print. In

4959-408: The modernity of Manet's subject matter: "almost all our originality comes from the stamp that 'time' imprints upon our feelings." When Manet's famous Olympia (1865), a portrait of a nude prostitute, provoked a scandal for its blatant realism mixed with an imitation of Renaissance motifs , Baudelaire worked privately to support his friend, though he offered no public defense (he was, however, ill at

5046-406: The most minute details of its authors' social life and rendering of them into literary art has been said to anticipate the supposed innovations of Proust. In 1940 Christopher Isherwood confided in his own journal that "Here, gossip achieves the epigrammatic significance of poetry". As late as 1962 one reviewer found it necessary to warn his more delicate readers about the scabrousness of much of

5133-676: The most remarkable are revealed to him in his soul." Gautier's frequent meditations on death and the horror of life are themes which influenced Baudelaire's writings. In gratitude for their friendship and commonality of vision, Baudelaire dedicated Les Fleurs du mal to Gautier. Manet and Baudelaire became constant companions from around 1855. In the early 1860s, Baudelaire accompanied Manet on daily sketching trips and often met him socially. Manet also lent Baudelaire money and looked after his affairs, particularly when Baudelaire went to Belgium. Baudelaire encouraged Manet to strike out on his own path and not succumb to criticism. "Manet has great talent,

5220-632: The nine volumes of Edmond de Goncourt's edition had yet been completed. This was followed by Julius West 's The Journal of the Goncourts in 1908, and by Lewis Galantière 's The Goncourt Journals 1851–1870 in 1937. In 1962 Oxford University Press published Robert Baldick 's much-praised Pages from the Goncourt Journal , reprinted in 1984 by Penguin Books and in 2006 by The New York Review of Books . George J. Becker has also edited and translated two thematic selections: Paris Under Siege, 1870–1871 (1969), and (in collaboration with Edith Philips) Paris and

5307-462: The often backbiting tone of the Journal led to strained relations with Edmond's surviving friends when they came to read his treatment of them in the published volumes. As late as the 1950s the Daudet family, concerned for the reputation of their ancestor Alphonse, were trying to block publication of the complete Journal. A few carefully chosen selections from the Journal were published by the Goncourts in

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5394-533: The poem), betray a move towards considering the poem as a self-referential object, an idea further developed by the Symbolists Verlaine and Mallarmé , who acknowledge Baudelaire as a pioneer in this regard. Beyond his innovations in versification and the theories of symbolism and "correspondences", an awareness of which is essential to any appreciation of the literary value of his work, aspects of his work that regularly receive much critical discussion include

5481-428: The poet. To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions." Baudelaire's influence on the direction of modern French (and English) language literature was considerable. The most significant French writers to come after him were generous with tributes; four years after his death, Arthur Rimbaud praised him in

5568-773: The poet: Baudelaire next worked on a translation and adaptation of Thomas De Quincey 's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater . Other works in the years that followed included Petits Poèmes en prose ( Small Prose poems ); a series of art reviews published in the Pays, Exposition universelle ( Country, World Fair ); studies on Gustave Flaubert (in L'Artiste , 18 October 1857); on Théophile Gautier ( Revue contemporaine , September 1858); various articles contributed to Eugène Crépet's Poètes français ; Les Paradis artificiels : opium et haschisch ( French poets; Artificial Paradises: opium and hashish ) (1860); and Un Dernier Chapitre de l'histoire des oeuvres de Balzac ( A Final Chapter of

5655-410: The previous decade. The poems found a small, yet appreciative audience. However, greater public attention was given to their subject matter. The effect on fellow artists was, as Théodore de Banville stated, "immense, prodigious, unexpected, mingled with admiration and with some indefinable anxious fear". Gustave Flaubert , recently attacked in a similar fashion for Madame Bovary (and acquitted),

5742-622: The project to completion at his death in 1953. The editorship was taken over by Robert Ricatte, and it was finally published in 22 volumes between 1956 and 1959. A new multi-volume edition, the work of a large editorial team under the direction of Jean-Louis Cabanès, began to appear in 2005. No complete translation of the Goncourt Journal into English has ever appeared, but there have been several selections. The first, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt: With Letters and Leaves from their Journals , compiled and translated by Marie Belloc and Marie L. Shedlock , appeared in two volumes as early as 1895, before

5829-502: The publication of Edmond's fourth volume "He listens and thinks he can hear, he looks and thinks he can see…Of the literary élite of his age…the best of their kind, all that he has managed to give us most of the time is a grotesque and often repulsive picture". The seventh volume called forth hostile articles in the Journal des débats and the Courrier français , while Le Figaro reported that

5916-461: The rate of roughly one a year, some being first serialized in L'Écho de Paris . The last volume appeared in May 1896, two months before Edmond's death. Le Figaro called the first volume a masterpiece of conceit. Worse, after three weeks only 2000 copies had been sold, provoking Edmond to say "Really, for a result like that it is not worth risking duels". Le Figaro continued its attacks, writing on

6003-420: The rights to his works and to give lectures. His long-standing relationship with Jeanne Duval continued on-and-off, and he helped her to the end of his life. Baudelaire's relationships with actress Marie Daubrun and with courtesan Apollonie Sabatier , though the source of much inspiration, never produced any lasting satisfaction. He smoked opium , and in Brussels he began to drink to excess. Baudelaire suffered

6090-421: The role of women, the theological direction of his work and his alleged advocacy of "satanism", his experience of drug-induced states of mind, the figure of the dandy, his stance regarding democracy and its implications for the individual, his response to the spiritual uncertainties of the time, his criticisms of the bourgeois, and his advocacy of modern music and painting (e.g., Wagner , Delacroix ). He made Paris

6177-527: The same style. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition : [T]hey invented a new kind of novel, and their novels are the result of a new vision of the world, in which the very element of sight is decomposed, as in a picture of Monet . Seen through the nerves, in this conscious abandonment to the tricks of the eyesight, the world becomes a thing of broken patterns and conflicting colours, and uneasy movement. A novel of

6264-576: The sentence. Victor Hugo wrote to him: "Your fleurs du mal shine and dazzle like stars...I applaud your vigorous spirit with all my might." Baudelaire did not appeal the judgment, but his fine was reduced. Nearly 100 years later, on 11 May 1949, Baudelaire was vindicated, the judgment officially reversed, and the six banned poems reinstated in France. In the poem "Au lecteur" ("To the Reader") that prefaces Les Fleurs du mal , Baudelaire accuses his readers of hypocrisy and of being as guilty of sins and lies as

6351-480: The spot. Ludovic Halévy , who was present at many of these conversations, gave the brothers credit for extreme accuracy, and similarly the narrator of Proust 's Le Temps retrouvé thought that Edmond de Goncourt "knew how to listen, just as he knew how to see"; but some among the Goncourts' contemporaries claimed that the brothers either consciously or unconsciously distorted the conversations they recorded. The painter Jacques Blanche, for example, said that "nothing

6438-668: The subject of modern poetry. He brought the city's details to life in the eyes and hearts of his readers. Baudelaire was an active participant in the artistic life of his times. As critic and essayist, he wrote extensively and perceptively about the luminaries and themes of French culture. He was frank with friends and enemies, rarely took the diplomatic approach and sometimes responded violently verbally, which often undermined his cause. His associations were numerous, including Gustave Courbet , Honoré Daumier , Félicien Rops , Franz Liszt , Champfleury , Victor Hugo , Gustave Flaubert , and Balzac . In 1847, Baudelaire became acquainted with

6525-623: The time). When Baudelaire returned from Belgium after his stroke, Manet and his wife were frequent visitors at the nursing home and she played passages from Wagner for Baudelaire on the piano. Nadar (Félix Tournachon) was a noted caricaturist, scientist and important early photographer. Baudelaire admired Nadar, one of his close friends, and wrote: "Nadar is the most amazing manifestation of vitality." They moved in similar circles and Baudelaire made many social connections through him. Nadar's ex-mistress Jeanne Duval became Baudelaire's mistress around 1842. Baudelaire became interested in photography in

6612-520: The unconscious self-revelations of the time. Their first novel, En 18... , had the misfortune of being published on December 2, 1851, the day of Napoléon III 's coup d'état against the Second Republic . As such it was completely overlooked. In their volumes (e.g., Portraits intimes du XVIII siecle ), they dismissed the vulgarity of the Second Empire in favour of a more refined age. They wrote

6699-577: The will but he was heartened nonetheless that the division with his mother might now be mended. At 36, he wrote to her: "believe that I belong to you absolutely, and that I belong only to you." His mother died on 16 August 1871, outliving her son by almost four years. His first published work, under the pseudonym Baudelaire Dufaÿs, was his art review "Salon of 1845", which attracted immediate attention for its boldness. Many of his critical opinions were novel in their time, including his championing of Delacroix , and some of his views seem remarkably in tune with

6786-492: The works of Poe , in which he found tales and poems that had, he claimed, long existed in his own brain but never taken shape. Baudelaire saw in Poe a precursor and tried to be his French contemporary counterpart. From this time until 1865, he was largely occupied with translating Poe's works; his translations were widely praised. Baudelaire was not the first French translator of Poe, but his "scrupulous translations" were considered among

6873-513: Was a French poet , essayist , translator and art critic . His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhyme and rhythm, containing an exoticism inherited from the Romantics , and are based on observations of real life. His most famous work, a book of lyric poetry titled Les Fleurs du mal ( The Flowers of Evil ), expresses the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrialising Paris caused by Haussmann's renovation of Paris during

6960-626: Was a retired cavalry officer and squadron leader in the Grande Armée of Napoléon I . The brothers' great-grandfather, Antoine Huot de Goncourt, purchased the seigneurie of the village of Goncourt in the Meuse Valley in 1786, and their grandfather Huot sat as a deputy in the National Assembly of 1789. The brothers' uncle, Pierre Antoine Victor Huot de Goncourt, was a deputy for the Vosges in

7047-439: Was banned after only six performances. When they came to write novels, it was with a similar attempt to give the inner, undiscovered, minute truths of contemporary existence. They published six novels, of which Germinie Lacerteux , 1865, was the fourth. It is based on the true case of their own maidservant, Rose Malingre, whose double life they had never suspected. After the death of Jules, Edmond continued to write novels in

7134-434: Was impressed and wrote to Baudelaire: "You have found a way to rejuvenate Romanticism...You are as unyielding as marble, and as penetrating as an English mist." The principal themes of sex and death were considered scandalous for the period. He also touched on lesbianism, sacred and profane love, metamorphosis, melancholy, the corruption of the city, lost innocence, the oppressiveness of living, and wine. Notable in some poems

7221-484: Was in some ways Wagner 's precursor, using the leitmotif and conceiving the idea of the "total art work" ("Gesamtkunstwerk"), both of which gained Baudelaire's admiration. Before even hearing Wagner's music, Baudelaire studied reviews and essays about him, and formulated his impressions. Later, Baudelaire put them into his non-technical analysis of Wagner, which was highly regarded, particularly his essay "Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris". Baudelaire's reaction to music

7308-429: Was passing, as he was later to note in his journals. In the early 1850s, Baudelaire struggled with poor health, pressing debts, and irregular literary output. He often moved from one lodging to another to escape creditors. He undertook many projects that he was unable to complete, though he did finish translations of stories by Edgar Allan Poe . Upon the death of his stepfather in 1857, Baudelaire received no mention in

7395-435: Was passionate and psychological. "Music engulfs (possesses) me like the sea." After attending three Wagner concerts in Paris in 1860, Baudelaire wrote to the composer: "I had a feeling of pride and joy in understanding, in being possessed, in being overwhelmed, a truly sensual pleasure like that of rising in the air." Baudelaire's writings contributed to the elevation of Wagner and to the cult of Wagnerism that swept Europe in

7482-513: Was sidetracked by indolence, emotional distress and illness, and it was not until 1857 that he published Les Fleurs du mal ( The Flowers of Evil ), his first and most famous volume of poems. Some of these poems had already appeared in the Revue des deux mondes ( Review of Two Worlds ) in 1855, when they were published by Baudelaire's friend Auguste Poulet-Malassis . Some of the poems had appeared as "fugitive verse" in various French magazines during

7569-407: Was their Journal. The Journal was produced by a process Edmond called "dual dictation", one brother dictating to the other and each revising the other's work. Their styles were so similar that it is impossible to tell which brother was writing any particular passage. For the most part they wrote the Journal late at night, without much consideration about literary style, and there are therefore few of

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