Au peuple, sur le choléra-morbus par un cousin du Bonhomme Richard (French Edition)

Cuve petite d'osier ou de paille. Cylendrique, ica CYflf Cymaise. CYN Cynips de l'olivier. Ped de lebre Dada. Dalles, toit fait avec des. Dame de onze heures Damer. Campaneta de mon- tagna. Damoiseau, qui fait le. Danse, chef de la. Desbauchaire , arela, Desbavagi. Desbouloiinar se, Desgevitrat, ada. Desbardai , Dcsma- lounat.

Desbardar , Desma- lounar. Descampa ssit , idn. Descamp a s sir. Declaratiu, iva , vl. Descourdurat , ada, Descourdureira. DEF D 'f;ichcr se. Desgauchit , ida , ia. Deslahrament Debifat , ada, Desla- brat. Demandait e , arela. Disputa, JJemele, DesgoussU, ida, ia. Demoiselle de Numi- die. Demoiselle , se donner Demitla. Dameisela , Doumei- sela. Endenlar, Dent de loup. Despreziament , vl Desapreciat, ada. Deshabilat , ada Deshabitar.

Desscssounat , a do. Desservit, ida , ia. Desunit, ida , t'a. Desunion, De s unir. Deulo- sulfate de cui- vre. Deuto- sulfate de so- dium, Deuloxyde de plomb. Desferroulhat , ada, Desvergoundat, ada. Desvestir se, Dehanat, ada. Debanar, Debanaire , arela. Diablatoun , Dia bloulin. Diana , batterie tambour. Dicton , Diton- Dital. Dimanche des bran- dons. Discortes , eza , vl. Dispareissut, uda , Avarit. Dislrach, acha, Dis- trat. Doigt petit , joli. Dolichos de la Chine. Don, titre honorifique Donat, n.

Dorade de la Chine. Dorures, Dorychnium ligneux Daurada, Aurada. Pei Sant Peire, Dorsenavant. Dos , se frotter le. Esquina, Dos, Palussar, se. Doulour ou s , ousa. Dramatique , ica, Dramo. Dressoir pour la vais- selle. DRU Dru , ue. DUB Diihitatiu , iva , vl. Pessa oouliva gavota Durance. Durcit , ida , ia. Duvet , couvert, garni Duvet, Gart. Eau, petit filet d'. Eau de fleur d'oran- ger. Eaux d'arrosage gardien des. Nec , EsbahiL Esbahir. Esbulhit , ida , ia.

Espeloufit , ida , ia. EBU Cougnet de bosc. Clausura de bouissQ- uns. E seau far s'. Echelle, tour de Y. Echeveaiix, mettre en Fchevcanx, mis en. Esclaboussat , ada Eclabousser. Desbanatf ada , Es- cornat. Escornura , Berca- dura. Ecuiner, Ecumeur de mer. Escrud , uda , a. Ecuelh , Esteou, Escudela. Ecurie, Ions les bes- tiaux d'une. EGA Egal , aie. Egueuler, Esbrecat , ada. ELL Ela , ella. Embarras de fil sur travoul. Embrouiller les che veux. Empedoui e Empcdouire s'.

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Emplatrer , Emplas- trar. Emplit , ida , ia. Emporter s'- Emporter s' , facile- ment. Empressement, ijrand Empresser s'. Empresser s', au tra- vail. Encenta , g roua Enceinte,! Rhooumas doou ccr veou. Ancra de la China. Peira de Sont Vincens. Endormit, ida , ia. Enduire de ciioses sales. Enfant jouflu, niais Pastis. Enfants, qui aime les. Enfants , qui les amuse. Enfermer dans le ber- cail. ENG Engageant , anta. Enregoui , ia Engourdir s'. Engourdir s' Engourdir s', par le froid. ENI Enigmatique , ica. ENN Ennemi , ie. Enrayer, faire le pre mier sillon. Envelopper s' Envelopper s' de son manteau.

Envie, faire venir V Envie folle. Espes , es sa. Espandit, ida , ia. Epaules , rompre les. Herba de la guerra. Epinard de Hollande ou sans cornes. Epine , prendre une. Epingles , fixer avec des. Rrable a feuilles de platane. Ergot, monter sar ses. Ped de perdris ERR Errant, anle. Escarabce stercoraire Escarhillard, arde. Esclave , ava, Escogrifo.

Fouit de courre- geas. Hordi quarrat, en herba. ESO liecassina de mar. Masca deis amplovat ESP Espace. Esprit de mende rerus. Essaims, mettre les, dans les ruches. Essor , prendre son. Etable, tous les ani- maux d'une, Etahler. Establit , ida , ia. Etamage, qui a perdu Banc. Estanchar, Four cor ai Pounchier. Ether citrique , etc. Ethuse ache des chiens. Estellas que toum- boun.

Cochit, Etoupe du brisoir. Etoupe abondant en , ou de la nature de. Estourdaria, EstourdU , ida , ta. Eucharistique , ica Auqueli. Erba de Sant Clar. EUX Eleis, elous, elas. Eveiller en sur saut. Eventrer, parlant d un sac trop plein. Exemplari, aria Exemplaire, s.

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Extentiu , iva , vK Extenlion. Extinctiu , iva , vl. Extrait de goulard oa de Saturne. Extraordinairement , Extraordinariament Extravagant, ante. FAB Fabien , n. Talounaire, Faces sious , ousa. Fagota filtrer le vin. Faisan de montagne, Faisandeau. Feneant , antr Feneantas. Fane des ognons, por- reaux.

Fane , qui a beaucoup Fanatique, ica. Farce , filet pour con- tenir la. Pioulin de mounta- gna. Faste Fastidieux, euse Fastueuscment. Faucille, arc de la. Faucon aux pieds rouges. Fauvetle de Provence, Fauvette des roseaux. Faux , manche de la. Faux bois de Sainte Lucie. Bouscarla de canier Couloumbada pichoti Escala sagna. FEC Fecound , ounda. Femme grosse et laide.

Femme simple , sans malice. Femme vielle, gro- gneuse. Femme , se marier , prendre, Amoillerar s', vl. Ferre de chivau Fer blanc. Ferme , monter une t en bestiaux, Acabalar. Ferme pourvue de bestiaux. Fessar , Fouitar, Fouitaire. Feu de Sainl Jean. Feuilles , se couvrir de. Feuil'os , chute des.

Fuec Fuec de jnya. Feoutrar Inu, 27 Feutre. Autre de las caragau- las. Fiente des brebis alta-. Febre inflammaloin Febre jauna. Figuratiu, iva , vl. Figure grosse ou laide. Figure petite , jolit '. Fil qui se croise en tissant. Filer, en train de. Filets, prendre dans ses. Filet de veau ou de mouton. Filet pour la salade. Filtre fait avec de la paille. Finochou, ocha Finaud , aude. Flambage d'un vais- seau. Fleur du grand sei- gneur. Fleur de la passion. Flour de la passion. Fleurit , ida , ia. Flours arlificielas Fleurs de soufre.

Flocon de neige, tom- ber des. FOL Fol , olle. Four an, ana, Fourlan. Fouet, porte charge du. Fouiller, en parlant des pourceaux. Fouler , les raisins , celui qui. Fouler se, une articu- lation. Paraire et Parandu- rier. Fourche , ce que peut contenir une. Fourcher de la langue.

Fripier qui court rues. Fripounet, ela, ot, ota Fripounat, ada. Campanela de moun tagna. Formage sec de cal - leboltes. Froment de Barbarie, Froment gris de souris Froment monocoque. Froumentous , ousa, Frounsit, ida, ia. Fructuous , ousa Frugal, aie. FU Fu , Fue. Fuseau de la lanterne d'un pulls. Fusil , monter un. Ilerha de la cira. Galets, lieu couvert de Codouliera. Galetas j espace vide du Camerat. Galous , ousa Galimafrcya. GAR Garance des teintu- riers. Garantit, ida , ia. Garnit , ida , ia. Gaules , frapper avec des. Generatif, iva , vl. Serbes, tas triangu- ; laire de.

Serbes , les joncher h! Calamendrier , Gcr- mandrea. Gesse sans feuilles Amarun. Gigot, manche Gigot petit. GIG Gigantesque , ca. Giron d'une marche d'escalier. Gironde , dcparle- ment de. Glands , donner des aux pourceaux. Glandulous, ousa, vl Glena. Glisser sur la glace. Gobe-mouche, bec Bouscarla chinsou- t f figue.

Gouitrous, a, Gamat, ada. S06 -Gomme de cerisier. Gonfler en s' embibant. Gorge, petite, rav Gorge de loup. Gorgear , Gavar Gorgeireta. Gousier , Gar ganta. Goujat, valet de jeu de mail. Goujat, mener comme un. Goulut , uda , Gala vard. Gradaliu , iva, vl. Ayranar, Grain de raisin. Graneta Graine de perroquet. Grana de perrouquel Graine de Canar e. Grana de canari Graine de paradis. Grana de paradis Grainetier. Gras cuit , uile. Grassette de monta- gne. Glet, eta, Amolit, ido. Graltcleux , eusc Grattelle. Gratter la terre les pieds. Gratter, qui a l'habi tude de se.

Ilerba aupaure homt Gratis. Graver sur le bois comme les bergers, Escriouselar. Gravier, petit banc de. Gravure de la semelle des souliers. Gressisme, lisez Grc' citme. Grelot gros, des mu lel. Grelots , faire sonner les. Grimace d'un hahil mal fait. Grimpereau de mu- raille.

Grive hasselle de Bar barie. GrossieretaL Grossit, ida, t'a. Mes de mai, Lagoussar. Gueule grosse ou laide. Gueule petite ou mi gnonne. Guichet , petite porte. Guilhemelar M au maridat. Habitable , abla Habitacle. HAI Hait , ida , ia. Aurelha de St-Piarrc Halot. Hardes, gros paquet Haras, Ega. Hardit , ida , ia. Carcagnaire , areU Fayoou. Harmounious , ousa larmonique. Rrpe , jouer de la.

Brausit, ida, ia Havir. Jlebelar , Embesliar, Jlcbraique, ica. Herba deis thouercl Herbar. Hernie , contracter I une. Affrous, ousUf Des- carat. Hiemenis, faire des, Crenilhar. HIL llilaire , n. HIP Kippobosque du che-. Hippobosque du mou- Ion, liarbin. Hirondelle grise des rochers. Bachelard , jouine- home. V erg ou gnous , ousa. Hoquet d'une person ne ivre. HUG Huche d'un pressoir Mastra. TLD Ildegonde , n. Ferre , ila de. Jlluminatiu, iva, v Illumination.

Ilot, Ilota , Ilhot. Imaginatiu, iva, vl Imagination. Impardounalle, abla Imparfait, aite. I Impartial , aie. Jmpatrounisat , ada, Impatrounisar s'. Imperturbable , ablo Imperturhablament. Impoulit , ida , ia.

Impunit, ida, ia Impunilat. INA Inabordable , alla. Incoumbuslible , il Incoumode , da. Jncounut , uda ua. Incorporai, ala, v Incorpourat , ada Incorpourar. Indeterminat , ada Index. Indisciplinat , ad Indiscret, eta. Indissoluble , ubl Indistinct , incta. Indivisible , illa Indoucile,ila. Indu, Ma, Indubitable, abla. Im-promplu , lisez In-promptu. Inscription en faux, jtnscrire. INS Insalubre j hra. Insoutenable , abla, Inspectar. INT Intact , acte. Ilerba de Sant Roch. INV Invalida , ida. Ionique , ica, lOT lolacisme, vl. IRR Irrationnel , elle.

Irritable, abla Irritanl, anta Irritation. Issues naturelles d'un lac. L83 Ivraie del Ivre. Jambon , reste ou os de. Jardinagi , llorlou- la'. Jardinier , fera, Jardiniera. Jauni avec du safran. Jaunir avec du safran. Jean, kan petit ou jeune. Jean de nivela kan-Baptisle , n. Jiet Jet d'une fontaine Raionu. Jeu , se passionner pour le. Jeu, passionne pour le. Poulit , ida , Joli , v Joliel, ette. Joncs, lieu couvert de. JOS Joseph , n.

Joue groste ou laide. Joues en mangant, faire gonfler les. Targar , Louchar , Jostar , vl. Labre , poisson , V. Table latine, au mot Labrus. Lacounique , ie Lacounisme. Lacryma- christ Lacrimal, ala. Lacet , Cordou Lacuna. Lagurier ovale i Mi. JLaid, un peu laid. LAG G cala hr a. Lail, faire venir le, au sein, Avcnar. Lait, qui aime le. Lach deis peissoun Lachairoun, Cardel Laitiroun. Lambinar Biou dcis itas. I Lambourdes, placer des Lambris. Lambruches, lipu couvert de. Velhouloun , Vclhou- roun. Lamprillon Lamprilhoun , Cm reou.

Lange de dessous en laine. Langourous , ousa Langouste commune Langousta. Languissent , enta Lanier. Lard , saler du. Larde , celui qui. Lacrimos , osu vl. LAX L ixatif , ive. Lou, Lous , Las. Lenitiu , ta, vl. Lentisques, lieu vert de. Lous, Lat , Lcis. Bugada, Lissiou Lessive de tanneur Adoub. Lessive , couler la Bugadoun. Lellre grosse cl laide. Lavasse, Lavassi , Raista. Licou , metlre le. Licilation Licite , Fermes , essa. Lilas de Pcx sa. Limpide , ida , Clar. LIN iv in ordinaire, tn purgatif. Castagna de l'argu Liniment.

LinoUe petite , des vignes. Lion, la race des. Courregeola de ba tas. Fi g a doounaz. Rapouchoun salmge LOC Local, aie. Perlas dois accou- chadas. LOD Lods et ventes. Verme-gros dois en- fants. Louison , n pr. Louvoyer en mois- sonnant. LOT Louyal , nia. Long agi , Renda. LUI Li, el, cou. Herha de la routa. LUP Vessa de loup. Luxurious , ousa 37 I. Calarineta deis P'- jiiens.

Canoun , Magdd- leoun. Mai, du mois de Maienc. Mailler , au jeu de j quilles. Main grosse ou laide. Maigrit, ida , ia. Labour ar , Malhar. Maison petite de cara- Baslida. Maison , grosse laide. Maladies des enfants Maladif, ive. Marx de la terra. Malice, donner de Malicieusement. Mal fusent , enta. Manosquin , ina Manca. MAQ M a que. Marguerite , n, pr. Marguerite grande , fleur. Marmite de fer fondu. Marque pour marquer avec de la poix. Marroun , Casla- gnolc Marrounier. Hassucdujeuduiu Mastic, ail Palamard. MAX Maxime , n. Jlerba de la routa. MEL 1 Melampyre des forets. Melancoulique , ica, Melangi.

Mainageamerit Mainagier, icra, Mainagiar. Reglas Mental , ala. Mercier , ter a. Merle couleur de rose Merle solitaire. Coua roussa moun- tagnarda. Mesurer, Mesurer , au jeu de boules. Mesureur, Sictc , d. Murlrier , iera, Aubaresliera. MI Mi , Miech. Midi, faire le repos ou le repas de.

Midi , petil champ avi. I Midi, gros mauvais champ au. Mielous , Mearous, ousa. MIG Mignard , arde. Berba de milla fuelh Herha de l'oli roui Galera. Minutes des notaires Minutie. Mistraras , Usez Mis tralas WT itaine. Moineau de montagne Moinillon. Mousit, ida , ia. Mol, ola, Mouel, ela Molaire. Monarchique, Mounarchique , ica. Murdut, uda , ua, Mourou. Mortaise , faire des.

Mourfoundul,uda, ua Mourfounda ment. Mouret , ela , Moricot. Mor sur a, Mordidura. MOU Mou , molle. Mou de veau , etc. Mouche, jeu de la. Mol, ola , Mouel. Mouche de la viande. Mousca de la vianda. Mousca de la merda. Mouette rieuse aux pieds rouges. Mouette petite , cen- dre'e. Mouette blanche , grande. Mouette aux pieds bleus.

Mouler, mesurer du bois. Gabian mugiliera Fumet, 4. Gautarut, uda , ua. Mousse de mer ou de Corse. Mousser, Mousseux , euse. Moutarde des capu- cins. Mouton de deux ans. Mooure, Mover , vl Mooure se. MUA Mougut, uda, ua. Mufle de veau ou Mu-Tetarelas nier.

Gula de MUG Muge. Mugeou carido ou sabounier. Mule grosse ou laide. Mulet qui a le museau noir. Par et de fais sa. Muriate corrosif de mercure. I MUS Musaraigne. Narcisse de Constan- tinople. Mau de testa, Pissauliech , 2. NAS Nasal , ala. NAT Natal , aie. Natte aux punaises, Nattier. NE Ni , Noun , Ne. Neige, gros jet de. Neige, fonte de la.

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Nisar , Nichar Nicher. Milnucha , santa Nitrate de potasse. Noix dont l'amande reoaue. NOS Maou doou pais. MU Nu , ue. Nuages , se couvrir de. Nuit , milieu de la. NUL iul , ulle. Nul, ula, Degun, una. NDT Nutritif, iva, supl. Escur , ura , Ouscur , ura. EU de la vigne.

Mémoires de Hector Berlioz by Hector Berlioz

Girouflada de cinq fuelhas. OGC ' ger le danois, n. Oignon gros ou mau- vais. Oiieau gros ou laid. Olives, chansons de ceux qui cueillent j les. Generally draughtsmen are naturalists guided by reason, whereas colourists, whose method is analogous to that of nature, are guided by temperament. The differences had been set out before, but now the judgement is uncompromisingly negative: With this inauspicious aphorism Ingres is explicitly brought back into the discussion.

His drawing is not called into question; indeed, he is said to draw admirably well, and rapidly, producing in his sketches the ideal naturally; in a sense he draws even better than Raphael, the great ancestor and king of draughtsmen. Baudelaire leaves the matter there, with the impression that there is somehow a mismatch between the sensuality of the figures and the quality of light in which they are placed.

Far from being presented with a coherent French school, the reader finds one that is split down the middle—with, in addition, figures like Vernet and Scheffer, whose presence in any harmony could only render it derisory. He begins by setting him against the great painters of the previous generation: Whatever their aims, whatever the solemnity of their subjects, whatever the inadequacy of their colour and use of light, they had the great merit of renewing in French art the taste for heroism and stoic virtue.

But they were not as Greek and Roman as they might have intended, especially the latter two, in whose work there are signs of future Romanticism. The summing-up is without mercy: On the contrary, it is essentially dynamic: It is linked to good taste, enabling us to avoid the bad and choose the good in art. Above all it is the faculty which activates all the others: It is both analysis and synthesis p.

In painting it is imagination that teaches the moral meaning of colour, outline, and scent. It presides over the doctrine of correspondence and synesthesia: Such a definition contrasts strongly with what might be called the classical view which saw imagination, like memory, as the handmaid of the intellect, providing images of past experience for it to work upon; without it, the intellect could never make headway, but would always be starting anew. Without the control and the legitimation of the intellect, however, it gives rise to chimera and follies.

Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, no. As for Delacroix, the world is a vast stock of images and signs which the imagination must digest and transform. It would be wrong, however, to think that the workings of the imagination are purely subjective, expressing only the temperament of the artist. Imagination, we are told, created analogy and metaphor at the beginning of the world. What aims does such an artist set himself? Not passion and sentiment, not great historical works, neither the sublimity of Christian inspiration, nor the ferocity of pagan subjects: Nature should, of course, be corrected, amended, represented as a whole, but Ingres is guilty of deceit and sleight of hand, so that his figures are often lacking in proportion and harmony in the sense intended by Lavater: Again, nothing is specified, but it takes little ingenuity to detect the once much praised Grande Odalisque, whose right breast appears to have been neatly pocketed like a billiard ball under the armpit, and whose navel appears too high, especially if one were to imagine her standing up.

On the contrary, it is reasoned, systematic, and comprehensive. Lacking the temperament which makes for the fatality of genius, Ingres is inevitably also of an eclectic disposition. His works draw upon multifarious sources: The chapter ends with the censure of two of his most famous works. He quotes with approval Heine p. A painting can no more be an assemblage of diverse elements observed in the external world than a poem can be created by the arbitrary juxtaposition of words from a dictionary. The result is that, instead of artists, there are only specialists, painters of the sun, moon, furniture, flowers, with infinite subdivisions, as in an industry, so that collaboration would become essential to make any one composition.

The conservative Baudelaire is unlikely to have been more indulgent, and may well have found unacceptable or baffling the incongruity of gesture and situation, and the irreverent hint of irony which underpins it. The black coat, symbolizing equality, has its political beauty; it has also its poetic beauty, which is the expression of the public soul: Here indeed is an array of bourgeois, country bourgeois admittedly, in black coats, celebrating a burial.

But that is as Baudelairean as the painting gets. No sense here of heroism, no sense of depth, emotion, spiritual energy, or Balzacian will-power, no sense of the anguish of bereavement and mourning. In addition the horizontality of the composition twice as long as it is high , the stasis of the figures, and their close-knit separation one from the other, play down any sense of a transcendence, which in any case seems mocked by the futile verticality of the crucifix set against a watery sky.

The figures seem less to be celebrating a funeral, than going through the perfunctory mechanics of disposing of a corpse. But there is no such thing. Courbet had been refused a place in the exhibition and had set up his own show in a baraque nearby. On the contrary, twoedged, it damns, deftly, tellingly, with praise carefully directed to miss the mark. See, for example, p. It extends to his view of contemporary culture and, beyond that, to his religious pessimism: The idea of progress and the Voltairian optimism of the prevailing ideology have contributed to a spiritual decline, in which religious faith has also foundered.

If there is salvation in this otherwise austere mental universe, it is to be found in suffering, in art, or in their combination. A well-turned and challenging aphorism in the Journaux intimes approximates to this idea: By an extraordinary sleight of hand, he is able to extend this idea to Delacroix himself in the obituary essay of 5 Oc.

Here is how he describes it in the Salon of the same year: Without the title, the spectator would be bereft of any clue as to its meaning. Here, in an acute form, is a problem which arises from time to time in relation to Delacroix, the problem of how to interpret the work.

This may at first seem strange, since so much of his production is of a literary and historical nature, whose principal characteristic, at least traditionally, might be thought to be its readability and transparency. Quoted in Johnson, Paintings, iii. Teodor de Wyzewa Paris: The interpretation could hardly be more Baudelairean, pointing as it does to the ambiguities of life, death, and divine love, depicted not as abstractions but as an overwhelming physical sensation in which the erotic element is barely concealed.

The second contains his definition of the beautiful: The Romantic, on the contrary, sees it as tragic separation, and an incitement towards the restoration of a unity lost. His inability to accept this condition causes him to sell his soul, or lose it in impossible aspirations: The novelist and the poet celebrate a yearning that can have no outlet except in art; less lucid, but equally torn, Emma is duped by the illusion of the immanence of the ideal in reality. It is a powerful image of repentance,21 and indeed of carnality, but much more readable, and to that extent more conventional, than its mysterious and fragmentary counterpart.

Again, it is surprising that he should say so little about this extraordinary work, which represented what was most typiMadame Bovary Paris: By his use of soliloquy at crucial points in the play, by his reporting of off-stage action, and above all in preserving a strict adherence to the unities of time, place, and action, Byron intended his play to be in the neoclassical mode of the French, of Alfieri and Grillparzer.

Byron departs very considerably from the original, making of Sardanapalus a less extravagant figure and, above all, reducing the final scene to the suicide of Sardanapalus and his favourite Myrrha on a funeral pyre. McGann and Weller, vol. He is aware of the unpopularity of this notion in present English literature; but it is not a system of his own, being merely an opinion, which, not very long ago, was the law of literature throughout the world, and is still so in the more civilised parts of it. It is possible that Delacroix found inspiration in an Indian source for the enormous couch upon which the Assyrian king is placed, with its elephant heads at each corner, and there may be some Etruscan influence in the depiction of his treasures.

But the lack of attribution suggests that he concocted the passage in the Salon catalogue for his own ends, to give a spurious historical authenticity to the scene as he portrayed it. In any case, the search for sources should not leave one blind to the use Delacroix invariably makes of them, and to the extent that they serve as a point of departure for his own prolific and uninhibited imagination. The smoky-green background reveals a breach in the palace wall through which the rebels are about to pass, while the rest of the picture comprises the richest jewels, arms, silver, and gold which provide one of the most extraordinary still lifes to be seen in any picture.

Black, brown, orange, yellow and above all blood red predominate in this immense canvas, which disorients the spectator not just because of its extravagant dimensions and the proliferation of incident, but by its impenetrability and its extraordinary use of perspective. For many the painting appeared incomprehensible because of the strangeness of the treatment and, above all, the sheer proliferation of incidents.

Furthermore, many of the incidents seem allusive, fragmentary, or incomplete: For an account of various treatments of the story from the Renaissance to Romanticism, see J. The Death of Sardanapalus London: Whatever the explanation of these defects, of which Delacroix himself was aware, there can be little doubt that for the viewer they increase the mystery and the attraction of the work, which at once overwhelms by its dimensions and draws one in by its mystery and its disturbing representation of spatial depth. See also his discussion of Christ on the Sea of Galilee, ibid.

He thus preserves some of the spatial tensions of the Sardanapalus but resolves them by integrating them more fully into a dynamic unity. Sardanapalique is also found. In the sixteenth century, the usage had been sardanapalin. But it is with the figure of Sardanapalus himself that Baudelaire would have felt an inescapable affinity. The posture is languid and the dress tends towards the effeminate,37 but what is most remarkable is his distraction and apparent indifference to the carnage around him. His gaze goes unseeingly beyond the stabbed concubine whose glazed and now sightless eye is lifted towards him, seeming to meet in indifference that of the distraught man with the outstretched arm on the right of the picture.

What Delacroix has given us is a version of the Romantic aesthete, whose indifference, rooted in ennui, is not without a tinge of cruelty. Baudelairean ennui, or spleen, as he more often calls it, is precisely a pathological apprehension of this imperfection, rooted not just in the intellect but in the physiology and in the nervous system. Escape is brief and illusory, being sought in perfect moments, in ecstasies and intoxications of the senses which momentarily recreate the conditions of oneness, only to be followed by a return to imperfection and an increased sense of ennui.

Disenchantment is inevitable since eternity cannot be made permanent in the instant, the infinite within the finite, being within becoming. It may be that the aspirations of the soul are infinite, but the body and the senses are not, and he who seeks the one within the other condemns himself to an even greater sense of imperfection, an ever deeper immersion in spleen. It is linked in the first place to the notion that, whatever the circumstances, life is not worth living, often because it fails to live up to the superior nature, intellect, insight or sensibility of the protagonist.

It is linked also to a morbid preoccupation with the satanic and with the unnatural, and thus finds its place in the literature of the time alongside themes of madness, incest, homosexuality, criminality, or the taking of the side of Satan against God. In Christian theology suicide is the sin without remission, against hope and against the holy spirit, essentially an unnatural crime, the punishment for which is to be placed only two circles of hell from Judas, frozen in the icy coldness of his treachery.

The death of Sardanapalus reflects then the ambiguities of eroticism and death, the Romantic obsession with suicide, but also the disdainful silence of the superior individual faced with the inadequacies of the material world and the blind powers that ultimately overwhelm him.

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The poem describes the Don, surrounded by the protest and admonitions of those he has wronged, impenitent and in a posture of calm indifference: The dandy is, of course, a modern version of the Stoic, and as Baudelaire himself says, stoicism is a religion which has but one sacrament, which is suicide. The drama of the Garden of Olives has attracted the attention of many writers and poets. A similar affinity no doubt drew Baudelaire to the murals Delacroix painted for la chapelle des Saints-Anges in Saint-Sulpice towards the end of his career. What is remarkable here is not so much what Baudelaire says as what he refrains from saying.

He seems instead to be 47 Vitet, erroneously, had blamed the full light of day in the work which he thought out of keeping with the dawn light of the account in Genesis. See Johnson, Paintings, v. The implication is that by dwelling on the material aspects of the scene, the painter, and the critic in his turn, have not imposed an arbitrary closure on the work, but have left its suggestiveness open to the viewer. If there is symbolism it is present only as a virtuality, operating in a manner similar to the elliptic symbols of later generations of artists, painter and critic being content to respect the simplicity and restraint of the biblical story.

It is because for both men painting is the concrete art par excellence that it must be faithful to its means and seek to express the spiritual, not as an abstraction, but as something anchored in the physical. The effect is of light and darkness, clarity and mystery, befitting the turning-point in the fortunes of Jacob and the children of Israel. Another suggestive contrast is between the serpentine movement of the caravan of animals and people, and the supernatural struggle between the isolated figures of Jacob and the angel.

Seen from a distance, it appears of an ordinary size; but from underneath its branches the impression is quite different: It embodies that sense of the numinous which caught the imagination of Lamartine and Hugo. It is also because, as with his own poetry, the 49 As an obstacle to be passed. But this interpretation is perhaps too restrictive. In his invitations to the inauguration of the chapel Delacroix describes the painting, as is his wont, in the most factual manner: It is the struggle of the elect with the powers that surpass him, caught at the crucial moment when the angel lames him by touching the nerve in his thigh, a moment of defeat soon turned to Johnson, Paintings, v.

Guy Dumur, Delacroix romantique Paris: Impressed by its dramatic magnificence, he finds, however, that the light from the upper part of the window makes it difficult for the spectator to enjoy the painting properly. Baudelaire notes the splendour of the polychrome temple, the horse holding Heliodorus down with its hoof, the ferocity of the whipping, and the beauty and serenity of the angels, but makes no mention of the extraordinary posture of the angel swooping down vertically to punish his victim.

There is no mention of whipping, and the miscreant, who unlike Heliodorus persists in his revolt, is seized by the hair and belaboured with punches. But if Delacroix painted the treasure and jewels of the temple with the same brio and sensuality as in Sardanapalus, it was not out of some kind of Luciferan desire to pillage the temple, but because jewels are alluring, otherwise they would not have attracted the covetousness of Seleucus and his messenger Heliodorus. If this were not so, both vice and virtue would be gratuitous, without justification or merit. On the contrary, his posture in defeat seems ignoble, and it is difficult to make out whether he is handsome like the divine horseman or not, since his countenance is mostly hidden.

But even if one were to admit that he is handsome, this would not be a ground for thinking the painting ambiguous. It would merely show that Delacroix, like Baudelaire, did not indulge in an oversimplified depiction of the vicious as ugly and the virtuous as beautiful. What can be generally accepted is that the tripartite work shows three kinds of revolt and their outcome. Saint Michel stands on high on a cosmic level, while the Heliodorus and Jacob on the walls are rooted in human time and the real world. But the contrast between them does not impair the unity of the total work, as Hannoosh argues it does.

But Romantic excess does not necessarily imply Luciferan or Heliodoran revolt. Their orthodoxy shines through the bravura, for what Delacroix has produced for the chapel of the holy angels is three instances of the intervention of divine messengers and a synthetic view of revolt, culminating in that of Jacob as a sign of grace and election.

Of the background Baudelaire writes: The absence of minor detail contributes to the universal quality of the painting, as does the absence of any of the conventional Christian symbolism that Baudelaire thought marred contemporary religious painting. His commentary contains a puzzling reference to Hamlet: What further specific links there may be with Hamlet might indeed, as Pichois suggests, be fruitfully sought in the lithographs, most convincingly, I would suggest, in the one depicting Hamlet and his mother, in which her features and the tension of her body have much in common with those of the Virgin.

Bullemont identifies the elegant young man as St John, which seems implausible given his modern apparel. What would be more daring and more plausible in this most profound of paintings would be to suggest a connection between the figures and the Danish prince, in particular in the graveyard scene, where he meditates on death in the most general manner, before his shocked recognition that it is Ophelia who is to be buried.

The suggestion of other possible links with the play continues, however, to puzzle the critical will. He was not perhaps thinking of anything specific, but rather of a similarity of intellectual climate. Though far removed in time, Dante and Shakespeare were judged by Baudelaire, Delacroix, and many of their contemporaries to be eminently modern in sensibility and in manner. For modern artists the Divine Comedy bore witness to the exalted mission of the artist as visionary, as the Orphic explorer of the mysteries of death and the underworld, captured with such passion and drama in La Barque de Dante, which Baudelaire greatly admired.

The Case of Baudelaire Chapel Hill: In addition to any specific similarities with the Hamlet works, what for Baudelaire particularizes this religious painting is freedom of execution and naturalness and passion of gesture. Like the actor and the poet, the painter does not have to believe in religion to produce great religious paintings. What he needs above all is imagination and a belief in the reality of what he is depicting during the execution of the work p. The spectator is not given the impression of being installed in some safe, neutral position outside the painting.

This is not just the death of Christ; it is ours. Even she is universalized, being referred to not by name or as the Virgin but as the Mother, as if in some way she were the mother of all: The titles of the paintings discussed so far indicate an explicit religious intention. Other paintings are interpreted by Baudelaire as being implicitly religious. Baudelaire is aware of the impression made by this journey on the mind of the painter: Other critics have pointed out how the Moroccan journey brought to his work a documentary realism and at the same time a new balance and classicism.

Pierre Daix has caught this aspect of the work extremely well: At most he is aware of different styles dictated by subjectmatter rather than by evolution, as the following passage from the Exposition universelle indicates: His criticism is creative, responding to the poetry, the mystery, the suggestiveness and sensuality of this mundus muliebris,86 and producing a kind of poetic prose, a literary analogue of the visual art. Where the realist might attribute the suggestion of sadness to the social and cultural position of the women who cannot 86 The expression occurs in ch.

Even the Koranic text on the curtain indicates less a realist notation than the lure of the mysteries of an alien culture. Here there is no outside source of light but a warm suffused glow that seems to emerge from behind the woman on the right of the picture; there is no door, and the depths are screened by various draperies, the mirror on the wall is devoid of reflection, there are very few objects and details to stimulate the imagination, and the black servant is much more static, seeming to merge with the featureless curtain she is lifting in order to depart.

Of the three seated women, only the one on the right maintains her inwardness, the other two appearing more aware of their surroundings. Quoted by Daguerre de Hureaux, Delacroix, p. On the contrary, each object is an invitation to an inner journey. Baudelaire shows himself aware of such misgivings by admitting that, generally speaking, Delacroix does not paint pretty women, not at any rate from the point of view of fashionable society, since they almost all appear ill, and that theirs is an inner beauty.

Champfleury Son Regard et celui de Baudelaire Paris: Clark The Absolute Bourgeois, London: The theme of exile and abandonment, common to both painter and poet, most often appears to go beyond its immediate or specific cause to take on a metaphysical dimension. Here is a great historical and literary scene, originally described by Villehardouin in the Conqueste de Constantinople. Quel ciel et quelle mer!

The action and the event itself which would have occupied the attention of the historian are subordinated to these visual elements; and yet typically, paradoxically, and perhaps inevitably in this most literary of art critics, Shakespeare is brought in at the end, not just in order that Delacroix should be seen to take his place among the greatest creative minds, but because there is a definite and identifiable similarity between them.

The gestures he picks out are never frozen or stylized, but are integral to the intensity and movement of the scene, like the fluttering draperies and the vibration of colour. Stasis is inimical to imagination, which may be a reason why Baudelaire is indifferent to still life. Here again Delacroix has departed considerably from his sources, the Tristia and the Epistulae ex Ponto in which the banished Roman poet laments his lot among a barbarous people in an inclement land: Among such men, alas!

Would he might live and not die among them, so that his shade might yet be free of this hated place! His comments are relatively few and general, evoking the posture of the exiled poet: Epistulae ex ponto London: Zacharie Astruc writes of it: There follows a meditation on exile, the inability of talent to ensure happiness, and the ingratitude of Rome towards its illustrious poet, whose memory is still kept by the barbarous people who welcomed him as an Orpheus amid its forests. The phrases in italic are taken from the epilogue to Atala, so that in this brief passage we have an allusion to three works by Chateaubriand.

The only painting by Delacroix inspired by Chateaubriand is Les Natchez, which interestingly represents a scene from the epilogue to Atala: There is a long tradition, going back to Dante, which sees Virgil as a link between the pagan and the Christian worlds. In Les Martyrs, in the symbolic liberation of Eudore at the tomb, there is a similar suggestion that for Chateaubriand, Ovid, who is described as an Orpheus figure, has replaced the writer of Book VI of the Aeneid.

This perhaps explains why Baudelaire should strive to introduce into this remarkable commentary allusions delicate and unobtrusive no doubt to Christianity and its inevitable sense of disproportion between the temporal and the eternal. By multiplying the allusions to Chateaubriand and above all by placing his commentary at the end of the section on religious paintings, he has drawn this essentially pagan work into a context far removed from the intentions of its author, by what must be seen as a calculated rhetorical strategy to Christianize it.

Baudelaire, who must have identified himself with this exiled and unrecognized Orpheus, develops the sense of a correspondence by interpreting the painting not just as a moment in the unhappy life of the poet, but as the visual and pictorial counterpart to the poetic world of Ovid: The suggestion of fertility emanates of course from the mare, with its proud and powerful head caught in a dramatic movement towards the viewer. Harshly criticized at the time for being so out of proportion as to be unreal, it was judged by one wit to be the partner of the Trojan Horse.

This question of thematic analogues has to be handled with care. The allusion is to the Metamorphoses, where the creator orders man to fix his gaze on the skies and stars, but the intention is clearly ironic, since the swan seems to be reproaching God instead of finding a justification for its suffering. The point of departure is the extraordinary image in the first stanza: By spreading out over the three dimensions of past, present, and future, memory brings about a transfiguration of time, which loses its threat, its uncertainties, and its irreversibility.

Through the echantment of memory, the poet finds himself in a time which is, so to speak, circular; the past is projected into a future that is both open to joy and closed to anxiety, and the future is endowed with the reassuring certainty of the past while still keeping its appeal to adventure and novelty. Cf the following statement in the first essay on Gautier: It is principally in his art criticism that Baudelaire exploits the idea of a metaphorical reaction to a painting or drawing.

Georges Poulet, La Conscience critique Paris: Even here however, as with the writings on art, the idea of a metaphorical criticism has to be approached with some circumspection, since what is involved is not so much a critical method as a prescriptive aesthetic which seeks to distinguish between good and bad contemporary art. The so-called critical method is in fact merely the inevitable counterpart to the prescriptive aesthetic.

He can strive to present his subject as faithfully as possible to a wider public, or use him to define his own attitudes and ideas, and to promulgate them. Though it is by no means his only posture, Baudelaire does practise a criticism of identification, nowhere more successfully than when he is writing about a form of art other than literary, in the essay on Wagner, or in his pages on Delacroix, which involve a discourse that is the critical counterpart of the high moments of lyricism in Les Fleurs du Mal, similarly dominated by echoes and analogies.

Gita May has perfectly understood his method: Baudelaire appears, already considerably aged, in an aristocratic posture, his abundant though greying hair swept back from the forehead to show its breadth and nobility, his lips set in a stoical expression befitting the Horatian moral of a man whom the ruins of the world would strike unafraid. Dignified, haughty even, sad, above all impassive, there is nothing in the portrait to suggest laughter, and certainly not the ironic and revolted laughter promised by the inscription. But what is even more puzzling is that there are moments when our appreciation of the power and clarity of this remarkable essay is replaced by a feeling of unease before a certain slippage in the terms used, by ambiguities in tone and obscurities in the development of the principal ideas.

The first moment of unease comes early in the essay, at the beginning of the second section, after the brief two-page introduction. The opening paragraph is so odd as to be worth quoting in its entirety: The essence of his argument is that the maxim is a conflation of two passages. In the first Bossuet refers to a verse in Ecclesiasticus: But here with Baudelaire the maxim appears at first as a puzzle, requiring several pages to spell out and make explicit the idea which its perfect form both contains and partly conceals.

The maxim which set out to distinguish the Sage from other human beings seems curiously to reduce him to their level, casting doubt on its own validity in the process. The young affect the wisdom of their elders, while those same elders give themselves the allure and elegance of the young. But it may be asked what good purpose can be served by such an irony at a crucial point in a philosophical essay on laughter, in which the poet is bent upon convincing his reader of the validity of his argument? Could it be part of the legendary wisdom of Solomon? If so, it would be easy enough to check.

But no, since it was probably a quotation from another source. It seems to have something of the intellectual rigour of Bossuet, but then the elliptic style suggests Bourdaloue. The implication is surely that the maxim is to be found in none of these authorities, all of which are plausible but none wholly satisfactory. With more than a suspicion of arrogance, and only a semblance of modesty, what Baudelaire is doing here, tongue in cheek, is to give his maxim the prestige and the authority of the spiritual giants among whom he is implicitly ranking himself. His sleight of hand is strategic: But the disproportion is clear, and the irony bends back on the author, who appears to be claiming a wisdom beyond his age, on a par with that of these great canonical figures.

By referring solely to the Christian tradition, he has subtly disposed his reader to think along such lines and to accept his theory more readily. His rhetorical trick is to suggest that the maxim came first, and that his obsession with its tormenting obscurities gave birth to the theory, whereas the truth is that he has fabricated the maxim in order to persuade the reader of the excellence of his theory, which is grounded, not in some moral speculation, but in metaphysics and theology, in the certainties of the Christian view of the human condition.

If the Sage fears laughter as he fears temptation, it is because there is a hidden contradiction between his nature as Sage and the primordial nature of laughter. His admiration for them would be difficult to exaggerate. The joke is that he is indirectly applying these qualities to himself. If the Sage does not laugh readily, it stands to reason, if one inverts the proposition and considers its antithesis, that laughter is the mark of madmen and fools, implying always some degree of ignorance and weakness. The synthesis follows without delay in words that are powerfully axiomatic: What is interesting about the conduct of the argument is that at each stage Baudelaire is moved, a sceptic might say forced, to lay down benchmarks from Christianity, particularly at the weak or doubtful points: It is clear that without this Christian display the argument would lack the force and momentum to take it through its various stages to the desired conclusion.

Not all Christian writers, however, disapprove of laughter. Ecce Adam quasi unus ex nobis. Ce qui est une ironie sanglante et sensible dont Dieu le piquoit vivement, selon S. Chrysostome et les interpretes. For confirmation of the theory, argues Baudelaire, one has only to think of the laughter of madmen, whose madness lies most often in the idea of their own superiority, or to imagine Virginie contaminated by the capital, gaining in knowledge of the world, and developing with the idea of her superiority the capacity for laughter.

Why, he asks, do we laugh at someone falling in the street? The effect of falling is to precipitate our walker from the time of projects and efficacious action into that of imperfection and absurdity. Here he was, hastening towards some action or project belonging to a whole system of values, decisions, judgements, and choices that form the very stuff of his life, giving it both meaning and direction. And the more he is serious, eager, absorbed, the more sudden and violent will be the convulsions of the laugher.

That suddenness plays an important role in the production of laughter has been noticed by many commentators, Stendhal and Hobbes among them, as we have seen. To realize this, one need only compare the unforeseen and hysterical convulsions of unrestrained laughter with the sardonic grimace which is but a pretence, without gaiety or convulsion, or indeed with the laugh of the villain of melodramas with which Baudelaire clinches his theory: In this magnificent story, which Baudelaire had planned to translate, Melmoth, condemned to 21 Cf.

At this point Baudelaire brings out the full significance of the convulsion in laughter, which had been noticed by other thinkers but not understood. But it also indicates an inherent moral weakness. His laugh is the result of his double and contradictory nature, infinitely greater than other men, and infinitely vile in relation to absolute Truth and Goodness. That laughter should indicate the superiority of the laugher and his physical and moral weakness can, of course, be 24 Melmoth the Wanderer Harmondsworth: For fallen humanity there can be no safe position ethically, since it can always be corrupted by pride, or by a modesty that can never clear itself of some trace of falseness.

Take the problem of motive, which provides an interesting parallel with laughter. Good deeds engender conceit and self-satisfaction, but my awareness of that can never free me totally from pride, since my admission that my motive is tinged with imperfection becomes in turn a cause of pride and superiority over those who are not similarly aware.

I am modest in the admission that my motive can never be perfect, but pride of such knowledge immediately ensues, and the process can repeat itself in an endless descending spiral of superiority and imperfection. Augustinians, Jansenists, Pascal have maintained that salvation cannot be through good works, but through grace.

And so it is with laughter. His quip shows that the laugher cannot escape, any more than the person who would wish to convince one of the purity of his motives. It has been said that the function of the poet in Les Fleurs du Mal is to record a spiritual journey, the travailing of a soul in the modern world, and to live out for his hypocritical fellow human beings the realities of their condition.

Although Baudelaire makes no reference to the Ancients or to the many treatises of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he was aware of the main issues raised and the possible approaches to them. The treatise is in three parts, in which three philosophes, Destouches, Fontenelle, and Montesquieu, seek to justify their theory against views they consider untenable.

Rosemary Lloyd, Baudelaire et Hoffmann: It is borne out also by the similarity of certain ideas and formulations, but most of all by the central thesis. It claims that laughter was sent to earth by the devil, but appeared under the mask of joy to facilitate its acceptance. It is the story of Gwynplaine, a victim in childhood of the comprachicos, who maim and distort human bodies and faces in order to show them as grotesques at fairs.

Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World Bloomington: See Die Nachtwachen des Bonaventura: His hideously deformed countenance is made to contain a continual grimace: He is beloved of the beautiful Dea, who, mercifully blind through having been born in an appropriately pure snowstorm on Chesil beach, sees only his soul. It led to an abuse of antithesis and a lack of psychological subtlety, as indeed Baudelaire himself was to observe. It was the special merit of writers like Flaubert and Baudelaire himself to view comedy and tragedy dialectically.

Hugo himself had seen the genius of Shakespeare as lying in the use of antithesis. It does not represent a complex psychology, but the revolt and subversive power of the individual or social group. There is a strong sense in which the laughter of the buffoon, servant, or underdog is an affirmation of their dignity in the face of oppression.

It is a negation of their status as underlings and an affirmation of their future and place in the world. Indeed, the laughter and the carnivalesque in Hugo have much the same function as defined by Bakhtin, who sees the latter as revolution itself: The destructive humour of Jean-Paul Richter is directed against all reality. But the title is perfectly true to the subject matter and evinces nothing in the way of self-conscious irony.

His project not to write a treatise, but merely to give the reader some reflections on the subject is a literary commonplace of authorial modesty. Furthermore, a treatise is traditionally a short work, see to name but a few Joubert, Poinsinet de Sivry, Roy, Scudo, and Voltaire. Leakey, Baudelaire and Nature Manchester: The first problem arises from the distinction between laughter and joy. Baudelaire admits that one could object to his theory that laughter is diverse, that we do not always laugh out of superiority, and that many things amuse us which are innocent and have nothing to do with sinfulness.

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But this, he argues, is only the case if we fail to distinguish joy from laughter. Joy is one, whereas laughter is double, hence the convulsions. To make the point more forcefully he contrasts the diabolical laugh of Melmoth with the joy of children,49 which opens like a flower: But no sooner has he established this vital distinction than he undermines it by a typically ironic soubresaut, which, reminiscent of the prose poems, passes abruptly from the myth of the child to its fallen reality: It seems a fundamental weakness in the argument that joy which is one should at the same time be held to be double.

If the joy of children, so near to undivided nature, is thus contaminated, what hope can there be for the so-called innocent amusements and joys of adults, a fortiori of poets and artists? It involves not so much an imitation of nature as a new creation, and this new creation can give rise to the helpless hilarity which some have difficulty in associating with the poet. It is the comic with all its convulsions, taken to an extreme. But the contradiction is flagrant. How can there be oneness in convulsion, joy within an awareness of the Fall? How can one feel superior to nature while being at the same time a prey to irony and derision?

As if sensing an objection, Baudelaire warns us that we must not find this idea too subtle. But here again, as with the joy of children, Baudelaire feels obliged to qualify in a paragraph which Professors Leakey52 and Pichois p. This qualification has all the signs of an afterthought, reinforcing a vital point that had got lost in the course of the argument and without which it would have appeared that the grotesque was breaking away from the synthesizing notion of the Fall of man.

He fails, however, to see the contradiction in the argument. And this omission is all the more striking as we have just read the splendid passage evoking Virginie in her tropical, earthly paradise, a passage which, incidentally, resembles the description of Immalee in Melmoth. It seems that Baudelaire had difficulty in fitting the grotesque and the laughter it engenders into his overall theory. Leakey surely sensed this when he suggested that the specific references to the doctrine of original sin were interpolated at a later date than the original drafting of the essay.

But this would involve a very drastic solution to the problem; for if all references to the doctrine were to be removed, we would be left with no theory of laughter at all, apart possibly from the distinction between the two types of comic, and a handful of anecdotes and allusions. The doctrine of the Fall, an essential and inevitable part of his Catholic education, also suited his temperament, and it is likely that at the time of writing it coexisted in his mind with other less sombre notions.

In the description of Virginie there had been a glancing, possibly ironic, reference to the socialist belief in a future earthly Melmoth, ch. She could not be conscious of fear, for nothing of that world in which she lived had ever borne a hostile appearance to her. With the increase of intelligence in civilised nations comes a corresponding increase in caricature and laughter, and yet an ultracivilized intelligence will rise beyond laughter. Clearly, Baudelaire is referring to himself and to the heights of lyricism in Les Fleurs du Mal.

However, the contradiction remains, and this curious coexistence of a belief in the Fall and its ultimate demise, which finds a parallel in the ideas of laughter as convulsion and laughter as joy, does little to alleviate the unease aroused by the essay. It could be that the essay, which was to have as its title Histoire de la caricature, then Une physiologie du rire, was written both hurriedly and over a long time, creating startling transitions or hiccoughs in the flow of ideas.

Take, for example, the two passages where Baudelaire sums up the argument, the first occurring at the beginning of the fourth section, only one-third of the way through the essay. Here he rehearses for a second time the idea of the satanic origin of laughter revealing the contradictory nature of man, an idea which he has just abundantly explained in the previous paragraph dealing with laughter in melodrama and in Melmoth.

One has the impression of the argument marking time as the writer takes his bearings to see how far he has got, as if picking up the thread of his thought after some time and starting a new chapter with a summary of the argument so far: But two things stand out: It involves a scene in which the thieving Pierrot is brought to justice with much moaning like a bull to the slaughter, and guillotined. But then his truncated body, still impelled by the irresistible urge to steal, rises up after the execution and walks off triumphantly with his own head in his pocket.

There can be no question here of a moral lesson, and indeed, it would take a grotesque effort of serious-mindedness to make of it a protest against capital punishment. The scene, and its vertiginous prologue in which all the characters make the most frantic and extravagant gestures, are characterized by violence, which Baudelaire sees as a fundamental and distinctive ingredient in this kind of laughter.

The hyperbolic gestures and convulsions of the laughers are the visible signs of an ecstatic intoxication, of joy at having triumphed over nature and death, as if one had made a leap into a surreal sphere, free from the laws of the physical world: But the convulsions are so violent and extreme no doubt because at the height of the ecstasy one remains, paradoxically, aware that the liberation is illusory, that the breakthrough belongs to the world of imagination and fantasy.

One goes beyond the real world through the trickery of the pantomime, but at the same time one is held back by common sense—and it is precisely this discrepancy and imbalance that are expressed in the hyperbolic convulsions. This is the highest expression of the grotesque in Baudelaire, but it is hardly exemplified in his own creative work. For him the comic, especially the grotesque, is eminently a mute art that is compromised to the extent it is involved with words, since laughter depends on an explosion within the instant, whereas words entail an unfolding in time. Analysis is hostile to the comic, which is why Baudelaire takes his examples of the grotesque from outside literature, with the exception of Hoffmann.

For Baudelaire the grotesque is above all a visual phenomenon, on stage or in a drawing. At its highest the comic is visual, sudden, and unmediated through language. It concerns a brilliant buffoon, by name of Fancioulle, who has entered a foolhardy plot against the tyrannical prince, whose favourite he is. Fancioulle gives a magnificent performance which wins thunderous applause from the admiring audience. The most common pattern is the passage from ideal to spleen, from exaltation to triviality, from dream to reality, and it is clear that in Le Spleen de Paris the emphasis falls almost exclusively on discord, disproportion, contradiction and the impossibility of uniting dream and reality, or poetry and prose.

Most interpretations agree, very broadly, with that of Charles Mauron,56 who sees in Fancioulle and the cruel prince an incarnation of aspects of the poet, the one representing the artist as martyr and idealist, the other the cynic, the negator, the agnostic aware of what separates art from reality. For Mauron the poem shows the triumph of the social self over the artist. This interpretation is satisfactory, but only up to a point, since it resolves the antagonism between the prince and the buffoon, but fails to take account of the contradictions within 56 BAM3 Charles Mauron, Le Dernier Baudelaire Paris: The rest is given to the subdivisions of the comique, and somewhat cursorily to Hoffmann.

It is, however, what Baudelaire says about Hoffmann in the last three pages of the essay that concerns us at this point. The moral message in both stories is similar, the discrepancy between military illusion and reality; but the means are totally different. But in Hoffmann the world is turned upside down. The soldiers are not like carrots.

The carrots exist in this surreal world in their own right, as independent creations. The soldiers are not compared to carrots; on the contrary in a splendidly surreal inversion, it is the carrots that are compared eventually to soldiers. The comic power of the grotesque derives from the absence of a comparison or simile, and from a vision which at first is surreal and only later reveals itself to be metaphoric. The appeal of the simile is to the rational mind, even in the most extravagant instances, since the two elements are kept apart. The parallel with the poetic image could not be clearer, since the comic charge of the grotesque could be compared to the greater poetic charge of the metaphor, and more particularly of the elliptic metaphor over that of the simile or comparison.

Here again, the moral lesson, that is to say the insight into the duality of human nature, a Baudelairean obsession if ever there was one, is seen to be perfectly compatible with the grotesque creation of a character whose memory is incapable of bridging the two parts of his personality. It should be stressed that that is all Baudelaire says specifically about Hoffmann, since the final point of the essay involves him only in the most general way. The point leads him to sum up the argument, in the curious manner we have seen, stressing the permanent duality of the artist who, comic or serious, has the power to be both himself and someone else at the same time.