Baudelaire: A Metaphor

One of the greatest French poets of the 19th century, Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was born in Paris and lived there most of his life. Sometimes called the "father of modern criticism," Baudelaire stunned many of his contemporaries with compelling images of decay and lust--images that eventually led to the censorship of some of his best poems. In fact, when Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), Baudelaire's best-known collection of poems, appeared in 1857, everyone involved in the publication process was indicted and found guilty of obscenity and blasphemy.

Throughout his life, Baudelaire apparently had a enigmatic relationship with his own sexuality. On the one hand, the poet clearly recognized--and was tantalized by--the pleasure of sexual activity, but nevertheless was unable to escape the suspicion that sexual involvement was a form of impurity--residue, perhaps, of original sin. In "Chanson d'après-midi" ("Afternoon Song"), for instance, he writes:

Quoique tes sourcils méchants (Although your malicious eyebrows)
Te donnent un air étrange (Give you a strange air)
Qui n'est pas celui d'un ange, (Which is hardly that of an angel)
Sorcière aux yeux alléchants, (Sorceress with enticing eyes)

Je t'adore, ô ma frivole, (I adore you, my frivolity)
Ma terrible passion! (My terrible passion)
Avec la dévotion (With the devotion)
Du prêtre pour son idole. (Of a priest for his idol)

Here the object of the poet's sexual desire is presented as a temptress, an enchanter. In the first stanza, Baudelaire focuses on his lover's face, particularly her eyes, employing adjectives like "méchant" (malicious) and "alléchant" (enticing). The poet's inclusion of the appelation "Sorcière" (sorceress or witch) lends color and depth to the two previous adjectives and establishes the supernatural tone of the entire poem. In the second stanza, the theme of the forbiddenness and danger continues, but now the poet openly admits that he he loves the girl, "frivole" though she may be. What's more, he continues to employ language that suggests a kind of tension between his sexual attraction and the suspicion that his "beloved" may be no more than a Keatsian "belle dame san merci." This theme culminates near the end of the second stanza with the poem's most potent metaphor: "...Avec la dévotion / Du prêtre pour son idole". Here again, the notion of forbidden or dangerous love appears, this time tempered by the religious imagery of a priest clutching an idol.

This conception of love (particularly coital love) as impure, heretical, or idolatrous has a long and ilustrious history. But for Baudelaire, its sting is particularly strong, as if some kind of insidious evil inheres in the sexual act itself. Indeed, as the poet himself put it: "Faire l'amour, c'est faire le mal" ("To make love is to do evil"). But the equation of "love" and "evil" is far too simple. There is, must be, something deeper at work. And, in my view, that "something" rests squarely on Baudelaire's image of the priest and his idol. To see what I mean, consider another, very different story. At the end of Exodus 31, Moses has ascended Mount Sinai to rendezvous with Yahweh. And, by all accounts, his stay has lasted longer than anticipated. Thus the opening verse of chapter 32: "When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain...." The Israelites, it seems, have grown impatient with their leader and, in his absence, make a new request: "the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, 'Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him'." The rest of the story is familiar enough. Aaron gathers up everyone's golden rings and fashions a calf. Moses soon comes down the mountain and, in his anger, smashes the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments onto the ground (if you're having trouble, just think Charlton Heston, circa 1956). What interests me here, though, is not Heston, but rather the status of the golden calf. In one sense, it is doubtless an idol that shall "go before" the people. More importantly, however, the golden calf is a kind of consolation or substitute, one ultimately born out of the Israelites' impatience (see above: "delayed").

And it is in this sense, I think, that we should understand the relationship between Baudelaire's antagonism toward sexual love and his image of the priest's idol. Sex, for the poet, seems to be a kind of replacement, a makeshift substitute that reveals an impatience with the arduousness of authentic love. As Columbian novelist Gabriel García Márquez puts it in his latest offering, "El sexo es el consuelo que uno tiene cuando no le alcanza el amor" ("Love is the consolation that you have when you can't have love"). And "consolation" in the worst sense.