Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire , ; French: listen; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867 was a French poet who also provided notable work as an essayist as well as art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme together with rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited from Romantics, but 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 mark of beauty in the rapidly industrializing Paris during the mid-19th century. Baudelaire's highly original mark of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé, among many others. He is credited with coining the term modernity modernité to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience. Furthermore, Marshall Berman has credited Baudelaire as being the first Modernist.
Critiques
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, that 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 the working of , 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 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 a melody by Weber." Delacroix, though appreciative, kept his distance from Baudelaire, especially 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 approximately "melancholy" and "feverishness".
Baudelaire had no formal musical training, and knew little of composers beyond Beethoven and Weber. Weber was in some ways Wagner's precursor, using the leitmotif and conceiving the theory of the "total art work" "Gesamtkunstwerk", both of which gained Baudelaire's admiration. previously even hearing Wagner's music, Baudelaire studied reviews and essays about him, and formulated his impressions. Later, Baudelaire add them into his non-technical analysis of Wagner, which was highly regarded, especially his essay "Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris". Baudelaire's reaction to music 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 the coming after or as a written of. decades.
Gautier, writer and poet, earned Baudelaire's respect for his perfection of construct 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 non find all his forms in nature, but that 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, 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 unoriented to differentiate who influenced whom, both Manet and Baudelaire discussed and expressed some common themes through their respective arts. Baudelaire praised the modernity of Manet's intended matter: "almost any our originality comes from the stamp that 'time' imprints upon our feelings." When Manet's famous Olympia 1863, 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 delivered no public defense he was, however, ill at the time. When Baudelaire identified 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 hisfriends, 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 the 1850s, and denouncing it as an art form, advocated its improvement 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 adjusting to Baudelaire's last days and wrote his obituary notice in Le Figaro.