The Flowers of Evil Essay Questions

Why is Baudelaire so entranced by eyes and scents?

In regards to eyes, as critic Anne Sienkewicz writes, they are "inscrutable sources of light or living mirrors and a means by which the poet's gaze is turned back upon himself. In gazing at the Other, be it cat or goddess, the poet is thrown back on his own yearning soul." In "The Living Torch" they compel the poet to Beauty, but in "Autumn Song" they only fills him with bitterness. The disparity of these emotions corresponds to his ability to handle truth, purity, and grace; as he descends more fully into the spleen, the eyes begin to frighten him. As for scents, they are heavily associated with both the lusty and earthy, but also with higher planes of dream and imagination. A scent plunges the poet into memory.

What does Baudelaire think the point of art is?

In the poem "The Beacons" Baudelaire gets closest to his thesis on what the nature and point of art are. He explores the works of major artists and the emotions produced by viewing them, such as delight, melancholy, fear, etc. These artists were veritable spokesmen for humanity, much as Baudelaire was as well. The poet focuses on the artists' paintings through the lens of the senses, writing of smell, sound, and light; this is his way of connecting poetry and painting. Art thus brings the individual intimations of immortality and a glimpse of the higher truth; it is the best of "human dignity" that can be offered to God.

If we read "Spleen and Ideal" as a whole, rather than as separate poems, what can we conclude about the poet's spiritual arc?

Even at the beginning of the volume, "To the Reader" and "Benediction" foreshadow the poet's eventual fall, but it is not necessarily a foregone conclusion. He spends time in the subsequent poems wandering through nature and reveling in the symbols it offers, trying reveling in and trying to interpret the emblems of beauty that may reveal a higher truth and moral standing. Unfortunately he becomes mired in lust and intoxicants, slipping further away from his Ideal into the Spleen. He begins to despair, devoting his verses more to the hostility of nature, the danger of women, and the pointlessness of life. By the end, in "The Clock," he has come to see life as short but arduous; time is passing quickly, and weighing heavily. He clings to his art to find meaning but he does not see himself as redeemed or even as redeemable.

How does Baudelaire use animals to convey his themes?

Baudelaire uses animals such as cats and owls in order to convey his themes. The cat, which is the most often used in the poems, represents modernity and the urban. Cats are prowlers, creatures of the night. They are graceful and sleek but they inhabit the dark parts of the city. Sometimes they seem infernal; they have a mysterious, seraphic quality about them that suggests a truth beyond the sublunary. Their mystique is akin to that of woman, of nature. In the inhumanity of the cat Baudelaire glimpses the beyond. The owls are also reminders to Baudelaire that he ought to be cognizant of the need for quiet, for wisdom, for perspicacity. They stand like silent, judging statues -they are omens that Baudelaire is following the wrong path.

How does "Correspondences" incorporate ritual elements?

According to Walter Benjamin, Baudelaire needs to incorporate ritual elements into his poem "Correspondences," because it is the only way he can understand the breakdown he was witnessing as a modern man. The poet's challenge is to discover, through poetry, something that was perhaps already irrevocably lost. In the poem he treats walking, communing with nature, and the act of interpreting symbols as rituals. This, Benjamin writes, "is possible only within the realm of ritual. If it transcends this realm, it presents itself as the beautiful. In the beautiful, ritual value appears as the value of art." In his poetry Baudelaire endeavors to get to the truth of the symbols he sees in nature, in the correspondences available for him to read and interpret. He can only do that by utilizing the ritualistic because that is, as religion suggests, the best way to tap into the eternal truth.

What role does memory play in the poems?

In the love poems in particular, Baudelaire reminisces about the women he was involved with, and those memories send him on flights of fancy and evoke strong emotions such as lust and rage. The senses are often the portal to memory, as a smell or a deep look into a woman's eyes sends the poet wheeling into the recesses of his mind. Memory also weighs on Baudelaire because as he ages and comes to fall further and further from his attainment of grace, he sees himself stuffed with memories like "a giant chest of drawers" but aware of how "I am a dusty boudoir where are heaped / Yesterday's fashions. and where withered roses, / Pale pastels, and faded old Bouchers, / Alone, breathe perfume from an opened flask" (Spleen II). Baudelaire no longer welcomes these memories, because they reveal how the snow of time is covering him.

How does Baudelaire conceive of symbols?

Critic Dorothy Betz writes that Baudelaire created "images [that were] raised to the role of symbols." He sees symbols in the external world that dovetail with the emotions he is feeling. It is the poet's job to interpret the symbols to reveal the deeper truth behind them. Symbols connect the sublunary world to the spiritual one; they are, once interpreted, those keys to the truth.

How does Baudelaire use personification, and to what end?

Baudelaire uses personification to emphasize the power of the external and internal forces that obsess, impel, and destroy him. In the beginning of the work he discusses the terrible power of Ennui and continues to evoke personified figures like Anguish, Hate, Remorse, Hope, Utility, Beauty, Time, Death, and many more. By elevating these emotions or experiences to the status of a powerful person, Baudelaire shows how much sway they have over him and how he is incapable of staving off their assault. Anguish is powerful enough to plant his black flag in the poet's soul, and Time engulfs him; what does he, pitiful human, have in his arsenal to resist them?

Baudelaire is often labeled the first modern poet; what evidence supports this?

Critic Jonathan Culler explicates the reasons for this claim, beginning with the idea of the artist-as-outsider, as a poète maudit (cursed poet), social misfit. He is not a seer or public spokesman. He lives on the fringes of society. Baudelaire "is seen as not only the creator of a new sort of poetry but as an instigator of modern experience." He does this by incorporating the banal, grotesque, mundane, and shocking to his works. He writes of the seedy mainstays of the newly industrialized city: prostitutes, drugs and wine, beggars, etc. He "produces dissonant combinations, which can be seen as reflecting the dissociated character of modern experience, where consciousness is confronted by objects, sensations, and experiences that do not go together." Life is fragmented, understanding inchoate. There is a focus on the construction and meaning of language as well as its limitations.

How are the poems for Jeanne Duval and Madame Sabatier and Marie Dabraun similar and/or different?

The poems for Duval are sometimes referred to as the "Black Venus" cycle and are the more sensual, sinful poems. They are filled with lust and desire, the relations hotly amorous and dangerous. The poems for Sabatier are called the "White Venus" cycle and are seen as idealized, Platonic. She is a goddess, but Baudelaire also dreams of corrupting her ("To One Who Is Too Cheerful"). The Dabraun poems are called the "Green-Eyed Venus" cycle and are a combination of both. There is passion, irony, worship, inspiration, and oblivion.