Spleen vs. Ideal
Baudelaire quests for the ideal and appears to glimpse it in many instances in the "Spleen and Ideal" section of Fleurs du mal, but ultimately he is overcome by spleen. The Ideal is an eternal truth beyond the strictures of everyday existence. That truth is beyond mere appearance, although certain things— nature, cats, the eyes or scent of a woman, a beautiful statue—give the poet a glimpse of that truth. Spleen refers to intense, ineffable ennui, longing, and suffering; it is the Fall, the defeat, the estrangement from God. When the spleen is victorious, time drags and consciousness is dulled.
Lust and Desire
Many of Baudelaire's "love poems" seem more like poems about lust and desire. Indeed, his obsession with women and sex leads him down the path of unrighteousness. He loses himself and his capacity for autonomy and reason, indulging in his desires without care for the status of his soul. Interestingly, though, his contemplation of these women's eyes, hair, scent, body, and/or jewels leads him to moments of transcendence in which his senses blend together and he has a glimpse of beauty in its purest form. Other times his lust is connected to death and the release that comes from sex is akin to the release that comes from vacating one's mortal body. He is morbidly curious about the body, about sex, and about death.
Nature
Nature is many things to Baudelaire. First, it is a reflection of his own turmoil. When he is depressed, the skies darken and the avalanche descends. Second, it can be a completely indifferent and external entity that cares nothing for the poet and his suffering and thus mocks him by flaunting its beauty and harmony while his soul darkens. It can terrify him when he feels that he has fallen from grace. Third, it is the key to the greatest mysteries of existence, including God, and can yield its secrets to the poet who interprets its symbols.
Irony
Irony is crucial to Baudelaire's aesthetic practice. He plays with puns, paradox, antithesis, hyperbole, and understatement; he adopts an ironic tone when discussing things of the gravest significance, such as a dead body in the middle of the road or inviting worms to devour his corpse. He uses luminous and gorgeous language to talk about grotesque or violent things. He quests for the transcendent and spiritual in the base and banal; he uses language to evoke the senses, reveling in the impossibility of the endeavor. He finds life in death, beauty in the monstrous.
Time
Time is unrelenting; it is a heavy sky, a decaying carcass, the coming of winter. It is also, as depicted in the last poem of the "Spleen and Ideal" section, a ticking clock that reminds its listener that life is ephemeral and they must not forget that. Baudelaire juggles this interpretation of time—the literal, methodical, unrelenting passage of minutes, days, years—with that of the transcendent moments where time seems to stop or become malleable. When contemplating nature or God, achieving sexual release or going under the influence of wine or opium, writing poetry or regarding paintings and sculptures, one can elevate their spirit and exist on a different temporal plane.
Beauty
Ideal beauty is not quite the same as lust for the poet. Ideal beauty is cool, aloof, and enduring, like a statue: Baudelaire uses images of stone, iron, and hard jewels to symbolize it. It is essentially passionless and is strange and monumental. Contemplating it, man can reach the infinite and relieve himself from the mundanity and misery of everyday existence. However, too much idolization can be problematic. Beauty can have an air of danger, of moving to a point that stretches one to the breaking point. It can also be infused with melancholy because man realizes he is not capable of comprehending ideal beauty forever.
The Senses
The senses are the gateway to transcendence. They meld together, scent suggesting a sound, color suggesting scent. Things in the material world such as hair, cat's fur, perfume, wine, music, etc. lead to memory and perhaps to another plane of existence. The senses' evocative power also allegorizes the poet's ability to use words to conjure up such images. He puts words on a page that allow us to smell frankincense, see forests and shorelines, hear cats purring and owls hooting.
Ennui
Ennui is monstrous, insurmountably powerful. It is a condition of modern existence and is directly tied to man's inability to remain in a state of grace. The poet experiencing ennui is acutely self-aware and knows about his divided self and his vices, but he simply cannot be provoked to act. This is what is so dangerous about Ennui, for people can recognize their wrongs, but when they repent they know they will sin again. In order to avoid ennui they will engage in all manner of things that intoxicate, dull, obviate, or relieve.
The Role of the Poet
In Baudelaire's work the poet takes on the role of spiritual and aesthetic interpreter and guide. He is assumed to possess a singular and rarefied vision and insight that allows him to interpret the symbols of Nature, art, and bodily existence and convey them to ordinary people. Sometimes people do not understand him; he may be an outsider, misunderstood and mocked. This vision is also difficult to keep pure, since it is constantly threatened by the spleen of lust and obsession. Baudelaire frequently laments that he has lost his vision, his spiritual fall occasioned by his romantic dalliances and dissolute urban life.
Decadence and Dissolution
Baudelaire does not mince words about the decadence and dissolution he is attracted to. He speaks of whores, opium, wine, fortunetelling, carcasses and corpses, suicidal longings, the intersection of spirituality and sensuality, and the concomitant trauma and despair that comes with such experiences. Walter Benjamin noted that Baudelaire "placed shock experience at the very center of his art...Since Baudelaire was himself vulnerable to being frightened, it was not unusual for him to evoke fright." He did not shy away from things that made him uncomfortable, insensate, angry, or overwhelmed.
Imagination and Escape
Baudelaire tries to ignore or escape from his imminent spiritual fall. He looks to women, to wine and opium, to the imagination and dreams, to stave off his realization that his life is irredeemable. Fleurs chronicles these attempts to escape, both through intoxicants and the imagination. He reaches a point in his revels where he can not only forget the horror but also where he might achieve some sort of aesthetic insight. He knows he is damned, but he also knows he is tapping into the transcendent.
The Banal
Baudelaire wrote of elevated ideas such as beauty, art, love, madness, and spirituality, but he did so through base and banal images. He glories in the dark city streets with their prowling cats, crone fortunetellers, weary prostitutes, and forgotten corpses. For him a carcass, a pipe, a whore, a cat's eyes can be gateways to something much more profound than their prosaic nature would suggest. The reality of the moment, of the modern, of the mundane are priceless to Baudelaire.
Death
Baudelaire is certainly obsessed with death; some critics complained that he had pioneered "carcass literature." Indeed, there are corpses and carcasses everywhere, not to mention the poet's increasing obsession with death. Initially there is a sense of cheerful glee and fascination, as well as a desire to shock and titillate; Baudelaire never shied away from the grotesque, the disreputable, the banal. However, blank spaces, avalanches, tombs, and worm-eaten remains (his own) populate the later poems. Baudelaire seems to be indicating that he has not been able to fully achieve communion with the ideal and that the spleen has taken over; thus, to persist in mortal existence only reminds him of that failure. His vices have won and he is aware that time is threatening to overtake him. Interestingly, he does not actually commit suicide, which is a testament to his enduring hope, however feeble, that poetry allowed brief moments of respite from ennui and despair.
The Devil
Baudelaire mentions Satan multiple times, suggesting that human beings are his puppets. Initially a reader may wonder if this is a manifestation of the vestiges of Catholicism that lingered in Baudelaire. A deeper look at the way the Devil is referenced and the similarities between the Devil and other forces of "Evil" demonstrate, though, that this is not necessarily an archaic Romantic religious holdover. The Devil in Baudelaire is Ennui, woman, love, Anguish, Remorse, Hate, the id, the unconscious—whatever represents, for Baudelaire, his inability to reach the Ideal. Baudelaire wrote elsewhere, "Everyone feels the Devil but no one believes in him."
