{"id":2942,"date":"2026-06-28T15:53:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T15:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2942"},"modified":"2026-06-28T15:53:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T15:53:43","slug":"imagery-in-two-of-baudelaires-spleen-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2942","title":{"rendered":"Imagery in two of Baudelaire’s Spleen poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spleen<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pluvi\u00f4se, irrit\u00e9 contre la ville enti\u00e8re,
\nDe son urne \u00e0 grands flots verse un froid t\u00e9n\u00e9breux
\nAux p\u00e2les habitants du voisin cimeti\u00e8re
\nEt la mortalit\u00e9 sur les faubourgs brumeux.<\/p>\n

Mon chat sur le carreau cherchant une liti\u00e8re
\nAgite sans repos son corps maigre et galeux;
\nL’\u00e2me d’un vieux po\u00e8te erre dans la goutti\u00e8re
\nAvec la triste voix d’un fant\u00f4me frileux.<\/p>\n

Le bourdon se lamente, et la b\u00fbche enfum\u00e9e
\nAccompagne en fausset la pendule enrhum\u00e9e
\nCependant qu’en un jeu plein de sales parfums,<\/p>\n

H\u00e9ritage fatal d’une vieille hydropique,
\nLe beau valet de coeur et la dame de pique
\nCausent sinistrement de leurs amours d\u00e9funts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How this little poem swarms with wretched lives that seem to start up almost one to a line! Baudelaire\u2019s genius for metaphor takes a striking turn here, seeming to pile presence on presence, pressure on pressure, in a way that reflects the crowded claustrophobia of nineteenth century metropolitan life. \u201cPluvi\u00f4se\u201d \u2013 name of the rainy fifth month in the French Republican Calendar, straddling January and February \u2013 becomes an irritable god pouring water in floods from an urn. Personified like this, he\u2019s not only seen as causing the conditions the city struggles under, but himself seems oppressed by a discontent that makes him lash out at everything and everyone around him. The poem in fact develops as a series of brilliantly self-contained images like tiny video clips, each inviting the reader to dwell on it and expand it in his own collaborative imagination. Most brilliant, to my mind, is the final one with its ripples of teasing suggestion. There\u2019s an animating friction between squalid and glamorous connotations \u2013 squalor in the \u201csales parfums\u201d, a flicker of discordant glamour in \u201cle beau valet de coeur\u201d. There\u2019s an arresting element of surprise at the way these court cards suddenly start into speaking, three-dimensional life. Readers will imagine different scenarios. For myself, though I don\u2019t know if this is a result of letting the English meaning of \u201csinister\u201d weigh too heavily, I picture the knave of hearts (the valet de coeur) and the queen of spades (the dame de pique) \u00a0putting their heads together, whispering like a pair of conspirators from Goya\u2019s black paintings. As they look back on their dead loves, \u201csinistrement\u201d makes us feel they\u2019re doing so sadly, gloomily and (to the unsympathetic spectator) boringly, but also that their doing so is disquietening, sinister in the English sense, and perhaps somehow ill-intentioned. All the tiny vignettes quiver with varying suggestions, though. In \u201cAux p\u00e2les habitants du voisin Cimeti\u00e8re\u201d, for example, \u201chabitants\u201d seems to treat the cemetery as just another district of Paris, blurring the line between the living and the dead. And why are they pale? Because they\u2019re ghosts, yes, but they also seem to be shivering with cold, hunger, disease, dread, like the living poor.<\/p>\n

Although I\u2019ve focused on picture rather than sound in this little piece, sound makes a vital contribution to the embodying of all these images in words. For example, the two lines describing the cat break up into little bursts of utterance that make you feel the cat\u2019s restlessness as a sensation in your own body.<\/p>\n

Another remarkable Spleen poem, \u201cJe suis comme le roi d\u2019un pays pluvieux\u201d, works very differently. From an imagistic point of view it seems much flatter than \u201cPluvi\u00f4se, irrit\u00e9 contre la ville entire\u201d or \u201cLa Cloche f\u00eal\u00e9e\u201d. Its ideas don\u2019t, for me, become internally animated, vividly self-sufficient scenarios as images in those poems do; striking as they are, they remain apt concepts unfolding thought in an essentially linear way. Such a flattening of individual images seems a necessary condition of this\u00a0 poem’s distinct power, which lies is in the beautifully shaped and modulated centripetal thrust of its argument:<\/p>\n

Spleen<\/strong><\/p>\n

Je suis comme le roi d’un pays pluvieux,
\nRiche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant tr\u00e8s vieux,
\nQui, de ses pr\u00e9cepteursS m\u00e9prisant les courbettes,
\nS’ennuie avec ses chiens comme avec d’autres b\u00eates.
\nRien ne peut l’\u00e9gayer, ni gibier, ni faucon,
\nNi son peuple mourant en face du balcon.
\nDu bouffon favori la grotesque ballade
\nNe distrait plus le front de ce cruel malade;
\nSon lit fleurdelis\u00e9 se transforme en tombeau,
\nEt les dames d’atour, pour qui tout prince est beau,
\nNe savent plus trouver d’impudique toilette
\nPour tirer un souris de ce jeune squelette.
\nLe savant qui lui fait de l’or n’a jamais pu
\nDe son \u00eatre extirper l’\u00e9l\u00e9ment corrompu,
\nEt dans ces bains de sang qui des Romains nous viennent,
\nEt dont sur leurs vieux jours les puissants se souviennent,
\nII n’a su r\u00e9chauffer ce cadavre h\u00e9b\u00e9t\u00e9
\nO\u00f9 coule au lieu de sang l’eau verte du L\u00e9th\u00e9<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spleen Pluvi\u00f4se, irrit\u00e9 contre la ville enti\u00e8re, De son urne \u00e0 grands flots verse un froid t\u00e9n\u00e9breux Aux p\u00e2les habitants du voisin cimeti\u00e8re Et la mortalit\u00e9 sur les faubourgs brumeux. Mon chat sur le carreau cherchant une liti\u00e8re Agite sans repos son corps maigre et galeux; L’\u00e2me d’un vieux po\u00e8te erre dans la goutti\u00e8re Avec […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-baudelaire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2942"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2944,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942\/revisions\/2944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}