An Analysis of Paris Spleen
Charles Baudelaire who is regarded as one of the most important figures of modern
art because of his writings about not only the poet but also the painter, and generally, the
artist of modern life, is told by Marshall Berman as the one who did more than anyone in the
nineteenth century to make the people of his century aware of themselves as moderns
(Berman, 1982, 132). He tried to make sense of modern life and its influences on art and artist.
His poems and writings which based on metropolitan life in modern Paris that was started to
be established by Hausmann Renovation, are counted as the early products of modern
aesthetics.
Charles Baudelaire’s book Paris Spleen consists of 51 short prose poems which had
published in Parisian newspapers and as a book it was published after Baudelaire’s death in
1869. These prose poems have been seen and analyzed as a part of Baudelaire’s poetics; but
the book has another aspect than reflecting Baudelaire’s poem that is shedding light on
Parisian modern life. Although he did not make any attempt at trying to reform society in Paris,
poems like ‘Eyes of the Poor’ his feelings of despair and class guilt are obvious. His spleen is
originated from these feelings or at least these feelings constitutes important cause of his
spleen. In order to understand Paris Spleen properly, we should examine Baudelaire and the
modern Paris.
Firstly, I will try to examine Charles Baudelaire in the light of Marshall Berman’s and
Walter Benjamin’s works on Baudelaire. After I will tell about Hausmann Renovation which
shaped modern life in Paris with new boulevards, cafes, streets and museums. Paris Spleen
bears the stamp of the transformation of Paris which headed by Baron Hausmann and
Napoleon III. The most of the poems in the book take place in the modern Paris and include
modern encounters with the inhabitants of the city and Baudelaire’s impressions on the city
as a flaneur who observes the city with the eyes of an artist. Encounters among different
classes become more possible after the Hausmann Renovation and Baudelaire’s impressions
are marked by this renovation and tells the story of the changing city. Finally, I will analyze
several passages of the Paris Spleen in order to capture clues about modern daily life in Paris
and Baudelaire’s impressions on it.
Charles Baudelaire: A Poet in the Streets
Paris Spleen is not the only work of Baudelaire which expresses the changing definition
of beauty in modern and industrialized Paris. Actually, since his first book ‘Flowers of Evil’ he
tries to capture ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis. Even, there is a chapter
named ‘Parisian Scenes’ in Flowers of Evil which consists of poems that deals with the feelings
of anonymity and alienation from a newly modernized city with the heroes such as beggars,
workers, gamblers and prostitutes. These poems reflect the effects of Hausmann renovation
which make excluded parts of the society visible. He tells about the metropolitan life which is
a consequence of modernity. According to him, the term modernity designates the fleeting
and ephemeral experience and responsibility of art has to capture that experience
(Baudelaire, 1863, 13). The artist of modern life is one who focuses on fashions, morals and
emotions within passing moment and all the suggestions of eternity that it contains (Berman,
1982, 133). Although Baudelaire thinks that imperative of modernism is to orient ourselves
toward the primary forces of modern life, he does not make it clear what these forces are and
what our stance toward them is supposed to be (Berman, 1982, 134).
Baudelaire accepts modern people with all strengths and weaknesses and portray
them as heroes. Despite the lack of the paraphernalia of heroism, modern person is subject
of heroism with cravats in the elusive modern life which its elusiveness originated from
tendency of modernity to make all things new that makes it harder to distinguish modern life
of next year and this year although they both are part of the same modern age (Berman, 1982,
143). He is aware of the importance of being close to the ordinary people in order to reflect
them with all aspects. According to him, modern artist should set up his house in the
metropolitan crowd and ‘‘his passion, his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd’’
(Baudelaire, 1863, 9). Baudelaire set his heroism within ordinary people by being a part of
crowds. Although one of the most fundamental problems of twentieth century modernism is
the way this art tends to lose touch with the people’s everyday lives, for Baudelaire, an art
that is not become one flesh with the crowds is not properly modern art at all (Berman, 1982,
146). His insistence of becoming a part of the crowd is related to his position as flaneur and
his spleen. Baudelaire understands flaneur as a man of the crowd (Benjamin, 1935, 48). And
his spleen results from this integration of crowds and the artist because as Berman says,
‘‘Baudelaire’s heart and his artistic sensibility draw him irresistibly toward the city’s bright
lights, beautiful women, fashion, luxury, its play of dazzling surfaces and radiant scenes;
meanwhile his Marxist conscience wrenches him insistently away from these temptations,
instructs him that these whole glittering world is decadent, hollow, vicious, spiritually empty,
oppressive to whole proletariat, condemned by history’’ (Berman, 1982, 146).
Politically, Baudelaire is confused. In his early writings, he praises bourgeoisie for the
similar reason of Marx’s praise to bourgeoisie in the Communist Party Manifesto. Marx was
praising because bourgeoisie proved that humans are the only subjects of the history and
showed that what classes can do, in other words, because of the progress that bourgeoisie
take a part. Baudelaire celebrates bourgeois for their intelligence, willpower and creativity in
industry (Berman, 1982, 135). He thinks that bourgeois motive for progress in industry and
politics is an evidence for their reliance on progress also in art. The fundamental bourgeois
motive of desire for infinite human progress not only in economical but also cultural sphere
helps people to realize the idea of the future in all its diverse forms (Berman, 1982, 135). This
claim of affinity between material and spiritual progress is a part of his pastoral vision of
modernity which always gave significance to armies on parade with their glittering hardware,
gaudy colors, flowing lines and fast and graceful movements (Berman, 1982, 137). However,
