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The Night of the Poet: Baudelaire, Benjamin, and the Woman in the StreetAuthor(s): Beryl SchlossmanSource: MLN, Vol. 119, No. 5, Comparative Literature Issue (Dec., 2004), pp. 1013-1032Published by: Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3251888Accessed: 22-12-2015 13:33 UTC

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BERYL

SCHLOSSMAN

from her

eye,

a livid

sky

where

hurricanes

take seed, sweet fascination and fatal pleasure.

A

flash of

lightning

... then

night -Lovely fugitive,

with

eyes

that

suddenly

resurrected

me,

will

I

not see

you again

before

eternity?

Someplace,

far

away

from here too late never

perhaps

For I

know not where

you

flee,

nor

you

where

I

go,

O

you

I

could have

loved,

o

you

who knew

it ]

Baudelaire's Flowers

ofEvil

are

shaped by

modernity

and

memory.

The

section named "Parisian Tableaux" features women

who

pass

through

city

streets. A feminine

figure emerges

as the bearer of

modernity;

she

plays

the

double role

of

poetic

and erotic

object.

In "To

A

Woman

Passing By

[A

Une

Passante],"

Baudelaire

stages

her in

three

ways:

she

appears

in the sonnet as the

object

of a

gaze,

as

an

image,

and as the

incomparable

resonance of

desire.1

This

feminine

object

is

not

anchored

in

a

source

or

a

history;

she

does not

belong

to monumental or collective

memory,

and her

intimate or

personal history

is

unknown.

In

any

case,

the notion of

her

origin

does

not seem

pertinent

in

Baudelaire's

eyes.

He

praises

artifice and the use of theater sets. He

accentuates

the

gaze

and the

effect

produced

by

distance

(CB

II:

668).2

Baudelaire's

images

are

observed at a distance.

They

do not

reveal

the

object's

point

of

origin.

They

make an

offering

of the

unique

appearance

of a distance that

Walter

Benjamin

names

aura

(WB

I:

440).3

One of the aura's most

remarkable

qualities

is that it alone

can

arouse the

viewer's

glance

or cause the

viewer

to look

up.4

But

in

Baudelaire's

modernity,

the

glance

or the

gaze

is

caught

between the

power

of Aura and its dissolution or ruin

("der

Verfall der Aura"

[WB

I:

647]

or

"die

Zertrummerung

der Aura"

[WB

I:

440]).

In

Baudelaire's

writing,

the

unique

appearance

of a

distance crumbles

or falls

apart;

perhaps

the

viewer

has come too

close

to the

image.

In

spite

of the

heavy materiality

of some of

Benjamin's

terms,

like

the "ruin"

or

"crumbling"

of

aura,

the

conceptual

focus of his

reading

of modern

subjectivity

is the

scene of the

gaze

(or

glance).5

An

ambivalent

and

paradoxical

gaze

enters

Benjamin's interpretation

of

nineteenth-

century

Paris from

Baudelaire's

writings.

In

Baudelaire's

world,

the

subject

is threatened:

vision threatens to succumb to the overwhelm-

ing

shock of

modernity.

Like

nightfall,

a black screen neutralizes

the

viewer's

gaze

as it renders the

world

invisible and

impenetrable.

In

this

sense,

the aura

appears accompanied

(or haunted)

by

its

own

dissolution,

ruin, loss,

or

crumbling.

1014

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M L N

Benjamin

relates

the

images

that

appear

in

the

poet's

work

to

the

gaze that produces them-the poet's gaze.6 This interpretive move

echoes Baudelaire's

attempt

to come

to

terms

with a vision of

modernity

rendered

in

a work of

art:

in

his

approach

to the art of

Constantin

Guys,

Baudelaire observes the

way Guys

looks at

things

in

connection with

Guys' drawings

of

images

of

modern

life.

In the

sketch of 1935

for

the

preface

to the

"Arcades

Book,"

Benjamin

brings together

the

Poet,

the

Allegorist,

and

the Flaneur: their

gazes

intersect

in the

gaze

that

Benjamin

attributes to Baudelaire. The man

in the

crowd

and the

prostitute

are also

present

at

this crossroads of

seeing (WB V.I: 54). In formulating the principle of his reading of

the nineteenth

century

through

Baudelaire,

Benjamin

captures

Baude-

laire's

unique

success and

poetic power

in

the terms

of

seeing.

The

crossroads of Baudelaire's

gaze produce

a kind

of

montage. Benjamin

writes:

"It

is

the

unique quality

of

Baudelaire's

poetry

that the

images

of Woman

and Death

penetrate

a third

image,

the one of Paris"

(WB

V.I:

55).

An

exploration

of

Baudelaire's

poetics

of

seeing

will

show

that the encounter

between the

Aura

and its

ruin

shapes

Baudelaire's

montage

of

Woman,

Death,

and the

City.

This encounter-or the

flash of lightning that signals the irreconcilable break between Aura

and the

modernity

that

puts

an

end

to

its

magic-shapes

the d6cor

of

Flowers

of

Evil.

Among

the

"Parisian

Tableaux,"

the sonnet "To

A

Woman

Passing By"

makes

this encounter

visible.

Baudelaire's sonnet

explores

the feminine

figure

as a

poetic

object

and

an

erotic

object.

"To

A

Woman

Passing

By"

offers

Baudelaire's

reading

of

modernity through

the

figure

of the

object. Benjamin

interprets

the Baudelairean

modernity

evoked

in

this

poem

in

several

of his

works: he discusses

it in

more detail than

any

other

poem

in

FlowersofEvil. The "ArcadesWork,"the writings published as a book

entitled Charles Baudelaire.

A

Lyric

Poet in the Era

of High Capitalism,

and

the

essay

entitled

"On Some

Motifs

in

Baudelaire" refer to Baudelaire's

sonnet.

In

the "Flaneur"

chapter

of the Baudelaire

book,

Benjamin's

presentation

of

the sonnet accentuates

the

view of the

crowd

that

Baudelaire found in Poe.

At

the

crossroads

of modern life

translated

by

Baudelaire,

the

crowd,

the

city,

and the erotic encounter intersect.

The

crowd,

Benjamin

writes,

is the

moving

veil

("der

bewegte

Schleier"):

it

might

be the

image

of the

city

that

transforms the

masses themselves into a phantasmagoria (a collective fantasy) ob-

served

by

the flaneur. The

crowd

gives

the

poem

its

form,

but

it

does

not

appear

in

the

poem. Benjamin

writes:

"No

turn,

no

word

make it

possible

to

name the

crowd

in the sonnet

'A

une

passante.'

And

yet

1015







BERYL

SCHLOSSMAN

the

event

rests

entirely

on it"

(WB

I:

622).

The

veil's

function is to

hide or mask the object, and to render its gaze enigmatic. The veil

diminishes

the

transparence

of

the

object's gaze

and threatens to

render it

opaque.

The

subject

who

looks at the

object

projects

the

image

of the

phantasmagoria

onto it. Veiled and

nameless,

the crowd

cannot be seen: it is the

invisible

protagonist

who

sets

up

the

poem's

event

from

within

the

secret

intimacy

of Baudelaire's

poetics.

Inside the virtual

space

of

poetic strategy

are its

most

important

elements,

unseen at the surface. This interiorization

is

connected

to

the use of

allegory,

essential to Baudelaire's

poetics.

The

crowd,

brought into view in the writings of Marx and Poe, shapes the drama

that unfolds

in

Baudelaire's

sonnet. The

crowd

appears

in

the

poem

only

as violence that is heard. Its

screaming

resonates

from the

hollow

of silence that Baudelaire

places

in

the

eye

of the storm.

Its

visible

form

in

the

poem

is

entirely negative:

it blends into the unnamed

darkness

of

night

that swallows

up

the woman

whose

passage

propels

her toward an eternal

disappearance.

The

crowd's

effect

on

the

poetic

Narrator is a kind of black-out: the

stage

of the

poem

is

emptied

of

any

other

human

presence.

In the same

way,

the

crowd's

movement is transmitted through the sudden frozen state of the

Narrator,

whose

gaze stops

him in

his

tracks;

his

gaze

transforms

the

rhythmically

moving

woman

into a

statue.

The

"I"

of the

poem

is the

intimate source

of a

gaze,

a

desire,

and a silence-ecstatic and

fatal.

"To a

Woman

Passing

By"

is a love

poem

written

in

a

lyrical

style,

but the event that takes

place

in it cannot be read as

a

model of

amorous

approach

nor

as

an auratic

experience

of

love.

Immediately

after the chance encounter that

produces

a

flash

of

lightning,

the

abyss

opens up

in

the time and

space

of the

poem.

The distance

separating the Narrator subject from the veiled object stretches into

infinity,

and the

instant of

anticipated

reunion

is

given away

to

eternity

at the fatalistic

cry

of

"Never." Instead

of the

living

branch

that

Benjamin

inscribes

in

the

exemplary

experience

of

aura

(quoted

from another section of "On

Some

Motifs

in

Baudelaire"),

Baudelaire's

sonnet

petrifies

the

object

into the

leg

of

a

statue,

watched

by

a

subject stopped

in

his tracks. The fetishized

leg-the

fragment

of

an

idol

or

the divided

body

of

allegory-corresponds

to the

subject's

desire,

a

suffering

that nails him

to

the

spot.

Desire

petrifies

him;

an

erotic shock suspends him before the image of a woman. She is

unknown

to

him,

except

for

what

he

sees;

her

beauty,

the veil that

keeps

the

voyeur's

gaze

at a

distance,

and the

clothing

that

reveals

her

to be

in

mourning.

In

the

eyes

of the

Allegorist,

the veiled woman is

1016







M L N

distinct from the vision

of

the crowd

that surrounds her. The

auditory

image of the first verse is the only indication of the crowd remaining

in

the

poem.

In

Benjamin's interpretation

of

love,

Eros dominates the

impres-

sion of a distance that mediates

the

approach

of the

beloved

object.

The final

impression,

however,

is

of

consumed

proximity,

ruled

by

Sexus.

The conflict

between

the close

and

the

far-away,

between Sexus

and

Eros,

is

resolved

only

in the tomb's

secrecy:

"The

grave

as

the

secret chamber

in

which Eros

and

Sexus

even

out

their old battle"

(WB

I:

660).

This

consummation

(and

consolation)

takes a Baude-

lairean form.

The

poem's

event

occurs as a

unique

instant,

a

single glance.

The

two

players

are

completely

silent. The articulation

of

this instant

produces

an

atmosphere

of violence that

Benjamin

reads as shock

or

catastrophe

(PW

N10,

2).

The

anonymous

man out for a walk is filled

with desire rather than

love;

mixed with

solitude,

hopeless

desire

strikes him

with

violence. His

suffering produces

the

"stigmata"

of

love

in the

big city.

Benjamin's

enigmatically religious

image

enters

the

itinerary

of

the

city

dweller

that

he

conceives

as Baudelaire's

stations of the cross. Erotic wounds turned into stigmata are the

indelible

marks of

suffering;

their

form

rendered sublime

in

Baudelaire's

poetry

allows

for the reflection

in

them of the feminine

image, images

of

the

fleetingly

seen

object.

At

the moment of their

encounter,

the

gaze

of

the

enraptured

Narrator

penetrates

the unknown woman as

a

mouth

and a

throat,

to

drink from her

eyes.

The

exchange

of

glances

stops

movement, time,

and

nightfall.

His

gaze

turns her into a

statue,

and

yet

allows him

to

witness

her

passing

toward

disappearance.

Her statue's

leg

that walks

and seems to dance, solemnly and majestically, is perfectly petrified

by

her

allegorical

beauty:

the antithesis

of

a

leg

frozen and

in

movement underlines

the

power

of

mourning, disappearance,

and

death.

In

this

way,

the

power

of the

woman's

desire,

expressed

by

rapid

movement,

is

stopped

in its

flight

by

the

allegory

of Death.

All

of

Baudelaire's

desiring

and desired women are

caught

in

flight

at the

edge

of the

grave;

the

horror that is

staged

in

many

of Baudelaire's

poems

about women

anticipates

the inner

petrifying power

of Death

as

if

it were the lover's

ally.

The

spectator

of horror is frozen on the

spot like the viewer of the Medusa, or like certain characters glimpsed

in Poe's fiction. The

figure

seen

in

the

spectacle,

however,

is in

flight.

A

second antithesis

places

the

Narrator

who

speaks

in

the same

paradoxical

state

as

the woman. She

passes

by

with

legs

like

a

statue,

1017







BERYLSCHLOSSMAN

while

her

potential

lover

presents

himself

as

petrified

and

raving

mad

(in baroque French, "extravagant"). The sight of her transforms

Baudelaire's

desiring subject

into a

stone,

but also into the

opposite

of

petrification,

the

wandering

movement

of

passion

and excess.

"Crisp6

comme

un

extravagant,"

the

desiring subject

reflects

the

antithesis

of the woman's

passage. Simultaneously

frozen and

in

flight,

this

subject

of Death

strangely

resembles

(at

least

in

rhetoric)

the admired

woman

dressed

in

mourning.

The Narrator's

gaze

transforms the woman's

passage

into an

instantaneous

image,

the French "instantanee" or

snapshot;

he

captures her image as a photograph or as a kinetoscopic flight of

movement.

This

portrait

in

movement

anticipates

the

development

of

cinema:

since the late

eighteenth-century

invention

of the

magic

lantern,

modernity

has

been

possessed

by

the ambition to

perfect

a

technique

for

rendering

movement

in

images,

for its

reproduction

and

representation.

Seen

through

the

Narrator's

gaze,

the

woman's

passage

becomes

an intimate and invisible wound.

The

stigmata

that

Benjamin

at-

tributes to the Narrator

mark

the

other side

of the

image.

The

deepened gaze that the Narrator plunges into the gaze of the object

in

a moment of

corresponding

vision contrasts with the

empty gaze

of

many

of Baudelaire's

women,

notably

the

prostitutes

on

the street.

Afflicted with

an

erotic

wound,

the Narrator

searching

the

empty

streets

begins

to resemble those

prostitutes

looking

for

prey;

like

them,

he

is

ready

to offer

himself

in

an

eroticized

exchange.

But

unlike

them,

he

is

looking

for

an idealized

object.

He is the

prey

of

desire,

which

Benjamin

calls

the

"being

touched

strongly"

that affects

him

("sexuellen

Betroffenheit").

Without

proximity,

duration,

or

words, love wears the widow's veil, or the veil of the image: Woman,

Death,

the

City.

This

instant of unbearable love occurs

in

a minimal

encounter,

typical

of

city

life.

Benjamin

writes:

"Wearing

a widow's veil

... an

unknown

woman

passes

before the

Poet's

gaze"

(WB

I:

622).

The

poem represents

a shock

or a

catastrophe,

an

event

produced by

the

crowd

that carries the woman

away

from the viewer.

Benjamin

reads

in

the

subject's

first

gaze

the final

one;

the

poet,

he

writes,

will

be

spared

rather than

deprived.

Several

sentences

in

the "ArcadesWork" ndicate the

impact

of this

sparing: "Baudelaire introduces into lyric poetry the figure of sexual

perversion

that seeks its

objects

in the street. But what is

most

characteristic

is

that

he

does so with verses

like

'crispe

comme un

extravagant'

in

one

of his most

accomplished

love

poems"

(PWJ21a,

1018







M L N

4).

The old battle between

Sexus and

Eros is

fought

once

more: the

ideal object is shadowed by the object of fantasy, the streetwalker.

Desire

remains

intact,

and so does

love. Both are

preserved

forever

through

the

fleeting, snapshot-like

quality

of their

image.

The

figure

of

perversion

betrays

a

lyrical

sensibility

that follows

an

unforeseen

and

possibly

fatal

path.

Desire

and

violence

shape

its

gaze.

"Trieb,"

or

drive,

this

gaze

is carried

by

the

crowd,

and

stops

at

nothing:

it has

no

modesty

before

the taboos of

religious worship

or

the

precious

obstacles

of

love.

The

subject looking

for love

objects

in

the

street looks into the

eyes

of an

anonymous

woman

passing

by

in

the crowd. The crowd (and its veil) makes his gaze possible. In a note

of

the "Flaneur"

chapter

of

Benjamin's

Baudelaire

book,

the

gaze

differentiates

love

in Baudelaire

from

love

in

Stefan

George:

"The

motif

of

love

for a woman

passing

by

is

echoed

in

a

poem

by

the

young George.

The decisive

moment has

escaped

him-the stream

that drives the

woman,

borne

along by

the

crowd,

before the

poet

...

Baudelaire

makes it

quite

clear that

he has

gazed

deep

into the

passing

woman's

eyes"

(WB

I:

438).

Benjamin

does not

say

the

obvious,

namely

that

George

maintains his hold

on the inviolable

images of religious worship, while the gaze of the Modern takes

possession

of the

image.

In this

instance,

Baudelaire

the

Modern

takes the

object

of

worship

off the

pedestal;

the

figure

of the

Poet

turns his

back on cult value.

While

George's spirituality

may surprise

readers

of

Baudelaire,

George's impact

on German

letters

may explain

some of

Benjamin's

own tactics

in relation to

Baudelaire's

poem.

Benjamin's

translation

of the sonnet

leads the translator

toward the

sounding

of the

abyss,

the translator's

primary

task.

For

Benjamin,

the

"passante"

becomes

a

lady.The rule of the hidden figure anchors Benjamin's interpretation

of the

poem

in the

phenomenon

of the crowd.

In the first

verse,

a

rapid

sentence

conveys

the

atmosphere

created

by

the unnamed

crowd:

"La rue

assourdissante autour

de moi hurlait."

The street

is

the

subject

of the

sentence,

and the

poem's

first noun.

The

verb,

in

the

imperfect,

is the

rhyme

word.

The street that

expresses

the

sounds of the crowd

sets the

poem

in motion like a comet:

it does

not

stop

to let the caesura

take a breath.

The breath comes

only

at the

end of the line

(and

the

sentence).

By eliminating

the caesura

in the

first line, Baudelaire discretely distances his poem from traditional

sonnet

forms. This

beginning

in

poetic prose

gives

the sonnet

a

modern tone.

The

poem's

event

is

finally

abandoned

to the

imperfect

tense

that

1019







BERYL

SCHLOSSMAN

marks the

rhyme

of

beginning

and end. But it is the silent

woman

who has disappeared with her black veils and her mysterious hypo-

thetical

knowledge

who

emerged

at the

spot

(at

the

rhyme)

where the

invisible crowd

gave

voice

to

its bestial

suffering.

The

crowd's

violent

expression

in

an

impersonal

voice

is the

backdrop

for the

Narrator's

silence: his encounter

with the woman

passing by

takes

place-or

does not

take

place-in

their silence.

The crowd is

hyperbolically

expressive

while love is a

litote,

a

figure

of understatement or

missed

connections. The

only

words

that are

spoken

tell the

story

of

the

sonnet's Narrator.

In the eye of the storm, in the middle of the crowd as hurricane,

the

speaking

I

of the

poem

evokes

the

deafening

noise with sibilant

and

liquid

consonants

(s,

r,

1).

Benjamin

preserves

these sounds in

his

translation. He also

keeps

the

syntax

of the

original,

except

for

the

placement

of the

verb. The second line shifts from the

crowd to the

woman,

and

delays

the

grammatical subject

until the

following

line.

The

effect of this

suspense

is a

rallentando,

as the music

begins

with

the woman's

rhythmic passage:

"Longue,

mince,

en

grand

deuil,

douleur

majestueuse,

/

Une femme

passa,

d'une

main

fastueuse."

The slowed effect produced by the pauses ("coupes") in the second

line

(and

by

a

very long rhyme

word)

is

coupled

with

the

semantic

effect created

by

the list

of

descriptive

elements

that culminate in the

allegorical

abstraction

of

"majestic

grief."

The list

awaits a

subject

and

a

predicate,

which the

poem delays.

The woman

is

unnamed,

and

her

passage

occurs in

an instant of the

past.

Benjamin

delays

the

translation of

"majestueuse"

until the fourth line.

The

woman's

form

is

nearly

dissolved

in an

allegorical

process.

It

seems to

capture

her for a musical

instant of

rallentando,

o

fetishize

or cut her into pieces in the description, and to anticipate her

disappearance

in

the abstractions of

her

mourning

and her

beauty.

She

wears

the black

clothing

of

"grand

deuil"

(formal

mourning

clothes):

black is

worn for the

ceremony

of Death and

Suffering

(or

Evil),

in

consequence

of

original

sin.

The

adjective "grand"

seems

to

agree

with

"majestueuse"

and

"fastueuse" to underline the

effects of

sublime

suffering

and the

royal

distance that

Baudelaire

recognizes

in

the

baroque.7

The woman's

mourning

sets

her

off from the

crowd,

except

that it

discreetly

identifies her

with the men

wearing

the

"frac"

coats that Baudelaire associates with funerals. In Benjamin's transla-

tion,

the formal

clothes of

mourning go

unmentioned;

their

figure,

like

that of the

woman

herself,

is hidden

by

the

veil.

The

rhythm

of

the feminine form

emerges

in

the

slowed

rhythm

of

1020







M L N

the alexandrine and the

rhyme

words that

give

it a

singular

form. In

general, rhyme words are particularlystrategic in Baudelaire's poetry;

for him as for

his

contemporaries, especially

Banville,

rhyme

is the

most

important

element of

prosody.8

Baudelaire

gives

a virtuoso

performance

of

rhyme

in

this

sonnet;

he

moves

away

from

traditional

forms and

yet

the sonnet

displays

the

three

types

of

rhyme

found

in

French

poetry.

One effect of

rhyme

in "A

Une Passante" is the

emphasis

on the break between the

quatrains

in

brace

rhyme

and the

tercets

in

alternating

rhyme

with

a final

couplet.

Baudelaire's

rhyme

words

mark the dramatic

presentation

of the

woman passing by with baroque gravityand the depth of mourning;

the solemn

display

of "fastueuse" choes the

grandeur

of

"majestueuse."

In the

eyes

of the

solitary

flaneur,

the hand and

leg

of the woman-

statue

seem to be isolated like

fetish-objects

or ruins

from

antiquity.

They

are

allegorical

fragments

of

a feminine

body

that has

already

been divided into

descriptive

elements. The

subject

and the

predicate

of the first

quatrain

linger

into

the

beginning

of the second

quatrain;

the effect is

to link

the

quatrains

and to accentuate the instance

of

silence and loss that

separates

them

from

the tercets

(or

sestet).

"Une

femme passa"-she passes by like a queen in mourning, but the noisy

city

is the

stage

and

the

stage-set.

A

vague fantasy

of the

woman who

walks

the street as a sexual

commodity

slips

into

this

representation.

In Second

Empire

Paris,

the

anonymity

of

prostitutes

offered

to

the

desiring gaze

of

observers aroused

bourgeois

masculine

indignation

and fear: the

controversy

around Manet's

"Olympia"

gives

substantial

journalistic

evidence

of these

emotions,

especially

in

connection

with

the "honest

women"-bourgeois

wives and

daughters-who

could no

longer

be

visually distinguished

from the

"fallen"

daughters

of Eve

on

city streets.9 The woman passing through the crowd in Baudelaire's

poem

bears the

stigmata

of

love.

Like

Baudelaire,

perhaps, Benjamin

clearly

takes

pleasure

in

identifying

her

black

form,

intimate

with

death,

the

anonymous identity

of

a woman

drifting

in

search

of

desire. This

woman

is

both

living

flesh

and

exhumed

statue,

body

and

monument.

The

fourth line is a

perfect

alexandrine,

with balanced

hemistichs,

balanced

participles

and

nouns,

and

equally

divided

repetitions

of

nasal

vowels

and

liquid

consonants.

The line is

divided between

images of the woman's dance-like movement and precise reflections

of fashion:

"Soulevant,

balancant

le feston

et

l'ourlet."

The

erotic

terms of the

line

remind

us that the

body

enters into the

process

of

mourning,

and that fashion offers

a

sign

for the

pain

and

suffering

of

1021







BERYL

SCHLOSSMAN

loss. In

the

Salon of

1846,

Baudelaire comments

on male

fashion

that

"all of us are celebrating a funeral" (CB II:494). The etymology of the

festoon adds to this macabre celebration: the Italian "festone" is a

holiday

ornament,

a

garland composed

of

flowers

and

leaves

and

hung

in an

arc;

in

architecture,

the festoon

is

an ornament

figuring

a

garland;

in

sewing,

it is

an embroidered

or

lacy

border.

Navigating

the

images

of nature and

artifice,

the festoon echoes the

hem,

a stitched

fold of fabric that finishes the dress.

The measure of

the

dance

places

in

the

rhyme

word

the

leg

...

of

a

statue. It

rhymes

with

murder,

in "the

pleasure

that kills." For

Benjamin, reader and translator, the movement of the hand raising

the

dress,

in a hinted

evocation

of sexual

signaling,

overwrites

the

rhythm

of

the dance. Does

this woman

present

the

image

of an

idol,

an

offering,

or a

commodity?

The

ambiguity

or

ambivalence

does

not

lessen the

allegorical

power

of

her

image.

Her erotic

anonymous presence

reminds us that the

fantasies

of

the Second

Empire

highlight

a

new

feminine

presence.

Hundreds

of

books and

images

bear

witness

to the

intriguing

and

troubling

impact

of the

feminine. Artists and

historians

emphasize

the new freedom of

women in the city. But the new liberty granted to women ultimately is

reduced to the subtle

freedom

of

anonymity

in the

street,

as

shown

in

Baudelaire's

sonnet. The violent reactions in the Second

Empire

include male fantasies of

imaginary conspiracies among prostitutes

in

order to seize

power

over

men.

In

this

fantasy,

it

is

worth

noting

that

the

principal weapon

is

the

crowd,

where fallen women

mingled

with

the

women

of the

bourgeoisie.

The

hysterical

reactions documented

in

the

controversy

over Manet's

"Olympia"

ead

from

the naked

gaze

of the courtesan-like

nude,

propped

on

pillows

in

Manet's boudoir

scene, to the unspoken desire of those proper women, also let loose

in

the

streets,

and to the fear that

they

too

might

decide

to

follow

the

path

of desire.

In the line

"Moi,

je

buvais,

crisp6

comme un

extravagant,"

Ben-

jamin

reads

an

instant

of

desire

that hits the

subject

with the violent

power

of

a shock. This violent event

is

conveyed by

an

analogy,

in the

typical

Baudelairean simile of "comme"

(like).

The

epithet

of "an

extravagant"

is

borrowed

from the

baroque

to evoke

the

subject's

rapture

in the

terms

of madness.

Benjamin

plays up

the

impact

of this

erotic extravagance, and transforms the metaphoric drinking into the

surrender to

intoxication,

corruption,

ruin

.

. .

or

someone. In this

line,

the

rhythm

and

punctuation

of the first

three

syllables

mark a

staccato

effect,

a

syncopation,

and

the

caesura occurs

at

the second

1022







M

L

N

comma.

The hemistich

beginning

with

"crispe"

vibrates with

the

occlusive, sibilant, and liquid consonants that form something like a

name for

the

anonymous

woman. "Boire dans son oeil"

unveils the

instant of erotic

intoxication

in

the

hyperbole

of the

Narrator's

gaze.

"Je

buvais"echoes the

vowels

of

the first

rhyme

while it

anticipates

the

sonnet's

ultimate

rhyme

("je

vais

/

savais").

The

image

of

drinking

from her

eyes

indicates the

poet's

ambiva-

lent

attitude toward the

object

of

desire. The

woman

in the

poem

is

magical

or

fatal;

like the

wine

that

Isolde offers to

Tristan,

the

gaze

that

Baudelaire's Narrator

consumes

figures

their

relations. Bor-

rowed from the conventional poetics of courtly love, Baudelaire's

image

is sexualized

by

the street context

and

deconventionalized

by

the

hyperboles

of the Narrator's

ambivalence.

In

"Le

Balcon,"

Baude-

laire

reveals the unnamed

love

object

in

the same terms of

drink and

consumption:

the woman is both

nectar and

poison.

In "A

Une

Passante,"

the

image

of

the

subject

drinking

in

the

woman's

eyes

is

the most

sensual and intimate connection

between the

spectator

and

the feminine

figure.

It marks the

instant of their encounter

with the

power

of

poetic

fusion and the

"fondu"

(melting, dissolving)

of

correspondance,elebrated in Baudelaire's introduction to Spleen de

Paris.

In

the

enjambment

and the

rejet

of lines 6 and

7,

the alternation

between the Narrator's

self-reference

("moi")

and the

woman

("elle")

again

carries the reader's

attention toward the

woman.

At

the

precise

instant

of the

gaze,

the

woman's

eye infinitely

expands

in

the

metaphor

of

the "livid

sky

where the

storm brews."

Elsewhere

in

Baudelaire,

the

livid

sky

is

libertine,

and therefore

emptied

of the

blue

sublime:

here,

Baudelaire

portrays

the Parisian

sky

as the

stage

set of a sexual drama. The hyperbole of line 7 recalls the hyperbole of

the first

verse and its

crowd

surrounding

the

speaking

I.

This

echo

occurs

at

the

moment

when

the

woman's

eye

becomes the

metonymic

image

of

the vast

sky.

In the

violence of

hyperbole,

the woman

passing by

becomes the

veiled

image

of the

sky

and

the crowd. Her admirer

enters the storm

for the

second time. He enters her. In

contrast to this

scenario,

in

the

poem

"A

Une Madone

[To

a

Madonna],"

the

lover who

speaks

in

the

name

of his

love

to a

woman

begins

by interiorizing

his madonna

figure inside himself. Later he enters her, in the breaking of the

taboo

that maintained

her as an

object

of his

adoration. He

ultimately

resembles

the Narrator of "A

Une

Passante,"

who

plunges

into the

drifting

course of desire

and its

metonymic

flow or

flight.

Frozen at

1023







BERYLSCHLOSSMAN

the

spot

of

vision,

he

projects

himself into the distance

with his

gaze.

The figure who gazes at his madonna is riveted to a cult object,

motionless

as a statue. She will

not

pass

him in the

street,

and

he,

who

declares

himself in an ex-voto

from

the Latin formula:

ex voto

suscepto,

following

the vow

taken)

will have

to sacrifice

her in order to make

her

disappear.

His

ambivalent

worship

of her has

already

divided

her

into the

separate pieces

of a ruin or an

allegory.

The Catholic

ex-votos characterized

by

a formula

of

recognition.

In

Baudelaire,

this

appreciative

recognition

follows

a

particular

path,

since the woman

adored

in

the

first stanza will incarnate

the Blessed

Virgin Maryin the second, when the cult becomes a satanic celebra-

tion of violence and

ritual sacrifice.

The

lover

in the

poem

will not

play

the lover who

respects

the taboos

of the cult

of

courtly

love:

his

love is

tinged

with

libertine

blackness,

with

violence,

and

pleasure.

In

this

way,

Baudelaire adds

to the resonances of medieval

and Renais-

sance

allegory

the

modern

allegory

that

bears his

signature.

The

nameless

erotic

object

who

plays

the

Madonna is constructed

as an

allegorical

form divided

into

pieces

and

fragments.

Her status

is

underscored

by

the

poet's

use of

capital

letters

in

the lover's

portrayal

of her. The lover's representation of her includes the artifices of the

emblem and of

statuary,

and an

emphasis

on death.

It is unfortunate

for

her that she

has a

heart,

made

for

suffering.

The lover's

adoration

and

worship

succumb

to "le mal": evil

corruption,

suffering,

and

destruction

take

possession

of

her.

In the encounters

of

correspondence,

between

the

visible

mourn-

ing

of the woman

passing

by

and the

elegy

of the

solitary

flaneur,

the

woman vanishes.

Modern

allegory

formulates the

montage

of

Woman,

Death,

and the

City.

When

Baudelaire

combines the

cult of the

Virgin

with courtly love, the New takes on the form of evil and suffering that

devour

the Adorer

from within

himself:

evil

arouses

his

ferocity,

and

modern

allegory

is

represented by

the sadistic

anticipation

of the

second stanza

("A

Une

Madone").

The

poet's

strategy

reflects an

effort to

free himself of the

romantic

vision

of

the feminine.

Baudelaire

attempts

to render virtual

the

figure

of the woman

on the

pedestal:

his Narrator

(or

figure

of the

Poet)

must

get

rid of

her

in

order to

take

possession

of her

in

memory.

He reconstructs

her

as an

image

that takes

its

truth

from the

resonances of

allegory.

The veiled

femi-

nine image is a fleeting one: she arouses the desire of the extravagant

Narrator,

and is lost

in a

labyrinth typical

of the

baroque.

In "A

Une

Madone,"

the

emblematic cult

image

absorbed

in the cult

of

worship

and

blasphemy

is frozen

in

the niche

of a medieval

chapel.

Her

1024







M

L N

idealized

image

is

caught

in stone: she

hovers

over him.

His

sadistic

violence is a response to her permanent presence. In both poems,

melancholy

and evil-or

desire and its blackness-set off

an

explo-

sion,

a flash

in

the

night.

In the instant of the

glance,

the melancholic sees the

object

of

desire

in the mirror of resemblance

that Baudelaire calls

analogy.

From the romantic

use of the term that comes to Baudelaire

most

powerfully

from

Edgar

Allan

Poe,

analogy

becomes a form of

Baudelairean

correspondence.

Benjamin

names it as "die Ahnlichkeit"

or

similarity.

In "A

Une

Passante,"

the flaneur's loss and inner

mourning are reflected in the veiled figure of the woman in black.

The drama of love lost is

played

out

in

the instant of her

passing;

the

moment

of the Narrator's

gaze places

the "Passante"

in

a

cityscape

that

is the

stage

for a beautiful celebration of

Death.

In

the

quasi-

liturgical

verse

of "A Une

Madone,"

the blackness

of the interior

space

is illuminated

by

the

flame of

love

that burns before the statue

of the

Virgin; eventually,

however,

this fire

will

destroy

Her statue.

With

some

subtle shifts of

liturgical

emphasis

and

some role

reversals,

Baudelaire transforms

mariolatry,

the

worship

of the

Virgin,

into a

cult of Death. The subject's adoration of his Madonna ritually breaks

her

body

in

pieces.

In the

end,

the lover-the

apostate

of

Courtly

Love-ritually pierces

her heart.

Line 8 of

"A

Une Passante"

reveals the woman's

eyes

(or

the

allegorical

singular,

her

eye)

as the secret source of the violence

celebrated with venom

in "A Une Madone." The Narrator drinks

from her

glance

"La douceur

qui

fascine et le

plaisir

qui

tue." The

grammatically

and

rhythmically

identical hemistichs

form a

perfectly

balanced line of verse: it

places

the fascination of Eros and the

fatality

of Sexus in equilibrium. "Sweetness"and "pleasure"are the perfectly

romantic

(and

banal)

abstractions that

represent

them: sweetness

is

fascinating,

but

pleasure

can

kill. The roles are reversed

in "A Une

Madone,"

when

the lover's

erotic intoxication

proves

fatal

to the

beloved woman.

The

in-depth gaze

cannot last: "Un

eclair,

puis

la nuit " The

eye

of

the woman

and the

eye

of the

storm come

together

in

the consumed

instant of the

gaze

that

begins

the

first tercet. The line is divided into

trimeter:

the caesura occurs at the moment when

the

subject

apostro-

phizes the fugitive as "tu," the pronoun of familiarity, love, or

intimacy.

The

pronoun

and the

apostrophe occupy

the

two

tercets.

A

key

element of the

poem

and

of Baudelaire's aesthetic is the

word

"beauty":

t falls at the

rhyme,

and follows

the

adjective

that

gives

1025







BERYL

SCHLOSSMAN

its form to the

woman

and to her modern form of

beauty: "fugitive."

The woman's passage through the street and the crowd locates her in

a

panoramic

view of

flight

and

movement.

Her silhouette

appears

against

this

backdrop;

when

her beautiful form strikes the

Narrator's

gaze,

the

crowded

street recedes in the

background. Benjamin puts

this

beauty

aside:

he

keeps only

a trace

of it in

the veil and the

shimmering

of the crowd that

displays

a

phantasmagoric image

of the

city.

This veil is essential to the Baudelairean

gaze:

"In

Baudelaire,

Paris becomes the

object

of

lyric

poetry

for the first time. This

poetics

is not an art of

nostalgia

for the

Homeland,

but

rather,

the

glance

of

the Allegorist that hits the city is the glance of the alienated one. It is

the

gaze

of the

Flaneur,

whose

way

of life

disguises

in

a

consoling

nimbus the future distress of the

city

dweller"

(WB

V.I:

54).

In

the

French

project description

of

1939

that

reworks most of

the

elements

of the 1935

project description, Benjamin

translates "Schimmer"as "a

mirage."

The veil is

present

in the text of 1935 as a

figure

of

phantasmagoria:

"The

crowd

is

the veil

through

which the familiar

city

waves

to the flaneur

as

a

phantasmagoria"

(WB

V.I:

54).

In

the

"Arcades

Book,"

Benjamin

writes: "Die

'Menge'

ist ein

Schleier,

der

dem flaneur die 'Masse' verbirgt [The 'crowd' is a veil that hides the

'masses'

from the

flaneur]"

(PWJ

59,

2).

The

feminine

object's gaze

fatally

hits the Narrator

drinking

from

her

eyes

at the

precise

moment

when

the

vision

of her

reawakens

his

sexuality.

Benjamin

performs

a kind

of

cover-up

at this

point

in

his

translation: the

woman's

beauty

and

her

gaze

are distanced

by

a

scintillating, shimmering

veil.

The one

who

is reborn

in

this

gaze-

the

one,

according

to

Benjamin,

who

is in the

process

of

becoming-

locates the instantaneous sexual

experience

in

the context of the

sublime renunciation of love. This renunciation echoes the fatal

moment of

succumbing

to her

gaze,

when

he drinks from her

eyes.

Baudelaire inscribes an

explosive

flash of

lightning

in the

split

second

of their chance encounter.

Body

and

soul,

Baudelaire's

poetics

confronts the instant of desire

exposed

with

the

lyrical gaze

of

love.

In

the terms of

Benjamin's allegorical vocabulary

of

love,

it

might

be

said that Sexus confronts Eros.

The Narrator

experiences

desire

as

a

violent

tension

comparable

to

shock-a

violence

that takes the

subject

over

the

edge,

in

this

case,

into the madness and rapture of extravagance. The poem presents

the scene of sexual

impact

as

a

renunciation of love.

In

this

sense,

"A

Une Passante"

anticipates

the loss of Aura. The sonnet

stages

the

drama of the Modern

subject, wandering

alone

in

the streets. The

1026







M

L

N

prose poem

entitled "Perte d'Aur6ole

[Loss

of a

Halo]"

offers a

poetics of the modern subject slipping into prose: the renunciation of

lyric

poetry

and the sacrifice of the

poet's romantically

divine

image

also

anticipate

the loss

of

Aura.

In

"A Une

Passante,"

the

anticipation

of the loss or denial of love starts with the

crowded street of the first

line and continues

in

the

explicit

sexuality

of

the encounter

in

the

tenth line.

In his

reading

as

well

as

in

his

translation,

Benjamin

emphasizes

the

illusory quality

of the instant of

vision;

the

crowd

becomes a

semi-opaque

screen or a

fata

morgana

hat

hides

the

image

of

his desire from the Narrator.

Benjamin's

screen transforms

Baudelaire's personified abstraction of the woman as a "beauty" nto

a

phantasmagoria

of

mourning

and a three-fold

allegory:

1)

she is the

crowd's

veil;

2)

this

veil

is

worn

by

the

city

in

the

guise

of a

woman;

and

3)

the formal clothes

of

mourning

connect her

with

the

majesty

of

tragic

women

in

antiquity

and the details of modern

fashion.

Baudelaire's Woman

passing

in

the street incarnates the

beauty

of

mourning,

the

hidden

key figure

("verborgene

Schlfisselfigur")

of

passing figures

who

gaze

at

each other and are forever

separated

by

Night.

For

an

instant,

the

allegorical

Night

of

eternity appeared

to

be

the night of intimacy evoked in "Le Balcon." That night thickened

like a screen

("s'epaississait

ainsi

qu'une

cloison")

to hide the

lovers

as

if

they

were

conspirators. Benjamin

borrows

this

screen for

his

theoretical framework for

modernity.

The screen of

Baudelairean

intimacy

that

Benjamin designates

as a

cover-up

resonates

in his

theoretical

framework

like the

navel

of the dream in

Freud's

interpre-

tation.

The

navel of

a

particular

dream,

according

to

Freud,

is

attached to the dream-text like an

opaque

spot

or a screen that

blocks

the access to its

meaning.

The navel

attaches

to

the

dream

when

the

dream analysis seems to be blocked by a mysterious power of

repression.

Freud remarks that the navel of the

dream is anchored

in

Death.10

In

the

ruin of

Aura,

Eros

disappears

forever,

and

Sexus

wears

the

veil

like

a

mask. The

veiled

figure

is

anonymous,

and like a nameless

prostitute,

she is

seening lifting

her

dress and

revealing

her

legs.

This

moment reveals

the

scandalous union

of Eros

and

Sexus,

Benjamin's

own

allegorizations

of

idealized love and

excessive,

unmediated

desire: Eros and Sexus combine the

tragic grandeur

of

antiquity

and

the graphic self-advertising of modernity. This union of love and sex

must

have

appeared

difficult if

not

impossible

to

Benjamin,

the

Jewish

Berliner

drifting

along

the

paths

of Parisian

desire,

as it must

have

appeared

to Baudelaire the

allegorist.

Baudelaire saw

a

painful

1027







BERYL

SCHLOSSMAN

complicity linking

the

artist and the

prostitute,

and

something

like

the commodification of the object of desire, but nothing like

Benjamin's

Eros,

the

magically charged

elixir of

love.

The

sonnet

"A

Une Passante"

dramatizes the

old

quarrel

between Eros and

Sexus;

its

Night

of

eternity

is

the

site of

their

reconciliation.1

The

negation

of line 11

("Ne

te

verrai-je

plus

que

dans

l'6ternite?")

shifts the encounter outside mortal life and into

eternity. "Eternity"

s

the

rhyme

word,

with

beauty

("beaute").

These words are

the

mascu-

line

rhyme

within an

alternating rhyme

form;

the feminine

rhyme

words

of

"renaitre" and

"peut-etre" signal

the rebirth

of

desire and

the Narrator's fearful anticipation. The masculine and feminine

rhymes

alternate,

according

to

the classical rule

(confirmed

by

Ronsard and rendered absolute

by

Malherbe)

that Baudelaire

gener-

ally

follows.

A

gender

reversal is an

unexpected poetic

effect that

results from this alternate

rhyme:

beauty

becomes

masculine,

and

reborn

virility

takes

on

a

feminine

appearance.

The first verse of the final tercet

posits

eternal

night

as an

abyss,

since the

desired

repeated

encounter

will

not take

place.

The

breaks,

the

syncopated

effect

of

"Ailleurs"

and

"jamais,"

and the exclamation

points make these lines brittle as glass. The fluidity of the first tercet

is

underscored

by

the

staccato

effect of the

second.

Baudelaire's

musical

form

of tension

and brittleness

is linked

to the

petrification

that

Benjamin

reads

in

other Baudelairean

portrayals

of

modernity.12

The final tercet

shapes

the Narrator's lament about the lost

opportu-

nity

for

love:

the

woman's fluid movement

of

flight

is

in stark contrast

to the Narrator's brittle

immobility.

Baudelaire underlines

'jamais"

in

anticipation

of the final

couplet

('je

vais

/

savais")

and internal

echoes.

Baudelaire's sonnet is filled with parallels and symmetrical forms.

The remarkable

symmetry

in

grammar, syntax,

and

prosody

is un-

usual

among

the love

poems

of The Flowers

of

Evil. The

central

encounter

implies

neither the sadism nor the

irony

that

most

frequently

characterize

the

lover's reflection of his

object.

The last

two lines

of

the sonnet

perfect

the

poem's

symmetry,

when

the

Narrator

declares himself

in

a double

passage

and a doubled

igno-

rance.

The

anonymous

woman

takes

flight

in

rhythmic

movement,

and leaves

the

Narrator with

his

unexpected hyperboles

of love.

The street is the theater of this crisis of love that begins with the

view of a

woman

and ends with

an

apostrophe

to the

woman seen

and

lost. In "Le Balcon

[The

Balcony],"

an

apostrophe

to the beloved

begins

the

poem

with her role

as a

given.

If

the "mere

des

souvenirs,

1028







M L

N

maitresse des maitresses

[mother

of

memories,

mistress

of mis-

tresses]"vanishes into thin air later in "LeBalcon," she vanishes from

an interior and does not

display

herself in the street. In "Le

Balcon,"

the

alcove

scene is

seductively

invoked

through memory.

The lover

summons

powerfully

evocative memories

from an

imprecise

past:

he

suspends

the

woman's

undecidable

reality

by taking

her

out

of

the

present

tense.

The

lover of the woman

passing

by,

on the other

hand,

does not

have

a

past

to

invoke

in the context of his

love.

Perhaps

the

extravagance

of his

love

is an effect of the total absence of

memories

related to its

object,

a

stranger

glimpsed

in

the street.

In the last verse of the sonnet, love turns into knowledge. This love

is

simultaneously

eloquent

and

silent;

the lover

attempts

to see the

woman as the Other

who

knows. In Lacan's seminar

entitled

Encore,

he

suggests

that the

fantasy

of

the

"autre

suppos6

savoir" s

integral

to

the structure of

love:

he

spells

it "amour" to

indicate the

presence

of

the

soul.13 But the

knowledge

that Baudelaire's Narrator

accusingly

attributes to the woman

who

has

disappeared

forever is

tenuous.

The

Night

of

Racine's

tragedies

and the infinite

Night

of

mystical

unknow-

ing

reconcile the

lover who

dies of

knowing

too much with the

subject who knows only that he loves, and whose night has become an

abyss.

The

lover has the last word. The last

line

of

the sonnet is

an

exclamation that accuses the

beloved

of

betraying

him: "6

toi

qui

le

savais "She

knew,

and

yet

she

continued her course. The

imperfect

tense

of

"savais,"

the

rhyme

word,

expands

the dimension of the

present

indicative time frame

in

the thirteenth line. The

moment

of

the

gaze

is

complex:

the Poet

figure

falls in

love

at

first

sight,

but his

gaze

remains

the

gaze

of the

Allegorist

who observes the ruin of the

Aura. This modern gaze takes in the constellation of the Woman,

Death,

and

the

City.

Its

privileged figures

are

widows veiled

in

mourning

and

anonymous

prostitutes

and

demi-mondaines.

he

Sec-

ond

Empire

opens

a

window

on the

antagonism

between

Eros

and

Sexus;

Sexus seems to have the

upper

hand,

and Eros is

suffering.

The love

object

is

veiled

in

anonymity

and lost in an

instant. The crisis

of

modernity

that

Benjamin

associates

with

tradition,

with

cult

value,

and

with

art

value,

the crisis that

he

theorizes as the

loss of

Aura,

also

resonates

in

Eros. The ruin of Aura

is

a

catastrophe

of

lost

love: it

leaves traces in nearly all of Baudelaire's writings.

The

violent

shock of love lost

produces

an

echo of

Stendhal

in

Baudelaire's

"Consoling

Maxims

on Love." But there

is

no

consolation

in

a world

of

aging

romanticism and

the

twilight

of auratic

love.

1029







BERYL

SCHLOSSMAN

Baudelaire's echoes

of

love

in

the

medieval, Renaissance,

and ba-

roque past frequently surrender to a representation of love in crisis,

love

that does

not

occur.

This is

part

of Baudelaire's search for

something

New. The non-occurrence

of

love

is

Baudelaire's

contribu-

tion to the tradition of love

lyric,

and

in

a certain

sense the

end

of

that

tradition. The end of

"A

Une Passante"

proclaims

love

in

the

realization

of its loss. The last line

with

its

past

conditional

"j'eusse

aim6e" inscribes love

in

memory: destiny

or

modernity

have

spared

the lover his aesthetic

passion.

Baudelaire's truest

representation

of

love

is

sung

in

the

figure

of its

flight.

But the

exchange

of

a

gaze

has

occurred: the instant of rapid consummation will last forever, in the

antiquity

of

Souvenir,

and in the

transports

of

the

Modern.

Baudelaire's sonnet translates love into the

terms

of

modernity:

love

emerges

in a

fragment

and

disappears

in

a moment of destruc-

tion.

Love

is

offered

as an

impossibility

and

retreats

in

an

image

of

anonymity.

Like the

mistress on the

balcony

and the

underground

madonna,

the

woman

passing

by

is an

enduring image

torn from the

passage

of time

to

represent

love.

Her

appearance,

as she

passes by,

is

the

object

of the lover's

gaze,

the

image

of

desire and

the

flight

of

time. Only the letters and lines of a love poem can preserve her

image.

As the

object

of

a lover's

discourse,

this feminine

figure

evokes

the distant

magic

of

Eros,

but the

modernity

that

puts

an end to Eros

shows her to the Narrator as

an

apparition,

an erotic

mirage

or

illusion. Her

appearance

contains the

figure

of

Sexus,

who

dispenses

with distance

and marks the

approach

of Death.

In

Baudelaire's

poem,

Love falls into the

abyss

of a

Night

without

end.

Benjamin

locates

the

fugitive beauty

of the sonnet in the

Night

of

the

Hidden

Figure.

Carnegie

Mellon

University

NOTES

1 The

English

translation of

"A

Une Passante"

(XCIII)

is mine. The French text is

quoted

from Charles

Baudelaire,

Oeuvres

completes

Paris:

Gallimard,

1975),

vol.

1,

92-93.

For

commentary

on "A Une

Passante,"

and "Tableaux

parisiens,"

see Les

Fleurs du

Mal,

edited

by

Jacques Crepet

and

Georges

Blin

(Paris:

J.

Corti,

1942),

460-61,

and

especially

Claude

Pichois,

OC

1,

1022-23.

On

Baudelaire,

see Claude Pichois's

bibliography

in

OC

2,

the

updated

bibliography

in

the Bulletin

Baudelairien,

and the

following:

Hans-Jost

Frey,

Studies

in

PoeticDiscourse:

Mallarme,Baudelaire,

Rimbaud,

Holderlin

Stanford:

Stanford

UP,

1996);

Paul de

Man,

The Rhetoric

of

Romanticism

NY:

Columbia

UP,

1984);

Ross

Chambers, "'Je'

dans les Tableaux Parisiens de Baudelaire" in Nineteenth

Century

FrenchStudiesvol. 9

(1980-81):

59-68;

by

the same

author,

"Baudelaire's

Street

1030







M L N

Poetry"

in

Nineteenth

Century

FrenchStudiesvol. 13

(1985):

244-59;

by

the

same

author,

Mlancolie

et

opposition:

es

debuts

du modernisme n France

(Paris:

Jose

Corti,

1987),

167-86;

Jonathan

Culler,

"Intertextuality

and

Interpretation:

Baudelaire's

'Correspondances"'

in

Nineteenth-Century

rench

Poetry,

edited

by

Christopher

Prendergast

(Cambridge:

Cambridge

UP,

1990),

118-37;

Richard

Stamelman,

Lost

BeyondTelling

Ithaca:

Cornell

UP,

1990);

by

the same

author,

"L'Anamorphose

baudelairienne:

L'Allegorie

du

'Masque"'

in

Cahiersde l'Association

nternationale

des etudes

francaises

vol.

41

(1989):

251-67; Jean Starobinski,

"Sur

quelques

repondants

allegorique

du

poete"

in

RHLF67

(1967):

402-12;James

Hiddleston,

"Baudelaire et

l'art

du souvenir" in

Les Fleurs

du

Mal:

L'interiorite

e

laforme

(Paris:

SEDES,

1989);

J.D.

Hubert,

LEsthetique

des Fleurs du Mal

(Geneve:

Pierre

Cailler,

1953);

Marc

Eigeldinger,

Poesieet

metamorphose

Neuchatel:

La

Baconniere,

1973);

Geoffrey

Hartman,

Criticism n the Wilderness

New

Haven: Yale U

P,

1980);

Victor

Brombert,

The Hidden

Reader

(Cambridge:

Harvard U

P,

1988);

John

E.

Jackson,

La Mort Baudelaire

(Neuchatel:

La

Baconniere,

1982)

and

by

the same

author,

Passions du

sujet

(Paris:

Mercure de

France,

1990),

203-42;

Georges

Poulet,

La

Poesie

&clat&e:

audelaire/Rimbaud

Paris:

PUF,

1980);

Nathaniel

Wing,

"The Danaides

Vessel: On

Reading

Baudelaire's

Allegories"

in

The

Limits

of

Narrative

(Cambridge:

Cambridge

U

P,

1986),

8-18. The

essays

of

Theophile

Gautier,

Paul

Valery,

Marcel

Proust,

Walter

Benjamin,

and Erich

Auerbach,

as well as

essays by Noyer-Weidner,

Felix

Leakey,

Michael

Riffaterre,

Margaret

Gilman,

Alison

Fairlie,

Bernard

Weinberg,

Gerald

Antoine,

and

Wolfgang

Drost

are collected

in

Wege

erForschung:

Baudelaire,

edited

by

Alfred

Noyer-Weidner

(Darmstadt:

Wissenschafliche Buch-

gesellschaft,

1976),

Band cclxxxiii.

See

the

notes below for references to "A

Une

Passante"and

melancholy

in

the

writings

of

Chambers, Stamelman,

and

Starobinski.

2 References to Baudelaire, indicated in parentheses within the text, refer to

volumes 1

and

2

of

the Gallimard Pleiade edition

by

Claude

Pichois,

Charles

Baudelaire,

Oeuvres

completes

Paris:

Gallimard,

1975 and

1976).

3 References to the

writings

of Walter

Benjamin

refer to the edition of the

complete

works

by

Rolf

Tiedemann:

Gesammelte

Schriften

Frankfurt

am Main:

Suhrkamp,

1974-89).

The abbreviation of PW refers to the

unfinished

manuscript

of the

"Passagenarbeit," published

as

Passagenwerk

[Arcades

Book]

in

the

Suhrkamp

edition.

All

translations are mine.

4 See "Uber

einige

Motive bei Baudelaire

[On

Some Motifs in

Baudelaire]"

(WB

1.2:

646-47).

5

PWJ47,

6 and

PWJ47a,

1. On Baudelaire and

Benjamin,

see Rainer

Nagele,

Echoes

of Translation(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997); by the same author, "The

Poetic Ground Laid Bare

(Benjamin Reading

Baudelaire)"

in

Walter

Benjamin:

Theoretical

Questions,

dited

by

David S. Ferris

(Stanford:

Stanford

UP,

1996),

118-

38;

and

by

the same

author,

"Traumlekture:

Benjamin

liest

Baudelaire

I,"

Lesarten

der

Moderne:

Essays

(Eggingen:

Edition Klaus

Isele,

1998),

33-54;

Samuel

Weber,

"Mass

Mediauras; or, Art, Aura,

and Media in the

Work

of

Walter

Benjamin"

in

Ferris,

ibid., 27-49;

Rodolphe

Gasche,

"The

Sober Absolute: On

Benjamin

and

the

Early

Romantics"

in

Ferris, ibid.,

50-74.

6

Benjamin

quotes

the

passage

from "Peintre de la

vie moderne"

in

Charles

Baudelaire,

"Die

Moderne"

(WB

I:

571).

7 See

Walter

Benjamin,

Urspriing

des deutschen

Trauerspiels

The

Origin of

the German

Mourning-Play],

WB

op. cit., 1982,

and

Raymond Klibansky,

Erwin

Panofsky,

and

Fritz

Saxl,

Saturn and

Melancholy

(London:

Nelson,

1964).

On

mourning

and

melancholy

in

Baudelaire,

see the

following:

Ross

Chambers,

"The Storm in

the

Eye

of the Poem:

Baudelaire's 'A Une Passante"' in

Textual

Analysis:

SomeReaders

Reading,

edited

by Mary

Ann

Caws

(NY:

MLA,

1986),

156-66,

and

by

the same

author,

"Pour une

poetique

du

vetement"

in

Michigan

RomanceStudies 1

(1980):

1031







BERYL SCHLOSSMAN

18-46;

Richard

Stamelman,

"The Shroud of

Allegory:

Death,

Mourning

and

Melancholy

in Baudelaire's

Work"

in TexasStudies in Literatureand

Language

25

(1983):

390-409,

and

by

the same

author,

Lost

Beyond Telling:Representations f

Death and Absence n ModernFrench

Poetry

Ithaca:

Cornell

U

P,

1990),

3-69;

Jean

Starobinski,

La melancolie u miroir

Paris:

Julliard,

1989),

and

by

the

same

author,

"L'Immortalite

melancolique"

in Le

Temps

de la

reflexion

1982)

vol. 3:

231-251.

8 See Albert

Cassagne,

Versification

t

metrique

e CharlesBaudelaire

Geneve:

Slatkine

Reprints,

1972),

and the

discussion

of romantic verse in Maurice de

Gramont,

Petit traitede

versificationrancaise

(Paris:

Armand

Colin,

1965).

9 See

TJ.

Clark,

The

Painting of

Modern

Life

(Princeton:

Princeton U

Press,

1984);

Charles

Bernheimer,

Figures of

Ill

Repute

(Cambridge:

Harvard U

Press,

1989);

Hollis

Clayson,

Painted Love

(New

Haven: Yale

UP,

1991);

Robert

L.

Herbert,

Impressionism:

rt, Leisure,

and Parisian

Society

New

Haven: Yale

UP,

1988);

and

Theodore Reff, Manet and ModernParis (U of Chicago P, 1982).

10

Sigmund

Freud,

Die

Traumdeutung

Frankfurt

am

Main: S. Fischer

Verlag,

1972),

Studienausgabe,

and

II,

chapter

II, 130,

and

chapter

VII:

A,

503.

(See

TheStandard

Edition

4,

110 and

5,

525).

11 See

Benjamin's fragment

published

as

Zentralpark

,

WB

I:

660.

12

On

petrification

and

allegory,

see

Benjamin's

Trauerspiel

ook and his remarks on

"Le

Cygne"

in Charles

Baudelaire,

cited above. On

allegory

in

Benjamin,

see Paul

de

Man,

"'Conclusions' on

Walter

Benjamin's

'The Task of the

Translator,"'

The

Resistanceto

Theory

(Minneapolis:

U of Minnesota

P,

1986);

Rodolphe

Gasche,

"SaturnineVision

and

the

Question

of

Difference: Reflections on Walter

Benjamin's

Theory

of

Language"

in

Rainer

Nigele, Benjamin's

(;round,

op.

cit., 83-104;

Samuel Weber,"Genealogyof Modernity: History,Myth,and Allegory in Benjamin's

Origin

of

the

German

Mourning

Play"

n Modern

Language

Notes

106

(1991):

465-

500;

Carol

Jacobs,

"Topographically Speaking"

in

Ferris,

94-117;

by

the same

author,

The

DissimulatingHarmony

(Johns

Hopkins

UP,

1978);

Werner

Hamacher,

"The Word Wolke-If It Is One"

in

Nagele, op.

cit.,

147-176. On

Baudelaire,

memory,

and "Le

Cygne"

see

Hans-JostFrey,

"Ueber die

Erinnerung

bei Baudelaire"

Symposium

33: 4

(1979),

312-30;

and Richard

Terdiman,

Present Past

(Ithaca:

Cornell

UP,

1993),

107-47.

13 See

Jacques

Lacan,

Le

Seminaire

XX.

Encore

(Paris:

Seuil,

1975).

Samuel

Weber

makes a similar

point

in "Mass

Mediauras,"

op.

cit.

1032

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