The role of death in Baudelaire's poems

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Usant à l’envi leurs chaleurs dernières,

Nos deux coeurs seront deux vastes flambeaux,

Qui réfléchiront leurs doubles lumières

Dans nos deux esprits, ces miroirs jumeaux.

In the second stanza, poet speaks of passionate and sensuous love. The sensuality between the lovers is represented through the vocabulary of fire and light (flambeaux) and heat “chaleurs” . These terms lay emphasis on the sense of touch.The sensual relationship is expressed by the poet through synesthesia. Also, their lust of sexual pleasure, their last embrace and their passion is evoked by alliteration of ‘l’ and ‘r’ in 5th line and in 7th line. The poet compares the lovers to mirrors each reflecting the image of the other of the meeting of two minds (esprits)and bodies (coeurs). The fusion and the repetition of the two hearts, two souls not just represents their corporal fusion but emphasizes on the spiritual fusion of the two which will fusion them forever into one. Hence the concept of dual is once again found with the use of words like deux and jumeaux.

Un soir fait de rose et de bleu mystique,

Nous échangerons un éclair unique,

Comme un long sanglot, tout chargé d’adieux;

In the third stanza, the tenderness of death is reflected through the alliteration of ‘s’ in “soir, rose and mystique” where poet creates a sensation of mysticism. Mysticism generated through the fusion of two colours red and blue gives a sensation of their otherworldly union one night when they will be moving towards the sky. But here the ethereal union manifested through the correspondence of vision of colours (rose et bleu)and light (éclair) as well as through sound produced by the lovers through a sudden expulsion of breath in a sob (sanglot) and no more through touch announces the end of physical love by rejoining the idea of spiritual love. Death is represented by the word (adieux). In the last line even the effect of fusing towards the celestial world has been accentuated by the poet through the use of alliteration of /on/ in “comme un long sanglot, tout chargé d’adieux”.

Et plus tard un Ange, entr’ouvrant les portes,

Viendra ranimer, fidèle et joyeux,

Les miroirs ternis et les flammes mortes.

In the last stanza, the poet imagines the two lovers entering heaven. This evolution in the vision of poet towards the infinity is marked by the progression of temporality in first verse “we shall have beds full of subtle perfumes” (Nous aurons des lits pleins d’odeurs légères), then in third verse “One evening of mystical azure skies” (un soir fait de rose et de bleu mystique), and in the last verse “And later an Angel, setting the doors ajar” (Et plus tard, entrouvrant les portes) assuming their future in heaven. The two lovers are dead but their love will be revived by an angel who will welcome the two with pleasure into the paradise, giving a sense of their eternal liberty, happiness and union after death. The poet alludes to the two mirrors that earlier reflected the images of two lovers which will be tarnished and the images of the two will become blurred representing fusion into one in infinity. The transformation of physical love into spiritual eternal love is represented by the phrase “flammes mortes’.

In conclusion, death is envisaged as a reincarnation of the two lovers as one who chooses death as a medium to get access to the infinity where their love will be eternal, ideal and spiritual. In this poem, Baudelaire introduces the idea of Neoplatonism. Neoplatonic thought states that the universe is structured with God at the top, and everything else leading up to God in a series of steps underneath him. Thus a person gradually moves away from the material to the spiritual. "Neoplatonists hold that being incorporated into the material realm—though not in itself evil—makes a person fall into a state of exile and forget existence’s true goal: reunion with the divine."Reunion with the divine comes with death then theoretically death should be viewed as a glorious occasion, not a dreaded one.

THE ROLE OF DEATH IN THE POEMS OF BAUDELAIRE

My M.A dissertation in the field of poetry is titled “the role of death in the poems of Baudelaire” This study seeks to answer the following questions:

“What is the signification of death in Baudelaire’s works?

How is death portrayed in Baudelaire’s poems?

For the purpose, I have chosen four poems from his well known work “Les fleurs du mal”/ “The flowers of evil”. This collection was first published in 1857 and comprised 94 poems, divided into five parts: Spleen and Ideal, Flowers of evil, Revolt, Wine, and Death. To this original collection some more poems were added as also another section titled Parisian landscape” between Spleen and Ideal“ and “Wine”. This new and revised version was published in 1861 and contained 129 poems. The final version was published in 1868 with 151 poems.

The title “Les fleurs du mal” in itself is a paradox. The word “mal” signifies misery, suffering, pain in one’s life which is manifested through the presence of melancholy, anxiety and fear of death. Through this title, Baudelaire tries to show the reader beauty of evil. Unlike other Romantic poets that use the description of nature to convey their emotions, Baudelaire chooses to convey beauty through horrifying and repulsive images. Thus, he evokes the coexistence of “Spleen and Ideal”. ”Spleen” signifies all that is wrong with the world like despair, death, solitude, murder. In contrast, “Ideal” represents transcendence over i.e overcoming and going beyond the reality of spleen. Baudelaire’s prosody of the soul involves a complex struggle between opposing tendencies: between “two simultaneous postulations”, one towards God, the other towards Satan.

The duality

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