” … glorifier le culte des images
(ma grande, mon unique, ma primitive passion) … “—From Mon coeur mis à nu
To the English-speaking intellectual, Baudelaire, the poet and man, is no stranger. If the reader finds it difficult to grasp the sophisticated vocabulary and subtle metaphors of the original French, he can turn to a dozen English renderings of the major poems from Les Fleurs du Mal, some quite good even if they cannot capture all the magic of the original. Several biographies of Baudelaire are available in English, and of these Enid Starkie’s volume is the most readable and reliable. Baudelaire the committed critic, however, is less widely known outside France than Baudelaire the poet, and his preoccupation with literature, music, and, especially, painting is less often discussed than his tragic love life and his fatal excursion into the world of drugs. Yet, his contributions to the art of criticism not only constitute a very substantial portion of his total oeuvre but also have such significance in the general development of criticism that they deserve to be stressed as we approach the centenary of Baudelaire’s death.
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