No More Learning

.
ure of the youthful poet is best preserved for us, appearing in all
the delicate and illusive radiance of the youth and beauty of legend-
ary saints on the gilded canvases of mediæval art. The radiant
youth and beauty may be no more truthful to nature than the gilded
background, but the fact of the impression sought to be conveyed is
not on that account to be disbelieved.
Baudelaire, Gautier writes, was born in the Rue Hautefeuille, in
one of those old houses with a pepper-pot turret at the corner which

111-102


## p. 1618 (#416) ###########################################

1618
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
i
have disappeared from the city under the advancing improvement of
straight lines and clear openings. His father, a gentleman of learn-
ing, retained all the eighteenth-century courtesy and distinction of
manner, which, like the pepper-pot turret, has also disappeared under
the advance of Republican enlightenment. An absent-minded, re-
served child, Baudelaire attracted no especial attention during his
school days. When they were over, his predilection for a literary
vocation became known. From this his parents sought to divert hiin
by sending him to travel. He voyaged through the Indian Ocean,
visiting the great islands: Madagascar, Ceylon, Mauritius, Bourbon.
Had there been a chance for irresolution in the mind of the youth,
this voyage destroyed it forever. His imagination, essentially exotic,
succumbed to the passionate charm of a new, strange, and splendidly
glowing form of nature; the stars, the skies, the gigantic vegetation,
the color, the perfumes, the dark-skinned figures in white draperies,
formed for him at that time a heaven, for which his senses unceas-
ingly yearned afterwards amid the charms and enchantments of civ-
ilization, in the world's capital of pleasure and luxury. Returning to
Paris, of age and master of his fortune, he established himself in his
independence, openly adopting his chosen career.
He and Théophile Gautier met for the first time in 1849, in the
Hotel Pimodau, where were held the meetings of the Hashish Club.
Here in the great Louis XIV. saloon, with its wood-work relieved
with dull gold; its corbeled ceiling, painted after the manner of
Lesueur and Poussin, with satyrs pursuing nymphs through reeds and
foliage; its great red and white spotted marble mantel, with gilded
elephant harnessed like the elephant of Porus in Lebrun's picture,
bearing an enameled clock with blue ciphers; its antique chairs and
sofas, covered with faded tapestry representing hunting scenes, hold-
ing the reclining figures of the members of the club; women cele-
brated in the world of beauty, men in the world of letters, meeting
not only for the enjoyment of the artificial ecstasies of the drug, but
to talk of art, literature, and love, as in the days of the Decameron
here Baudelaire made what might be called his historic impression
upon literature.
He was at that time twenty-eight years of age; and
even in that assemblage, in those surroundings, his personality was
striking. His black hair, worn close to the head, grew in regular
scallops over a forehead of dazzling whiteness; his eyes, the color of
Spanish tobacco, were spiritual, deep, penetrating, perhaps too insist-
ently so, in expression; the mobile sinuous mouth had the ironical
voluptuous lips that Leonardo da Vinci loved to paint; the nose was
delicate and sensitive, with quivering nostrils; a deep dimple accent-
uated the chin; the bluish-black tint of the shaven skin, softened
with rice-powder, contrasted with the clear rose and white of the


## p. 1619 (#417) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1619
upper part of his cheeks. Always dressed with meticulous neatness
and simplicity, following English rather than French taste; in man-
ner punctiliously observant of the strictest conventionality, scrupu-
lously, even excessively polite; in talk measuring his phrases, using
only the most select terms, and pronouncing certain words as if the
sound itself possessed a certain subtle, mystical value, — throwing
his voice into capitals and italics; - in contrast with the dress and
manners about him, he, according to Gautier, looked like a dandy
who had strayed into Bohemia.
The contrast was no less violent between Baudelaire's form and
the substance of his conversation. With a simple, natural, and per-
fectly impartial manner, as if he were conveying commonplace
information about every-day life, he would advance some axiom
monstrously Satanic, or sustain, with the utmost grace and coolness,
some mathematical extravagance in the way of a theory.
And no
one could so inflexibly push a paradox to the uttermost limits,
regardless of consequences to received notions of morality or reli-
gion; always employing the most rigorous methods of logic and
reason. His wit was found to lie neither in words nor thoughts, but
in the peculiar standpoint from which he regarded things, a stand-
point which altered their outlines, — like those of objects looked down
upon from a bird's flight, or looked up to on a ceiling. In this way,
to continue the exposition of Gautier, Baudelaire saw relations inap-
preciable to others, whose logical bizarrerie was startling.
His first productions were critical articles for the Parisian journals;
articles that at the time passed unperceived, but which to-day
furnish perhaps the best evidences of that keen artistic insight and
foresight of the poet, which was at once his greatest good and evil
genius. In 1856 appeared his translation of the works of Edgar Allan
Poe; a translation which may be said to have naturalized Poe in
French literature, where he has played a rôle curiously like that of
Baudelaire in Poe's native literature. The natural predisposition of
Baudelaire, which fitted him to be the French interpreter of Poe,
rendered him also peculiarly sensitive to Poe's mysteriously subtle
yet rankly vigorous charms; and he showed himself as sensitively
responsive to these as he had been to the exotic charms of the East.
The influence upon his intellectual development was decisive and
final. His indebtedness to Poe, or it might better be said, his iden-
tification with Poe, is visible not only in his paradoxical manias, but
in his poetry, and in his theories of art and poetry set forth in his
various essays and fugitive prose expressions, and notably in his
introduction to his translations of the American author's works,
In 1857 appeared the (Fleurs du Mal’ (Flowers of Evil), the vol-
ume of poems upon which Baudelaire's fame as
a poet is founded.


## p. 1620 (#418) ###########################################

1620
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
It was the result of his thirty years' devotion to the study of his art
and meditation upon it. Six of the poems were suppressed by the
censor of the Second Empire. This action called out, in form of
protest, that fine appreciation and defense of Baudelaire's genius and
best defense of his methods, by four of the foremost critics and
keenest artists in poetry of Paris, which form, with the letters from
Sainte-Beuve, de Custine, and Deschamps, a precious appendix to the
third edition of the poems.
The name Flowers of Evil” is a sufficient indication of the inten-
tions and aim of the author. Their companions in the volume are:
(Spleen and Ideal, Parisian Pictures, Wine,' Revolt,' Death. '
The simplest description of them is that they are indescribable.
They must not only be read, they must be studied repeatedly to be
understood as they deserve. The paradox of their most exquisite art,
and their at times most revolting revelations of the degradations and
perversities of humanity, can be accepted with full appreciation of
the author's meaning only by granting the same paradox to his
genuine nature; by crediting him with being not only an ardent
idealist of art for art's sake, but an idealist of humanity for human-
ity's sake; one to whom humanity, even in its lowest degradations
and vilest perversions, is sublimely sacred; - one to whom life offered
but one tragedy, that of human souls flying like Cain from a guilt-
stricken paradise, but pursued by the remorse of innocence, and
scourged by the consciousness of their own infinitude.
But the poet's own words are the best explanation of his aim and
intention :
«Poetry, though one delve ever so little into his own self, interrogate his
own soul, recall his memories of enthusiasms, has no other end than itself; it
cannot have any other aim, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly
worthy of the name of poem, as that which shall have been written solely for
the pleasure of writing a poem. I do not wish to say that poetry should not
ennoble manners – – that its final result should not be to raise man above vul-
gar interests.
That would be an evident absurdity. I say that if the poet
has pursued a moral end, he has diminished his poetic force, and it would
not be imprudent to wager that his work would be bad. Poetry cannot,
under penalty of death or forfeiture, assimilate itself to science or morality.
It has not Truth for object, it has only itself. Truth's modes of demonstra-
tion are different and elsewhere. Truth has nothing to do with ballads; all
that constitutes the charm, the irresistible grace of a ballad, would strip
Truth of its authority and power. Cold, calm, impassive, the demonstrative
temperament rejects the diamonds and flowers of the muse; it is, therefore, the
absolute inverse of the poetic temperament. Pure Intellect aims at Truth,
Taste shows us Beauty, and the Moral Sense teaches us Duty. It is true
that the middle term has intimate connection with the two extremes, and
only separates itself from Moral Sense by a difference so slight that Aristotle


## p. 1621 (#419) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1621
did not hesitate to class some of its delicate operations amongst the virtues.
And accordingly what, above all, exasperates the man of taste is the spectacle
of vice, is its deformity, its disproportions. Vice threatens the just and true,
and revolts intellect and conscience; but as an outrage upon harmony, as dis-
sonance, it would particularly wound certain poetic minds, and I do not think
it would be scandal to consider all infractions of moral beauty as a species of
sin against rhythm and universal prosody.
«It is this admirable, this immortal instinct of the Beautiful which makes
us consider the earth and its spectacle as a sketch, as a correspondent of
Heaven. The insatiable thirst for all that is beyond that which life veils is
the most living proof of our immortality. It is at once by poetry and across
it, across and through music, that the soul gets a glimpse of the splendors
that lie beyond the tomb. And when an exquisite poem causes tears to rise
in the eye, these tears are not the proof of excessive enjoyment, but rather
the testimony of a moved melancholy, of a postulation of the nerves, of a
nature exiled in the imperfect, which wishes to take immediate possession,
even on earth, of a revealed paradise.
« Thus the principle of poetry is strictly and simply human aspiration
toward superior beauty; and the manifestation of this principle is enthusi-
asm and uplifting of the soul, - enthusiasm entirely independent of passion,-
which is the intoxication of heart, and of truth which is the food of reason.
For passion is a natural thing, even too natural not to introduce a wounding,
discordant tone into the domain of pure beauty; too familiar, too violent, not
to shock the pure Desires, the gracious Melancholies, and the noble Despairs
which inhabit the supernatural regions of poetry. ”
Baudelaire saw himself as the poet of a decadent epoch, an epoch
in which art had arrived at the over-ripened maturity of an aging
civilization; a glowing, savorous, fragrant over-ripeness, that is
already softening into decomposition. And to be the fitting poet of
such an epoch, he modeled his style on that of the poets of the
Latin decadence; for, as he expressed it for himself and for the
modern school of «decadents” in French poetry founded upon his
name: -
“Does it not seem to the reader, as to me, that the language of the last
Latin decadence — that supreme sigh of a robust person already transformed
and prepared for spiritual life — is singularly fitted to express passion as it is
understood and felt by the modern world ? Mysticism is the other end of the
magnet of which Catullus and his band, brutal and purely epidermic poets,
knew only the sensual pole. In this wonderful language, solecisms and bar-
barisms seem to express the forced carelessness of a passion which forgets
itself, and mocks at rules. The words, used in a novel sense, reveal the
charming awkwardness of a barbarian from the North, kneeling before Roman
Beauty. ”
Nature, the nature of Wordsworth and Tennyson, did not exist for
Baudelaire; inspiration he denied; simplicity he scouted as an an-
achronism in a decadent period of perfected art, whose last word in


## p. 1622 (#420) ###########################################

1622
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
poetry should be the apotheosis of the Artificial. “A little charlatan-
ism is permitted even to genius,” he wrote: “it is like fard on the
cheeks of a naturally beautiful woman; an appetizer for the mind. ”
Again he expresses himself:-
It seems to me, two women are presented to me, one a rustic matron,
repulsive in health and virtue, without manners, without expression; in short,
owing nothing except to simple nature ; – the other, one of those beauties that
dominate and oppress memory, uniting to her original and unfathomable
charms all the eloquence of dress; who is mistress of her part, conscious of
and queen of herself, speaking like an instrument well tuned; with looks
freighted with thought, yet letting flow only what she would. My choice
would not be doubtful; and yet there are pedagogic sphinxes who would
reproach me as recreant to classical honor. )
In music it was the same choice. He saw the consummate art
and artificiality of Wagner, and preferred it to all other music, at a
time when the German master was ignored and despised by a classic-
ized musical world. In perfumes it was not the simple fragrance of
the rose or violet that he loved, but musk and amber; and he said,
“my soul hovers over perfumes as the souls of other men hover
over music. »
Besides his essays and sketches, Baudelaire published in prose a
novelette; Fanfarlo,' Artificial Paradises,' opium and hashish, imi-
tations of De Quincey's 'Confessions of an Opium Eater); and Little
Prose Poems, also inspired by a book, the (Gaspard de la Nuit) of
Aloysius Bertrand, and which Baudelaire thus describes: -
« The idea came to me to attempt something analogous, and to apply to
the description of modern life, or rather a modern and more abstract life, the
methods he had applied to the painting of ancient life, so strangely pictur-
esque. Which one of us in his ambitious days has not dreamed of a miracle
of poetic prose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough
and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of the soul, to
the undulations of reverie, and to the assaults of conscience ? »
Failing health induced Baudelaire to quit Paris and establish
himself in Brussels; but he received no benefit from the change of
climate, and the first symptoms of his terrible malady manifested
themselves a slowness of speech, and hesitation over words. As a
slow and sententious enunciation was characteristic of him, the
symptoms attracted no attention, until he fell under a sudden and
violent attack. He was brought back to Paris and conveyed to a
«maison de santé,” where he died, after lingering several months in
a paralyzed condition, motionless, speechless; nothing alive in him
but thought, seeking to express itself through his eyes.
The nature of Baudelaire's malady and death was, by the public
at large, accepted as confirmation of the suspicion that he was in the
1


## p. 1623 (#421) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1623
are.
habit of seeking his inspiration in the excitation of hashish and
opium. His friends, however, recall the fact of his incessant work,
and intense striving after his ideal in art; his fatigue of body and
mind, and his increasing weariness of spirit under the accumulating
worries and griefs of a life for which his very genius unfitted him.
He was also known to be sober in his tastes, as all great workers
That he had lent himself more than once to the physiological
and psychological experiment of hashish was admitted; but he was a
rare visitor at the séances in the saloon of the Hotel Pimodau, and
came as a simple observer of others. His masterly description of
the hallucinations produced by hashish is accompanied by analytical
and moral commentaries which unmistakably express repugnance to
and condemnation of the drug:
«Admitting for the moment,” he writes, “the hypothesis of a constitution
tempered enough and strong enough to resist the evil effects of the perfidious
drug, another, a fatal and terrible danger, must be thought of, — that of habit.
He who has recourse to a poison to enable him to think, will soon not be
able to think without the poison. Imagine the horrible fate of a man whose
paralyzed imagination is unable to work without the aid of hashish or opium.
But man is not so deprived of honest means of gaining heaven,
that he is obliged to invoke the aid of pharmacy or witchcraft; he need not
sell his soul in order to pay for the intoxicating caresses and the love of
houris. What is a paradise that one purchases at the expense of one's own
soul ?
Unfortunate wretches who have neither fasted nor prayed, and
who have refused the redemption of labor, ask from black magic the means
to elevate themselves at a single stroke to a supernatural existence. Magic
dupes them, and lights for them a false happiness and a false light; while we,
poets and philosophers, who have regenerated our souls by incessant work and
contemplation, by the assiduous exercise of the will and permanent nobility of
intention, we have created for our use a garden of true beauty. Confiding
in the words that (faith will remove mountains,' we have accomplished the
one miracle for which God has given us license. ”
The perfect art-form of Baudelaire's poems makes translation of
them indeed a literal impossibility. The Little Old Women,' (The
Voyage, The Voyage to Cytherea, A Red-haired Beggar-girl,'
“The Seven Old Men,' and sonnet after sonnet in (Spleen and Ideal,'
seem to rise only more and more ineffable from every attempt to
filter them through another language, or through another mind than
that of their original, and, it would seem, one possible creator.
Grace Trung


## p. 1624 (#422) ###########################################

1624
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
MEDITATION
B
E PITIFUL, my sorrow - be thou still:
For night thy thirst was lo, it falleth down,
Slowly darkening it veils the town,
Bringing its peace to some, to some its ill.
While the dull herd in its mad career
Under the pitiless scourge, the lash of unclean desire,
Goes culling remorse with fingers that never tire:
My sorrow, — thy hand! Come, sit thou by me here.
Here, far from them all. From heaven's high balconies
See! in their threadbare robes the dead years cast their eyes:
And from the depths below regret's wan smiles appear.
The sun, about to set, under the arch sinks low,
Trailing its weltering pall far through the East aglow.
Hark, dear one, hark! Sweet night's approach is near.
Translated for the Library of the World's Best Literature. )
THE DEATH OF THE POOR
This
his is death the consoler — death that bids live again;
Here life its aim: here is our hope to be found,
Making, like magic elixir, our poor weak heads to swim round,
And giving us heart for the struggle till night makes end of the
pain.
Athwart the hurricane — athwart the snow and the sleet,
Afar there twinkles over the black earth's waste,
The light of the Scriptural inn where the weary and the faint may
taste
The sweets of welcome, the plenteous feast and the secure retreat.
It is an angel, in whose soothing palms
Are held the boon of sleep and dreamy balms,
Who makes a bed for poor unclothèd men;
It is the pride of the gods - the all-mysterious room,
The pauper's purse — this fatherland of gloom,
The open gate to heaven, and heavens beyond our ken.
Translated for the Library of the World's Best Literature. )


## p. 1625 (#423) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1625
MUSIC
SWEETToward my pale star
WEET music sweeps me like the sea
Toward my pale star,
Whether the clouds be there or all the air be free
I sail afar.
With front outspread and swelling breasts,
On swifter sail
I bound through the steep waves' foamy crests
Under night's veil.
Vibrate within me I feel all the passions that lash
A bark in distress:
By the blast I am lulled — by the tempest's wild crash
On the salt wilderness.
Then comes the dead calm — mirrored there
I behold my despair.
Translated for the Library of the World's Best Literature.
THE BROKEN BELL
B.
ITTER and sweet, when wintry evenings fall
Across the quivering, smoking hearth, to hear
Old memory's notes sway softly far and near,
While ring the chimes across the gray fog's pall.
Thrice blessed bell, that, to time insolent,
Still calls afar its old and pious song,
Responding faithfully in accents strong,
Like some old sentinel before his tent.
I too — my soul is shattered; - when at times
It would beguile the wintry nights wiih rhymes
Of old, its weak old voice at moments seems
Like gasps some poor, forgotten soldier heaves
Beside the blood-pools—’neath the human sheaves
Gasping in anguish toward their fixed dreams.
Translated for the Library of the World's Best Literature. )


## p. 1626 (#424) ###########################################

1626
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
The two poems following are used by permission of the J. B. Lippincott
Company
THE ENEMY
M
Y YOUTH swept by in storm and cloudy gloom,
Lit here and there by glimpses of the sun;
But in my garden, now the storm is done,
Few fruits are left to gather purple bloom.
Here have I touched the autumn of the mind;
And now the careful spade to labor comes,
Smoothing the earth torn by the waves and wind,
Full of great holes, like open mouths of tombs.
And who knows if the flowers whereof I dream
Shall find, beneath this soil washed like the stream,
The force that bids them into beauty start?
O grief! O grief! Time eats our life away,
And the dark Enemy that gnaws our heart
Grows with the ebbing life-blood of his prey!
Translation of Miss Katharine Hillard.
BEAUTY
B В
EAUTIFUL am I as a dream in stone;
And for my breast, where each falls bruised in turn,
The poet with an endless love must yearn
Endless as Matter, silent and alone.
A sphinx unguessed, enthroned in azure skies,
White as the swan, my heart is cold as snow;
No hated motion breaks my lines' pure flow,
Nor tears nor laughter ever dim mine eyes.
Poets, before the attitudes sublime
I seem to steal from proudest monuments,
In austere studies waste the ling'ring time;
For I possess, to charm my lover's sight,
Mirrors wherein all things are fair and bright-
My eyes, my large eyes of eternal light!
Translation of Miss Katharine Hillard.


## p. 1627 (#425) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1627
DEATH
Hº DUp"anchor, away from this region of blight:
O, DEATH, Boatman Death, it is time we set sail;
U'p anchor, away from this region of blight:
Though ocean and sky are like ink for the gale,
Thou knowest our hearts are consoled with the light.
Thy poison pour out — it will comfort us well;
Yea — for the fire that burns in our brain
We would plunge through the depth, be it heaven or hell,
Through the fathomless gulf — the new vision to gain.
Translated for the Library of the World's Best Literature. )
THE PAINTER OF MODERN LIFE
From "L'Art Romantique)
T"
He crowd is his domain, as the air is that of the bird and
the water that of the fish. His passion and his profession
is to wed the crowd. ” For the perfect flâneur, for the
passionate observer, it is an immense pleasure to choose his
home in number, change, motion, in the fleeting and the infinite.
To be away from one's home and yet to be always at home; to
be in the midst of the world, to see it, and yet to be hidden
from it; such are some of the least pleasures of these independ-
ent, passionate, impartial minds which language can but awk-
wardly define. The observer is a prince who everywhere enjoys
his incognito. The amateur of life makes the world his family,
as the lover of the fair sex makes his family of all beauties,
discovered, discoverable, and indiscoverable, as the lover of paint-
ing lives in an enchanted dreamland painted on canvas. Thus
the man who is in love with all life goes into a crowd as into
an immense electric battery. One might also compare him to a
mirror as immense as the crowd; to a conscious kaleidoscope
which in each movement represents the multiform life and the
moving grace of all life's elements. He is an ego insatiably
hungry for the non-ego, every moment rendering it and express-
ing it in images more vital than life itself, which is always
unstable and fugitive. “Any man,” said Mr. G- one day, in
one of those conversations which he lights up with intense look
and vivid gesture, “any man, not overcome by a
sorrow
SO


## p. 1628 (#426) ###########################################

1628
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
heavy that it absorbs all the faculties, who is bored in the midst
of a crowd is a fool, a fool, and I despise him. ”
When Mr. G— awakens and sees the blustering sun attack-
ing the window-panes, he says with remorse, with regret:-
«What imperial order! What a trumpet flourish of light! For
hours already there has been light everywhere, light lost by my
sleep! How many lighted objects I might have seen and have
not seen! ” And then he starts off, he watches in its flow the
river of vitality, so majestic and so brilliant. He admires the
eternal beauty and the astonishing harmony of life in great
cities, a harmony maintained in so providential a way in the
tumult of human liberty. He contemplates the landscapes of the
great city, landscapes of stone caressed by the mist or struck by
the blows of the sun. He enjoys the fine carriages, the fiery
horses, the shining neatness of the grooms, the dexterity of the
valets, the walk of the gliding women, of the beautiful children,
happy that they are alive and dressed; in a word, he enjoys the
universal life. If a fashion, the cut of a piece of clothing has
been slightly changed, if bunches of ribbon or buckles have been
displaced by cockades, if the bonnet is larger and the back hair
a notch lower on the neck, if the waist is higher and the skirt
fuller, be sure that his eagle eye will see it at an
distance. A regiment passes, going perhaps to the end of the
earth, throwing into the air of the boulevards the flourish of
trumpets compelling and light as hope; the eye of Mr. G-
has already seen, studied, analyzed the arms, the gait, the physi-
ognomy of the troop. Trappings, scintillations, music, firm looks,
heavy and serious mustaches, all enters pell-mell into him, and
in a few moments the resulting poem will be virtually composed.
His soul is alive with the soul of this regiment which is march-
ing like a single animal, the proud image of joy in obedience!
But evening has come. It is the strange, uncertain hour at
which the curtains of the sky are drawn and the cities are lighted.
The gas throws spots on the purple of the sunset.
Honest or
dishonest, sane or mad, men say to themselves, "At last the day
is at an end! » The wise and the good-for-nothing think of
pleasure, and each hurries to the place of his choice to drink the
cup of pleasure. Mr. G— will be the last to leave any place
where the light may blaze, where poetry may throb, where life
may tingle, where music may vibrate, where a passion may strike
an attitude for his eye, where the man of nature and the man
enormous
1
1
1


## p. 1629 (#427) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1629
of convention show themselves in a strange light, where the sun
lights up the rapid joys of fallen creatures! A day well spent,"
says a kind of reader whom we all know, “any one of us has
genius enough to spend a day that way. ” No! Few men are
gifted with the power to see; still fewer have the power of
expression. Now, at the hour when others are asleep, this man
is bent over his table, darting on his paper the same look which
a short time ago he was casting on the world, battling with his
pencil, his pen, his brush, throwing the water out of his glass
against the ceiling, wiping his pen on his shirt,—driven, violent,
active, as if he fears that his images will escape him, a quarreler
although alone, - a cudgeler of himself. And the things he has
seen are born again upon the paper, natural and more than nat-
ural, beautiful and more than beautiful, singular and endowed
with an enthusiastic life like the soul of the author. The phan-
tasmagoria have been distilled from nature. All the materials
with which his memory is crowded become classified, orderly,
harmonious, and undergo that compulsory idealization which is
the result of a childlike perception, that is to say, of a percep-
tion that is keen, magical by force of ingenuousness.
MODERNNESS
T“ tainty his man,"such as I have portrayed him, this soli-
hus he goes, he runs, he seeks. What does he seek? Cer-
tainly this
.
tary, gifted with an active imagination, always traveling
through the great desert of mankind, has a higher end than that
of a mere observer, an end more general than the fugitive pleas-
ure of the passing event. He seeks this thing which we may
call modernness, for no better word to express the idea pre-
sents itself. His object is to detach from fashion whatever it
may contain of the poetry in history, to draw the eternal from
the transitory. If we glance at the exhibitions of modern pic-
tures, we are struck with the general tendency of the artists to
dress all their subjects in ancient costumes. That is obviously
the sign of great laziness, for it is much easier to declare that
everything in the costume of a certain period is ugly than to
undertake the work of extracting from it the mysterious beauty
which may be contained in it, however slight or light it may be.
The modern is the transitory, the fleeting, the contingent, the


## p. 1630 (#428) ###########################################

1630
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
half of art, whose other half is the unchanging and the eternal.
There was a modernness for every ancient painter; most of the
beautiful portraits which remain to us from earlier times are
dressed in the costumes of their times. They are perfectly har-
monious, because the costumes, the hair, even the gesture, the
look and the smile (every epoch has its look and its smile), form
a whole that is entirely lifelike. You have no right to despise
or neglect this transitory, fleeting element, of which the changes
are so frequent. In suppressing it you fall by necessity into the
void of an abstract and undefinable beauty, like that of the only
woman before the fall. If instead of the costume of the epoch,
which is a necessary element, you substitute another, you create
an anomaly which can have no excuse unless it is a burlesque
called for by the vogue of the moment. Thus, the goddesses,
the nymphs, the sultans of the eighteenth century are portraits
morally accurate.
FROM (LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE)
EVERY ONE HIS OWN CHIMERA
U roads, withoue grass, without a thistle, without a nettle, I
1
met several men who were walking with heads bowed
down.
Each one bore upon his back an enormous Chimera, as heavy
as a bag of flour or coal, or the accoutrements of a Roman sol-
dier.
But the monstrous beast was not an inert weight; on the con-
trary, it enveloped and oppressed the man with its elastic and
mighty muscles; it fastened with its two vast claws to the breast
of the bearer, and its fabulous head surmounted the brow of the
man, like one of those horrible helmets by which the ancient
warriors hoped to increase the terror of the enemy.
I questioned one of these men, and I asked him whither they
were bound thus. He answered that he knew not, neither he
nor the others; but that evidently they were bound somewhere,
since they were impelled by an irresistible desire to go forward.
It is curious to note that not one of these travelers looked
irritated at the ferocious beast suspended from his neck and
glued against his back; it seemed as though he considered it as


## p. 1631 (#429) ###########################################

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
1631
making part of himself.
None of these weary and serious faces
bore witness to any despair; under the sullen cupola of the sky,
their feet plunging into the dust of a soil as desolate as that sky,
they went their way with the resigned countenances of those who
have condemned themselves to hope forever.
The procession passed by me and sank into the horizon's atmo-
sphere, where the rounded surface of the planet slips from the
curiosity of human sight, and for a few moments I obstinately
persisted in wishing to fathom the mystery; but soon an irre-
sistible indifference fell upon me, and I felt more heavily
oppressed by it than even they were by their crushing Chimeras.
HUMANITY
At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those artificial fools,
those voluntary buffoons whose duty was to make kings laugh
when Remorse or Ennui possessed their souls, muffled in a glaring
ridiculous costume, crowned with horns and bells, and crouched
against the pedestal, raised his eyes full of tears toward the im-
mortal goddess. And his eyes said:— "I am the least and the
most solitary of human beings, deprived of love and of friendship,
and therefore far below the most imperfect of the animals. Never-
theless, I am made, even I, to feel and comprehend the immortal
Beauty! Ah, goddess! have pity on my sorrow and my despair! ”
But the implacable Venus gazed into the distance, at I know not
what, with her marble eyes.
WINDOWS
He who looks from without through an open window never
sees as many things as he who looks at a closed window. There
is no object more profound, more mysterious, more rich, more
shadowy, more dazzling than a window lighted by a candle.
What one can see in the sunlight is always less interesting than
what takes place behind a blind. In that dark or luminous hole
life lives, dreams, suffers.
Over the sea of roofs I see a woman, mature, already wrinkled,
always bent over something, never going out. From her clothes,
her movement, from almost nothing, I have reconstructed the
history of this woman, or rather her legend, and sometimes I tell
it over to myself in tears.


## p. 1632 (#430) ###########################################

1632
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
If it had been a poor old man I could have reconstructed his
story as easily.
And I go to bed, proud of having lived and suffered in lives
not my own.
Perhaps you may say, “Are you sure that this story is the
true one ? » What difference does it make what is the reality out-
side of me, if it has helped me to live, to know who I am and
what I am ?
DRINK
One should be always drunk. That is all, the whole question.
In order not to feel the horrible burden of Time, which is break-
ing your shoulders and bearing you to earth, you must be drunk
without cease.
But drunk on what ? On wine, poetry, or virtue, as you
choose.
But get drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass
of a moat, in the dull solitude of your chamber, you awake with
your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, the
wave, the star, the clock, of everything that flies, sobs, rolls, sings,
talks, what is the hour? and the wind, the wave, the star, the
bird, the clock will answer, "It is the hour to get drunk! ” Not
to be the martyred slave of Time, get drunk; get drunk unceas-
ingly. Wine, poetry, or virtue, as you choose.
FROM A JOURNAL
I
SWEAR to myself henceforth to adopt the following rules as the
everlasting rules of my life.
To pray every morning
to God, the Fountain of all strength and of all justice; to my
father, to Mariette, and to Poe. To pray to them to give me
necessary strength to accomplish all my tasks, and to grant my
mother a life long enough to enjoy my reformation. To work
all day, or at least as long as my strength lasts. To trust to
God — that is to say, to Justice itself — for the success of my
projects. To pray again every evening to God to ask Him for
life and strength, for my mother and myself. To divide all my
earnings into four parts - one for my daily expenses, one for my
creditors, one for my friends, and one for my mother. To keep
to principles of strict sobriety, and to banish all and every stim-
ulant.


## p. 1633 (#431) ###########################################

1633
LORD BEACONSFIELD
(1804-1881)
BY ISA CARRINGTON CABELL
B
ENJAMIN DISRAELI, Earl of Beaconsfield, born in London, De-
cember, 1804; died there April 19th, 1881. His paternal
ancestors were of the house of Lara, and held high rank
among Hebrew-Spanish nobles till the tribunal of Torquemada drove
them from Spain to Venice. There, proud of their race and origin,
they styled themselves “Sons of Israel,” and became merchant
princes. But the city's commerce failing, the grandfather of Benjamin
Disraeli removed to London with a diminished but comfortable for-
tune. His son, Isaac Disraeli, was a well-
known literary man, and the author of
(The Curiosities of Literature. )
On ac-
count of the political and social ostracism
of the Jews in England, he had all his
family baptized into the Church of Eng-
land; but with Benjamin Disraeli espe-
cially, Christianity was never more than
Judaism developed. His belief and his
affections were in his own race.
Benjamin, like most Jewish youths,
was educated in private schools, and at
seventeen entered a solicitor's office. At
twenty-two he published Vivian Grey' LORD BEACONSFIELD
(London, 1826), which readable and amus-
ing take-off of London society gave him great and instantaneous noto-
riety. Its minute descriptions of the great world, its caricatures of
well-known social and political personages, its magnificent diction,
- too magnificent to be taken quite seriously,- excited inquiry; and
the great world was amazed to discover that the impertinent observer
was not one of themselves, but a boy in a lawyer's office. To add
to the audacity, he had conceived himself the hero of these diverting
situations, and by his cleverness had outwitted age, beauty, rank,
diplomacy itself.
Statesmen, poets, fine ladies, were all genuinely amused; and the
author bade fair to become a lion, when he fell ill, and was com-
pelled to leave England for a year or more, which he spent in travel
on the Continent and in Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine. His visit to
III-103



## p. 1634 (#432) ###########################################

1634
LORD BEACONSFIELD
the birthplace of his race made an impression on him that lasted
through his life and literature. It is embodied in his Letters to His
Sister? (London, 1843), and the autobiographical novel Contarini
Fleming' (1833), in which he turned his adventures into fervid
English, at a guinea a volume. But although the spirit of poesy, in
the form of a Childe Harold, stalks rampant through the romance,
there is both feeling and fidelity to nature whenever he describes
the Orient and its people. Then the bizarre, brilliant poseur forgets
his rôle, and reveals his highest aspirations.
When Disraeli returned to London he became the fashion. Every-
body, from the prime minister to Count D'Orsay, had read his clever
novels. The poets praised them, Lady Blessington invited him to
dine, Sir Robert Peel was “most gracious. ”
But literary success could never satisfy Disraeli's ambition: a seat
in Parliament was at the end of his rainbow. He professed himself
a radical, but he was a radical in his own sense of the term; and
like his own Sidonia, half foreigner, half looker-on, he felt himself
endowed with an insight only possible to an outsider, an observer
without inherited prepossessions.
Several contemporary sketches of Disraeli at this time have been
preserved. His dress was purposed affectation; it led the beholder
to look for folly only: and when the brilliant flash came, it was the
more startling as unexpected from such a figure. Lady Dufferin told
Mr. Motley that when she met Disraeli at dinner, he wore a black-
velvet coat lined with satin, purple trousers with a gold band running
down the outside seam, a scarlet waistcoat, long lace ruffles falling
down to the tips of his fingers, white gloves with several rings out-
side, and long black ringlets rippling down his shoulders. She told
him he had made a fool of himself by appearing in such a dress, but
she did not guess why it had been adopted. Another contemporary
says of him, “When duly excited, his command of language was
wonderful, his power of sarcasm unsurpassed. ”
He was busy making speeches and writing political squibs for the
next two years; for Parliament was before his eyes. “He knew,”
says Froude, he had a devil of a tongue, and was unincumbered by
the foolish form of vanity called modesty. ” Ixion in Heaven,' (The
Infernal Marriage,' and (Popanilla' were attempts to rival both
Lucian and Swift on their own ground. It is doubtful, however,
whether he would have risked writing (Henrietta Temple) (1837) and
(Venetia' (1837), two ardent love stories, had he not been in debt;
for notoriety as a novelist is not always a recommendation to a con-
stituency.
In (Henrietta” he found an opportunity to write the biography of
a lover oppressed by duns. It is a most entertaining novel even to


## p. 1635 (#433) ###########################################

LORD BEACONSFIELD
1635
a reader who does not read for a new light on the great statesman,
and is remarkable as the beginning of what is now known as the
« natural manner; a revolt, his admirers tell us, from the stilted
fashion of making love that then prevailed in novels.
(Venetia' is founded on the characters of Byron and Shelley, and
is amusing reading. The high-flown language incrusted with the
gems of rhetoric excites our risibilities, but it is not safe to laugh at
Disraeli; in his most diverting aspects he has a deep sense of humor,
and he who would mock at him is apt to get a whip across the face
at an unguarded moment. Mr. Disraeli laughs in his sleeve at many
things, but first of all at the reader.
He failed in his canvass for his seat at High Wycombe, but he
turned his failure to good account, and established a reputation for
pluck and influence. «A mighty independent personage,” observed
Charles Greville, and his famous quarrel with O'Connell did him so
little harm that in 1837 he was returned for Maidstone. His first
speech was a failure. The word had gone out that he was to be put
down. At last, finding it useless to persist, he said he was not sur-
prised at the reception he had experienced. He had begun several
things many times and had succeeded at last. Then pausing, and
looking indignantly across the house, he exclaimed in a loud and
remarkable tone, “I will sit down now, but the time will come when
you will hear me. "
He married the widow of his patron, Wyndham Lewis, in 1838.
This put him in possession of a fortune, and gave him the power to
continue his political career. His radicalism was a thing of the past.
He had drifted from Conservatism, with Peel for a leader, to aristo-
cratic socialism; and in 1844, 1845, and 1847 appeared the Trilogy, as
he styled the novels Coningsby,' Tancred,' and (Sibyl. ? Of the
three, Coningsby' will prove the most entertaining to the modern
reader. The hero is a gentleman, and in this respect is an improve-
ment on Vivian Grey, for his audacity is tempered by good breeding.
The plot is slight, but the scenes are entertaining. The famous
Sidonia, the Jew financier, is a favorite with the author, and betrays
his affection and respect for race. Lord Monmouth, the wild peer, is
a rival of the Marquis of Steyne,” and worthy of a place in Vanity
Fair'; the political intriguers are photographed from life, the pictures
of fashionable London tickle both the vanity and the fancy of the
reader.
(Sibyl’ is too clearly a novel with a motive to give so much
pleasure. It is a study of the contrasts between the lives of the very
rich and the hopelessly poor, and an attempt to show the superior
condition of the latter when the Catholic Church was all-powerful in
England and the king an absolute monarch.


## p. 1636 (#434) ###########################################

1636
LORD BEACONSFIELD
(Tancred' was composed when Disraeli was under the illusion of
a possibly regenerated aristocracy. ” He sends Tancred, the hero, the
heir of a ducal house, to Palestine to find the inspiration to a true
religious belief, and details his adventures with a power of sarcasm
that is seldom equaled. In certain scenes in this novel the author
rises from a mere mocker to a genuine satirist. Tancred's interview
with the bishop, in which he takes that dignitary's religious tenets
seriously; that with Lady Constance, when she explains the Mystery
of Chaos” and shows how the stars are formed out of the cream of
the Milky Way, a sort of celestial cheese churned into light”; the
vision of the angels on Mt. Sinai, and the celestial Sidonia who talks
about the “Sublime and Solacing Doctrine of Theocratic Equality,” –
all these are passages where we wonder whether the author sneered
or blushed when he wrote. Certainly what has since been known as
the Disraelian irony stings as we turn each page.
Meanwhile Disraeli had become a power in Parliament, and the
bitter opponent of Peel, under whom Catholic emancipation, parlia-
mentary reform, and the abrogation of the commercial system, had
been carried without conditions and almost without mitigations.
Disraeli's assaults on his leader delighted the Liberals; the coun-
try members felt indignant satisfaction at the deserved chastisement
of their betrayer. With malicious skill, Disraeli touched one after
another the weak points in a character that was superficially vulner-
able. Finally the point before the House became Peel's general
conduct. He was beaten by an overwhelming majority, and to the
hand that dethroned him descended the task of building up the ruins
of the Conservative party. Disraeli's best friends felt this a welcome
necessity. There is no example of a rise so sudden under such con-
ditions. His politics were as much distrusted as his serious literary
passages. But Disraeli was the single person equal to the task. For
the next twenty-five years he led the Conservative opposition in the
House of Commons, varied by short intervals of power.
He was
three times Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1853, 1858, and 1859; and
on Lord Derby's retirement in 1868 he became Prime Minister.
In 1870, having laid aside novel-writing for twenty years, he pub-
lished "Lothair. ) It is a politico-religious romance aimed at the
Jesuits, the Fenians, and the Communists. It had an instantaneous
success, for its author was the most conspicuous figure in Europe, but
its popularity is also due to its own merits. We are all of us snobs
after a fashion and love high society. The glory of entering the
splendid portals of the real English dukes and duchesses seems to be
ours when Disraeli throws open the magic door and ushers the
reader in. The decorations do not seem tawdry, nor the tinsel other
than real. We move with pleasurable excitement with Lothair


## p. 1637 (#435) ###########################################

LORD BEACONSFIELD
1637
from palace to castle, and thence to battle-field and scenes of dark
intrigue. The hint of the love affair with the Olympian Theodora
appeals to our romance; the circumventing of the wily Cardinal and
his accomplices is agreeable to the Anglo-Saxon Protestant mind;
their discomfiture, and the crowning of virtue in the shape of a res-
cued Lothair married to the English Duke's daughter with the fixed
Church of England views, is what the reader expects and prays for,
and is the last privilege of the real story-teller. That the author has
thrown aside his proclivities for Romanism as he showed them in
(Sibyl, no more disturbs us than the eccentricities of his politics.
We do not quite give him our faith when he is most in earnest,
talking Semitic Arianism on Mt. Sinai.
A peerage was offered to him in 1868. He refused it for himself,
but asked Queen Victoria to grant the honor to his wife, who
became the Countess of Beaconsfield. But in 1876 he accepted the
rank and title of Earl of Beaconsfield. The author of Vivian Grey)
received the title that Burke had refused.
His last novel, Endymion,' was written for the £10,000 its pub-
lishers paid for it. It adds nothing to his fame, but is an agreeable
picture of fashionable London life and the struggles of a youth to
gain power and place.
Lord Beaconsfield put more dukes, earls, lords and ladies, more
gold and jewels, more splendor and wealth into his books than any
one else ever tried to do. But beside his Oriental delight in the dis-
play of luxury, it is interesting to see the effect of that Orientalism
when he describes the people from whom he sprang. His rare ten-
derness and genuine respect are for those of the race that is the
aristocracy of nature, the purest race, the chosen people. ” He sends
all his heroes to Palestine for inspiration; wisdom dwells in her
gates. Another aristocracy, that of talent, he recognizes and ap-
No dullard ever succeeds, no genius goes unrewarded.
It is the part of the story-teller to make his story a probable one
to the listener, no matter how impossible both character and situa-
tion. Mr. Disraeli was accredited with the faculty of persuading
himself to believe or disbelieve whatever he liked; and did he pos-
sess the same power over his readers, these entertaining volumes
would lift him to the highest rank the novelist attains. As it is, he
does not quite succeed in creating an illusion, and we are conscious
of two lobes in the author's brain; in one sits a sentimentalist, in
the other a mocking devil.
plauds.
La barsington babell .


## p. 1638 (#436) ###########################################

1638
LORD BEACONSFIELD
A DAY AT EMS
From (Vivian Grey)
“I
THINK we'd better take a little coffee now; and then, if you
like, we'll just stroll into the REDOUTE” [continued Baron
de Konigstein).
In a brilliantly illuminated saloon, adorned with Corinthian
columns, and casts from some of the most famous antique statues,
assembled between nine and ten o'clock in the evening many of
the visitors at Ems. On each side of the room was placed a long,
narrow table, one of which was covered with green baize, and
unattended, while the variously colored leather surface of the
other was very closely surrounded by an interested crowd.
Behind this table stood two individuals of very different appear-
ance.
The first was a short, thick man, whose only business was
dealing certain portions of playing cards with quick succession,
one after the other; and as the fate of the table was decided by
this process, did his companion, an extremely tall, thin man,
throw various pieces of money upon certain stakes, which were
deposited by the bystanders on different parts of the table; or,
which was more often the case, with a silver rake with a long
ebony handle, sweep into a large inclosure near him the scat-
tered sums.
This inclosure was called the bank, and the myste-
rious ceremony in which these persons were assisting was the
celebrated game of rouge-et-noir. A deep silence was strictly
observed by those who immediately surrounded the table; no
voice was heard save that of the little, short, stout dealer, when,
without an expression of the least interest, he seemed mechani-
cally to announce the fate of the different colors. No other
sound was heard save the jingle of the dollars and napoleons,
and the ominous rake of the tall, thin banker. The countenances
of those who were hazarding their money were grave and gloomy;
their eyes were fixed, their brows contracted, and their lips pro-
jected; and yet there was an evident effort visible to show that
they were both easy and unconcerned.
Each player held in his
hand a small piece of pasteboard, on which, with a steel pricker,
he marked the run of the cards, in order, from his observations,
to regulate his own play: the rouge-et-noir player imagines that
chance is not capricious. Those who were not interested in the
game promenaded in two lines within the tables; or, seated in


## p. 1639 (#437) ###########################################

LORD BEACONSFIELD
1639
recesses between the pillars, formed small parties for conversa-
tion.
As Vivian and the baron entered, Lady Madeleine Trevor,
leaning on the arm of an elderly man, left the room; but as she
was in earnest conversation, she did not observe them.
“I suppose we must throw away a dollar or two, Grey ! ” said
the baron, as he walked up to the table.
"My dear De Konigstein -- one pinch- one pinch! ”
“Ah! marquis, what fortune to-night ? ”
“ Bad — bad! I have lost my napoleon: I never risk further.
There's that cursed crusty old De Trumpetson, persisting, as
usual, in his run of bad luck, because he will never give in.
Trust me, my dear De Konigstein, it'll end in his ruin; and
then, if there's a sale of his effects, I shall perhaps get the
snuff-box-a-a-h!
"Come, Grey; shall I throw down a couple of napoleons on
joint account? I don't care much for play myself; but I sup-
pose at Ems we must make up our minds to lose a few louis.
Here! now for the red — joint account, mind! ”
« Done. ”
« There's the archduke! Let us go and make our bow; we
needn't stick at the table as if our whole soul were staked with
our crown pieces — we'll make our bow, and then return in time
to know our fate. ” So saying, the gentlemen walked up to the
top of the room.
“Why, Grey! - surely no— it cannot be — and yet it is. De
Bæeffleurs, how d'ye do? ” said the baron, with a face beaming
with joy, and a hearty shake of the hand. “My deardear
fellow, how the devil did you manage to get off so soon ? I
thought you were not to be here for a fortnight: we only
arrived ourselves to-day. ”
“Yes — but I've made an arrangement which I did not antici-
pate; and so I posted after you immediately. Whom do you
think I have brought with me? ”
« Who?
« Salvinski. ”
And the count ? »
« Follows immediately. I expect him to-morrow or next day.
Salvinski is talking to the archduke; and see, he beckons to me.
I suppose I am going to be presented. ”
The chevalier moved forward, followed by the baron and
Vivian.
“Ah!


## p. 1640 (#438) ###########################################

1640
LORD BEACONSFIELD
“Any friend of Prince Salvinski I shall always have great
pleasure in having presented to me. Chevalier, I feel great
pleasure in having you presented to me! Chevalier, you ought
to be proud of the name of Frenchman. Chevalier, the French
are a grand nation. Chevalier, I have the highest respect for
the French nation. ”
« The most subtle diplomatist,” thought Vivian, as he recalled
to mind his own introduction, would be puzzled to decide to
which interest his imperial highness leans. ”
The archduke now entered into conversation with the prince,
and most of the circle who surrounded him. As his highness
was addressing Vivian, the baron let slip our hero's arm, and
seizing hold of the Chevalier de Boeffleurs, began walking up
and down the room with him, and was soon engaged in very
animated conversation.