Melancolia urbana

No final de 2020, a Editora 34 lançou O spleen de Paris, que reúne anedotas, reflexões e epifanias (pequenos poemas em prosa) do francês Charles Baudelaire (1821-1866). O volume conta com tradução primorosa de Samuel Titan Junior e texto de apresentação do escritor e cineasta argentino Edgardo Cozarinsky. Esta obra, do poeta maldito, já recebeu mais de dez edições no Brasil ― a primeira em 1937 ― e com certeza outras virão, mas esta tem todo um charme especial, a começar pela capa que traz o autorretrato de Baudelaire. Petits poèmes en prose (Le spleen de Paris) apareceu pela primeira vez, como edição póstuma, no quarto volume das Obras completas (1869) do poeta, organizadas por Théodore de Banville (1823-1891) e Charles Asselineau (1820-874) e editadas pela Gallimard.

Outro Baudelaire: Sobre a forma livre de “O spleen de Paris” e das “Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas”

A partir da análise minuciosa de um poema em prosa de O spleen de Paris e de um capítulo das Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas, este artigo busca elucidar a proximidade formal entre as duas obras e mostrar como, ao mesmo tempo que se consolidava uma tradição de jovens baudelairianos leitores de As flores do mal, um pequeno grupo de escritores, dentre os quais Machado, exercitava-se na forma livre da prosa poética de Baudelaire.

Prose Poetry

This chapter treats the prose poem as the decadent genre par excellence by focusing on Charles Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris (Paris Spleen, 1869). The prose poem is well suited to the expression of decadent culture because of its formal subversion of conventional poetry, especially as adapted by Baudelaire to articulate “the bump and lurch” of urban experience. J. K. Huysmans certified the decadent credentials of the genre when he described it in À rebours (Against Nature, 1884) as “the osmazome of literature, the essential oil of art,” a literary distillation that makes it “an aesthetic treat to none but the most discerning.” The article analyzes “Any Where Out of the World” and other prose poems in relation to certain poems in Le Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil, 1857), observing no loss of metaphorical power in the more “prosaic” medium despite Baudelaire’s secular and subversive treatment of many of the same poetic material given more elevated, spiritual treatment in the earlier collection.

The Question of Intent

This chapter examines how the poet employs a range of conflicting voices, opinions, and personas throughout Le Spleen de Paris. It discusses how this polyphony has been variously interpreted as a reflection of contemporary political debates, as deliberate mystification, and as a form of antagonism. The chapter argues instead for an implied ambition to wean readers from reliance on authoritative pronouncement so that they may become lawgivers themselves—and thereby enjoy the beauty of perplexity and conjecture. The question of authorial intent is discussed with reference to Baudelaire’s dedicatory letter to Arsène Houssaye, and it is proposed that the unifying voice within the polyphony of Le Spleen de Paris is that of ‘l’Étranger’. The chapter closes with a discussion of ‘Le Mauvais Vitrier’ as an example of how the poet seeks to elicit multiple readerly responses in imitation of a kaleidoscope, etymologically ‘the means of seeing beautiful forms/ideas’.

Creative Confinement and Narratives of Violence: Charles Baudelaire, Shumona Sinha and Assommons les pauvres!

This article examines the relationship between Baudelaire’s prose poem, “Assommons les pauvres!” (Le Spleen de Paris, 1869) and Shumona Sinha’s 2011 novel of the same title. Focusing on questions of reading and intertextuality, from Baudelaire’s reference to Proudhon to Sinha’s engagement with the prose poem and Le Spleen de Paris more broadly, it explores forms of confinement and creativity, the connections between narrative and freedom and the ways in which lyrical subjectivity and literary form reflect the social challenges of each period. In expressing socio-cultural and linguistic alienation, these texts centre the textual in an exploration of the marginal, thereby demonstrating that the connection between them goes beyond a critical act of violence and the presumed equality or dignity it confers, to represent a shared interrogation of universalism, multiculturalism, and authorial and political power.

A HISTÓRIA DA LITERATURA SEGUNDO WALTER BENJAMIN E O DIÁLOGO COM A HERMENÊUTICA BÍBLICA

O presente artigo pretende analisar, por um lado, o fragmento de 1922 de Benjamin acerca das Afinidades eletivas de Goethe. Por outro lado, examinar o texto de 1931 sobre a História da Literatura. Além disso, apontamos, inicialmente alguns versos de Charles Baudelaire, especialmente Le Spleen de Paris, I - L’Étranger, de 1869, no qual ele descreve a vida moderna. Há vários pontos de contato entre os autores: a descrição da modernidade e a união da Literatura com a História (Geschichte). Assim, seguimos um esquema triádico: primeiro, literatura atual – filologia / Benjamin – crítica x comentário; segundo, interpretação dos elementos – tarefa do crítico; terceiro, história das obras – preparação crítica. Nesse sentido, colocamos em diálogo o pensamento hermenêutico crítico de Benjamin com a hermenêutica bíblica, por meio de algumas passagens do Primeiro e Segundo Testamentos.

curación al filo de una navaja. Proyecciones del juicio en le spleen de Paris

En diálogo con un trabajo previo donde estudiamos la incidencia del régimen editorial, mediático y jurídico posterior a 1830 en la constitución de Les Fleurs du mal, en este artículo buscamos analizar los efectos del juicio y la censura de 1857 en dos textos del Spleen de Paris, “A Arsène Houssaye” (1862) y “Mademoiselle Bistouri” (1867).

“Discourses of Displacement” in the Ethnography of Léon-Gontran Damas and Poetry of Charles Baudelaire

It is not far-fetched to imagine that the French underclass that occupied the city streets Charles Baudelaire roamed as a flâneur could have turned up in the bagne, or penal colony, described by the Negritude poet Léon Damas in his ethnographic field work in Guyane. Through a literary analysis of Damas’ ethnography, Retour de Guyane (1938), in tandem with a selection of prose-poems by Baudelaire from Le Spleen de Paris (1869) and Les Fleurs du mal (1857), this article calls attention to the parallels between the observational methods of urban spectatorship they use to collect case studies for their writing. The interpretive approach I use acknowledges the crossover between literary creativity and sociological analysis and is informed by a theoretical framework that couples Negritude’s anticolonialism with carceral studies. My analysis of these texts is situated in the context of the French Third Republic’s laws against recidivism and vagrancy in the late nineteenth century, which carried the penalty of forced deportation to distant penal colonies, a punitive practice that continued into the early twentieth century. In Baudelaire’s case, changing sociopolitical circumstances in light of Hausmannisation necessitated new modes of how writers dealt with the capital city’s exclusionary development. In the case of Damas, his critique of mise en valeur culture and exploitative colonial scholarship prompted his departure from the conventional practice of salvage ethnography that feigned inclusive objectivity. The article focuses on passages that highlight overlapping colonial and carceral attributes within both the colony and metropole. In conclusion, I argue that Damas’ condemnation of the mission civilisatrice, alongside Baudelaire’s contestation of degraded urban environments, point towards a poetics of colonial society’s intoxication with power.