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Baudelaire is a boss. His 1857 work, Fleurs de Mal (Flowers of Evil) is arguably the most important French poetic work from the 19th century. It inspired a movement of symbolists, and helped to create modern poetry. Symbolism was all about generating emotion through metaphor and comparison, all with the help of a Platonic ideal.
I’ve been thinking a lot about art today and I think that a similar idea is apparent in many artistic and literary works. Recently, I came across the term, “object-hood,” which is another way of saying “symbolic content,” the representation of feelings and ideas through materiality. For more on this see my post postmodernism manifesto below. Tradition is inescapable, so it was only natural that I turned to Baudelaire’s “The Soul of Wine” as a prime example of wine’s object-hood. Here it is:
«Homme, vers toi je pousse, ô cher déshérité,
Sous ma prison de verre et mes cires vermeilles,
Un chant plein de lumière et de fraternité!
De peine, de sueur et de soleil cuisant
Pour engendrer ma vie et pour me donner l’âme;
Mais je ne serai point ingrat ni malfaisant,
Dans le gosier d’un homme usé par ses travaux,
Et sa chaude poitrine est une douce tombe
Où je me plais bien mieux que dans mes froids caveaux.
Et l’espoir qui gazouille en mon sein palpitant?
Les coudes sur la table et retroussant tes manches,
Tu me glorifieras et tu seras content;
À ton fils je rendrai sa force et ses couleurs
Et serai pour ce frêle athlète de la vie
L’huile qui raffermit les muscles des lutteurs.
Grain précieux jeté par l’éternel Semeur,
Pour que de notre amour naisse la poésie
Qui jaillira vers Dieu comme une rare fleur!»
“O man, dear disinherited! to you I sing
This song full of light and of brotherhood
From my prison of glass with its scarlet wax seals.
And in burning sunlight on the blazing hillside,
Of creating my life, of giving me a soul:
I shall not be ungrateful or malevolent,
Down the throat of a man worn out by his labor;
His warm breast is a pleasant tomb
Where I’m much happier than in my cold cellar.
And the hopes that warble in my fluttering breast?
With sleeves rolled up, elbows on the table,
You will glorify me and be content;
And give back to your son his strength and his color;
I shall be for that frail athlete of life
The oil that hardens a wrestler’s muscles.
By the eternal Sower, I shall descend in you
So that from our love there will be born poetry,
Which will spring up toward God like a rare flower!”
Daniel the Writer 