On Baudelaire

Baudelaire wrote during a time of revolution that was not just about literature. It was during a period of societal revolution that therefore influenced a political revolution. These things combined led to themes in literature changing drastically. This era was post-enlightenment, which meant that people were less focused on intellectual improvement and discoveries, and ended up being focused more on the emotional sides of life. On top of this, Baudelaire was a part of creating the idea of a “citizen” of a nation during a time period when the borders of nations were beginning to be geographically placed, eventually leading to many civil wars in nations throughout Africa. Baudelaire was interested in a child-like curiosity writing that a “genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will-- a childhood now equipped for self-expression with manhood’s capacities and a power of analysis which enables it to order the mass of raw material which it has involuntarily accumulated” (683). This goes directly against the ideas of enlightenment that were integral to society and especially literature before. He is making the idea of timeless linear and placing more importance on childhood than previous writers and critics have. It’s also interesting to note that the French culture, to this day, is more interested stereotypically in emotions than the American culture is. As for his beliefs on beauty, he writes that “for any ‘modernity’ to be worthy of one day taking its place as ‘antiquity’, it is necessary for the mysterious beauty which life accidentally puts into it to be distilled from it” meaning that he believes that for modern writing to becomes part of the canonical writing of the future, it must take and “distill” the beauty that life holds (685).