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The Bible and Les Fleurs du mal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Abraham Avni
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Abstract

The sources of the Bible's influence on Baudelaire, which is greater than previous research would indicate, are his education at home and school, the example of other French poets, and some preoccupation with the Bible in his criticism of art and literature. The influence manifests itself in allusions to the Bible's characters, often involving use of its imagery, and many other echoes of its diction, including some Hebraisms. Of single books of Scripture, Job, the Song of Songs, and the Apocalypse exerted the strongest influence: Job affected not only the diction but also the structure and train of thought of “Benediction”; many love poems of Les Fleurs du mal are indebted to the Song of Songs for their stark sensuality and bizarre similes; the Apocalypse helped to shape the visions of “Une Gravure fantastique” and “Rêve parisien.” Also, the poet blunted the anti-Biblical edge of the chapter “Révolte” in Les Fleurs du mal by a genuine Biblical tone and diction. Yet, although Baudelaire is much plagued by a sense of sin and evil, the effect of the Bible on his poetry remains generally external, limited to the use of image, symbol, and event or character.

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Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 88 , Issue 2 , March 1973, pp. 299 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1973

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References

1 Les Fleurs du mal, Vol. 1 v in GSuvres completes de Charles Baudelaire, ed. Jacques Crepet (Paris: Conard, 1923–52); Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, ed. Jacques Crepet and Georges Blin (Paris: Corti, 1942); Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, ed. Antoine Adam (Paris: Gamier, 1961); Jean Pommier, Dans les chemins de Baudelaire (Paris: Corti, 1945); Robert Vivier, L'Originalité de Baudelaire, 2nd ed. (Bruxelles: Academie Royale, 1952); RobertBenoit Cbérix, Essai d'une critique integrate: Commentaire des Fleurs dumal, 2nd ed. (Geneva: Droz, 1962); Yves Le Hir, Analyses stylistiques (Paris: Armand Colin, 1965).

2 The allusions are in “Les Petites Vieilles” (I. 83), “Un nom de bon augure” (I. 4), “L'Heautontimoroumenos” (I. 3), “Reversibilite” (I.22), “Le Monstre ou le paranymphe d'une nymphe macabre” (I. 24), “Les Sept Vieillards” (I. 20), “Le Flacon” (I. 18), “Je n'ai pas pour maitresse une lionne illustre” (I. 24). There are also two references to “Babel.” Here and throughout the paper I am considering not only Les Fleurs du mal proper but also other poems, like “Le Monstre…” and “Je n'ai pas pourmaitresse…,” generally published in one volume with Les Fleurs du mal, proper but also other poems, like “Le Monstre…” and “Je n'ai pas pourmaitresse…”

3 Some of these editions are the following: Eugene de Genoude, trans., La Sainte Bible, 3 vols. (Paris: Blaise, 1828); David Martin, trans., La Sainte Bible (Paris: Societe biblique protestante, 1823); Louis Lemaistre de Sacy, trans., La Sainte Bible (Paris: Furne, 1846). Lemaistre is hereafter cited as Sacy. If no translator is indicated, the versions are the same.

4 Cherix, p. 129. It does not matter for our concern whether Baudelaire is appealing to God, as Cherix and Du Bos think, or to his beloved, as Adam and most commentators do. Here and throughout this paper the numbering of Psalms is according to the Catholic Bible. I am quoting from Les Fleurs du mal, ed. Jacques Crepet and Georges Blin, rev. Georges Blin and Claude Pichois (Paris: Corti, 1968).

5 For more details about the Bible's influence on Racine and Romantic poets see L. C[lodomir] Delfour, La Bible dans Racine (Paris: Leroux, 1891), and Abraham A. Avni, The Bible and Romanticism: The Old Testament in German and French Romantic Poetry (The Hague: Mouton, 1969). Of poems written by the Romantics I considered only those that had appeared before Baudelaire composed or published his own comparable ones at dates given by Blin and Pichois, pp. 489–92, 533–68.

6 Adam, p. 448, notes the poet's debt to Gautier but not to Exodus.

7 Adam, p. 290, recognizes the allusion to Moses but not to Isaiah.

8 Adam, p. 340; Chenx, p. 198; Vivier, p. 149; Crepet and Blin, p. 386.

9 Adam, p. 265; Crepet and Blin, p. 286.

10 1 obviously disagree with the conclusion of Rob R. McGregor, in “Is Baudelaire's ‘Benediction’ Christian and Biblical?” Romance Notes, 11 (1969), 275–85, that the religious element in “Benediction” is not Biblical. Daniel Vouga, Baudelaire et Joseph de Maistre (Paris: Corti, 1957), p. 194, contrasts, in a stricture, the poet of “Benediction” with Moses rather than comparing him with Job: “… a ce qui n'6tait trop souvent qu'une banale rhorique (et une complaisante flatterie) Mo'ise deja avait donne un sens plus precis et plus grave: Que vous ai-je done fait pour Stre elu?”

11 Le Hir, pp. 190–91.For an explanation of parallelism see below.

12 Here and in my comment on the other poems of “ReVolte” I partially follow the excellent interpretation of Pierre Drieu, “Note sur la doctrine religieuse de Baudelaire,” in Sur les ecrivains (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), pp. 325–47.

13 On this point I agree with Jean Prevost, Baudelaire (Paris: Mercure de France, 1953), p. 327.

14 “Baudelaire and Mortimer,” FS, 7 (1953), 101–13.

15 We find soleil noir (or terne) in French poems before Baudelaire's, e.g., in Gautier's “Melancolia” and, of course, Nerval's “El Desdichado,” but in both in a different context, without the figure of Death dominant in Revelation and “Une Gravure fantastique.” See Helene Tuzet, “L'image du soleil noir,” Revue des Sciences Humaines, 85–88 (1957), 479–502.

16 Francis Duke, trans., Flowers of Evil (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1961), p. 287.

17 Les Epaves, in CEucres completes, iv, 484. For other signs of Biblical influence, some implied, see Crepet and Blin, p. 606 (index). Also, Frederick Locke (“Baudelaire's L'Albatros,” Explicator, 20, Jan. 1962, Item 44) considers the albatross an analogue of Christ and the poem an image of the Savior-Poet because the description of the bird as “comique et laid . . . l'infirme qui volait” gives the bird attributes of the Servant of God, a prefiguration of Christ, in Isa. liii.3., “. . . habitue a la souffrance . . . dont on detourne le visage.” Baudelaire's use of “infirme,” Locke believes, echoes the Vulgate's rendering of “scientem infirmitam” for “habitue a la souffrance.” However, the whole interpretation seems farfetched and is practically disproved by the fact that the third stanza, in which the above description appears, is a later and quick addition to an originally shorter poem, inserted at the suggestion of the poet's friend Asselineau. See Eugene Crepet, Charles Baudelaire (Paris: Messein, 1928), p. 311. Finally, Marcel Ruff remarks in Baudelaire, CEuvres completes (Paris: Seuil, 1968), p. 14: “ ‘Une Charogne’ … a merite qu'on invoquat a son sujet la Genese, l'Ecclesiaste, le Livre de Job.”

18 Abraham Avni, “A Revaluation of Baudelaire's ‘Le Vin’: Its Originality and Significance for Les Fleurs du mal,” FR, 44(1970), 310–21.

19 See Le Hir, p. 202, and Cherix, pp. 61, 69.

20 Les Epaves, p. 372. Pierre Emmanuel comments in Baudelaire (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1967), p. 145: “Citer precisement ce texte-la equivaut a proclamer le caractere sacre de la parole poetique, telle que Baudelaire la consoit.”

21 Claude Pichois, Baudelaire: Etudes et temoignages (Neuchatel: La Baconniere, 1967), p. 196, has shown that for this epigraph the poet did not draw directly on the Bible but on the humanist Nicolas Chorier's Satyre sotadique d'Aloisia Sigcea. In a note to Salon de 1846 Baudelaire quotes a passage from this work containing the Biblical quotation in question.

22 Charles Baudelaire, Correspondance generate, ed. Jacques Crepet and Claude Pichois (Paris: Conard, 1954), HI, 335. See also p. 177, about another pointer to the role of the Bible in the conception of the poet's ideas: in a letter to Poulet-Malassis he recommends as a frontispiece for Les Fleurs du mal a copy of an engraving by Langlois depicting, among other things, Adam, Eve, and the serpent. For more details see Pichois, pp. 187–97.

23 Indeed, the title page of an early edition of Lemaistre's translation (Liege: Broucart, 1702) states, “traduite en francais sur la Vulgate.”

24 Pichois, pp. 106–11, deals with these disciples who exerted a strong influence on Baudelaire in 1847 and included abbe Constant, the author of La Bible de la liberie.

25 E.g., Prarond's sonnet “A mon ami C.B.” printed in full in Eugene Crepet, p. 220. It warns the poet of his liaison with Sarah Louchette, his Jewish mistress, and contains the following concentration of Biblical allusions:

Elle vous fit couler d'un doigt voluptueux La source des plaisirs aux egouts de Ninive . . . Elle eut enivre Loth au fond d'une caverne Tenu comme Judith le sabre d'Holopherne Et frappe du marteau le front de Sisara

26 According to Emmanuel, p. 52, Anatole France made this comment, which may sound exaggerated: “Ses [Baudelaire's] meilleurs vers sont inspires de vieilles proses de l'Eglise et des hymnes du breviaire.”

27 The curriculum is fully described and analyzed by Geraud Venzac, Les Premiers Maitres de Victor Hugo (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1955), pp. 297–303.

28 Enid Starkie, Baudelaire (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1958), p. 44; Pommier, p. 19.

29 VArt romantique, in CEuvres completes, II, 43–45. Thesource of the poet's quotation has been recognized by Lorin A. Uffenbeck, “Petites Enigmes,” Bulletin Baude-lairien, 2, No. 2 (1967), 19. The poet probably did not note the difference between “Jacob” and “Jaboc” and mistook Jabbok, a tributary of the Jordan near which Jacob wrestled with the angel, for the patriarch's name.

30 L'Art romantique, p. 407. In his review of the production of Wagner's Tannhauser in Paris, p. 240, Baudelaire comments on the hoped-for future acceptance of Wagner's original, now rejected, use of music for drama: “D'une maniere vague et generale on peut dire avec le Psalmiste, que tot ou tard, ceux qui ont ete abaisses seront eleves, ceux qui ont ete eleves seront humilies” (See Ps. cxlvi.6).

31 Journaux intimes, ed. Jacques Crepet and Georges Blin (Paris: Corti, 1949), p. 75.

32 CEuvres posthumes: Juvenilia, reliquiae, in CEuvres tompletes, ix, 88 and 260.

33 E.g., James Patty, “Baudelaire and Bossuet on Laughter,” PMLA, 80 (1965), 459, suggests that a secondary source of the poet's maxim “Le Sage ne rit qu'en tremblant,” the first words of Pt. IIof his essay, “De l'essence du rire,” might have been Ecclesiasticus xxi.20, “Le fou eclate en riant, mais le sage rit a peine a petit bruit.” In my view, the poet could have drawn on a further Biblical source, on Ps. ii.ll, “Rejouissez-vous avec tremblement…” (Sacy).