268
PARTISAN REVIEW
of, The handsome knave of hearts and the queen of spades. In his com–
ments he shifts the whole meaning and tone of the poem to the -level
of the secondary reference, the only one given in his translation, ignor–
ing the playing cards, and considering the reasons Baudelaire might
have had for introducing two surprise characters into his setting. Under
this stress the poem does hold together and we find that the ambiguity
in the line is not merely a highlight but works
ba~k
into the rest of the
poem. Thus, although Bennett misses the simplicity, he points an empha–
sis that the reader familiar with the playing card idiom might miss.
However, the reader who does not know French should be warned
that the translations in
thi~
volume are often shoddy and sometimes
grossly inaccurate, and that the inaccuracies rarely lead to happy in–
terpretations. Even the French text, based on the poor Calmann Levy
edition, is not free from errors.
A book of a completely different kind is Albert Feuillerat's
Baude–
laire et Sa Mere.
This is a partial biography, a study of mother and son.
But Baudelaire's complex emotions toward his mother, which often
were far from affection, directed his life to an unusual degree, and to
understand this relationship is practically to understand his whole life.
Baudelaire's letters to his mother are almost impossible reading, so
painful are the miseries, spiritual as well as financial, displayed to gain
sympathy; so revolting are the calculated brutalities of the son in his
attempts to obtain money: another 1000 francs, another 100 francs, even
another 10 francs. It is a sickening catalogue of rancors and humilia–
tions, of prides and poverties.
Feuillerat uses these letters, as well as letters from the mother, as his
principal source-books. The portrait he draws from these sources is not
as repugnant as that I derived from Baudelaire's letters alone, and is
doubtless much more authentic than that given in the fictionalized
Vie Douloureuse
by Porche. In Feuillerat we find the scheming, neu·
rotic man, but we also find intimations of the integrity that made pos·
sible the
Fleurs du Mal.
Since
Baudelaire et Sa Mere
is in French this is perhaps not the
place for a lengthy review. However it is too good a book, and too good
a corrective to all the nonsense current about the life of Baudelaire, to
let pass without notice.
GEORGE ANTHONY
RETURN OF THE PURITANS
I
PuRITANISM AND DEMOCRACY.
By Ralph Barton Perry. The Vanguard
Press.
$5.00.
S
IX HUNDRED labored pages leave me unconvinced that we shoulJ
"take puritanism and democracy as symbols of piety ... to maintain
our moral identity and the stream of national life." Perhaps I remain
