EXISTENTIAL ANALYSIS
753
an Antisemite"; and this for a good reason: The portrait of the Anti–
semite was an exercise in literary typology: it constructed an abstract,
ideal type of a man. This was quite legitimate-sociological analysis
constantly operates with "ideal types"-and quite instructive because
of the novelty in approach and perspective. Since it was an abstraction
it did not matter that there was no individual antisemite who corre–
sponded precisely to Sartre's description. It was sufficient that the por–
trait added a new dimension to the complex phenomenon of antisemitism
as we encounter it, to varying shades and degrees, in individual anti–
s~mites.
In the case of Baudelaire, however, the situation is exactly
reversed. The task is not to construct an ideal type but a unique indivi–
dual. And for this task, I think, the existential blueprint is much less
instructive: It does not lead to an understanding of Baudelaire's powers
as a poet ; nor is it an original study in the psychopathology of an in–
dividual; nor does it lead to an understanding of what Baudelaire thought
or felt.
M. Sartre anticipates the criticism that he is not concerned with
the aesthetic dimension of Baudelaire's work. Perhaps he would admit
with Freud (although otherwise scornful of ordinary psychoanalysis)
that, "unfortunately, before the creative artist, analysis must lay down
its arms." Yet even if we disregard this aspect of Baudelaire, the essay
raises other points of doubt. For what does the metaphysical category of
the "free choice" really tell us about the structure of the individual per–
sonality? In what sense does it "elucidate the immediate and concrete
categories" of his existence, as Sartre wrote in
L'
Etre at Le N eant?
In
Baudelaire's case, the "choice" was made during early childhood when
he was confronted with the individuality ("singularity") of his mother
and General Aupick, his stepfather. It was then that he chose a "non–
authentic" form of existence, i.e., his failure as a human being and
partiaL
success as a writer. However, this choice is not to be confused
with an ordinary Oedipus situation:
*
according to Sartre, it is an "a
priori choice which is entirely unmotivated" and "appears as an absolute
event."
Now does this really enable us to see the existential situation of
the individual in a new light; does it provide a new insight into the
perplexing cemplexity of Baudelaire's personality? I doubt it. An "a
priori, entirely unmotivated, absolute choice" at childhood is a mystifying
*
Rene Laforgue, in a Freudian study called
The Dllfeat of Baudelaire,
places
the genesis of the Oedipus situation prior to the second marriage of Baudelaire's
mother and suggests that Baudelaire may even have loved General Aupick un–
consciously-an interpretation which Sartre, without giving the source, calls an
"idiocy."
