7S4
PARTISAN REVIEW
concept. Thus it is perhaps not surprising that when he turns to the
detailed analysis of Baudelaire, M. Sartre makes extensive use of prac–
tically every theoretical concept developed by ordinary psychoanalysis:
defense mechanisms, wish-fulfilment, projection, displacement, regression,
sado-masochism, narcissism, etc. Thus as far as the substance of the
portrait is concerned, existential analysis simply appropriates a familiar
terminology without adding anything except a rather mystifying meta–
physical thesis.
But, in addition to these points of doubt, the existential analysis,
I think, also fails when we try to use it for an understanding of Baude–
laire's significance as a man and writer. Sartre subordinates all the major
themes of Baudelaire (dandyism, evil, sexuality, art, beauty and horror,
the past and memory, progress, nature and the city, etc.) to the original
thesis of the "free choice." Thus instead of using the complexity of
Baudelaire's inner life and poetic creations for the purpose of disclosing
"existential categories" relevant to the social, historical, or human situation
in general, he is, strangely enough, only interested in Baudelaire as an
"object" lesson and exhibit for a metaphysical theory. After a while,
I think, this
tour de force
wears rather thin and seriously distorts, not
only the picture of Baudelaire as an individual, but, what is even more
important, any understanding of what he thought and felt. In the end, it
is difficult to see not only how Baudelaire wrote beautiful poetry, but
how he ever thought, felt, or said anything worth listening to and what
it was. In addition to the formal magic of the poetry, in addition to per–
sonal suffering and failure, surely, there is something in Baudelaire's
life and works which has been profoundly significant in human or even
philosophical terms. But whatever it is, the existential analysis fails to
disclose it or make it intelligible. "Baudelaire never believed completely
in anything he thought or felt, in any of his sufferings or in any of his
gritty
(grin~antes)
voluptes."
Even allowing for the qualification of "com–
pletely," this is strong medicine; and after taking it, one involuntarily
reaches for a copy of the
Fleurs du Mal
to read at least
Le Balcon,
Harmonie du Soir,
or
L'I.nvitation au Voyage
and to discover that Sartre's
statement simply does not contribute anything to an understanding of
volupte
or any other Baudelairean concept. (This is particularly surpris–
ing, because, in these poems alone, there are at least two ideas, the
concept of the body as pure flesh or pure pleasure, and the idea of
nothingness, which M. Sartre, in another context, has taken quite
seriously. )
Sensibility, or, as Valery also called it,
volupte poetique,
combined
in Baudelaire with an extraordinary sense of critical intelligence or
