THE WRITER AND SOCIAL STRATEGY
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most indestructible of faculties and on the divine gifts which work and
money
~annot
confer.
Some of Baudelaire's sentences have a melodramatic ring and the
word "dandy" has not worn well. It suggests something willfully freak–
ish and "bohemian," something too local, too nineteenth century; but
the reality for which it stands is not in doubt.
It
is a definition of
the patrician attitude. I propose therefore to drop Baudelaire's term
and re-name the "dandy" the patrician.
Baudelaire's essay is really the first attempt to create a writers'
party. The writers must make common cause. Against the background
of a society which is still fairly rigidly divided into three classes, we
see the formation of what is in effect a new aristocracy based on the
indestructible values which "work and money cannot comer," on
the eternal values of intelligence and sensibility. Although the new
aristocracy might be recruited from any social sphere, it soon devel–
oped its own peculiar characteristics and became in Baudelaire's
words an exclusive "caste."
It is interesting to look at some of the political dicta which are
to be found in Baudelaire's diaries and which have not had as much
attention as they deserve:
There is no reasonable and certain fonn of government except an
aristocratic one; monarchies or republics based on democracy are equal–
ly feeble and absurd.
Another entry has a prophetic note:
Politics.
In short, in the eyes of history and of the French people,
the great achievement of Napoleon III will have been to prove that the
first comer who gains control of the telegraph and the national printing
press can govern a great nation.
He penetrates to the heart of the matter when he observes in still
another entry:
It
is not particularly in political institutions that universal ruin or
universal progress-for the name matters little-will manifest itself. It
will
be
in the degradation of the human heart
(I'avilissement des coeurs).
Although the issues were perceived more clearly in France and
the statement of them by French writers was more radical, the move–
ment was not confined to that country. Baudelaire's attack on the
bourgeois and his plea for a patrician outlook had its parallel in
