328
PARTISAN REVIEW
ical and biographical sources have given us in the way of information.
The narrative is arresting, as one would expect it to be, but neither es–
pecially distinguished nor (except for the last few pages of the section)
very relevant to the purpose of the book, which claims to be a history
of the poetry. The central chapter, "The Interpretation of the
Fleurs
du Mal,"
seems strangely pedestrian for so gifted a writer. It is less
tainted than some of the others by what I consider to be Mr. Tumell's
besetting sin: his ready way, untroubled by any scruple of method, of
dividing the work into a mortal and an abiding half; his compulsion to
make excuses for his author, too often of a donnish or downright prissy
kind ("He also belonged to his age and while we must deplore the fact
that some of its least admirable attitudes found their way into his poetry,
this was to a large extent inseparable from his achievement")-suffer–
ing, instead, from two complementary weaknesses: a laboring of the
obvious and a substitution of circumstantial paraphrase for exegesis. An
example of the former will have to suffice: "We must next examine the
psychological reasons for B's preoccupation with coldness and distance.
When we look at the last two lines of
<Je t'adore a regal': <Et je eheris, .
8 bete implacable et eruelle!
/
Jusqu' a eette froideur par
OU
tu
m'es plus
belle!'
we cannot fail to notice the perverse element. It is clear that the
woman's coldness is the the cause of her attraction, that the poet does
not want her to give herself or to rouse her." It is clear indeed-so clear
that we feel slightly embarrassed. And one wonders whether such state–
ments are the result of innocence, of overconscientiousness or simply of
a certain insensitivity, lack of discretion. Whatever the source, they be–
tray a radical want of humor. We read them, and as we read can hear
Baudelaire's laughter-sardonic, diabolical-in the distance.
But what bothered me most in this book was the careless way in
which Mr. Tumell shirks every major encounter in the arena of ideas
and so misses practically all his chances: for even to be undone by an
idea is better than not to have faced it. Reverence for his poet does not
keep him from subjecting Baudelaire to the reductive method bred of
the most facile, and hence the most fashionable, branch of nominalist
thinking. Was he afraid he might be classed with the obscurantists
if
he
dealt resolutely-I would have said "seriously" were Mr. Tumell not
such a serious man himself-with ideas as central as those of the
Idol
and the
Absolute?
These are the true cruxes, or
aporiae,
in the work of
Baudelaire; by the same token, the true challenges hurled at his inter-
. preter. To reduce them is to discount their significance altogether; their
significance, I mean, as the stable norms around which a poetic cosmos
groups and organizes itself. To treat them as necessary fictions-with
