Even if its effect and function seem more limited than in Les Fleurs

Contexts of Tw iiight in Baudelaire's
"Petits poémes en prose"
Renée Riese Hubert, University of Californiajlrvine
Even if its effect and function seem more limited than in Les Fleurs du mal,
even if it never suggests spiritual aspiration as in “Bénédiction”, light is
present in most of the Petiis poémes en prose. Nothing offers escape, in
“Le Fou et la Vénus”, from the dazzling sun whose watchful eye never
blinks. Overpowered by this force, nature voices no protest; not even the
murmur of waters can disturb the silence. But muteness does not imply
the reduction of nature to an object. The word ecstasy (“L’extase universelle
des choses”) refers to sensuous pleasure while expressing a feeling of admiration, as well as an expansion upward, echoed by such terms as rivaliser,
croissant, crescendo. As a result, the silence, comparable to meditation, is
compensated for by visual effects. As every particle of nature sparkles and
produces heat, light fills the world with visible elements, generating enough
power and energy to make even the fragrance of flowers perceivable.1 What
relation does this setting, where every flower expresses an erotic vitality,
bear to the scene between Venus and the fool? Does the goddess of love
encourage those who look up to her or pay her homage? Surrounded by
sensuous lights, Venus remains cold to the entreaties of the fool. Her marble
eyes, peering into the distance, contrast with the fiery glance of the sun, as
the bent posture of the teary-eyed fool contrasts with the upward drive of
nature. For the solitary fool who remains estranged, the sun creates but
an inhuman illusion.
The same omnipresent sun prevails in the tropical setting of “La Belle
Dorothée” where sand and sea become but dazzling reflections. As in “Le
Fou et la Vénus” its luminosity, its erotic temptations appear all-pervading.
However, it suffices to oppose the initial sentences: “Quelle admirable
journée!” of “Le Fou et la Vénus” to “Le Soleil accable la ville de sa
1. Cf. in this context Marc Eigcldinger’s remark in “La Symbolique solaire”: “L’irradiation
de la lumiére provoque “l’extase universelle des choses,” accuse l’intensité des couleurs et
favorise l’expansion des parfums” (RHL, (avril-juin, 1967), p. 361).
Contexts of Twilight in “Petits poémes en prose”
353
lumiére droite et terrible” of “La Belle Dorothée”, to note that nature is no
longer characterized by fertility, by an upward motion, but by a downward
gesture, a sort of capitulation: “une sieste qui est une espéce de mort savoureuse”. As the sun crushes the world by light and weight rather than
heat, man submits to this hostile force, the vertical sun rays that act like
daggers. But Dorothée asserts herself against the mighty sun. She becomes a
rival of the star by wandering alone through the streets, by maintaining her
upright posture while others take a siesta. Tn spite of her black skin Doro­
thée becomes a focal point of luminosity: “faisant sur la lumiére une tache
éclatante et noire”. This radiant blackness is stressed a second time: her
leg bared by the wind is “luisante et superbe”. To the strong color and light
of her skin, Dorothée adds those of her clothes: a brilliant pink dress, a red
sunshade. Dorothée, who has left her cozy, well-adorned boudoir, triumphs
symbolically in a world where man dares not withstand sunlight. A former
slave, she asserts her freedom at the very moment when she consents to
make love. Not only does she become stronger and more beautiful than
everyone else on her tropical island, but she reasserts her superiority over
sophisticated Parisians. Like the sun, she creates reflections of her power
around her: “Elle apercevait au loin dans l’escape un miroir reflétant sa
démarche et sa beauté”. Within Dorothée, at once proud and nonchalant,
the contrasts that divorce mankind from the sun harmoniously unite.
In “Le Tir et le cimetiére”, even less than in “Le Fou et la Venus” and
in “La Belle Dorothée” does brilliant sunshine espouse the human cause.
Near the cemetery the sun attains its greatest intensity, rolling like a drunk
person on the flowerbeds to the accompaniment of explosions from a nearby shooting stand. The vitality and richness (cf. magnifiques, riches, engraissees) of grass, sun and flowers banishes the sadness and even the very
silence of the tombs. Yet the heat and light, which permeate the earth,
arouse the voice of death, which denounces the futility and nothingness of
life: “Si vous saviez . . . combien tout est néant, excepté la Mort”.2 Although
the illuminating qualities of light have momentarily created the illusion that
the powers of life are enhanced, the overwhelming presence of the sun
remains alien once more to human sensitivity and communication.
2. For a somewhat similar interpretation, cf. J. P. Richard: Poésie et profondeur (Paris,
1955), p. 136: “Par sa sécheresse et discontinuité, cette crépitation rompt et compense
l’envahissante mollesse créée par la volatilisation mortuaire”.
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The sunlight in the three preceding poems manifests its power by an
excess of its natural qualities, whereas the moon in “Les Bienfaits de la
lune” suggests a world of dream and legend upon which reality barely encroaches. Metamorphosed into a goddess, it can, through its powers of expansion, fill any room. Its permeating quality, expressed by analogies with
the sea, and its poisonous nature, manifested by phosphorescence, a combination of a greenish color and a shining light which darkness can hardly
overcome, explain its powers of seduction. The moon goddess stares at a
child, resting at first in her cradle; then Crossing the window, she stoops
over the baby girl and grips her by the neck. In a threatening cradle song
she predicts that the little girl, unable to resist, will become just like the
goddess: “Tu seras belle å ma maniére. Tu aimeras ce que j’aime et ce
qui m’aime”. Indeed, whereas at first, the moon merely colored the child’s
face with its green colors and opened widely her eyes in bewilderment, to­
wards the end the child is so fully impregnated by the moon’s c'naracteristics that the poet can seek the goddess’ reflection in her: “Cherchant dans
toute ta personne le reflet de la redoutable Divinité”. The strong sunlight
merely remained indifferent to human endeavors; the moon, a far more
dangerous force, bewitches even the innocent by means of its supernatural,
not to say diabolical powers.
In “Les Yeux des pauvres” the scene takes place in a café into which
no natural light ever penetrates. Gas lighting, by bringing out the w'hiteness
of the table cloth and heightening the reflection of the mirrors, intensifies
the effects of bad taste. However, to the poor, who watch from the sidewalk, this repulsive world take on the dimensions of the marvelous. Their
eyes, described by the poet’s heartless mistress as “ouverts comme des
portes cochéres”, characterize their receptivity, so different from the ag­
gressive pretensions of the light. In the gas light, so destructive of dream
and illusion, objects display themselves with ostentation, but never harmonize.3 Thus the café represents a stage in the poet’s discovery of his mistress’
inhumanity.
In “Le Vieux Saltimbanque” and “Les Veuves” Baudelaire expresses
man’s desire for joy and festivity, his escape from reality, by repeated ex3. In “Le Plaisant” even more clearly than in “Les Yeux des pauvres” the objects themselves
become a source of light. On New Year’s Day the world is a continuous display of
fireworks and explosions.
Contexts of Twilight in “Petits poémes en prose”
355
plosions of sound and light. In the former text, the swiftly turning skirts of
beautiful dancers sparkle in the light. By linking the following paradoxical
terms: “Tout n’était que lumiére, poussiére, cris, joie, tumulte”, Baudelaire
implicitly condemns these circus performers and spectators, as opposed to the
saltimbanque who dwells in a mysterious, deep darkness upheld by silence and
feeble candlelight. The crowd, as already indicated by the juxtaposition of
the three verbs in the initial sentence: “Partout s’étalait, se répandait,
s’ébaudissait”, has the expanding quality associated with light; the old
Saltimbanque, in contrast, seems (like the bent-down fool) restricted to a
limited space. To the partout of the pleasure-seekers Baudelaire opposes the
ici of the saltimbanque. Like the family of “Les Yeux des pauvres” his
meaningful glance reveals the shallowness of the world clad in light.4
The contrast between a crowd, which is only too visible and audible, and
a solitary, self-effacing human being occurs also in “Les Veuves” where the
widows’ black dresses differ from the glittering manifestations of apparent
joy and wealth. Yet their glance (“yeux caves et ternes”) can contain this
large, motley, somewhat hellish world which Baudelaire refers to as “l’étincelante fournaise”. The spiritual greatness of one of these widows becomes
outwardly manifest when the very blackness of her attire appears radiant.5
Twice the term éclatant is applied to the widow in order to suggest the
revelation she brings to the poet. By her sadness and dignity, by the dark­
ness and luminosity of her appearance, she becomes the creator of a new
form of harmony more powerful than that of the “étincelante fournaise” and
the orchestra. In “Le Vieux Saltimbanque” and “Les Veuves” light created
by man embodies his ostentation and lack of depth, darkness becomes the
sign of spiritual values.
In other poems, Baudelaire tends not only to dissociate light from spiri­
tual illumination, but also from moral values. In “Le Confiteor de l’artiste”
harmony, a State which defies explanation or analysis, characterizes at first
the relationship between the poet and the world. As man embraces the outer
4. The eye, as Gérald Antoine suggests in his “La Nuit chez Baudelaire” (RHL, (avril-juin,
1967)), cannot be dissociated from light. In the Petits poémes en prose the pupil may
become the recipient of inner or outer light. In “Les vocations” the deep dark eyes of
the bohemians become luminous when they play music, thus revealing their great inner
liberty.
5. Strangely enough, Baudelaire will suggest this luminosity in terms almost identical to those
used in ”La Belle Dorothée”: “dans un milieu ou elle fait une tache si éclatante”.
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world, the dusk of autumnal days penetrates his inner universe. The pulse
of time does not beat, the past and the present merge into a single sensation
of unbearable intensity. Then the poet’s sensations revert from pleasure to
pain, from peace to tension; he asserts himself against nature, which assumes
more and more the cold beauty of Venus. What burdens him is the very
purity and transparence of the sky,6 this absolute blueness which assumes,
as the sun in “La Belle Dorothée”, the characteristics of cruelty and indiffer­
ence. To this attitude “L’Etranger” who finds comfort in an affinity with the
clouds, provides a corollary. He opts for the veiled, the imprecise, the
mysterious so different from the sharpness of the clear sunlight or azure.7
Yet how can we explain, in the same context, “A Chacun sa chimére”, which
evokes the spleen descending upon the poet through an all-pervading atmosphere of grayness? No flower, vegetation, or path will throw a speck of
light or reflection onto the gray cupola, the outlines of which are mysteriously re-echoed by every man who advances with a sack on his back. From
the sky and the procession, representing the spleen which envelops the
poet’s soul, there is no escape. In “A Chacun sa chimére”, the grayness or
lack of light evokes an undivided world without opposition, whereas in the
texts where light emerges appear contrasts, conflicts or tensions. In order
to assert the stranger’s loneliness and his opting for, not the sky, but the
clouds, the poet chose the dialogue form. In “La Belle Dorothée” the oppo­
sition between light and darkness constitutes the basis of a dramatic conflict. In “Le Vieux Saltimbanque” it stresses an irretrievable division.
“Anywhere out of the world” includes, however, both the spleen and the
tension arising from changes in luminosity. The poet proposes voyages, new
domains to his blasé soul, until the very limits of imagination have been
reached. In the polar regions where the sun throws oblique rays falling into
sheaves, light and darkness alternate with agonizing slowness. While “A
Chacun sa chimére” evokes, through an absence of light, the poet’s succumbing to spleen, “Anywhere out of the world”, by a succession of light and
obscurity, suggests the difficulty of overcoming this state. Still, this pro6. Comparable to the pure and polished mirror which is the image of the perfect, but un­
bearable mistress in “Portraits de maitresses”.
7. Cf. Alison Fairlie’s remark in her “Observations sur les Petits poémes en prose”: “L’Etran­
ger du premier poéme refuse tout ce que lui offre le monde pour ne contempler que les
nuages, images des possibilités changeantes et impondérables qu’il pourra fagonner å son
gré” (RSH (juillet—sept. 1967), p. 453).
Contexts of Twilight in “Petits poémes en prose"
357
longed monotonous state moves towards a climax equivalent to damnation,
an intensification of the previous light sequences against which the poet (as
in “Confitéor de l’artiste”) reacts by an inner violence.
“Le Crépuscule du soir” shows the poet, gradually succumbing to peace
as the day ebbs. The first suggestions of light, “Les couleurs tendres et
indécises du crépuscule” and “les nues transparentes du soir”, pointing to­
wards a diminished harshness, lend to dusk the mysterious, indefinite qua­
lities that “L’Etranger” is seeking in the clouds. Twilight produces a soothing effect by obliterating the struggle and anguish that the city at daytime
creates in the poet, but spurs some people to violence or even to mania.
Such distinctions lie in the very nature of twilight, its basic duality at once
peaceful and stormy, —as revealed by such expressions as: ‘Tharmonie de
renfer”, “lugubre harmonie”. The approaching darkness frees not only the
poet from the sorrows of work and the oppressions of reality, it creates an
inner festivity, an imaginary spectacle, represented by the dying redness of
day and the appearance of the first city lights. The sky, belonging at once to
dream and reality, assumes erotic qualities as it simulates the dark skirt of
a dancer which is sown with sparkling stars. Between the expanses of the sky
and the walls of the mind no basic distinction remains: the same lights and
colors shine within a pervading darkness. Bright lights, as we stated earlier,
are usually dissociated from spiritual illumination.8 Twilight, not only in
“Le Crépuscule du soir”, but also in “Les Vocations”, coincides with a form
of self-knowledge, of religious contemplation.9
The juxtaposition of the two rooms in “La Chambre double”, translating
again the poet’s desire for escape, seems at first related to the alternation of
ténébres and aurores boréales of “N’importe ou hors du monde”. However,
into the first, the timeless room, no sunlight penetrates. Indefiniteness characterizes its blue and pink shades, imitating those of sky and clouds: “C’est
quelque chose de crépusculaire, de bleuåtre et de rosåtre”. In this room
more and more endowed with the subdued, dissolving qualities of dusk, the
8. Once more we come close to a statement of Marc Eigeldinger’s concerning Baudelaire’s
poetic works in general: “II se soustrait å la chaleur dévorante et å la pure incandescence
pour se refugier dans la sphére de la lumiére douce et tamisée qui recéle les semences de
la spiritualité” (op. cit., p. 362).
9. In the former poem, Baudelaire states: “au point que j’eus un instant l’idée bizarre que je
pouvais avoir un frére å moi-méme inconnu. Le soleil s’était couché. La nuit solennellement avait pris place . . .”.
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poet’s dreams eneounter no obstaeles. The word harmonie stresses the
blending of two elements: “Ici tout a la suffisante clarté et la délicieuse
obscurité de l’harmonie”. The lack of a precise source of light is crystallized
in the word éclipse. The eventual emergence of the Idol with her eyes,
at once luminous and dark, “ces toiles noires” consumates this state of wellbeing where the poet’s mind no longer seeks to assert itself.10 In the context
of twilight this prose-poem comes close to “Crépuscule du soir”, where the
effects of a mellowing light, unadulterated by shade, matters more than
references to time or timelessness.11
The contemplation of a port scene where the lighthouse constitutes the
main but not sole source of light, provides a similar peace to the poet’s tired
mind. The motion of clouds, an animated force in the vast sky, is echoed
through the sea. Both movements exist independently and as reflections of
each other. Clouds and sea, which bring into the great expanse a rhythmical sequence of movement and color, meet the glittering vibrations of the
beams projected from the lighthouse. The beams, an independent entity,
constitute also an extension of the harmonious movement of sea and sky.
Epitomizing light, color and movement, they represent the essence of an
ordered beauty which constantly recreates itself according to its own laws.
Their eneounter, transformation and concentration in the eye, is suggested
by the word prisme. Thereby the phenomena of the outer world reach the
poet’s mind of which they are a reflection. This prism of understanding,
reverberating the unending movement of ships in the harbor, indicates once
more the inseparability and simultaneity of light and color vibrations. As in
“La Chambre double ’, peaceful contemplation, lack of suffering stem from
lights, of a complex or compound nature, where the corresponding ele­
ments blend and recreate effects.
In both “L’Invitation au voyage” and “Un Hémisphére dans une chevelure” the poet reaches out for an absent or imaginary world. In the former,
similar to the first part of “La Chambre double”, a mysterious order un10. Two sources of light exist in “Déjå”. One emanates from the land (“une terre magnifique,
éblouissante”) renders mankind happy and the poet sad. The other, the sun, rising or
setting, radiant or morose, embracing the duality suggested in “Le Crépuscule du soir”
represents for him an incomparable beauty to which he does not wish to say farewell.
11. Our interpretation of twilight might conflict with Fritz Nies’ theory that dissonances, sur­
prise effects and contrasts usually do not subside. Poesie in prosaischer Welt, (Carl Winter
Verlag, Heidelberg, 1964), cf. especially pp. 190-209.
Contexts of Twilight in “Petits poémes en pr ose"
359
threatened by time or other interference propagates an atmosphere of peace.
It stems from an equilibrium of spiritual and sensuous terms crystallized
in such expressions as ‘Tinfini des sensations” and “åmes raffinées” and
brings out the similarity between the ideal land and the woman, mysterious,
secret, yet tangible. The correspondence of soul and body, landscape and
woman, intimacy and vastness, fantasy and simplicity, simulates not the recapturing of a natural land, but of a painting: “Verrons-nous jamais, passerons-nous jamais dans ce tableau qu’a peint mon esprit, ce tableau qui te
ressemble?” In this silent painting, light, color and motion, first clad in a
mysterious mist with subdued clearness, will become inseparable as in “Le
Port”. Later, when the poet evokes an interior, rich in painterly qualities,
words referring to light abound. From “les soleils couchants” (the plural
stresses again the reference to paintings) emanates a light in evolution gradually suffused by darkness which endows the objects in the room with
picture-like attributes: panneaux, cuirs dorés, peintures béates, tamisés par
de belles étoffes, ces hautes fenétres ouvragées, meubles vastes et curieux,
les miroirs. Every object is at once a receiver and a generator of light,
blen ding its luminosity with that of others, producing thus a filtration which
purifies or elevates spiritually. After the misty atmosphere of the beginning,
followed by reflections which transform the evening sun into a work of art,
the universe mirrors its infinite sky and sea in the limpidity of the woman’s
soul. In “Le Port” the interrelation of motion and light as well as the various
constituents of the landscape, decomposed and recomposed, attain a unity
which parallels that of the room in “L’Invitation au voyage”. The limpidity
or purity suggested in the final paragraph consumates not only the invitation
to the imaginary land, but makes all sources of light obsolete and stresses,
more than any of the previous poems, an inner experience with an inner
landscape and an inner light.
Visual elements play a less significant role in “Un hémisphére dans une
chevelure” for the woman’s hair becomes a mysterious container of different
sensations: “Tout ce que je vois! tout ce que je sens! tout ce que j’entends
dans tes cheveux!” As intertwined visual, auditory, and olfactory memories
recur, the very hair of the woman reflects altemately the immensity of the
ocean or sky and the warmth of a hearth until the culminating image: “dans
la nuit de ta chevelure, je vois resplendir l’infini de l’azur tropical”. The
very blackness of the woman’s hair, simulating the walls of a boudoir,
evokes the infinite, spacious luminosity of the skies. The mysterious azure
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reborn from an instantaneous sensation, the seent of the dark hair, con­
stitute the threshold to the pure, lasting light of dream, so far removed
from the aggressive sunlight, a dramatic condensation of reality.
Thus we may conclude that the solitary strength of the outer light is less
beneficial than the atonement of dusk, its mystery, its harmonious blending
with other sensations and that dusk in its turn is less propitious than the inner light, divorced from the world of reality. “Les Fenétres” summarizes
these very ideas. Looking through an open window with the help of sun­
light does not permit the artist to discover or attain life, its truth, its suffering.
Looking through a closed window dimly lit by a candle reveals an unsuspected
depth which the direct light entering upon an open space fails to show.12
This rich vision, like the widow's eyes, like the Dutch interiors, contains at
once darkness and light: “plus ténébreux, plus éblouissant qu’une fenétre”,
“dans ce trou noir ou lumineux”. A penetration into a world not solely
revealed from a unilateral, outside source must be attained through aesthetic
distance. In “Le Mauvais Vitrier” the perfect panes are unrevealing until
the poet breaks the glass, until he creates, be it by means of destruction, a
rainbow of color and light.13 And alone the dim panes in “Les Fenétres” stir
him to creativity and to communion with others. Baudelaire, the symbolist,
the modern poet, sought the challenge of retrieving distant elements from
darkness rather than admiring the luminous contours offered by the skies.
12. Gérald Antoine considers also “Les Fenétres” one of the key poems which can illustrate:
“. . . la vision de la lumiére et de la nuit coexistant å l’intérieur du méme étre ou du
méme objet” (op. cit., pp. 398-99).
13. Robert Guiette’s conclusion about the Petits poémes en prose seems particularly appropriate to “Le mauvais vitrier”, “Ce sont des fusées qui éclatent au-delå”. Cf. “Bau­
delaire et le petit poéme en prose” (Revne beige de Philologie et d ’Histoire, No. 3, (1964),
852).