Baudelaire, Charles | Edward K. Kaplan (essay date 1990)
Edward K. Kaplan (essay date 1990)
SOURCE: "Interpreting the Prose Poems: An Amalgam beyond Contradictions," in Baudelaire's Prose Poems: The Esthetic, the Ethical, and the Religious in "The Parisian Prowler, " The University of Georgia Press, 1990, pp. 1-18.
[Kaplan is an American poet and critic. In the following excerpt, he finds that Le spleen de Paris addresses the conflict between "compassion and a fervent aestheticism. " According to Kaplan, compassion entails community, while fervent aestheticism leads to isolation. ]
Baudelaire's 1855 experiments with lyrical prose quickly faded into the background as he developed autonomous subgenres—"fables of modern life," as I call them. The formalistic problem of the "prose poem" is far less valuable in interpreting them than a focus on their narrator, a Second Empire Parisian poet—a flâneur, or urban stroller—who struggles with his conflicting drives. It is remarkable...
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