By Association by Charles Baudelaire
"By Association" is a poem by Charles Baudelaire, featured in his notable collection, *Les Fleurs du mal* (*The Flowers of Evil*), first published in 1857 and included again in the 1861 edition. This poem explores themes of beauty, desire, and the duality of women, situated between two other poems that also address feminine beauty. Baudelaire employs a rich sensory language to evoke the experience of a poet entranced by a woman's presence, utilizing imagery such as "perfume," "rhythm," and "light." The poem begins with the poet's closed eyes, symbolizing surrender to his sensual experience, while the woman’s open eyes signify a potential dominance.
The poem’s idyllic and exotic imagery suggests a paradise filled with sensory delights, yet it also hints at underlying dangers, reflecting Baudelaire's complex relationship with beauty and desire. The interplay between sensation and vision is a recurring motif, linking "By Association" to other works in the collection, where themes of longing and peril are intertwined. Overall, this poem illustrates Baudelaire's ability to weave interconnected ideas and motifs throughout his work, inviting readers into a nuanced exploration of the artist's emotional and imaginative landscape.
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By Association by Charles Baudelaire
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: “Parfum exotique,” 1857 (collected in The Flowers of Evil, 2006)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
“By Association” details one of the many forms of departure that tempted Baudelaire throughout Flowers of Evil prior to his ultimate departure in “The Trip.” The poem was published in the 1857 edition of Flowers of Evil, as well as in the 1861 edition, where it was situated between two other poems, “Hymne à la Beauté” (“Hymn to Beauty”) and “La Chevelure” (“The Head of Hair”), on the general subject of the beauty of women. “By Association” also exemplifies Baudelaire’s technique of developing both ideas and imagery through a sequence of related poems.
“Hymn to Beauty” addresses beauty in general, though clearly in female form, and reflects the dualism that Baudelaire recognized in this subject. The opening lines, “Do you come from deep heaven or from the abyss/ Oh Beauty?” recognize the danger of woman. Yet by the end of the poem, the poet willingly takes whatever risk that he must: What does it matter, if you—velvet-eyed fairy/ Rhythm, perfume, light, my only queen—you make the universe less ugly and time less heavy?” The attributes that Baudelaire ascribes to the woman reflect her duality. The allusions to “rhythm, perfume, light” recall the multiple sensory stimuli that contributed to the poet’s vision in “Correspondences.” Yet the reference to her eyes, the instruments by which women often overpower the poet elsewhere in Flowers of Evil, alludes to her potential dominance and links this poem to the one that is to follow.
“By Association” begins with the poet’s eyes closed, in contrast to those of the woman, which are presumably open: “When with closed eyes on a warm autumn evening/ I breathe the odor of your warming breast.” The poet’s closed eyes imply that he is abandoning himself to the sensations provided by the perfume, sensations that still evoke, as they had in “Correspondences,” a visionary experience: “I see stretched out before me happy shores/ Dazzled by the fires of a monotone sun.” The vision, drawing on the suggestion of “exotique” in the title of the sonnet, conjures a setting frequent in Baudelaire’s imagery. The “shores” suggest a sea voyage, while the dazzling sun suggests a tropical destination.
Dangers lurk even in this idyllic landscape. The sun described as “monotone” recalls Baudelaire’s negative “boredom,” and the second quatrain describing “a lazy island” anticipates the Lotus Eaters of “The Trip.” The island is also inhabited by “women whose eyes astonish by their frankness.” Yet the poet does not take warning from the power expressed in the women’s eyes. The sestet describes an earthly paradise to which he is “guided by your perfume.” In describing this paradise, Baudelaire briefly abandons the contradictory images that have rendered many of his visions ambiguous: “While the perfume of the green tamarind trees/ That circulates through the air and widens my nostrils/ Combines in my soul with the song of the sailors.” The fusion of perfume and music returns to the experience of “Correspondences.” This imaginative departure inspired by the woman continues in the following poem, “The Head of Hair,” where the perfume of her hair carries the poet as far as “languorous Asia and burning Africa.” Yet in the following, untitled poem “I adore you as the vault of night,” the danger of passion reappears, as Baudelaire realizes that his experiences with the woman “separate my arms from the blue immensity.”
Baudelaire’s linking of themes and development of ideas from poem to poem through Flowers of Evil invites the reader to approach the work as a unit, both for the story that it traces of the poet’s life and for the progressive development that it makes possible for his slowly evolving symbols.
Bibliography
Benjamin, Walter. The Writer on Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire. Translated by Howard Eiland et al., edited by Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Charles Baudelaire. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
Carter, A. E. Charles Baudelaire. Boston: Twayne, 1977.
Evans, David. Rhythm, Illusion, and the Poetic Idea: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004.
Hemmings, E. W. J. Baudelaire the Damned: A Biography. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982.
McLees, Ainslie Armstrong. Baudelaire’s “Argot Plastique”: Poetic Caricature and Modernism. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989.
Richardson, Joann. Baudelaire. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Sanyal, Debarati. The Violence of Modernity: Baudelaire, Irony, and the Politics of Form. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Baudelaire. Translated by Martin Turnell. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1964.
Ward Jouve, Nicole. Baudelaire: A Fire to Conquer Darkness. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980.