Introduction
Charles Baudelaire was a remarkable French poet who discussed the changes in Paris of the 19th century. His collection of poems, The Flowers of Evil, contains a variety of stories about people, their emotions, and abstract things that determine the quality of life. A distinctive feature of his works is the presence of a flâneur, a person who wanders the world and shares his observations. After reading his poems like “The Swan” and “To a Passer-By”, it is easy to understand that Baudelaire is that flâneur, who is both fascinated and upset with the process of urbanization and its contradictory beauty.
He uses the whole city as his canvas and integrates various literary techniques to relate the images of luminal experiences. He focuses on contradictions related to personal and social changes. Despite using classical verse forms, he, being fascinated by sensation contrast, he underlines the mismatch between form and content through the concept of limit and liminal experiences. In “The Swan” and “To a Passer-By”, Baudelaire, the flâneur, shares his memories of the past and the realities of the mundane present to underline the beauty of the transience of life.
The Role of a Flâneur
The introduction of the flâneur and the thrills of the feeling of overstimulation make Baudelaire one of the most recognizable sensory poets during the 19th century. On the one hand, this character is detached from the crowd and observes recent social and industrial changes “in the windows shine the jumbled bric-a-brac” from the sidewalk (Baudelaire 89). On the other hand, flâneur cannot ignore his interest in urban life opportunities and a variety of people with “new palaces, scaffolding, blocks of stone, old quarters” (Baudelaire 90). Using the experience of an ethnographer, the author tries to catalog the beauty of everyday life with its dissonant parts.
For example, there are eternal and invariable elements like Louvre and relative, circumstantial details like “piles of shafts, of rough hewn cornices” (Baudelaire 89). His fascination with the language used in “Swan” is seen through the lines as each word is properly chosen to depict the unity of hesitation, uncertainty, frustration, and inspiration. The future of the flâneur remains unclear because everything depends on some chance, ephemeral encounters, and minute observations. Attention to such liminal experiences makes Baudelaire’s poems out of mundane everyday life.
Limit Experiences
The concept of limit experience was a common technique developed by French philosophers in the 20th century. This type of human activity could push people to the edge of their beliefs and possibilities and make a choice that is not always easy to understand. Limit experiences include life events that can either motivate or challenge, depending on humans and their visions. For example, if a person faces problems and concerns constantly, there is a possibility that limit experience reveals the darkest side of his or her soul. However, negative emotions should not be the only expected outcomes of limit experiences.
There is also a challenge to be turned into a great opportunity to change something. Therefore, despite being properly defined and explained, limit experiences are hard to predict and discuss in one frame. However, Baudelaire goes beyond the common 19th century French norms where love and other feelings prevailed. He uses a city, “Old Paris”, as an object of his poetry (Baudelaire 89). He becomes the first urban but still melancholic poet who misses the past, cherishes his memories, and cannot resist a life that is passing by.
In Baudelaire’s poems, there are no clearly identified good or bad sides of a human soul, and people are introduced as strangers and passers-by. It is hard to comprehend what has already happened to a person and why such decisions are made. At the same time, it is clear that, even being detached from society, the flâneur is frustrated with the idea of urbanization and ready to reproach God just to avoid changes (Baudelaire 90).
As a result, the representation of limited experiences in “The Swan” and “To a Passer-By” pushes the reader to some new ways of understanding, relying on specific poetic forms and images. These two poems are examples of lyric modernity, where the convention of normal forms and ideas is twisted because of the lack of knowledge, experience, and evidence.
“The Swan”
The peculiarity of limit expression in Baudelaire’s poem “The Swan” is the combination of attitudes toward Paris past and present that are shared by a transient flâneur. In the 19th century, the city underwent a number of considerable changes in different spheres, including architecture, politics, economic, and social relationships. Being a direct observer of human reactions, Baudelaire found it necessary to share his knowledge and attitude toward the transition of old Paris into a new one. To escape the limits of language and demonstrate his love for sonnets, he used a traditional format, Alexandrine or iambic hexameter.
However, compared to the original text of the poem (written in French), its English versions may be confusing. Therefore, attention should be paid to the use of figurative language and ideas. The author begins the poem by mentioning Andromache as “that mirror, poor and sad, which glittered long ago/ With the vast majesty of your widow’s grieving” (Baudelaire 89). This image and the metaphor of “mirror” are used to introduce pain the stranger experiences about Paris ruins and transformations, comparing them with the emotions of the Greek woman who lost her family and land.
An increased number of metaphors proves the liminal position of the stranger and the desire of the author to conjoin apocalyptic vision with mundane things. He has nothing to do but accept social transformations and keep the past in his memories that “are heavier than rocks” or that “sounds loud the hunting horn” (Baudelaire 91). To underline a driving rhythm and intensify emotions, Baudelaire also used anaphora several times, “towards the sky at times…/ towards the ironic, cruelly blue sky” (90).
There is also a repetitive occurrence of the preposition “of” at the beginning of many lines, which conveys an impressive number of similar outcomes and experiences. Finally, “the swan” itself becomes an allegory of the author who “restlessly bathed his wings in the dust” and “stretch his avid head upon his quivering neck” (Baudelaire 90). All these poetic techniques show the importance of liminal experiences of the author (the stranger) with a desire to never forget the past but accept the present as it is.
“To a Passer-By”
Compared to “The Swan” where the stranger does not have a particular thing or a person to hold on in the process of change, Baudelaire’s “To a Passer-By” introduces a specific image of a woman. “The Swan” is a reaction to the changes the citizens of Paris cannot avoid, and “To a Passer-By” is a solution that is available to everyone. Instead of focusing of abstract notions and ideas, this poem focuses on the woman “tall, slender, in heavy mourning, majestic grief” (Baudelaire 95). Still, liminal experiences cannot be ignored in this poem because the author wanted to explain how people are pushed to the edge of their emotions.
The ecology of urban life turns out to be an interesting subject for consideration for Baudelaire. Instead of discussing the qualities of humans, their experiences, and abilities, he focuses on the city as the main source of inspiration and differentiation. His unwillingness to be definite about “whoever has lost that which is never found” challenges and provokes the reader (Baudelaire 91). And yet, such uncertain but limit experience proves the author’s fascination about what happens and the desire to observe more.
“To a Passer-By” is a poem about changes people experience every day and the explanations of why some change is accepted, and another is not. In the beginning, a flâneur faces “the street” that “roared with a deafening sound” (Baudelaire 95). The presence of such metaphors demonstrates the irritation of the author about his inability to escape the world where he lives. Then, he saw an “agile and graceful” woman and again used several metaphors to express the transition of emotions and experiences. In the end, the reality is revealed by means of the chosen anaphors of “know not” and “o you” (Baudelaire 95). They demonstrate the author’s unawareness of the future and uncertainties of the present, and the reader is free to create a specific development of events in regard to personal experiences and ideas.
Conclusion
Both poems by Baudelaire are unique in their representation of limited experiences. The author did not want to provide the reader with definite emotions and attitudes toward the events around but enhanced creativity by means of metaphors and allegories. Liminal experiences of people are hard to avoid or predict because there are many internal and external factors that influence the development of events. “The Swan” and “To a Passer-By” represent the intensity of feelings and the impossibility of maintaining human relationships in the same way because of a constantly developing world, unstable standards, and unpredictable reactions.
The presence of the flâneur is not a random step taken by the author. This character explains the position of people toward the situation in the country. On the one hand, they become direct participants of the changes that happen around them. On the other hand, they can hardly do something individually to influence urbanization and the established standards. Baudelaire breaks the rules inherent to the poetry of the 19th century, and his tradition to consider the city as an object for analysis is proved to be successful and interesting to readers and critics.
Work Cited
Baudelaire, Charles. The Flowers of Evil. Translated by William Aggeler, Academy Library Guild, 1954.