Sie sind auf Seite 1von 5

South Atlantic Modern Language Association

Baudelaire and Aldous Huxley


Author(s): James S. Patty
Source: South Atlantic Bulletin, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Nov., 1968), pp. 5-8
Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3198080
Accessed: 23-08-2015 16:19 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

South Atlantic Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to South
Atlantic Bulletin.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 200.130.19.179 on Sun, 23 Aug 2015 16:19:37 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

November, 1968

SOUTH ATLANTIC BULLETIN

Page Five

Baudelaire and Aldous Huxley


To juxtapose the names of Baudelaire and Huxley is to bringtogether
two figures of unusual importance
in the long, richly complex story of
Anglo-French literary relations. On
the one hand, the Baudelaire-Poe
relationship is, all by itself, a long
and complex story, and it is by no
means the only importantconnection
between Baudelaire and the AngloSaxon world-there is also the Baudelaire-DeQuincey relationship, for
instance. As for Huxley, it would be
difficultto find an English writer
of the last century or so more deeply imbued with a knowledge of
French literature and with admiration for it. True, Huxley is but one
of a number of ardent Francophiles
among the Anglo-Saxons-after all,
there are Swinburne, Wilde, George
Moore, T. S. Eliot, to mention perhaps the most noteworthy.But when,
in 1939 in the Revue de Littdrature
Comparde, Ruth Z. Temple devoted
a sound and thorough study to the
general subject of Huxley's knowledge and use of French literature,
she produced an article forty-six
pages long, solidly packed with information. Ten of her pages were
about Huxley and Baudelaire. The
present paper is a sort of appendix
to her excellent article. I propose
to review brieflythe principal points
she made, to elaborate on one of
them, and to conclude with a few
observations on matters which she
could not deal with in 1939. Huxley,
we must remember, lived on and
wrote and evolved for almost another quarter century,but his death
on November 22, 1963, was overshadowed by other, more terrible
news, and it seems to me he has
not yet emerged from this shadow.
As Miss Temple makes clear, references to Baudelaire are frequent in
Huxley's work-nine, for example,
in Texts and Pretexts (more than
for any other French writer). More
significantly,he included an essay
on Baudelaire in the collection Do
What You Will (1929); he based the
character of Spandrell in Point
Counter Point (1928) on Baudelaire; and he translated into English
the long and difficultpoem "Femmes
damnbes: Delphine et Hippolyte,"
one of the "pidces condamnbes." I
agree with Miss Temple that this
translationis "in general successful."
She seems unnecessarily non-committal when she says that Huxley
"seems not incapable of feeling the

special qualities of Baudelaire's


poetry." Her discussion of Huxley's
failure, in his essay, to comprehend
fully Baudelaire's sense of spleen
and ennui and his rather special
form of Christianity, with its emphasis on the primacy and power of
evil, need not be recapitulated in
detail. Suffice it to say that, as
might be suspected, she findscertain
importantresemblances between the
two writers, as well as certain differences of temperament and background which account for the lack of
total comprehension on Huxley's
part. One might ask, in passing, who
has ever totally understood Baudelaire?
As I have indicated, Miss Temple's
discussion of the Baudelaire-Huxley
relationship is largely based on the
essay in Do What You Will. I would
like to develop-and this is my principal topic-the Baudelairian elements in Point Counter Point. This
topic has not, I believe, been treated
in detail, and it deserves such treatment, in my opinion, since we have
here an almost unique instance of
an importantnovel inspired by Baudelaire. Partly inspired,I should say,
of course, for Point Counter Point
is an unusually complex novel, with
a large and varied cast of characters,
and the Spandrell theme is but one
among a number.
Before turning to this specifically
Baudelairian element in the novel,
I would like to note in passing, by
way of substantiating my earlier
statementabout Huxley as a knower
and admirer of French literature,
that there are references to Musset,
to Vigny ("La maison du berger"),
to Verlaine, to Rimbaud-a key allusion, since he "believed in life"
and is thus set in contrast to Spandrell-Baudelaire-as well as references to various French prosateurs:
Flaubert, Zola, Barres, Bourget,
Marie Leneru, Proust, Robert de
Montesquiou, and Cocteau. Furthermore, Huxley's fictional painter,
John Bidlake, is evidently a kind
of British Renoir, and there are references to Manet and D6gas as well
(not to mention two French painters
well known to Baudelaire-Ingres
and Ary Scheffer). Finally, the
novelistic techniques employed by
Huxley are to a large extent borrowed from Gide's Les Faux-Monnayeurs. A word might be said, too,
about the general influence of Voltaire and Anatole France.

In Point Counter Point, Huxley


reveals an almost scholarly interest
in Baudelaire. In an early chapter,
at a cocktail party, a minor character is shown drunkenly "defending art against the Philistines," and
arraying himself "on the side of the
angels, of Baudelaire, of Edgar Allan
Poe, of De Quincey. . . ." A little
later in the same scene, Spandrell
brings Baudelaire into the argument, characterizinghim as "the last
poet of the Middle Ages as well as
the first modern," and, by way of
illustration, citing seven lines from
"Une charogne." Much later in the
book, Mr. Quarles quotes several
lines from Baudelaire's "L'albatros,"
but this allusion cannot be regarded
as a real compliment to the French
poet, since Mr. Quarles is attempting to justify his wasted life and
since Huxley clearly wants us to
regard him as a pompous nonentity.
But it is still another passage which
really justifies claiming that Huxley
was somethingof a Baudelaire scholar (fortunately, he was also much
more). Philip Quarles is engaged in
conversation with the coquettish
Molly d'Exergillod:
Molly smiled. "Do you know
why Jean says I'm the only
woman he could ever fall in
love with?"
"No," said Philip, thinking
that she was really superb in
her Junonian way.
"Because," Molly went on,
"according to him, I'm the only
woman who isn't what Baudelaire calls le contraire du dandy.
You remember that' fragment
in Mon Coeur Mis
Nu? 'La
femme a faim et elle veut manger; soif, et elle veut boire. La
femme est naturelle, c'est-a-dire
abiminable. Aussi est-elle . . .'
her.
Philip interrupted
"You've left out a sentence," he
said, laughing. 'Soif, et elle
veut boire.' And then: 'Elle est
en rut,et elle veut Stre...' They
don't print the word in Cr~pet's
edition; but I'll supply it if you
like."
"No, thanks," said Molly,
rather put out by the interruption. It had spoilt the easy unfolding of a well-tried conversational gambit. She wasn't accustomed to people being so well
up in French literature as Philip.
"The word's irrelevant."
"Is it?" Philip raised his eye-

This content downloaded from 200.130.19.179 on Sun, 23 Aug 2015 16:19:37 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page Six

SOUTH ATLANTIC BULLETIN

November,1968

brows. "I wonder."


Afterthis psychicshock,Maurice
Lucy Tantamounttells the general
she expectsto see Mauricethateve- had grownup into a very splenetic
"'Aussi est-elle toujoursvulgaire,'" Molly went on, hurry- ning: ". . . between Spandrell and youngman. His veryface seems to
his stepfather
the quarrel,she knew be takenfromthathauntingphotoing back to the point at which
'c'estshe had been interrupted,
verywell, was mortal."This insight graph of Baudelaire by Carjat: "It
of Lucy's is enlarged upon when was a gaunt face. Cheekbone and
a-dire le contrairedu dandy.'
Jean says I'm the only female
Huxley lets the reader brieflyenter jaw showedin hard outlinethrough
the
think?"
general's private thoughts: the tightskin. The grey eyes were
What
do
you
dandy.
"Whathe hadn'tdone for that boy! deeply set. In the cadaverousmask
"I'm afraid he's right."
And how ungratefully
the boy had only the mouthwas fleshy--awide
Aside fromthe extensivequotation responded,how abominablyhe had mouth,withlips thatstoodout from
fromMon coeurmis & nu and Hux- behaved! Gettinghimselfkickedout the skinlike two thickweals. 'When
ley's amusingexploitationof it, we of everyjob the General had wan- he smiles,' Lucy Tantamounthad
must take note of the referenceto gled him into. A waster,an idler; once said of him, 'it's like an ap"Cr6pet'sedition."One's firstreac- drinkingand drabbing;makinghis pendicitis operation with ironical
tion is to think of the magnificent mothermiserable,spongingon her, corners.'The red scar was sensual,
set edited by Jac- disgracingthe family name. And but firmat the same time and denineteen-volume
ques Crepet beginningin 1922.But the insolence of the fellow, the termined,as was the round chin
at the time when Point Counter thingshe had venturedto say the below. There were lines round the
Point was published (1928), the last time they had met and, as eyes and at the cornersof his lips.
volumecontainingthe journaux in- usual, had a scene together!The The thickbrownhair had begun to
times had yet to appear. Huxley General was never likely to forget retreatfromthe forehead."
must have seen a copy of the being called 'an impotentold fumThe most Baudelairian part of
Oeuvres posthumesof 1908 or pos- bler.'" Obviously,Huxley has accorthe
et
novel,however,is a longpassage
Oeuvres
posthumes
siblythe
ceptedthe long-familiar-and,as we
respondancesinedites publishedby now know, somewhatinaccurate-- in which Huxley shows Spandrell
the elder Crepet (Eugene) in 1887. pictureaccordingto whichtheyoung wallowingin a sloughofennui,sloth,
In any case, Huxley had gone out Baudelaire always hated his step- debauchery,and depravity."It had
of his way to collect or at least to fatherand clashedoftenand violent- been rainingfor days. To Spandrell
consultreliabletextsof Baudelaire's ly with him. Huxley has slightly it seemed as thoughthe fungiand
his
works.
reworkedthe facts about Baudel- the mildew were sproutingin
his
in
or
sat
in
He
soul.
bed,
lay
But it is the characterof Maurice aire's expulsion from school. But dismal
or leaned against the
room,
which
in
one
crucial
to
is
there
'way
Sprandrellwhich is mostcrucial
counterin a public house, feeling
this paper. First of all, it is obvious Huxley's accountof Maurice'searly the
slimygrowthwithinhim,watchBaudelaire's
resembles
life
youth:
thatHuxleyknew a good deal about
it with his inward eyes." From
ing
Baudelaire's life; he probablyused Spandrellpreservesa vivid memory naturallaziness reinforcedby pride
felicities
incredible
the Baudelaire: 6tude biographique of "those quite
and aristocraticcontemptfor work,
by the two Cr6pets (1906). Span- of his boyhood"--thehappinesshe Spandrellhad movedon to conscious
sole
drell is the son of a woman who, had known when he enjoyed
"Ever since his mother's
afterthe death of her firsthusband, possessionof his mother'slove and evil-doing.
second
Spandrell had almarriage
and
Maurice's father,married a hand- attention.His present gloom
the worstof
made
some army officer.When we first misanthropyare traced directlyto ways perversely
course,deworst
the
chosen
things,
a
see Gen. Knoyle at a cocktailparty, his mother'sremarriage.During
his own worst
encouraged
liberately
he
mother
his
and
with
upbraids
quarrel
he is immediatelyridiculous
It was with debauchery
"His voice [is] mar- her: "'You didn't think much of tendencies.
unsympathetic.
his endless leidistracted
he
that
.
the
in
past
and he is talking my happiness
tial and asthmatic,"
was
He
revengeon her,
sures.
taking
about race-horseswith anotherof- When you married that man,' he on himselfalso for having been so
ficer.A few pages later, Frank I1- wenton,'did you thinkofmyhappi- foolishlyhappy and good. He was
lidge says of the general: "Nothing ness?'" His motherdefendsherself spitingher, spitinghimself,spiting
shortof hangingwoulddo fora man by saying that,at the time of her God. He hoped therewas a hell for
like that."We are remindedof the second marriage,Maurice gave no him to go to and regrettedhis instorywhich has the young Baude- reasons for his "unreasonable"be- ability to believe in its existence.
laire shoutingduringsome1848turb- havior. "'Reasons,' he repeated Still, hell or no hell, it was satisulence: "11 faut fusillerle g~ndral slowly. 'Did you honestlyexpect a factory,
it was even excitingin those
of fifteento tell his motherthe early days to know that one was
Aupick." Some pages later, we see boy
reasons why he didn'twant her to
thegeneralthroughtheeyes ofWaldoing somethingbad and wrong."
share her bed with a stranger?'" While
been
ter Bidlake: "The generalhad
Huxley is apparentlyforgethandsome once. Corseted,his tall That Huxley is deliberatelylinking ting or ignoringBaudelaire's proand fessionsof beliefin the existenceof
figure still preserved its military his character to Baudelaire
the
Hamlet-Oedipus
to
him
through
the
and
guardsthe Devil and indeed the whole ulThe
gallant
bearing.
he tells tra-orthodox,
Maistrianside of Bauman, he smiled; he fingeredhis motifis made clear when
whitemoustache.The next moment us that young Maurice had been delaire's thought,he is obviously
he was the playful,protectiveand readinga pornographicnovel about quite familiarwith such a passage
confidentialold uncle." Here Hux- a Frenchgirls'school in which"the as this: ". . . la volupt6 unique et
ley is, of course, extrapolatinga sexual exploitsof the militarywere supremede 1'amourgitdans la certiportraitfromthe littlehe knew or pindaricallyexalted" shortlybefore tude de faire le mal." When,in the
thoughthe knew about Baudelaire's his motherannouncedto him her
same part of the novel, Huxley deremarriage.
step-father.A few momentslater, forthcoming
This content downloaded from 200.130.19.179 on Sun, 23 Aug 2015 16:19:37 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

November, 1968

SOUTH ATLANTIC BULLETIN

play Le marquis du ler houzards. On


her wedding night, the Comtesse de
Timey had received fromher elderly
bridegroom (!who dies immediately
afterwards) initiation into his own
moral and political corruption. His
dying words to her are: "Ma chore
fille, je laisse dans votre ame virginale l'exp6rience d'un vieux
roue." Huxley works in a brief account of Spandrell's latest sexual
Aux objets repugnants nous
affair,one in which he had carried
trouvons des appas;
out the obsessions just described.
Now he has been abandoned by his
Chaque jour vers 1'Enfer nous
descendons d'un pas,
wretched victim. "He contented
Sans horreur, a travers des
himself with talking about the ext6nebres qui puent.
citements of diabolism, while in
Huxley's point is a little different practice he remained sunk apathetifrom Baudelaire's-Spandell,
ulti- cally in the dismal routine of brandy
mately, finds no charms in the re- and hired love. The talk momentaripugnant objects he pursues. But the ly excited him; but when it was
moral torpor,the volatilization of the over he fell back again yet deeper
rich metal of man's will are the into boredom and despondency.
same. And the two writers are once There were times when he felt as
though he were becoming inwardly
again in touch when Huxley turns
with a gradual numbing
paralyzed,
to the final stage of Spandrell's
of the very soul. It was a paralysis
"descent into hell":
which it was within his power, by
The corruptionof youth was the
making an effortof the will, to cure.
But he could not, even would not,
only form of debauchery that
now gave him any active emomake the effort." "I really like
tion. Inspired, as Rampion had
hating and being bored," he admits.
And Huxley concludes his long andivined, by that curious vengeful hatred of sex, which had realysis of Spandrell's spiritual sicksulted from the shock of his
ness thus: "He liked it. The rain
mother's second marriage superfell and fell; the mushrooms
vening, in an uneasy moment of
sprouted in his very heart and he
adolescence, on the normal updeliberately cultivated them." One
per middle-class training in remay not agree with this interpretation of Baudelaire's moral situation,
finement and gentlemanly rebut one cannot doubt that it is depression, he could still feel a
rived from Huxley's knowledge of
peculiar satisfaction in inflictBaudelaire's life and writings. We
ing what he regarded as the
humiliation of sensual pleasure
recognize at once the Baudelaire
on the innocent sisters of those
who, as his letters and journals show
too much loved and therefore
specially well, tried to lash himself
into activity, vainly; who, unable
detested women who had been
to establish satisfying relationships
for him the personification of
with decent women, normally rethe detested instinct.Medievally
sorted to "hired love"; who sank
hating, he took his revenge, not
deeper and deeper into cranky mis(like the ascetics and puritans)
anthropyin those last dreadful years
by mortifyingthe hated fllesh
in Belgium. Huxley's treatment of
of women, but by teaching it an
Spandrell, as far as his plot is conindulgence which he himself
cerned, culminates in the nihilistic
regarded as evil, by luring it
political murder which his character
and caressing it on to more and
commits near the end of the novel.
more complete and triumphant
But, for our present purposes, it all
rebellion against the conscious
leads up to a terrible scene directly
soul. And the final stage of his
inspired by one of Baudelaire's
revenge consisted in the gradual
insinuation into the mind of his
strangest and strongest poems. One
victim of the fundamental
Sunday afternoon in spring, Spandrell rents a car and, accompanied
wrongness and baseness of the
by the aging Connie, drives into the
raptures he himself had taught
her to feel.
country. As Mr. Carter ably sumThis seems to derive from Baudemarizes the scene, ". . . the spectacle
laire's sketch for the never-written of nature, glorious in the first
scribes the power of habit to dull the
conscience, he may well have in
mind certain lines from the admonitory poem "Au lecteur":
Et nous alimentons nos aimables
remords,
Comme les mendiants nourrissent
leur vermine.
Nos peches sont tetus, nos
repentirs sont liches;

Page Seven
warmth of spring and rebirth,
awakens Spandrell's smouldering
algolagnia: he indulges in a curious
emasculation fantasy which is, of
course, a direct negation of [D. H.]
Lawrence's 'phallic consciousness.'"
Huxley's words in the crucial passage are as follows: "'Oh, the foxgloves! cried Connie. . . . Spandrell
followed her. 'Pleasingly phallic,' he
said,, fingeringone of the spikes of
unopened buds. And he went on to
develop the conceit, profusely.
Raising his stick he suddenly began
to lay about him right and left,
slash, slash. . . . 'Down with them,'
he shouted, 'down with them.... Do
you think I'm going to sit still and
let myselfbe insulted? The insolence
of the brutes! . . . Damn their insolence! It serves them right.'"
This extraordinarypassage springs
from several Baudelairian sources.
One thinks of the letter to Fernand
Desnoyers which Baudelaire wrote
to serve as a preface to his poems
on twilight: ". . . vous savez bien
que je suis incapable de m'attendrir
sur les vegetaux, et que mon ame
est rebelle a cette singulibre Religion nouvelle, qui aura toujours,
ce me semble, pour tout etre spirituel, je ne sais quoi de shocking.
... J'ai meme toujours pense qu'il
y avait dans la Nature, florissante
et rajeunie, quelque chose d'affligeant, de dur, de cruel,-un je ne
sais quoi qui frise l'impudence." But
most pertinent is the "piece condamnee" entitled "A celle qui est
trop gaie," which reads in part:
Quelquefois dans un beau jardin
Ou je trainais mon atonie,
J'ai senti, comme une ironie,
Le soleil dechirer mon sein;
Et le printemps et la verdure
Ont tant humili6 mon coeur,
Que j'ai puni sur une fleur
L'insolence de la Nature.
From what has been set forth in
this paper, from various rapprochements of detail already noted in
Miss Temple's article, from others
I could add to hers if there were
time to do so, I conclude that the
life and work of Baudelaire furnished Huxley one of the major
themes for his novelistic symphony.
And it must be borne in mind that
against Spandrell and his nihilistic
hatred of life, Huxley sets the figure
of Mark Rampion, a sort of transposed D. H. Lawrence, under whose
spell Huxley was when he wrote
Point Counter Point and Do What
You. Will. Thus we have among the
major characters a fictionalized

This content downloaded from 200.130.19.179 on Sun, 23 Aug 2015 16:19:37 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page Eight

SOUTH ATLANTIC BULLETIN

November,1968

Baudelaire and a fictionalizedanti- effet,il est d6fendui l'homme,sous Huxley does not bother to refute
Baudelaire.
peine de d6cheanceet de mortin- Baudelaire's arguments explicitly,
In an unpublishedpaper which tellectuelle,de d6rangerles condi- though he must have been quite
he has generouslymade available tions primordialesde son existence familiarwith the texts concerned.
to me, A. E. Carter shows how the et de rompre l'6quilibre de ses But he does referto "artificialparaSpandrell-Baudelaire t y p e re- facultes avec les milieux ou elles dises," and he does cite a phrase
appears in later novelsby Huxley-- sont destinies a se mouvoir,en un fromBaudelaire'sessay on laughter.
Mark Staithes in Eyeless in Gaza mot,de derangerson destinpour y So, even in the midst of very un(1936), Will Farnaby in Island substituerune fatalited'un nouveau Baudelairianor indeed anti-Baude(1962). You can take my word, I genre."In The Doors of Perception, lairian ideas, fragmentsof Baudethink,that he proves his point. I Huxley expressedpreciselythe op- laire break through.
And that in fact is more or less
to devotemy positepointof view: "To be shaken
would like, therefore,
conclusionto showinghow Baude- out of the ruts of ordinarypercep- the point. That Baudelaire should
laire and Huxley looked at the tion,to be shownfora few timeless have influenced Swinburne and
question of the mind-expanding hoursthe outerand the innerworld, Wilde adds nothingto his glorydrugs,an interestwhich,as every- not as they appear to an animal theywere, so to speak, predestined
one knows, greatly preoccupied obsessed with survival or to a hu- to absorb somethingfromhim. But
Huxley in his last years and to man being obsessedwithwordsand it is an extraordinarytributethat
which he devoted two long essays, notions, but as: they are appre- Baudelaire's presence should have
The Doors ofPerceptionand Heaven hended, directly and uncondition- impingedupon a mind which, on
was fundamentand Hell. To bringthe matterto a ally, by Mind at Large--thisis an mostfundamentals,
in
with
to
disaccord
his own.
value
inestimable
of
two
to
have
but
ally
we
experience
compare
head,
JAMESS. PATTY,
essential quotations. Baudelaire everyoneand especially to the inVanderbiltUniversity.
wrotein Les Paradis artificiels:"En tellectual."In his essays on drugs,

Baudelaire and the GermanMetropolis


mit neuen
der Dekadenz
The ascendancyof the metropolis Vers, Fltenlied. Arm und rein,nie
and the consequentflightfromthe am biirgerlichenErfolg beteiligt, Gefiihls-undAusdrucksformen.
der
countrysidethroughoutEurope de- am Ruhm,am Fett des schliirfenden . .. Die lyrischeArchitektur
Fleurs du Mal reizte wohl
manded a new means of literary Gesindes.Lebt von Schatten,macht
formal verwandte Nachdichter
expressionduringand afterthe de- Kunst."
wie Stefan George, aber sein
cline of the Romanticage. In GerImaginationand form are prewirklicherEinflussbeginnt,so
Baudelaire
which
forces
the
occurred
this
cisely
phenomenon
many
sonderbares klingenmag, erst
only sporadically and rather late infused into European poetry and
"modGerman
made
which
jetzt,und zwar auf die lyrische
fruition
until
to
poetry
and did not come
Produktioneiniger der Ganzthe firstdecade of the presentcen- ern" fromabout the last-decade of
jungen, der zumeistnoch ganz
tury. The lyric work of Friedrich the nineteenthcentury.Paul Val6ry
unbekannten lyrischen "Stiirthe importanceof BaudeNietzschehad given some impetus highlights
mer und Driinger."
to modernGermanpoetry,particu- laire as the apostle of modernityin
One of Baudelaire's "modern"
"Mais
Baudelaire":
de
and
his
"Situation
to
with
regard imagination
larly
the will to exceed oneself.A similar avec Baudelaire,la po6sie frangaise themes is the paradoxical mixture
effectcan be ascribed to Charles sort enfindes frontieresde la na- of disgustand fascinationwith the
Baudelaire, of whom the vagabond tion.Elle se faitlire dans le monde; metropolis.Eccentricity,absurdity,
here
poet Peter Hille said: "Die Phan- elle s'imposecommela po6siememe horror,and ecstasyintermingle
de la modernitY; elle engendre to give a true insightinto modern
tasie wandertzu viel."
In 1955, GottfriedBenn, looking l'imitation,elle feconde de nom- urban life. In 1859,Baudelaire used
back at the lyricpoetryof the Ex- breux espirits."Among these for- the term "modernity"for this spethe
pressionistdecade, states that the eign poets Valery names Stefan cific human condition. What immodern poetry of that time was George,for whose circle Mallarm6 Germanpoets admiredwas the
in workmanshipand per- and Verlaine had also been of the position of a highly intelligible
different
form,in George's words,"der eifer
sonalities from "Landschaftsbetr~i-greatestconsequence.
The intensive preoccupationof mit dem er der dichtung neue
die
mer und Bliimchenverdufter,
dem deutschenPublikumals innige the German literary world with gebiete eroberteund die gliihende
Poetenaufgeredetwurden."He then Baudelaire duringthe Expressionist geistigkeitmit der er auch die
continuesto praise the willingness decade is attested by the Berlin spr 5 desten Stoffedurchdrang."
of the Expressionistpoets to seek criticErich Oesterheldin an inter- Since the turn of the centurythe
new avenues, to condense and ex- esting essay entitled "Baudelairi- cityhas becomethe habitatforhalf
the German population.Therefore,
periment and yet to uphold the ana."
the social problemof the urban en"literarhiskeine
Er
noch
ist
steadfast
Form."
"Moral der
Benn,
torische"Grbsseim landlaiufigen vironmentturned into a general
dein the defenseof his generation,
human problem. Arno Holz and
Sinne der Philologie,eher schon
scribes the Expressionistendeavor
-und besondersin Deutschland othershad writtenurban poetryas
to "4pater le bourgeois": "Noch
-der artistischeBefruchterder
early as 1885,but their social pity
aber steht sie da: 1910-1920Meine
Modern e, eine aisthetische is rather pathetic and shallow.
Generation.Haimmertdas Absolute
Stefan George, Richard Schaukal,
Norm, ein endgiiltigerTypus
in abstrakte,harte Formen: Bild,

This content downloaded from 200.130.19.179 on Sun, 23 Aug 2015 16:19:37 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen