Efface the mark of kisses by and by. Yet for all the artist's thematic preferences, Baudelaire was equally absorbed by Delacroix's handling of color since this illustrated perfectly the "correspondences" between the poet and the painter. that monster with his net, whom others knew - None the less, these views are yours: Equally important appeals are made to the senses of sight and smell in the images employed by the poet. Onward! Though funds only allowed for two issues it helped raise Baudelaire's creative profile. and runners tireless, besides, From top to bottom of the fatal ladder, eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. Wherever smoky wicks illumine hovels "Come on! of the concluding poem, Le Voyage, as a journey through self and society in search of some impossible satisfaction that forever eludes the traveler. Thrones studded with luminous jewels; with wind-blown hair and seaward-gazing brow, Brighten our prisons, please! Even though sensation is a manure the world provides in overabundance. Things with his family did not improve either. This poem, unlike the others has a sense of hope. ", "Inspiration is decidedly dependent on regular work. Beautifully awash in light, in this painting his white skin stands in sharp contrast to the dark background and his limp body evokes similarities to Christ's body at the time of his deposition from the cross. We shall embark upon the Sea of Shadows, gay That he is happy is abundantly evident in his sweet smile, yet there is a terribly sad irony behind the painting. Well, then, and most impressive of all: you cannot go We imitate, oh horror! While Manet and Baudelaire had by now become close friends, it was the draftsman Constantin Guys who emerged as Baudelaire's hero in his 1863 essay, "Le Peintre de la vie moderne" ("The Painter of Modern Life"). Our eyes fixed on the open sea, hair in the wind, One of his final prose poems, La Corde (The Rope) (1864), was dedicated to Manet's portrait Boy with Cherries (1859). We're sick of it! Duval would come in and out of his life for the rest of his years, and inspired some of Baudelaire's most personal and romantic poetry (including "La Chevelure" ("The Head of Hair")). Examines the role of Baudelaire in the history of modernism and the development of the modernist consciousness. As the title indicates, she is a harem girl who lounges across cushions and colorful sheets in her bedroom in which also hangs a blue brocade curtain in an exotic pattern. - old tree that pasture on pleasure and grow fat, "Competitive Analysis Tridhaatu vs Competitors" "Crpuscule du soir" | Charles Baudelaire "Des Cannibales", Essais, 1595 Montaigne "Father Knows Best" "Harmonie du soir" - Baudelaire . Web. Anywhere. Baudelaire jumped ship in Mauritius and eventually made his way back to France in February of 1842. There is a spontaneity to Manet's painting that captures the fleeting expressions and mannerisms of individuals in his crowd. The "crude" modern subject matter did not sit well with the Parisian art establishment either. Baudelaire, who felt a near-spiritual affinity with the author - "I have discovered an American author who has aroused my sympathetic interest to an incredible degree" he wrote - provided a critical introduction to each of the translated works. So concerned were they about their son's predicament, Baudelaire's parents took legal control of his inheritance, restricting him to only a modest monthly stipend. Already a member? In horsehair, nails, and whips, his dearest pleasures. Those wonderful jewels of stars and stratosphere. One runs, another hides The subject of this painting is a boy named Alexandre who had, in Baudelaire's words, an "intemperate taste for sugar and brandy", and was given to bouts of melancholy. It is thought that the artist intended his portrait to be a viewed specifically by Baudelaire in recognition of the positive notice the writer had given him in his recently published essay "L'eau-forte est la mode" ("Etching is in Fashion"). Pleasure in the eyes of the poet alludes to the certainty that it somehow includes the forbidden. What a bottomless incurvation to your eyes. To sail beyond the doldrums of our days. "Ye that would drink of Lethe and eat of Lotus-flowers, Several religions similar to our own, Copyright 1999 - 2023 GradeSaver LLC. If you can stay, remain; To plunge into those ever-luring skies. And we go and follow the rhythm of the waves, Where Baudelaire used poetry to achieve this affect, Delacroix used color, but both men were leading a charge towards a new - modern - era in art history. The fourth and fifth lines begin with the same word, aimer (to love). My child, my sister,think of the sweetnessof going there to live together!To love at leisure,to love and to diein a country that is the image of you!The misty sunsof those changeable skies have for me the samemysterious charmas your fickle eyesshining through their tears.There, all is harmony and beauty,luxury, calm and delight. Our soul's like a three-master, where one hears "Charles Baudelaire Influencer Overview and Analysis". Voyage to Cythera Charles Baudelaire - 1821-1867 Free as a bird and joyfully my heart Soared up among the rigging, in and out; Under a cloudless sky the ship rolled on Like an angel drunk with brilliant sun. we're often deadly bored as you on land. Though black as pitch the sea and sky, we hanker The full story of "C, E-flat, and G go into a bar", Classical Music Beyond the Concert Stage: Ten Classical Pieces Used in Commercials. others can kill and never leave their cribs. Indeed, it was on Baudelaire's recommendation that Manet painted the canonical Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1862). "O childish little brains, Baudelaire's mother disapproved of the fact that her son's muse was a poor, racially-blended, actress and his connection with her further tested their already strained relationship. Shall we move or rest? The travelers to join with are those who want to Yet, when his foot is on our spine, one hope at least Baudelaire liked to write about the artists whose work he most admired and spent a portion of his Salon de 1859 publication focusing on Meryon's city etchings, stating that, "through the harshness, refinement, and sureness of his drawing, M. Meryon recalls the excellent etchers of the past". A pool of dread in deserts of dismay. Damnation! A voice resounds upon the bridge: "Keep a sharp eye!" Rocking our infinite on the finite of the seas: Yet we took Charles Baudelaire 1821 (Paris) - 1867 (Paris) Childhood; Life; Love; Melancholy; Nature; . Some morning we start out; we have a grudge, we itch simply to move - like lost balloons! Manet's realist portrait shows a young blond-haired boy leaning on a stone wall cupping a bowl of cherries. Who might as well be wallowing on feather beds and flowers Source (s) Invitation to the Voyage Though it is thought that Manet used photographic portraits as a visual aid when composing his painting in the studio, his painting achieved what the new technology could not: the fleeting passages of time. The feasts where blood perfumes the giddy rout: Astrologers who've drowned in Beauty's eyes, We have been shipwrecked once or twice; but, truth to tell, The more beautiful. Becomes an Eldorado, is in his belief more, All Charles Baudelaire poems | Charles Baudelaire Books. Of the painting specifically, he wrote, "the drama has been caught, still living in all its lamentable horror, and by a strange feat that makes of this painting David's true masterpiece and one of the great curiosities of modern art, it has nothing trivial or ignoble about it". for China, shivering as we felt the blow, Show us the caskets of your rich memories The original flneur, Baudelaire was an invisible idler; the first connoisseur of the streets of modern Paris. Beyond the known world to seek out the New! Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Dreams, nose in air, of Edens sweet to roam. Would make your bankers have dreams of ruination; What have you seen? In the final stanza the dream reaches its resounding triumph. what glorious stories Yet, if you must, go on - keep under cover flee Do you want more of this? Make up for encounters that strand you Nowhere How sour the knowledge travellers bring away! From top to bottom of the fatal stair This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. gives its old body, when the heaven warms And whilst your bark grows great and hard The Voyage As professor Andr Guyaux observed, he was "obsessed with the idea of modernity [and in fact] gave the word its full meaning". Yet we shall push off upon Night's shadowy Sea, Escape the little emotions All things the heart has missed! a spectre rise and hear it sing, "Stop, here, I By: Charles Baudelaire. here's Clytemnestra." Baudelaire was a champion of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, the latter being, in his view, the bridge between the best of the past and the present. so rich Rothschild must dream of bankruptcy! if now the sky and sea are black as ink But it was more than just his technique that Baudelaire admired, writing "I have rarely seen the natural solemnity of a vast city represented with more poetry. This situation infuriated Baudelaire whose reduced circumstances led to him being forced (amongst other things) to move out of his beloved apartment. Many religions like ours runs like a madman diving for repose! VII "come, cool thy heart on my refreshing breast!" ", "What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Your branches strive to get closer to the sun! Poison of too much power making the despot weak; Make your memories, framed in their horizons, - his arms outstretched! The dreams of all the bankers in the world. For me, the imagery suggests a kind of life in death, or death in life, corresponding to Elysium. Regardless, it isn't what it seems until you really take it a part line by line. Not to be changed into beasts, they get drunk Baudelaire's poem Hymn sees a woman as beauty and right and loveliness and reality, all uninterfered with. A rebel of near-heroic proportions, Baudelaire gained notoriety and public condemnation for writings that dealt with taboo subjects such as sex, death, homosexuality, depression and addiction, while his personal life was blighted with familial acrimony, ill health, and financial misfortune. Let us set sail! It's bitter if you let it cool, We've seen this country, Death! Here we hold Astrologers drowned in the eyes of a woman, On occasion, we reprint previously published fiction of established reputation, and we have several programs to publish literary works in translation. His lover is crying and her eyes look treacherous to him, their mystery shadowing the sunlight of his dreaming. Some wish to fly a cheapness they detest, How big the world is, seen by lamplight on his charts! But it was all no use, Not to be changed to beasts, they have their fling And the people loving the brutalizing whip; You'll meet females more exciting like a black angel flogging the brute sun. In this poem, he chose to employ stanzas of twelve lines, alternating with a repeating two-line refrain. One runs, but others drop Manet wrote to Baudelaire telling him of his despair over Olympia's reception and Baudelaire rallied behind him, though not with soothing platitudes so much as with his own inimitable brand of reassurance: "do you think you are the first man placed in this situation? II Must one depart? Those less dull, fleeing Bitter the knowledge gained from travel What am I? By the familiar accent we know the specter; He was the only son born to parents Franois Baudelaire and Caroline Defayis; although his father (a high ranking civil servant, and former priest), had a son (Alphonse) from a previous marriage. This country wearies us, O Death! This trial, and the controversy surrounding it, made Baudelaire a household name in France but it also prevented him from achieving commercial success. We were bored, the same as you. in their eternal waltzing marathon; It's bitter knowledge that one learns from travel. The majesty of massed stone, spires 'pointing to the sky', the obelisks of industry vomiting to the firmament their accumulations of smoke, the prodigious scaffolding of monuments under repair, applying to the solid body of the architecture their own open-work architecture with its highly paradoxical beauty, the turbulent sky, freighted with rage and rancor, the depth of perspectives increased by the thought of all the drams that have unfolded within them, none of the complex elements that make up the grim and glorious decour of civilization has been forgotten". Invitation to the Voyage. Of the simple enemy in a single hour and an oasis of horror in a desert of ennui! All climbing up to heaven; Saintliness Baudelaire is arguably the most influential French poet of the nineteenth century and a key figure in the timeline of European art history. The three stanzas of The Invitation to the Voyage correspond to three visual images, three landscapes. Baudelaire had met Jeanne Duval soon after his return from his ill-fated voyage to the South Seas. Just as we once took passage on the boat Of this afternoon without end!" "The Voyage" Poetry.com. He had also succumbed to the tricks of fraudsters and unscrupulous moneylenders. Through our paperback imprint, Bison Books, we publish reprints of classic books of myriad genres. nothing's enough; no knife goes through the ribs yonder our mates hold beckoning arms toward ours, The poisonous power that weakens the oppressor A strange land, drowned in our northern fogs, that one might call the East of the West, the China of Europe; a land patiently and luxuriously decorated with the wise, delicate vegetations of a warm and capricious . blithely as one embarking when a boy; If there are two dates, the date of publication and appearance - Enjoyment fortifies desire. Emmanuel Chabrier: Linvitation au voyage (Mary Bevan, soprano; Amy Harman, bassoon; Joseph Middleton, piano). One morning we set sail, with brains on fire, Many of Baudelaire's writings were unpublished or out of print at the time of his death but his reputation as a poet was already secure with Stephane Mallarm, Paul Valaine and Arthur Rimbaud all citing him as an influence. What splendid stories And jugglers whom the rearing snake caresses." A voice from the dark crow's-nest - wild, fanatic sound Fearing Humanity, besotted with its own genius, According to Hemmings, "from 1856 onwards, the venereal infection, alcoholic excess and opium addiction were working in an unholy alliance to push Baudelaire down to an early grave". However, a comparison to epic models suggests that the voyage on the Sea of Darkness is a modern version of Odysseus's journey to the Underworld and is distinct from the voyage of death at the end. The suns of the imaginary landscape are doubled by the ladys eyes. Man, a greedy tyrant, ribald, hard and grasping, the world is equal to his appetite - Baudelaire was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, and he saw Poe's use of fantasy as a way of emphasizing the mystery and tragedy of human existence. Show us the streaming gems from the memory chest Whose name no human spirit knows. Finds but a reef in the morning light. Come and get drunken with the strange sweetness Robes which make the eyes intoxicated; Shoot us enough to make us cynical of the known worlds Felt like cortisone injections into the knee. All ye that are in trouble! Translated by - Geoffrey Wagner Do you hear these voices, alluring and funereal, Request Permissions, Published By: University of Nebraska Press. what's the odds? Oil on canvas - Collection of Muse Fabre, Montpellier, France. While your bark grows thick and hardens, Till nearly drowned, stand by the rail and watch the foam; In swerve and bias. As with the light, the amber scent is vague. The emphasis is on complexity of stimuli: many-layered scents and elaborate decoration enhanced by time and exotic origin. Indeed, Deroy introduced Baudelaire to the Caf Tabourey where he was "able to meet and listen to some of the leading art critics of the day". it is here that are gathered Of the deep wave; yet crowd the sail on, even so! The Voyage date the date you are citing the material. thy beckoning flames blaze high in every heart! The regular alternation of long and short lines produces a gently syncopated rhythm, difficult to duplicate in translation. On completing his commemoration of this momentous historic event Delacroix wrote to his brother stating: "I have undertaken a modern subject, a barricade, and although I may not have fought for my country, at least I shall have painted for her". STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Paint on our spirits, stretched like canvases for you, I hear the rich, sad voices of the Trades The complex pattern of rhyme in the original version is also an instrument of the poetic unity, especially since it is doubled by an interior structure of repetition and assonance. Gleaming furniturepolished by agewould decorate our bedroom;the rarest of flowerswould mingle their fragrancewith the vague scent of amber;the rich ceilings,the deep mirrors,the splendor of the Orient everything therewould speak in secretthe souls soft native tongue.There, all is harmony and beauty,luxury, calm and delight. Please! Detailed analysis of the poetry, especially its relationship to Baudelaire's. Astonishing voyagers! I curse Thee! Some say Baudelaire was inspired by a journey to India when he wrote this, and that is very possible. Ruinous for your bankers even to dream of them - ; prejudices, prospects, ingenuity - Our hearts are always anxious with desire. All the outmoded geniuses once using Brothers, to whom all's fine that comes from far away. Lit, in our hearts, a yearning, fierce emotion He sees another Capua or Rome. Baudelaire's "Le Voyage' The Dimension of Myth Nicolae Bahuts "Le Voyage," Baudelaire's longest poem, ranks among his most com plex and enigmatic. A slave of the slave, a gutter in the sewer; Baudelaire's name is inextricably linked with the idea of the, Baudelaire played a significant part in defining the role both of the artist, Baudelaire became a close friend of Manet on whom he had a profound influence. Baudelaire borrowed the circumstances of this poem from a story that Grard de Nerval had told of his own visit to Greece in his Voyage en Orient (1851; Journey to the Orient, 1972). It's time, Old Captain, lift anchor, sink! sees whiskey, paradise and liberty Never contained the mysterious attraction Baudelaire saw himself very much as the literary equal of the modern artist and in January 1847 published a novella entitled La Fanfarlo which drew the analogy with a modern painter's self-portrait. In 1841, his stepfather had sent him on a voyage to Calcutta, India, in hopes that the young poet would manage to get his worldly habits in order. Flee the great herd penned in by Destiny, Baudelaire was also given to bouts of melancholia and insubordination, the latter leading to his expulsion in April 1839. That no matter how smoothly things go, waste is inevitable. our comrade spreads his arms across the seas; He started to take a morphine-based tincture (laudanum) which led in turn to an opium dependency. Travel But the true travellers are those who go As in the first stanza, the tone is generalized; the poet speaks of sunsets in the plural. Where Man tires not of the mad hope he races The solar glories on the violet ocean Singing: "Come this way! Though precedents can be found in the poetry of the German Friedrich Hlderlin and the French Louis Bertrand, Baudelaire is widely credited as being the first to give "prose poetry" its name since it was he who most flagrantly disobeyed the aesthetic conventions of the verse (or "metrical") method. all storming heaven, propped by saints who reign Gathered a few sketches for your greedy album, Baudelaire seemed unable to comprehend the controversy his publication had aroused: "no one, including myself, could suppose that a book imbued with such an evident and ardent spirituality [] could be made the object of a prosecution, or rather could have given rise to misunderstanding" he wrote. let's weigh anchor! Enjoy musical settings by Duparc, Jean Cras and more! We wish to voyage without steam or sails! In the last years of his life, Baudelaire fell into a deep depression and once more contemplated suicide. The untrod track! For Baudelaire, moreover, modernity was all about "the transient, the fleeting, the contingent" and the "painter of modern life" must be one who is capable of capturing this spirit through a shorthand style of loose brush work and lucid coloring. Only when we drink poison are we well - This did not deter Baudelaire from treasuring it for many years. We have greeted great horned idols, Although an anthology, Baudelaire insisted that the individual poems only achieved their full meaning when read in relation to one another; as part of a "singular framework" as he put it. IV But really, your views would be ours if you'd been out. The child, in love with globes and maps of foreign parts, ", "The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvellous subjects. The indulgent reins of government sponsorship/research can quell their excitement. Runs ever like a madman searching for repose. Our soul's a three-master seeking Icaria; Baudelaire transferred to the prestigious Lyce Louis-le-Grand on the family's return to Paris in 1836. The drunken sailor's visionary lands VI Divers religions, all quite similar to ours, "We have seen stars and waves. And costumes that intoxicate the eyes; There's no ourselves today, tomorrow, yesterday, He captures the mocking elegance of Baudelaire's most ferocious passages, like that in ''A Voyage to Cythera'' in which the poet, sailing close to Aphrodite's mythical island of love, sees not a . A nude woman, but for the colorful scarf in her hair and bracelets on her wrist, dominates the canvas of Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres's Grande Odalisque. The universe is the size of his immense hunger. Is a slave of the slave, a trickle in the sewer; Oil on canvas - Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium. Singing: "This way, those of you who long to eat Would be a dream of ruin for a banker, V drunk with the sweetness and the drowsy power We highlight the maps to mark lightly traveled roads and How vast the world seems by the light of lamps, Although the illustrator Constantin Guys emerged as the main protagonist in Baudelaire's "Le Peintre de la vie moderne" ("The Painter of Modern Life") in reality it was Manet who rose to the challenges laid down by the poet. These have passions formed like clouds; Despite his growing reputation as an art critic and translator - a success that would smooth the path to the publication of his poetry - financial struggles continued to plague the profligate Baudelaire. Charles Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du mal of Charles Baudelaire. You know our hearts III III Women with tinted teeth and nails Come here and swoon away into the strange He would not have won himself a name in literature, it is true, but we should have been all three much happier". Others, the horrors of their cradles; and a few, The sense of oriental splendor is a recurring theme in many Baudelaires poems, and his Indian voyage provided an obsession of exotic places and beautiful women. Tell us, what have you seen? Whose glimpses make the gulfs more bitter? Just as in other times we set out for China, we still can hope, still cry, "On, on, let's go!" Kill the habit that reinforces slaking off or hanging it out.. "That dark, grim island therewhich would that be?" "Cythera," we're told, "the legendary isle Old bachelors tell stories of and smile. Flush with funds, he rented an apartment at the Htel Pimodan on the le Saint-Louis and began to write and give public recitations of his poetry. When night approaches, the dreamers achieve some real peace and they can live the beauty denied by reality. eNotes.com, Inc. An oasis of horror in a desert of ennui! The wearisome spectacle of immortal sin: Crying to God in its furious death-struggle: where trite oases from each muddy pool They know it and shame you Charles Baudelaire, in full Charles-Pierre Baudelaire, (born April 9, 1821, Paris, Francedied August 31, 1867, Paris), French poet, translator, and literary and art critic whose reputation rests primarily on Les Fleurs du mal (1857; The Flowers of Evil ), which was perhaps the most important and influential poetry collection published in Europe His decision to pursue a life as a writer caused further family frictions with his mother recalling: "if Charles had accepted the guidance of his stepfather, his career would have been very different. And so, to gladden the cares of our jails, Baudelaire pursued his literary aspirations in earnest but, in order to appease his parents, he agreed to enrol as a "nominal" (non-attending) law student at the cole de Droit. The tone is intimate, the outlines gently blurred. It's just as dull as here in any foreign land. Although vagabond by nature, they are gathered to sleep on canals which, unlike the untamed sea, are waters controlled and directed by human agency. Physical pleasure won't exist in Heaven, as our entrance and existence there will be based on our spiritual rather than physical selves. The weight of the trial, his poor living conditions, and a lack of money weighed heavily on Baudelaire and he sunk once more into depression. The citation above will include either 2 or 3 dates. Sailors discovering new Americas, Brothers finding beauty in all things coming from afar! And then, and then what else? And there were quite a few". Only to get away: hearts like balloons Les soleils mouills De ces ciels brouills 4 Mar. have found no courser swift enough to baulk No old chateau or shrine besieged by crowds O Death, old captain, it is time! Glory! stay if ye can. Content compiled and written by Jessica DiPalma, Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Antony Todd, 28 July: Liberty Leading the People (1830), "An artist, a man truly worthy of this great name, must possess something essentially his own, thanks to which he is what he is and no one else. That drunken tar, inventor of Americas, The painting was so topical it featured a cast of the artist's own family and personal acquaintances including Baudelaire, Theophile Gautier, Henri Fantin-Latour, Jacques Offenbach and Manet's brother Eugene. Never did the richest cities, the grandest countryside, there women, servile, peacock-tailed, and coarse, Though there was no indication of how literally one should treat his claims, it is true that he had a troubled family life. It says its single phrase, "Let us depart!" the time has come! III Listening to Bruce Liu is like riding on a rollercoaster", Discover Battles favourite operatic roles and her non-classical music collaborations, When Being a Principal Player is Nerve Wracking, Learn how to combat the negative chatterbox in our heads. VII Who even in their cradles know how to kill it. Priests' robes that scattered solid golden flakes, Shall you grow on for ever, tall tree - -must you outdo He never left the home and died there the following year aged just 46. Enjoy its musical setting by Brville, Loeffler, Rollinat and Debussy, Musicians and Artists: Liszt, Raphael, and Michelangelo, Musicians and Artists: Tru Takemitsu and Cornelia Foss, Tru Takemitsus Final Work: Mori no naka de (In the Woods), Work for flute and guitar inspired by 6 paintings of Paul Klee, Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven and Four Composers, Musical settings by Joseph Holbrooke, Leonard Slatkin and more. Here are the fabulous fruits; look, my boughs bend; 2023 The Art Story Foundation. Like to think it possible to combat the tediousness of these bourgeois prisons. The universe fulfils its vast appetite. It's actually quite upbeat and playful compared to the others in the volume, and it's a welcome change. is some old motor thudding in one groove. The autoerotic nightmare tortured to fulfillment where the goal changes places; You know our hearts are full of sunshine. the fragrant sorcery of the lotus-flower! Vessels come from the ends of the earth to satisfy the desires of the poets mistress, and she is not crying anymore. VI Whom nothing suffices, neither coach nor vessel, Pass over our spirits, stretched out like canvas, The most obvious is the repeated refrain, with its indefinite There, which refers simultaneously to each separate scene and to the imaginary whole. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Crying to God in its furious agony: In addition to its shifting views of romantic and physical love, the collected pieces covered Baudelaire's views on art, beauty, and the idea of the artist as martyr, visionary, pariah and/or even fool. we know the phantom by its old behest; Each little island sighted by the watch at night Life swarms with innocent monsters. According to Lloyd, Baudelaire considered Ingres to be, "'the master of line' and here in this work he shows his mastery over the human figure while simultaneously rendering it in a modern way". ministers sterilized by dreams of power, Have quietly killed him, never having stirred from home. VI How enormous is the world to newly matriculated students Or bouncing like a ball, we go, - even in profound To Madness, seeking refuge, turn to opium. Your bark grows harder, thicker, with the passing days, Bewitched his eye finds a Capua And others, dedicated without hope, For a man who loved Paris and loved the idea of modernity as Baudelaire did, Meryon's image, which effectively captured their city in a state transition, served as the visual embodiment of the poet's own heartfelt views of the fleeting qualities of the age. In the summer of 1866 Baudelaire, stricken down by paralysis and aphasia, collapsed in the Church of Saint-Loup at Namur.