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Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (Verso Classics) by Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin's essays on the great French lyric poet Charles Baudelaire revolutionized not just the way we think about Baudelaire, but our understanding of modernity and modernism as well. In these essays, Benjamin challenges the image of Baudelaire as late-Romantic dreamer, and evokes instead the modern poet caught in a life-or-death struggle with the forces of the urban commodity capitalism that had emerged in Paris around 1850. The Baudelaire who steps forth from these pages is the flAneur who affixes images as he strolls through mercantile Paris, the ragpicker who collects urban detritus only to turn it into poetry, the modern hero willing to be marked by modern life in its contradictions and paradoxes. He is in every instance the modern artist forced to commodify his literary production: "Baudelaire knew how it stood with the poet: as a flAneur he went to the market; to look it over, as he thought, but in reality to find a buyer." Benjamin reveals Baudelaire as a social poet of the very first rank.
The introduction to this volume presents each of Benjamin's essays on Baudelaire in chronological order. The introduction, intended for an undergraduate audience, aims to articulate and analyze the major motifs and problems in these essays, and to reveal the relationship between the essays and Benjamin's other central statements on literature, its criticism, and its relation to the society that produces it.
The introduction to this volume presents each of Benjamin's essays on Baudelaire in chronological order. The introduction, intended for an undergraduate audience, aims to articulate and analyze the major motifs and problems in these essays, and to reveal the relationship between the essays and Benjamin's other central statements on literature, its criticism, and its relation to the society that produces it.
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First published January 1, 1969
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About the author
Walter Benjamin
844 books2,056 followersWalter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and neo-Kantianism, Benjamin made influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders, though the friendship between Arendt and Benjamin outlasted her marriage to Anders. Both Arendt and Anders were students of Martin Heidegger, whom Benjamin considered a nemesis.
Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Charles Baudelaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nikolai Leskov, Marcel Proust, Robert Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction". Benjamin himself considered his research to be theological, though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority.
In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died by suicide at Portbou on the French Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.
Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Charles Baudelaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nikolai Leskov, Marcel Proust, Robert Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction". Benjamin himself considered his research to be theological, though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority.
In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died by suicide at Portbou on the French Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
September 19, 2023
Proust, a great connoisseur of Time, defined the 'mémoire involontaire'. He was an attentive reader of 'Les Fleurs du mal' where Baudelaire, 'a poet of the masses' also explores time, experience, shock, passion and the constantly changing world around him while he chooses to remain only an observer.
'He speaks of a duel in which the artist, just before being beaten, screams in fright. This duel is the creative process itself. Thus, Baudelaire placed shock experience [ Chockerfahrung] at the very center of his art. This self-portrait, which is corroborated by evidence from several contemporaries, is of great significance. Since Baudelaire was himself vulnerable to being frightened, it was
not unusual for him to evoke fright.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Shock is among those experiences that have assumed decisive importance for Baudelaire's personality. Gide has dealt with the intermittences between image and idea, word and thing, which are the real site of Baudelaire's poetic excitation. Riviere has pointed to the subterranean shocks by which Baudelaire's poetry is shaken; it is as though they caused words to collapse.'
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'Baudelaire wrote: "Who among us has not dreamed, in his ambitious moments, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical, yet without rhythm and without rhyme, supple and resistant enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of reverie, and the sudden leaps of consciousness. This obsessive ideal is born, above all, from the experience of giant cities,
from the intersecting of their myriad relations."
This passage suggests two insights. For one thing, it tells us about the close connection in Baudelaire between the figure of shock and contact with the urban masses. For another, it tells us what is really meant by these masses. They do not stand for classes or any sort of collective; rather, they are nothing but the amorphous crowd of passers-by, the people in the street. This crowd, whose existence Baudelaire is always aware of, does not serve as the model for any of his works; but it is imprinted on his creativity as a hidden figure, just as it constitutes the figure concealed in the excerpt quoted above.'
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'Baudelaire does not seem to have been a devotee of gambling, though he had words of sympathetic understanding, even homage, for those addicted to it. The motif he treats in his night piece " Le Jeu " [The Game] is integral to his view of modernity, and writing this poem formed part of his mission. In Baudelaire, the image of the gambler becomes the characteristically modern
counterpart to the archaic image of the fencer; both are heroic figures to him.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Games of chance, which were disseminated by Napoleon's armies, henceforth became a pastime " both among the fashionable set and among the thousands of people living unsettled lives in big-city basements"-became part of the spectacle in which Baudelaire claimed he saw the heroic, " as it typifies our age. "
'He speaks of a duel in which the artist, just before being beaten, screams in fright. This duel is the creative process itself. Thus, Baudelaire placed shock experience [ Chockerfahrung] at the very center of his art. This self-portrait, which is corroborated by evidence from several contemporaries, is of great significance. Since Baudelaire was himself vulnerable to being frightened, it was
not unusual for him to evoke fright.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Shock is among those experiences that have assumed decisive importance for Baudelaire's personality. Gide has dealt with the intermittences between image and idea, word and thing, which are the real site of Baudelaire's poetic excitation. Riviere has pointed to the subterranean shocks by which Baudelaire's poetry is shaken; it is as though they caused words to collapse.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Baudelaire wrote: "Who among us has not dreamed, in his ambitious moments, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical, yet without rhythm and without rhyme, supple and resistant enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of reverie, and the sudden leaps of consciousness. This obsessive ideal is born, above all, from the experience of giant cities,
from the intersecting of their myriad relations."
This passage suggests two insights. For one thing, it tells us about the close connection in Baudelaire between the figure of shock and contact with the urban masses. For another, it tells us what is really meant by these masses. They do not stand for classes or any sort of collective; rather, they are nothing but the amorphous crowd of passers-by, the people in the street. This crowd, whose existence Baudelaire is always aware of, does not serve as the model for any of his works; but it is imprinted on his creativity as a hidden figure, just as it constitutes the figure concealed in the excerpt quoted above.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Baudelaire does not seem to have been a devotee of gambling, though he had words of sympathetic understanding, even homage, for those addicted to it. The motif he treats in his night piece " Le Jeu " [The Game] is integral to his view of modernity, and writing this poem formed part of his mission. In Baudelaire, the image of the gambler becomes the characteristically modern
counterpart to the archaic image of the fencer; both are heroic figures to him.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Games of chance, which were disseminated by Napoleon's armies, henceforth became a pastime " both among the fashionable set and among the thousands of people living unsettled lives in big-city basements"-became part of the spectacle in which Baudelaire claimed he saw the heroic, " as it typifies our age. "
December 1, 2019
Modernity has changed most of all, and the antiquity it was supposed to contain really presents a picture of the obsolete.
As noted the holidays present personal challenges. The rituals and kinship don't connect with me and somehow my Prime member status hasn't yielded a more enriching experience. What this year’s Thanksgiving patch did provide was a couple days to sit and read. I worked yesterday and briefly Thanksgiving night but the rest of the time was devoted to brooding, I mean reading. Imagine then the effect of that happy scholar Walter Benjamin writing on spleen and its champion Charles Baudelaire. This isn't a contained book or finished project but rather myriad essays culled from across Benjamin's life and at least two of them are but notes. The early ones are only oblique with reference to the poet. The advent of newspapers and advertising are a tantalizing subject. Prostitution as an endeavor of mass production is also an interesting thought. The course appears corrected in The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire which is more a Marxist textual analysis, the one I suspect many were expecting all along. There is a slight mention of Brecht and then Benjamin retreats. What mediation that is! There is also a remarkable digression on the nocturnal walks of Dickens which I found most engaging.
As noted the holidays present personal challenges. The rituals and kinship don't connect with me and somehow my Prime member status hasn't yielded a more enriching experience. What this year’s Thanksgiving patch did provide was a couple days to sit and read. I worked yesterday and briefly Thanksgiving night but the rest of the time was devoted to brooding, I mean reading. Imagine then the effect of that happy scholar Walter Benjamin writing on spleen and its champion Charles Baudelaire. This isn't a contained book or finished project but rather myriad essays culled from across Benjamin's life and at least two of them are but notes. The early ones are only oblique with reference to the poet. The advent of newspapers and advertising are a tantalizing subject. Prostitution as an endeavor of mass production is also an interesting thought. The course appears corrected in The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire which is more a Marxist textual analysis, the one I suspect many were expecting all along. There is a slight mention of Brecht and then Benjamin retreats. What mediation that is! There is also a remarkable digression on the nocturnal walks of Dickens which I found most engaging.
November 1, 2023
It's cinema.
Insane poggers kino skibidi. Walter my man Benjamin cooked super hard with this book 🗣️🔥
(Jokes aside, I really didn't expect to enjoy this so insanely much. Gotta read Les Fleurs du Mal asap)
Insane poggers kino skibidi. Walter my man Benjamin cooked super hard with this book 🗣️🔥
(Jokes aside, I really didn't expect to enjoy this so insanely much. Gotta read Les Fleurs du Mal asap)
August 22, 2024
Benjamin’s constant quotation of Valéry and Proust, far more lucid and pungent critics of Baudelaire than he, made for an ambivalent reading experience. Still, his ponderousness has many charms.
August 6, 2011
It took a very long time to read but that is because it was a pleasure to read and who rushes through pleasure. (Perhaps too many of us.)
I found the discussion of Baudelaire useful, difficult and often even lovely. As Walter Benjamin looks back nearly a century to understand his own time, so I find much in his thoughts helpful not only to better understand and so read, Baudelaire, but also Benjamin. Benjamin, along the way, offers some insights into our own confused/comic/tragic times.
I find Benjamin persuasive: Baudelaire is not simply the poet of Modern LIfe, but the poet of the psyche of Modern Life—the last lyric poet before lyric poetry was silenced by incessant noise. ( A condition that defines both Hell and life as we know it.)
By Benjamin's time, the notion of modernity lost whatever positive strains it once possessed as it passed from a grim industrial, into the global. Benjamin's radical conception was that it was possible to find in the life of a man and his work, who lived a century earlier, a guide to understand his own time. In the same way, we would profit, by reading Benjamin, dead now for 70 years, to understand something of our urban, if not urbane existence. The shock has not gone away in spite of the cushion of personal digital technology.
Niccolo Machiavelli, in another City, in the early 16th Century, wrote: " If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples, there are always the same desires and and the same passions as there always were." Here, as elsewhere, Machiavelli is prophetic.
We may transition, but we don't change. Benjamin sought to understand the impact of industrial life on the experience of the urban dweller, we might find him useful in understanding the effects of the digital revolution on our consciousness. Who, I wonder, will be our poet, the one, who in the manner of Baudelaire, manages to see inside the "works," from the privileged position of being on the outside?
I found the discussion of Baudelaire useful, difficult and often even lovely. As Walter Benjamin looks back nearly a century to understand his own time, so I find much in his thoughts helpful not only to better understand and so read, Baudelaire, but also Benjamin. Benjamin, along the way, offers some insights into our own confused/comic/tragic times.
I find Benjamin persuasive: Baudelaire is not simply the poet of Modern LIfe, but the poet of the psyche of Modern Life—the last lyric poet before lyric poetry was silenced by incessant noise. ( A condition that defines both Hell and life as we know it.)
By Benjamin's time, the notion of modernity lost whatever positive strains it once possessed as it passed from a grim industrial, into the global. Benjamin's radical conception was that it was possible to find in the life of a man and his work, who lived a century earlier, a guide to understand his own time. In the same way, we would profit, by reading Benjamin, dead now for 70 years, to understand something of our urban, if not urbane existence. The shock has not gone away in spite of the cushion of personal digital technology.
Niccolo Machiavelli, in another City, in the early 16th Century, wrote: " If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples, there are always the same desires and and the same passions as there always were." Here, as elsewhere, Machiavelli is prophetic.
We may transition, but we don't change. Benjamin sought to understand the impact of industrial life on the experience of the urban dweller, we might find him useful in understanding the effects of the digital revolution on our consciousness. Who, I wonder, will be our poet, the one, who in the manner of Baudelaire, manages to see inside the "works," from the privileged position of being on the outside?
April 7, 2021
мистецтво говорити про Бодлера, не говорячи про Бодлера. важливі для автора думки про фланерів, ганчірників і (найголовніше) пасажі, але обмаль важливого про Поета.
September 1, 2013
لم تعجبنى المعالجة الطبقية لبودلير وشعره، لكن الدراسة بها استبصارات غاية فى الروعة عن البوهيميون وتعريفهم ودورهم فى المجتمع وقت بودلير وحكومة نابليون الثالث، كما تحدث عن الكسندر دوماس وظهور الملاحق الأدبية مع الصحف فى فرنسا والروايات المسلسلة القائمة على التسلية، كما تحدث فى فصل آخر عن "المتسكع" والفصل بينه وبين المتطفل وفى نفس الفصل أقام دراسة عظيمة عن المدينة متمثلة فى باريس وتطورها العمرانى بعد دخول "البواكى" على يد هاوسمان. والفصل الذى يليه تحدث عن الحداثة بسماتها المتمثلة فى صناعة البطولة وسط حشد الجماهير الغفيرة ثم الانتحار كسمة أساسية وان كان لم يظهر بصفة مادية وانما يكفى تمظهراته المعنوية ثم الخنوثة بالسيولة والهلامية فى الحد الفاصل بين الذكر والأنثى.
وان سلّم فى النهاية بلاإنتمائية بودلير وازدواجيته وتذبذبه بين النقيضين وتنازله عن بعض الأفكار التى اعتنقها فى بداية حياته
الدراسة بها جانب مدينى كبير - عن المدينة- متمثلا فى باريس القرن التاسع عشر، لم يترك تفصولة صغنونة إلا وذكرها فى بناء فكرى تفكيكى تركيبى هندسى. أنا فى الأساس أحب فالتر بنيامين مفكرا وأحبه كأخوة انسانية
ربما هذه أفضل ترجمة لأحمد حسان من بين الثلاث كتب التى ترجمهم لفالتر رغم أنه ترجمها عن الانجليزية، ترجمته لـ"شارع ذو اتجاه واحد" لم تكن احترافية رغم أنه أيضا ترجم "بريخت" عن الألمانية وكانت ترجمة جميلة
وان سلّم فى النهاية بلاإنتمائية بودلير وازدواجيته وتذبذبه بين النقيضين وتنازله عن بعض الأفكار التى اعتنقها فى بداية حياته
الدراسة بها جانب مدينى كبير - عن المدينة- متمثلا فى باريس القرن التاسع عشر، لم يترك تفصولة صغنونة إلا وذكرها فى بناء فكرى تفكيكى تركيبى هندسى. أنا فى الأساس أحب فالتر بنيامين مفكرا وأحبه كأخوة انسانية
ربما هذه أفضل ترجمة لأحمد حسان من بين الثلاث كتب التى ترجمهم لفالتر رغم أنه ترجمها عن الانجليزية، ترجمته لـ"شارع ذو اتجاه واحد" لم تكن احترافية رغم أنه أيضا ترجم "بريخت" عن الألمانية وكانت ترجمة جميلة
June 9, 2024
2/58! Loved reading this in its entirety and having a much better understanding of the flâneur as Benjamin thought about it, and getting a lot more context that often gets lost when people talk about the figure. It also produced more questions for me, which means it was a successful reading. It also endeared me to Baudelaire’s work in a way that hasn’t happened before (I never wanted to read the poetry before)
May 12, 2020
من أجمل الدراسات والكتب النقدية التي قرأتها في حياتي إن لم يكن الأجمل ولكني في الحقيقة لا أرى أن فالتر بنيامين أنصف بودلير في نقده بل أراه أحياناً يبتعد عنه ويغوص في قلب مدينة باريس ..
ولكن الملفت حقيقة في هذه الدراسة كيف استسقى فالتر من الأدب سواء من بودلير أو بلزاك أو فلوبير وغيرهم حقائق عن الحياة الباريسية ونقدها بشكل مذهل الثورة والسياسة الأدب والصحافة الاقتصاد والعمال الشرطة والثوار وشكل الشوارع والمقاهي أستطيع أن أقول أن فالتر بنيامين عرى المجتمع الباريسي في هذه الدراسة الفريدة من نوعها والتي صورت لي فالتر بنيامين في شكل الناقد الحاد دون تجاوز هذه أول مرة أقرأ دراسة نقدية لفالتر طبعاً مع شُح الترجمات لدراسات الرجل وقلة الاهتمام بفلسفته للأسف.
أحببت الترجمة فقد كانت بديعة ولكن الطباعة والورق والإخراج كان رديء جداً لدرجة أن الكتاب تمزق بين يدي أثناء القراءة.
ولكن الملفت حقيقة في هذه الدراسة كيف استسقى فالتر من الأدب سواء من بودلير أو بلزاك أو فلوبير وغيرهم حقائق عن الحياة الباريسية ونقدها بشكل مذهل الثورة والسياسة الأدب والصحافة الاقتصاد والعمال الشرطة والثوار وشكل الشوارع والمقاهي أستطيع أن أقول أن فالتر بنيامين عرى المجتمع الباريسي في هذه الدراسة الفريدة من نوعها والتي صورت لي فالتر بنيامين في شكل الناقد الحاد دون تجاوز هذه أول مرة أقرأ دراسة نقدية لفالتر طبعاً مع شُح الترجمات لدراسات الرجل وقلة الاهتمام بفلسفته للأسف.
أحببت الترجمة فقد كانت بديعة ولكن الطباعة والورق والإخراج كان رديء جداً لدرجة أن الكتاب تمزق بين يدي أثناء القراءة.
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January 22, 2025Only focused on the final essay & what Benjamin writes about modernism. Very beautiful, cutting words about fashion, collecting, activating class consciousness.
“The collector is the true inhabitant of the interior. The collector naively dreams of a world in which things are freed from the bondage of being useful. The collector dreams of leading a life which leaves traces.”
Walter! would you have liked my trinkets????
“The collector is the true inhabitant of the interior. The collector naively dreams of a world in which things are freed from the bondage of being useful. The collector dreams of leading a life which leaves traces.”
Walter! would you have liked my trinkets????
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July 3, 2023Lassemo stare
December 2, 2007
It takes one to write about another one. Walter Benjamin, the poet of the urban landscape writes about another poet of the urban landscape. The only thing missing is Benjamin wearing a velvet cape before he wonders around Paris in the early hours before dawn. Benjamin is one of the great critical writers of his time - in fact he's head of his time!
January 31, 2021
I actually read this hand-in-hand with another book. Though different translation, good to read both version. As some paragraph here (translation by Harry Zohnare better elucidated on the other book. Not sure if I should cross-compare the text, maybe later.
June 18, 2023
Ohne selbst allzu alt zu sein, muss man dem Lesen Benjamins eine gewisse Wartezeit voranstellen.
Vor drei Jahren war dieses Buch ein unmögliches - heute hilft es mir auch nur im Ansatz dem näher zu kommen, das Benjamin gemeint haben könnte...
Vor drei Jahren war dieses Buch ein unmögliches - heute hilft es mir auch nur im Ansatz dem näher zu kommen, das Benjamin gemeint haben könnte...
November 9, 2020
I remain unclear on why any of this has to do with Baudelaire.
February 4, 2024
"Behind the masks which he used up, the poet in Baudelaire preserved his incognito. He was as
circumspect in his work as he was capable of seeming provocative in his personal associations.
The incognito was the law of his poetry. His prosody is comparable to the map of a big city
in which it is possible to move about inconspicuously, shielded by blocks of houses...Baudelaire
conspires with language itself. He calculates its effects step by step..." (Benjamin, pg. 98)
Consisting of three sections, entitled, respectively, "The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire," "Some Motifs in Baudelaire," and "Paris--The Capital of the Nineteenth Century," this book, simply entitled "Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism," is a fine example of Walter Benjamin's particular strain of idiosyncratic genius. For, in this work, and in the larger work which inspired it ("The Arcades Project"), Benjamin analyzes, with his particular brand of insight, the Paris of the nineteenth century, the home of Haussmann, Baudelaire, the legacy of Saint Simon and Fourier (early socialist utopians), Balzac, and the Arcades themselves (precursor of the department store, constructed of iron and glass, and filled with fetishized commodities). So, while the work of Charles Baudelaire is the occasion for this book, the work itself takes upon itself an encyclopedic exploration of all things Parisian, circa the 19th century. This leads to wonderful explications of the intersection between specific Baudelaire poems and social phenomena of the time, including the allegorical relationship between the ragpicker, the subject of one of Monsieur Baudelaire's finest poems, the birth of capitalism, and the role of the poet as a similar bricoleur of late capitalism. Indeed, particularly perspicacious is the discussion of the 'flaneur,' the dandy who roams the city of modernity, subjecting it to his 'gaze,' and the role of photography in the destruction of painting, a subject near and dear to the heart of Baudelaire (who wrote extensively concerning the art (and music) of his time.)
So, while the Marxism may seem a bit 'passe' to many observers, this book still holds a bright, illuminating light up to the works of the poet in question and the time which created him, all through the thoughts of one of the premier left-wing critics of the 20th century. For those reasons alone, it should be read!
circumspect in his work as he was capable of seeming provocative in his personal associations.
The incognito was the law of his poetry. His prosody is comparable to the map of a big city
in which it is possible to move about inconspicuously, shielded by blocks of houses...Baudelaire
conspires with language itself. He calculates its effects step by step..." (Benjamin, pg. 98)
Consisting of three sections, entitled, respectively, "The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire," "Some Motifs in Baudelaire," and "Paris--The Capital of the Nineteenth Century," this book, simply entitled "Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism," is a fine example of Walter Benjamin's particular strain of idiosyncratic genius. For, in this work, and in the larger work which inspired it ("The Arcades Project"), Benjamin analyzes, with his particular brand of insight, the Paris of the nineteenth century, the home of Haussmann, Baudelaire, the legacy of Saint Simon and Fourier (early socialist utopians), Balzac, and the Arcades themselves (precursor of the department store, constructed of iron and glass, and filled with fetishized commodities). So, while the work of Charles Baudelaire is the occasion for this book, the work itself takes upon itself an encyclopedic exploration of all things Parisian, circa the 19th century. This leads to wonderful explications of the intersection between specific Baudelaire poems and social phenomena of the time, including the allegorical relationship between the ragpicker, the subject of one of Monsieur Baudelaire's finest poems, the birth of capitalism, and the role of the poet as a similar bricoleur of late capitalism. Indeed, particularly perspicacious is the discussion of the 'flaneur,' the dandy who roams the city of modernity, subjecting it to his 'gaze,' and the role of photography in the destruction of painting, a subject near and dear to the heart of Baudelaire (who wrote extensively concerning the art (and music) of his time.)
So, while the Marxism may seem a bit 'passe' to many observers, this book still holds a bright, illuminating light up to the works of the poet in question and the time which created him, all through the thoughts of one of the premier left-wing critics of the 20th century. For those reasons alone, it should be read!
Want to read
May 26, 2024remembers being assigned an excerpt. lord this is so over an 18 y/o's head. fortunately, there is no escaping modernity and years later i willingly approach benjamin's work in the age of technological reproducibility.
September 6, 2024
two great tastes that taste great together
Read
September 12, 2024nice try walter this was a horrendous mess to read
January 4, 2025
hardly has there ever been an essay as beautiful as Benjamin's "The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire"
February 15, 2024
This is one of Benjamin's great unfinished works. It is a multifaceted study of Baudelaire's life and writing, but covers many other topics. There are many pages devoted to Proust, for instance, and also an figure much written about by both Baudelaire and Benjamin—the flaneur:
And there's also:
The flâneur is someone abandoned in the crowd. In this he shares the situation of the commodity. He is not aware of this special situation, but this does not diminish its effect on him and it permeates him blissfully like a narcotic that can compensate him for many humiliations. The intoxication to which the flâneur surrenders is the intoxication of the commodity around which surges the stream of customers.
If the soul of the commodity which Marx occasionally mentions in jest existed, it would be the most empathetic ever encountered in the realm of souls, for it would have to see in everyone the buyer in whose hand and house it wants to nestle. Empathy is the nature of the intoxication to which the flâneur abandons himself in the crowd.
And there's also:
The last poem of the Fleurs du mal, 'Le Voyage': 'O death, old captain, it is time, let us weigh anchor ('O mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps! levons l'ancre!"). The flâneur's last journey: death. Its goal: novelty. 'To the depths of the unknown to find something new' ('Au fond de l'Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!'). Novelty is a quality which does not depend on the use-value of the commodity. It is the source of the illusion which belongs inalienably to the images which the collective unconscious engenders. It is the quintessence of false consciousness, of which fashion is the tireless agent. This illusion of novelty is reflected, like one mirror in another, in the illusion of infinite sameness. The product of this reflection is the phantasmagoria of 'cultural history' in which the bourgeoisie enjoyed its false consciousness to the full. Art, which begins to have doubts about its function, and ceases to be 'inséparable de l'utilité' (Baudelaire), is forced to make novelty its highest value.
October 25, 2025
interesting attempt to get Baudelaire to appear socialist (can anyone even state baudelaire was something without also arguing he was its direct opposite? I'm not saying benjamin believed it, but it can easily look like it). I would recommend this because of all the analysis and conceptualizations. big emphasis on this book's historical and cultural references, which surely help to "understand" Baudelaire's cultural apparatus.
February 8, 2013
Soms verschrikkelijk moeilijke woorden, maar niet storend. [we zijn ten slotte een dichter aan lezen] Het is werkelijk een fantastisch initiatief, een cultuur trachten blootleggen door middel van artiestieke en creatieve kunsten die het genereert. Ik ga denk ik ook eens een WB'tje over de hedendaagse tijden doen.
August 20, 2008
Re-reading Benjamin on Baudelaire to re-examine la flãnerie in the light of my late (recent) discovery of Hope Mirrlees' 1919 chapbook, PARIS : A Poem - who wrote her Modernist poem when it was practically impossible for a woman to be a flãneuse.
June 26, 2012
Shoot. This book is ostensibly the "English" translation, but, if you French is rusty, Benjamin'll whip you right into shape, haha. Very good though. I actually found it more accessible than "Illuminations," which I didn't expect.
October 19, 2013
Mmmm. The intersection of my two favourite early modern thinkers on art. A perfect marriage!
Want to read
May 10, 2014very nice
January 23, 2015
Baudelaire: Symptom des Hochkapitalismus, Erreger der Moderne, Dialektiker ohne Synthese, warenfeindlicher Fetischist. Benjamin lohnt sich immer.
May 22, 2022
半懂不懂吧..翻译得很好
November 6, 2022
原书名：a lyric poet in the era of high capitalism 一本意料之外的带货。名字改得不错。看到了波德莱尔的照片。有冲击性的观点：love at last sight
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