Baudelaire’s Correspondences: Unveiling the Poet’s Aesthetic Creed
Correspondences: Baudelaire’s Aesthetic Creed
Critics agree that “Correspondences” embodies the poet’s aesthetic credo, outlining his artistic principles. This manifesto sets forth the fundamental tenets of symbolism, influencing later French poetry. The sonnet is a pivotal moment in poetry history.
Nature is a “temple” where living pillars murmur sometimes indistinct words; Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances. This concept suggests that nature is a “correspondence of heaven,” echoing the Platonic ideal, the world of Ideas, and eternal truths. The various sensitivities of nature (the senses) “correspond” with each other, allowing us to associate them as multiple expressions of an essential unity. The sensible world and the world of ideas correspond, with the latter expressed through the former. Natural and spiritual realms converge in this analogy.
The world of “correspondences” is a supernatural realm where encounters lead to a reunion with the primitive. To know it is to remember, to recall the Divine, God, the Idea, the ideal, as Plato suggested. Baudelaire implies that all meanings reside in Nature, awaiting a sensitivity capable of deciphering them. Even the most trivial and commonplace can hold profound significance, eluding centuries of searching. Violence, sex that satisfies base instincts, disease, corruption, beauty, and love are all part of these correspondences. The poet reveals his pantheism: everything, absolutely everything, is God.
Consider man, for example: If God created man in His image, then, considering Baudelaire’s Neoplatonism, we can say that God is within man. The essence of man is God. Extending this, everything man creates contains God in essence.
Poetry’s Purpose
The poet concludes that poetry should be open. Grand themes and ideals, nature in the hackneyed romantic sense, will eventually fade. A diseased prostitute represents both the ideal and the unattainable, like Novalis’s blue flower. Baudelaire remains grounded, aware of the paradox of art for art’s sake, where subjects belong to an environment rife with stupidity, hypocrisy, and vice. The metaphor is deliberate, and prayer is intellectually penetrated art, but art has this content and link it back to earth. This is demonstrated in other poems, which applies the aesthetic theory set forth in this famous sonnet.
Sonnet Structure
“Correspondences” is a sonnet, comprising two quatrains and two tercets. Its classical structure and musical closure make it a model of perfection. As I do not work with the original, I find irrelevant verses scan, I am not sure that it has complied with (or that it could respect) this in the translation. Translating a poem is somewhat rewritten.
Religious Unity
The first verse speaks of religion, uniting “Nature” with “Temple” through the verb “is,” conveying unity and meeting. Relígere, the root of religion, means to reconnect, to reunite. Remember the ideal and meet with him. Nature carries meaning, untouched, while the temple invites contemplation, thinking of God. St. Augustine considered contemplation the closest state to God, where one can achieve the absence of sin, and therefore good. This verse presents a pantheistic view.