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HIST30062 Document Analysis

Extract from Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays,
trans. Johnathon Mayne, (London, 1995), p.12.

And so away he goes, hurrying, searching. But searching for what? Be very
sure that this man, such as I have depicted him this solitary, gifted with an
active imagination, ceaselessly journeying across the great human desert has
an aim loftier than that of a mere flneur, an aim more general, something other
than the fugitive pleasure of circumstance. He is looking for that quality which
you must allow me to call modernity; for I know of no better word to express
the idea I have in mind. He makes it his business to extract from fashion
whatever element it may contain of poetry within history, to distil the eternal
from the transitory. Casting an eye over our exhibitions of modern pictures, we
are struck by a general tendency among artists to dress all their subjects in the
garments of the past. Almost all of them make use of the costumes and
furnishings of Rome. There is however this difference, that David, by choosing
subjects which were specifically Greek or Roman, had no alternative but to
dress them in antique garb, whereas the painters of today, though choosing
subjects of a general nature applicable to all ages, nevertheless persist in rigging
them out in the costumes of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance or the Orient.
This is clearly symptomatic of a great degree of laziness; for it is much easier to
decide outright that everything about the garb of an age is absolutely ugly than
to devote oneself to the task of distilling form it the mysterious element of
beauty that it may contain, however slight or minimal that element may be. By
modernity I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art
whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.

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The Painter of Modern Life is an essay written by the poet of mid-nineteenth century
Paris, Charles Baudelaire, and was published in instalments in the periodical Le Figaro in the
winter of 1863.1 In this extract Baudelaire delineates the notion that the transient, anonymous,
encounters of everyday life in the urban metropolis constitute a world of impressions worthy
of representation in modern art. He promotes a style and ideology of social observation that
permeated nineteenth century writing, much of which was produced for the feuilleton section
of the new mass newspapers, such as Le Figaro, and were likely to have received a wide
readership. Influential critics such as Walter Benjamin have studied Baudelaires ideology of
the modern artist in this document and have argued that it is emblematic of the tortured
intellectual in the wake of industrial capitalism.2 However, the significance of Baudelaires
literary approach in conveying the experience of the transition to modernity is undercut by, as
Wolff outlines, the exclusion of women.3 The ideal artist that Baudelaire sanctifies is male,
and through his imaginative distilling of the eternal aspects of traditional aesthetics from
the transitory in public space, the specific women he depicts are only constructed through
his gaze. This study will therefore evaluate how Baudelaires progressive ideology of modern
artistry would have simultaneously reverberated with, and have been repudiated by,
contemporary and current readers of French literature and culture.
In this document Baudelaire draws on existing themes in the literature of modernity
that would have resonated with contemporary audiences in the Second Empire. The noun
flneur, for example, meaning stroller or lounger, emerged as key term in French literature
describing the experience of the individual in the changing city and society. Ceaselessly
journeying across the great human desert, the flneur, propelled by curiosity, provided the
1

Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. Johnathon Mayne, (London, 1995),
p.301.
2
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin,
(London, 1999), p.962.
3
Janet Wolff, The Invisible Flneuse: Women and the Literature of Modernity, Theory, Culture & Society,
Vol. 2, No. 37, (November, 1985), p.37.

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writer with a method and persona in the cultivation of urban knowledge.4 The literary figure
first appeared in nineteenth century Paris and is often initially associated with Honore de
Balzacs novel Physiologie du manage of 1826.5 However, the appropriation of the authority
of the flneur within literary guide books to Paris indicates that Balzac was working with an
already well-established urban patronage and practice. The flneurs constitutive
disengagement from the city, as indicated in the text by the adjective solitary, is utilized as a
model for the travel guide Le Flneur in 1825; the author ambles through Paris, without
plan, without order, without method.6 Thus, Baudelaires incorporation of a principal figure
within the existing literature of modernity would have reverberated with contemporary
readers in 1863. However, while Baudelaires elusive flneur is consonant with traditional
illustrations he also diverges from previous narratives through his insistence that he is not the
mere idler previously known to the audience. Instead, Baudelaires flneur acquires a more
superior art through his exploration of public space where by his intellectual quality could
be sought. The document therefore conveys how Baudelaire builds on a central tenet of
French urban writing and radicalizes flneurie to promote his artistic style of social
observation.
Baudelaire defines the artist-flneurs field of predilection as the public space made
available by the increased modernisation of cities in the mid-nineteenth century. For example,
Ferguson situates the genesis of the flneur within French literature as being part of a
symbiotic relationship between the artist and the urban environment.7 Baudelaires painter of
modern life thus derives his originality from investigating the continual metamorphoses of
the mid- century city facilitated by the transition from production to consumerism. In Paris,
for instance, the accelerated urbanisation under the aegis of prefect Haussmann broke down
4

Priscilla Pankurst Ferguson, Paris As Revolution: Writing the 19th Century City, (Oxford, 1997), p.82.
Honore de Balzac, Physiologie due manage, (Paris, 1826), Cited in, Ferguson, Paris, p.81.
6
Ferguson, Paris, p.85.
7
Ferguson, Paris, p.81.
5

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social and geographical divisions between classes, thereby intensifying the flneurs
proclivity for observation.8 Consequently, the document states that the aim of artists should
now be to understand the modern as comprising of two interrelated halves: the eternal and
immutable subject matter and evaluative criteria of traditional art alongside the ephemeral
characteristics of metropolitan life. The expansion of the notion of modernity in this piece
can be viewed as a response to the transition to capitalism that instigated an imperative need
within the artist-flneur to make sense of the changing contours of public space.
Furthermore, while Ferguson highlights how Paris became a spectacle for the flneur
within the capitalist origins of modernity, the significance of the role of imagination in the
text dislocates Baudelaires conception from his contemporaries. The artist that Baudelaire
views as demonstrative of the heroic stroller is Monsieur C. G or Constantin Guys.9 As a
popular sketch artist of Paris life, Guys, goes out into the crowd in order to extract from
fashion its element of beauty. An isolated reading of the source suggests that the fashion
Guys endeavours to uncover from his idle perusals is sartorial and unlike the antique garb
of traditional art. However, elsewhere in the essay Baudelaire itemises fashion as a
characteristic that can be understood as physical ugliness, but also, a sort of professional
beauty.10 Guys painting, Three Women By a Bar (See Appendix), illustrates the sufficient
imagination acquired of the artist-flneur to distil from a group of chaste and poor
prostitutes their eternal poetry. Baudelaire claims that he does not want to scandalize the
reader with these images but rather to purify the thoughts to which they give rise.11 Unlike
the contemporaneous realism movement, for instance, the creativity of Baudelaires artist
relies on not imitating reality but ultimately the ability of his mind to infiltrate beyond the

Wolff, The Invisible, p.40.

Baudelaire, The Painter, p.5.
10
Baudelaire, The Painter, p.37.
11
Baudelaire, The Painter, p.38.
8
9

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banality of appearances.12 Nevertheless, this ideology is still likely to have repudiated readers
in 1863, considering that six poems incorporating this aesthetic logic from Baudelaires
collection, Les Fleurs du mal, were charged with an obscene libel in 1857.13 Thus, while the
text can be understood as an attempt to substantiate Baudelaires notion of beauty to the
reader, it also establishes the disquieting relationship of the artist to his modern urban canvas.
The significance of the document can be ascertained from the ways in which
Baudelaires ideology becomes emblematic of his own intermittent creativity in denoting the
experience of the capitalist origins of modernity. For Benjamin, Baudelaire emerged as the
prodigious idler of the modern age and became an example of the tortured intellectual in the
advent of a capitalist regime of work.14 Benjamins Marxist approach to history rejects a
hermeneutical understanding of the past as it actually was and instead his method lies in the
shock of removing historical objects from their original context in order to awaken
revolutionary consciousness in the present. Benjamin summarizes the relationship between
the writer and consumerist culture as Erfahrung is the outcome of work; Erlebnis is the
phantasmagoria of the idler.15 Benjamins distinction between Erfahrung and Erlebnis (two
forms of experience) parallels that between production, the active creation of ones reality,
and a reactive, consumerist response to it. However, in the case of Baudelaire,
phantasmagoria (meaning a sequence of dreams) is experienced by his observations
alongside a paradoxical shock experience; the result of his alienated labour.16 Thus, when
Baudelaire states in his essay that Guys has distilled the phantasmagoria from nature he
has presented the urban idler with the possibility of a new kind of work; he uses his
imagination to penetrate the banality of the reified disposition of relationships he witnesses
12

Matei Calinescu, Faces of Modernity: Avant Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, (London, 1977), p.54.
Richard Sieburth, Poetry and Obscenity: Baudelaire and Swinburne, Comparative Literature, Vol. 36, No.4,
(1984), pp.343-353, p.344.
14
Peter Buse et al, Benjamins Arcades: An unGuided Tour, (Manchester, 2005), p.152.
15
Benjamin, The Arcades Project, p.962, Cited in, Buse, Benjamins, p.152.
16
Buse, Benjamins, p. 153.
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within the consumerist city to sell to the feuilleton sections of mass newspapers.17 Thus,
Baudelaire is utilized by Benjamin as a critical insight into the source of the problem of the
modern artist under capitalism, which he views as only redeemable through an awakening of
revolutionary consciousness in the present.18 The impact of the ideology of the valiant flneur
comes to represent Baudelaires literature itself and is indicative of the afflictions of
intellectuals under the imposition of capitalism.
However, Baudelaires ideology is constructed through a gendered conception of
artistry that undercuts the credibility of elucidating the experience of the transition to
modernity. While Benjamins approach is useful for revealing Baudelaires broader impact
within the literature of modernity, both writers have rendered the experience of women
invisible by, as Wolff claims, equating the modern with the public.19 For example, elsewhere
in the essay Baudelaire extolls the female sex as a non-person. Although he writes that a
woman is far more than just the female of Man he defines her as being a kind of idol,
stupid perhaps, but dazzling and bewitching.20 Wolff highlights the misogynist duality
Baudelaire presents of women as idealised-but-vapid/real-and-sensual-but-detested and
outlines that the women described within the literature of modernity are of a particular
parade due to the centrality of public space.21 As a result of the sexual division of labour the
document, and others like it, fail to include the experience of women through its admission of
the private sphere. Ultimately, the impact of The Painter of Modern Life within the literature
of modernity is limited by the invisibility of the flneuse.
Word Count: 1518

17

Baudelaire, The Painter, p.11.

Susan Buck-Morss, The Flneur, the Sandwhich Man and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering, New
German Critique, No.39 Special Issue on Walter Benjamin, (Autumn, 1986), pp.99-140, p.122.
19
Wolff, The Invisible, p.37.
20
Baudelaire, The Painter, p.30.
21
Wolff, The Invisible, p.43.
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Bibliography
Primary
Baudelaire, Charles. Les Fleurs du mal: The Complete Text of The Flowers of Evil, ed. and
trans. by Richard Howard, (Brighton, 1982).
Baudelaire, Charles. Selected Writings on Art and Artists, trans P.E. Charvet, (London, 1981).
Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, ed. and trans. by
Johnathon Mayne, (London, 1995).

Secondary

Benjamin, Walter. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, (London,
1997).
Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Howard Eiland and
Kevin McLaughlin, (London, 1999).
Buck-Morss, Susan. The Flneur, the Sandwhich Man and the Whore: The Politics of
Loitering, New German Critique, No.39 Special Issue on Walter Benjamin, (Autumn, 1986),
pp.99-140.
Buse, Peter, Ken Hirschkop, Scott McCracken and Bertrand Taithe. Benjamins Arcades: An
unGuided Tour, (Manchester, 2005).
Calinescu, Matei. Faces of Modernity: Avant Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, (London, 1977).
Ferguson, Priscilla Pankhurst. Paris As Revolution: Writing the 19th Century City, (Oxford,
1997).
Harvey, David. Paris, Capital of Modernity, (London, 2003).
Sieburth, Richard. Poetry and Obscenity: Baudelaire and Swinburne, Comparative
Literature, Vol. 36, No.4, (1984), pp.343-353.
Wolff, Janet. The Invisible Flneuse: Women and the Literature of Modernity, Theory,
Culture & Society, Vol. 2, No. 37, (November, 1985), pp. 37-46.

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Appendix

Figure 1. Guys, Constantin. Three Women By a Bar, drawing, 1860. Cited in, Baudelaire, The
Painter of Modern Life, plate 20, p.280.

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