Baudelaire, Maupassant and Modernity

“For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts,
Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies,
the placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.”
From Beauty by C.B

uy de Maupassant’s stories, “A necklace”, “A million”, “A Parisian Affair”, and “Mother of Invention”, are modern, by the criteria set out by Baudelaire, in the choice of subject and in their choice of setting even if they are not comparable in feeling to what Baudelaire consider the most modern artistic current: Romanticism. Normally, Maupassant is considered a Naturalist or a high realism writer, but it can be said that he was modern for his time.

For Baudelaire, Art is Beauty: “The duality of art is the inevitable result of the duality of man. The eternal element may be considered the soul of art, if you wish, and the variable element its body” (293). Although the quote doesn’t express the relationship of art and beauty, the purpose of this discussion is precisely to establish “a rational and historical theory of beauty.” That being said, Art is beauty and the expression of the ineffable part of it through the present circumstances. These present circumstances make up the body of a work of art while the eternal element is the essence of art or the soul of it. This search is not particular to Art itself; it stems from the duality of man, as Baudelaire points out: men have a body and a soul and they strive to represent that in art.

Baudelaire has said before that this duality is precisely the duality of beauty: “Beauty is composed of an element that is eternal, invariable, and exceedingly difficult to measure, and of another element that is relative and circumstantial, such as period, fashion, morality, emotion, taken either one by one or all together.” (292-293). The former is very similar from the following:: “All forms of beauty… contain something eternal an something transitory- something absolute and something particular.”(292) The artist in trying to make a work of art that is beautiful can only be measured by how well he incorporated the eternal and the transitory in his work. The eternal part, as Baudelaire says, “is exceedingly difficult to measure,” but it must always be present.

As such we can affirm that art for Baudelaire is about the artist’s expressing this duality of beauty and of man. Even more, that that is what Art has always been, for as he says, “every painter of the past had his own modernity” (296). It follows that for Baudelaire Modernity is precisely that part of life, beauty, and man that lies in the present. It is the circumstantial, the spontaneous, the ephemeral. “Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art, [that the former quotes had talked about] of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable.” (296) Beauty contains two parts; one of which is the eternal and the other the transitory. The eternal part is very difficult to measure but it must be glimpsed and the transitory part is the circumstantial. That part which is transitory is the Modernity of a work of art for Baudelaire. Writers have always known that to write about universals is impossible; one can only reach that universality: that eternal part of beauty, by writing about the local and present situation. And in the describing the most local one finds the most universal.

This becomes easier to understand when one realizes that for art to be alive in the mind of the painter and of the beholder it has to have as much of the present as it can. It would be ridiculous or even profoundly satirical to sculpt for example a marble Adonis wearing an i-pod. For Baudelaire the importance of the present is that it harmonizes the work of art and it allows us to glimpse the eternal part of art which otherwise would be “indigestible, inappreciable, unadapted and unsuited to human nature.” (293).

Modernity is not then just the present, it must also make us glimpse that part of the eternal beauty, and last if not least it has to be original, and that for Baudelaire is only given by the present: “for almost all our originality comes from the stamp that time imprints upon our feelings.” (297) As I said before the most local (the transitory part) is the most universal (the eternal part) and in the most local is where one can find all the inspiration and all the originality. In that paradox is where great art lives.

Guy de Maupassant is a great artist. Not only because he was very successful during his time but because we’re still reading him 150 years later and his stories seem as alive as if they were written today. He is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and he was a protégé of that other great artist, Flaubert. Today we consider him as a classical author or to be more specific as a Naturalist or High Realism writer. Nevertheless, it’s the purpose of this article to understand if some of Maupassant’s stories can indeed fulfill Baudelaire’s criteria for Modernity, even if for us neither of them can be considered modern nor is it relevant if Baudelarie’s criteria for modernity still holds true. On this point there will be some opinions given at the end. The question right now is: do Maupassant’s stories fulfill Baudelaire’s criteria for modernity?

We will take as a reference point for the time being and for the sake of argument the artistic current called Romanticism. Whether M. is a romantic or not is a question we will address later. This will be useful when trying to determine whether M’s stories are modern or not since Baudelaire considers Romanticism “the most contemporary expression of the beautiful…To speak of Romanticism is to speak of modern art.” (40) It is in this discussion of romanticism that Baudelaire gives the most succinct points on what he considers modern and why.

Baudelaire mentions four criteria for a work of art to be modern as related to romanticism. These would be: the choice of subject, the choice of setting, the truth of art and the manner of feeling. Maupassant fulfills the first three and as such can be considered a modern artist if not a Romantic because for Baudelaire “romanticism lies neither in choice of subject nor in exact truth, but in the manner of feeling.” For Baudelaire this manner of feeling is precisely the romantic feeling. That feeling is what gave way to the highest expression of romanticism with paradoxically enough is not a symphony, a work of art or a literary work. The highest moment of Romanticism as Bertrand Russell said, is Lord Byron’s death in Missolonghi, fighting for the liberty of Greece. By that he meant that romanticism was no mere painting current, a poetic or musical movement but a élan vital, an attitude toward the world, a way of seeing it and how we fit in it. Maupassant was not like that at all. As he said in the epitaph that he himself penned: “I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing.” Maupassan’t is not a Romantic but he certainly is modern according to the first three criteria given by Baudelaire: the choice of subject, the choice of setting, and the truth of art

The choice of subject can be equated to B. discussion of the heroism of modern life. For him, it is important to establish that there is indeed such a thing: “Before trying to discover the epic side of modern life and to prove through examples that our age is no less fertile in sublime themes that the past, it may be said that, just as all centuries and all peoples have had their forms of beauty, so inevitable we have ours. That is the natural order of things…” (43) Every age has a specific form of beauty and this abstract concept can be best explained by symbols. It is no coincidence that Baudelaire was the founder of symbolism and as such he has a beautiful metaphor full of the symbols of his modernity that expresses the form of beauty of his age. It is the metaphor of mourning.

Baudelaire puts it this way: “Is it not the necessary garb of our suffering age which wears the symbol of perpetual mourning even on its thin black shoulders?…an endless procession of hired mourners, political mourners, amorous mourners, bourgeois mourners. We are all of us celebrating some funeral.” Is it not true that all of the character start out mourning for something they don’t have and end up mourning because they got it and it didn’t live up to their expectations? It is important to remember that mourning here is taken metaphorically. Mourning is normally taken to mean a state of sorrow over the death or departure of a loved one. Maupassant shows that we can fall in love with many things; even things that we don’t have or that we don’t want to have.

In “A Parisian Affair” the ending paragraph says: “Returning home, the image of Paris swept inexorably clean by the cold light of day filled her exhausted mind, and as she reached her room, sobs broke from her now quite frozen heart.” She is mourning for that illusion she once had of the rich and beautiful of Paris. The illusion, the love for it has been swiped clean and there is nothing left but to mourn for the fairy tale story she had constructed in her mind. One feels she has lost a child of her imagination and that it will take her a while to replace this infatuation or love with something as appealing as the star-crossed world of fashionable Parisian stars.

In “A million” the Bonnins mourn for the promise of a million and the condition that they cannot fulfill to get it, and then, at then at end Madame Bonnin despises if not mourns for the women who commit adultery just because she did it for a higher purpose. Throughout the story she is mourning for the senility of her husband, for the child she can’t have, of what she must do to get it and all for the love of 1 million francs.

In “Mother of invention” la comtesse mourns for the children she doesn’t want to have and her husband mourns for the child who he thinks is not his. At the ends M. even gives us a glimpse of that melancholy which is so essential to Baudelaire and that let us see a little of that eternal beauty just as Baudelaire would have wanted. “He left, looking at her still and wondering that she could remain so beautiful. Stirring within him he could feel a strange emotion, perhaps more awesome, he thought, than good old-fashioned love itself.” (274)

Lastly, in “The Necklace” isn’t giving 10 years of life and beauty for a necklace that was not even worth 500 francs the most pungent of all mournings? Besides it fits in perfect with Baudelaire’s image of modernity: “Do not those puckered creases, playing like serpents around the mortified flesh, have their own mysterious grace?” (40)

For these reasons it is safe to say that these stories by Maupassant are modern according to the first criteria suggested by Baudelaire because they fulfill his symbols. Baudelaire also gives a very vivid image of what subjects a modern artist should tackle. “I notice that most artists who have dealt with modern themes have restricted themselves to public and official subjects…however, there are subjects to be found in private life that are far more heroic.” (44) It is clear that in all of Maupassant’s stories he writes about the private lives of woman.

Baudelaire, in fact, does not say that every private life is worthy of becoming a work or art. He goes on to describe with the morbidness that characterized him where one could find these private stories. “the spectacle of fashionable life and of thousands of stray souls – criminal and kept women – … all prove to us that we need only open our eyes to become aware of our heroism.” (44)

Here follow examples from the stories which prove that fashion is one of the underlying motives of the four stories. All the women are in love with fashion, they wanted and will do anything to uphold that fashion but at the same time risking all they have. Is that not a symptom that they are in love with it?

In “A Parisian Affair” the main character is precisely one who is obsessed with the fashionable life of the rich and wealthy:

“Lulled by the regular snoring of her husband sleeping next to her on his back with a scarf wrapped round his head, she conjured up the images of all the famous men who made the headlines and shone like brilliant comets in the darkness of her somber sky. She pictured the madly exciting lives they must lead, moving from one den of vice to the next, indulging in never-ending and extraordinarily voluptuous orgies…” (42)

“In “A Million,” the same hold true. “ Nevertheless she suffered all the time. She had been destined, or so she believed, for a delicate life of luxury” (296). These women are all after fashion and luxury. They believe that there they will be happy and I’m sure that that was not something Maupassant made up. There probably were millions of woman in the 19^th century who where thirsting to be fashionable. Another famous book describes exactly the same motives in woman and gives one of the most classical and most famous ways of social climbing. Even today we speak of one who will climb the social ladder by any means as a Rastignac. This book, of course is Pere Goriot by Balzac written very close to the short stories by Maupassant.

The setting is also of outmost importance to Baudelaire. “Parisian life is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. The marvelous envelops and permeates us, like the atmosphere itself but we do not see it.” (296) Fortunately, Maupassant found a way to show that to us, he was a convalescent transfixed by the newness of each day. Luckily for us every single one of the stories mentioned take place precisely in Paris. In none other than a Parisian affair M. writes: “She looked on Paris as representing the height of all magnificent luxury as well as licentiousness.” (42) We have proven that M. stories fulfill the first two criteria. The third one is the one of the truth of art.

As for what Baudelaire calls the truth of art, he is mainly referring to that of which we had spoken before: the depiction of the transient nature of the present; the dresses, costumes, streets and such manners which one could find in Paris in the 1870’s. It is obvious that these stories are set in the present. An even a character such as Jean Varin, which is mentioned by name in “A Parisian affair”, was a real sculptor. In “Mother of Invention” they make reference to real places in Paris, the Bois de Boulogne, L’Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile and the Champs Elysees.

Having fulfilled all three criteria Baudelaire proposed we can say that these fours stories are without doubt modern for Baudelaire. The choice of subject, the setting and the truth of art are present with very clear examples and symbols in all of them and they let us glimpse the eternal beauty through the transient beauty of the time and place where he wrote them. They are without doubt great works of art; it’s not for nothing that M. is considered the father of the modern short story. Are Baudelaire’s criteria still relevant today?

The criteria for modernity suggested by Baudelaire remained relevant until the 1950’s. He was without doubt the most important character and perhaps the founding father of modernity but after post-modernism and post-structuralism his criteria are just a theory of art that is outdated.Today we may find that the ugly is more beautiful or that a Campbell’s soup can repeated a thousand times can be art. We may even see an Adonis with an i-pod or a broken toilet displayed as art; a pipe that is not a pipe and some melting clocks in a surreal setting. A theory of art is overrated, even if it is more necessary than ever.

If we agree that everything can be deconstructed, that is that we can find the reference or the frame on which any theory or work of art is constructed, then there is no need for a specific theory of beauty but for many self-referential theories. Baudelaire’s can be one of them but it will not tell us if something is modern or even art. It is just another, although fascinating, way to view the world.

Add which books you took the quotes from!

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