(2025jan01) Happy 2025, let’s dive right into it.
I first discovered Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) when I was working on my second book Introspect, and I was looking around for descriptions of internal conflict written 100+ years ago. I found this great quote:
I liked the quote so much that I went to look up other quotes by him, and these were some that resonated with me deeply:
I didn’t think much too of it at the time, but I still find myself periodically quoting these in conversations years later– and as I’ve been thinking more about this Substack, it’s become clearer to me that the second one is searingly resonant with [gestures around] this entire operation. So I decided to dig a little deeper.
It turns out that the wound-and-the-knife quote is from Les Fleurs du mal (1857), translated somewhat imperfectly as ‘The Flowers of Evil’, an anthology of nearly all of Baudelaire’s poetry. I look forward to reading it sometime. The modernity quote, meanwhile, is from an essay titled The Painter of Modern Life, an essay of about 15,000 words published in 3 installments in La Figaro. I find myself compelled to read it right away.
But wait, before that, let me contextualize Charles Baudelaire a little bit:
- Baudelaire was born in Paris in 1821. Other famous people born in 1821 include Dostoysevsky and Flaubert. The POTUS at the time was James Monroe, #5 after Jefferson. Napoleon Bonaparte died that year, while exiled on the island of Saint Helena. Mexico would achieve independence from Spain a few months later. The Greeks were fighting for independence from the Ottomans, and Simon Bolivar continued his campaign for South American independence. Singapore’s population is about 5,000 at the time, 2 years after Sir Stamford Raffles established a British trading port on its shores. The Industrial Revolution would begin soon after, with the first public railway opening in Britain in 1825, and inventions like the electric telegraph in the 1830s would revolutionize communication. When Baudelaire was 9 he witnessed the Bourbon monarchy being overthrown by the July monarchy. When he was 27, he’d witness the collapse of the July Monarchy, and participated in the revolution himself as a writer.
- Baudelaire was a huge fan of Edgar Allen Poe, translating many of his works from English to French, and describing him as one of the best authors of all time
- Aldus Huxley references Baudelaire in The Doors of Perception
- TS Eliot wrote an essay titled Baudelaire,
- Marshall McLuhan was a fan of Baudelaire
There’s a quote from Charles Baudelaire that has stuck with me for years now: “Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, which make up one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immutable. This transitory fugitive element, which is constantly changing, must not be despised or neglected.” Revisiting this quote, along with a couple of others, has made me want to read all his shit, particularly an essay he wrote about ‘the painter of modern life’, and his book of poetry les fleurs de mal, translated to ‘the flowers of evil’, which strikes me as an imperfect translation because ‘mal’ doesn’t have the exact same connotations as evil, does it? it’s a valid translation but all translations are imperfect. i feel like ‘the flowers of sin’ might be a better translation in my view.
i criticize groupchats a lot but i also wrote some good stuff in there
it’s really better to write like you’re texting. maybe i should just do a series of posts that are like i’m texting.
why? because then it’ll just flow more naturally, and the more stuff i get out, the more i should be able to do.
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Baudelaire: Barbaric explosive child genius
High voltage living
Land mine
Crackle boom
Aesthetic reckoning
Undulating arabesques
fugitives
Picturesque
Garrisons, cantonments
Hospitality, feet and lips
Pensive
Bold, spirited pen
Turbulent