NOTES

INTRODUCTION

        1.    See Rémy de Gourmont, Promenades littéraires, Paris, Mercure de France, 1904.

        2.    Literary History of the United States, ed. Robert E. Spiller et al; New York, 1948, v. 3, p. 691.

        3.    Professor W. T. Bandy has discovered a French adaptation of Poe’s William Wilson published in France in 1844, i.e., before the Wiley and Putnam edition appeared (information furnished in a letter).

        4.    Most of the quotations are taken from letters and whenever possible reference will be made simply to the number of the letter in Crépeťs volumes devoted to Corre-spondance Générate. The letter to Fraisse is number 502 (III, p. 41).

        5.    Correspondance Générate, letter number 134 (I, p. 195).

        6.    See the Christopher Isherwood translation of Baudelaire’s Intimate Journals, Hollywood, Marcel Rodd, 1947, p. 107.

        7.    See Jacques Crépet, Oeuvres Posthumes, Paris, Louis Conard, 1939, p. 570. This is volume 11 of Oeuvres Complètes de Charles Baudelaire. Unless otherwise specified, all references are to Jacques Crépet’s edition of Baudelaire’s work.

        8.    Ibid., p. 574.

        9.    Correspondance Générate, letter 122 (I, pp. 160-161).

        10.    Ibid., letter 231 (I, p. 378).

        11.    Les Paradis Artificiels, opium et haschisch, a work in prose by Baudelaire, was based on De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater as well as on his own experience.

        12.    Baudelaire used this word in his article on the painting exhibition, Exposition Universelle de 1855. See Crépet, Curiosités Esthétiques, p. 235.

        13.    See Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, 3rd ed., New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1946, p. 53 and p. 60.

        14.    Correspondance Générate, letter 234 (I, p. 381).

        15.    Quoted from Marcel Raymond, From Baudelaire to Surrealism, New York, Wittenborn and Schultz, 1950, p. 17. Translated by G. M.

        16.    In addition to being a poet and literary critic, Baudelaire was a distinguished art critic. Most of his articles in that field were published the year after his death under the title Curiosités Esthétiques.

        17.    Correspondance Générale, letter 235 (I, p. 386).

        18.    From Champfleury, Souvenirs et Portraits, Paris, 1863, p. 142. Quoted by Crépet in Histoires Extraordinaires, p. 353.

        19.    See Campbell Dodgson, Albrecht Dürer, London and Boston, The Medici Society, 1926, p. 51; and Daniel C. Rich, Seurat and the Evolution of “La Grande Jatte,” Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1935, p. 35.

        20.    The despair and contempt behind Dadaism, expressing themselves in shock tactics, are only more recent examples of psychological phenomena observable in Baudelaire and other rebellious nineteenth century artists. See Barr, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism.

        21.    Crépet, Histoires Extraordinaires, p. 293.

        22.    Crépet, Histoires Grotesques et Sérieuses, pp. 239-240.

        23.    Correspondance Générate, letter 170 (I, p. 266).

        24.    Ibid., letter 844 (IV, p. 277).

        25.    This essay appears in Variété II, Paris, Librairie Gallimard, 1930.

        26.    For the artists mentioned, see the following publications: John Rewald, Gauguin, Paris and New York, Hyperion Press, 1938, p. 119; Carl Zigrosser, The Book of Fine Prints, New York, Crown Publishers, 1948, p. 154; Life Magazine, February 26, 1951: information to be published by Lloyd Goodrich in his forthcoming book on Ryder; Florent Fels, James Ensor, Geneva and Brussels, Editions Pierre Cailler, 1947, p. 53; Paul Klee, New York, Museum of Modern Art Catalogue, 1941, p. 4; Marcel Guérin, L’Oeuvre Gravé de Manet, Paris, Librairie Floury, 1944, pp. 84 ff.

        27.    Quoted from Marcel Raymond, From Baudelaire to Surrealism, p. 18.

        28.    Correspondance Générate, letter 233 (I, 380).

1852—EDGAR ALLAN POE, HIS LIFE AND WORKS

        1.    The Goncourt brothers, in their Journal, mention a convict thus tattooed. Crépet, 11, p. 568.

        2.    Vauvenargues was a French moralist of the eighteenth century whose Maxims are less pessimistic than those of La Rochefoucauld.

        3.    Leur chien méme les mord et leur donne la rage.

                        Un ami jurera qu’ils ont trahi le roi. These lines are from Théophile Gautier’s poem Ténèbres.

        4.    The reference is to Alfred de Vigny’s book Stello, which was published in 1832.

        5.    The biographer in question was P. Pendleton Cooke who wrote an article on Poe in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1848.

        6.    The unnamed critic was perhaps James Russell Lowell who had written about Poe in Graham’s Magazine in 1845.

        7.    There was no legal adoption. It seems to have been Mrs. Allan who was interested in the child.

        8.    Poe’s works are full of French phrases. [Baudelaire’s note.]

        9.    Poe’s life, his adventures in Russia and his correspondence have long been promised by American magazines, but have never appeared. C.B. [Baudelaire’s note.]

        10.    The prize winning story was MS. Found in a Bottle, for which he received $50.00.

        11.    Poe was forty years old at the time of his death.

        12.    Poe’s friend, the writer Nathaniel P. Willis, wrote an obituary notice which appeared in the Home Journal on the Saturday following Poe’s death. It was reprinted by Griswold and later biographers.

        13.    Baudelaire wrote a poem in imitation of Longfellow which is entitled Le Calumet De Paix (The Pipe of Peace).

        14.    Joseph de Maistre was an authoritarian philosopher of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. He wrote Soirées de Sain-Petersbourg.

        15.    Baudelaire’s source was an article published by P. Pendleton Cooke in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1848, from which the following passage is quoted:

                        For my individual part, having the seventy or more tales, analytic, mystic, grotesque, arabesque, always wonderful, often great, which his industry and fertility have already given us, I would like to read one cheerful book made by his invention, with little or no aid from its twin brother imagination—a book in his admirable style of full, minute, never tedious narrative— a book full of homely doings, of successful toils, of ingenious shifts and contrivances, of ruddy firesides— a book healthy and happy throughout, and with no poetry in it at all anywhere, except a good old English ‘poetic justice’ in the end. Such a book, such as Mr. Poe could make it, would be a book for the million, and if it did nothing to exalt him with the few, would yet certainly endear him to them. See Harrison’s edition of Poe, I, p. 390.

        16.    Baudelaire’s poem La Pipe, reflects the modern addiction to tobacco.

        17.    Mesmeric Revelation was the first of Poe’s stories to be translated and published by Baudelaire.

        18.    The story referred to is The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion.

        19.    The passage quoted is not in the English text. It was either done from memory or was simply meant to summarize the situation.

        20.    There is no description of the tavern. Again, Baudelaire must have been writing from memory (according to one of his friends he had memorized The Black Cat) or was strongly stimulated by Poe’s suggestions of the effects of drink.

        21.    In a letter to Jules Troubat, dated March 5, 1866, Baudelaire wrote:

                        I am very happy to learn of Sainte-Beuve’s recovery. I have not had feelings of this sort about the health of others, except in the case of E. Delacroix, who was moreover a great egoist. But affections come to me largely through my mind. Crépet, 11 p. 576.

        22.    Several of these phrases appear in French in Poe’s story: “Of Mademoiselle Sallé it has been well said: ‘Que tous ses pas étaient des sentiments,⁹ and of Berenice I more seriously believed que tous ses dents étaient des idées.”

        23.    Elsewhere Baudelaire speaks much less favorably of George Sand.

        24.    Baudelaire published his translation of the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym in 1858.

        25.    Baudelaire published a translation of Eureka in 1863.

        26.    Saint-Just was a supporter of Robespierre, with whom he was executed.

        27.    As the final entry in his Intimate Journals Baudelaire wrote:

                        I swear henceforth to observe the following rules as the eternal rules of my life: To pray every morning to God, source of all power and all justice; to my father, to Marietta [his old servant] and to Poe as intercessors: to give me the strength necessary to accomplish all my duties .... See Isherwood, Intimate Journals, p. 112.

1856—EDGAR POE, HIS LIFE AND WORKS

        1.    Ľaigle, pour le briser, du haut du firmament Sur leur front découvert lâchera la tortue, Car ils doivent périr inévitablement

                These lines are from Théophile Gautier’s poem Ténèbres. There is a legend that an eagle dropped a tortoise on the bald head of the Greek dramatist Aeschylus. Probably Gautier had that story in mind when he was writing these lines. Information furnished by Professor R. E. Dengler.

        2.    The book was Alfred de Vigny’s Stello.

        3.    The biographer was P. Pendleton Cooke. See note 5 in part one.

        4.    Possibly James Russell Lowell. See note 6 in part one.

        5.    Nathaniel P. Willis. See note 12 in part one.

        6.    The reference is to George Sand, about whom he wrote quite bitterly in his Intimate Journals.

        7.    See note 7 in part one.

        8.    James Russell Lowell used this phrase in his article on Poe, published in Graham’s Magazine in 1845.

        9.    See note 10 in part one.

        10.    Gérard de Nerval, who committed suicide on January 26, 1855. A study of his life by S. A. Rhodes was published by the Philosophical Library on January 26, 1951, the anniversary of his death.

        11.    Baudelaire raised the question of suicide several times. A newly discovered Baudelaire manuscript, which is an outline of a story to have been called La Conspiration, is the most recent evidence of his preoccupation with suicide. The manuscript was published and discussed by Georges Blin in the February, 1951, issue of Esprit.

        12.    Baudelaire has changed the original order of the paragraphs.

        13.    Poe also believed in phrenology; in reviewing a book on the subject he wrote: “Phrenology is no longer to be laughed at.”

        14.    This passage is a brief foretaste of Proust. René Galand has shown some of the connections between the two writers in his article Proust et Baudelaire, published in the December 1950 issue of PMLA.

        15.    It is interesting to note that Baudelaire gave Delacroix a copy of his translations of Poe. The painter enjoyed the stories, but did not relish the comparison.

1857—NEW NOTES ON EDGAR POE

        1.    The Diable Amoureux was written by Jacques Cazotte, who was executed in 1792.

        2.    This paragraph is from Poe’s “Fifty Suggestions.” The final quotation—”to deny what is and to explain what is not”—is from Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloise.

        3.    Allamistakeo appears in Poe’s Some Words with a Mummy.

        4.    This quotation is from Poe’s “Fifty Suggestions.”

        5.    This quotation is likewise from “Fifty Suggestions.”

        6.    Baudelaire published a translation of Poe’s article, The Philosophy of Composition, in 1859. It is interesting to compare the few lines quoted here with the corresponding lines in Poe:

                        I determined, then, to place the lover in his chamber . . . The room is represented as richly furnished— this in mere pursuance of the ideas I have already explained on the subject of Beauty, as the sole true poetical thesis.

        7.     This passage is also from The Philosophy of Composition.

CRITICAL MISCELLANY

        1.    Mesmeric Revelation, Baudelaire’s first Poe translation, was published in the magazine Liberté de penser in July, 1848.

        2.    Berenice was first published in l’Illustration in April, 1852. Lemonnier has shown that Baudelaire wrote this preface.

        3.    The Philosophy of Furniture was first published in the Magasin des Families in October, 1852.

        4.    This preface, which precedes Baudelaire’s prose translation of The Raven, was first published in the Revue française in April, 1859.

        5.    Hans Pfaall was first published in Le Pays in April, 1855.

        6.    This original dedication to Mrs. Clemm was published in Le Pays in July, 1854. It was followed by the series of translations which later formed the volume entitled Histoires Extraordinaires, which appeared in 1856.

        7.    On a sheet of corrections Baudelaire crossed out this phrase.

        8.    This text is from a manuscript note probably written about 1860 when Baudelaire was planning a new edition of his translations. The manuscript was first published by M. Y.-G. Le Dantec in 1934, in the Cahiers Jacques Doucet and reprinted by M. Jacques Crépet in 1936 in his edition of Eureka.

        9.    The reference is to the Causeries de lundi by Saint-Beuve.