University of Oregon

Broken Presents: The Modern City in Ruins in Baudelaire, Cernuda, and Paz
Author(s): Cecilia Enjuto-Rangel
Source: Comparative Literature, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Spring, 2007), pp. 140-157
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of the University of Oregon
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CECILIAENJUTO-RANGEL

The
Presents:
Broken
Modern
City in Ruins
in Baudelaire,Cernuda,
Paz
and
CONTRAST TO THE ENDURING ANCIENT RUINS of baroque and romantic poetry, the ruins of modern urban poetry tend to be short-lived- the
remains of the destruction and reconstruction of a city's streets, houses, public
buildings, and factories rather than broken monuments and statues, abandoned
churches, fragments of temples, or other remnants of a distant past. In these
poems nature ceases to be the principal force that slowly "overcomes"the works
of "civilization":progress and war take over the role of ivy and time; spleen and
ennui replace awe and nostalgia. As Georg Simmel has argued, in the modern and often traumatic- experience of the metropolis, "The fight with nature which
primitive man has to wage for his bodily existence attains ... its latest transformation" (409). In the city, people survive traffic, crowds, and advertisements, not
tigers and serpents. Modern poems on ruins also differ from their baroque and
romantic counterparts both in their reading of history and in their representation of the poetic self. The speakers in these poems are not fixed or stable; they
can be both melancholic and nostalgic, humorous and ironic.
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), Luis Cernuda (1902-1963), and Octavio Paz
(1914-1998) all use poetic representations of the city in ruins to conceptualize
and criticize modernity. In a space that is alwaysredefining itself, alwaysin reconstruction, ruins can easily be treated as merely waste. However, these poets see
in ruins the emblems of the city's historical process, and in their poems they
intend to rescue the remains of the past from the bulldozers of the future.
Baudelaire's work, with its powerful review of the failures of urban progress, expresses the melancholy of Parisians who feel that their city is becoming unrecognizable; yet it also manifests a fascination with the bizarre new versions of
modern beauty. In turn, both Cernuda and Paz explore Baudelaire's contradictory definitions of the modern city in their poetry, but without Baudelaire's nostalgia. Their disillusioned, pessimistic vision of the modern city is charged with
social and political indignation.
There are very few studies that examine in depth the connections among Baudelaire, Cernuda, and Paz, and I do not want to confine this essay to the appar-

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ANDPAZ/141
BAUDELAIRE,
CERNUDA,

ent influence of Baudelaire on these Hispanic poets. Rather, I will analyze in the
work of these three poets the ways in which modern poetry prioritizes the role of
literary and historical memory and employs representations of the changing city
and its ruins to reflect upon a crisis of perception. Although in Cernuda's and
Paz's poetry many cities, both abstract and concrete, abound, Baudelaire's Paris,
the epitome of the nineteenth-century modern city, constantly casts its shadow
upon the evolution of urban poetry.
Baudelaire's Pieces of Paris
Why was Paris, in the second half of the nineteenth century and at the height
of its reconstruction by Baron Georges-Eugne Haussmann, paradoxically represented as a city in ruins? Although there are many possible answers to this question, we may start by noting that Haussmann's project to modernize the urban
landscape was extremely unpopular within the working class and the bourgeoisie.
Because this disapproval was accompanied by a longing for the lost Paris of revolutionary times, the ruined city came to symbolize the transformation of a Paris
associated with liberty and fraternityinto a well-organized structure of great stores,
great avenues, trees, and lakes- all in the name of efficiency and social control.1
A passage from Thophile Gautier'spreface to Edouard Fournier's Paris Dmoli
is likely representative of the overwhelming sense of loss and dislocation felt by
many Parisians at mid-century: "C'est un spectacle curieux . . . ces maisons
ouvertes avec . . . leurs escaliers qui ne conduisent plus rien . . . leurs boulements bizarres et leurs ruines violentes" (2; It is a curious spectacle . . . those
open houses with . . . their staircases that go nowhere . . . their bizarre collapsed
buildings and their violent ruins; my translation) .2As a result, "le penseur sent
natre en son me une mlancolie, en voyant disparatre ces difices, ces htels,
ces maisons o les gnrations prcdentes ont vcu. Un morceau du pass tombe
avec chacune de ces pierres" (3; the thinker senses that a melancholic feeling is
born in his soul when he sees the disappearance of those buildings, those palaces, those houses where previous generations have lived. A piece of the past
falls with each one of those stones). Although Baudelaire shares Gautier's melancholic feeling towards the changing Paris, unlike Fournier, whose project attempts to trace all the historical remains of the city, Baudelaire wants to capture
1Whether Haussmann's venture was a success or a failure is debatable and has been the
subject of
extensive research by TJ. Clark and Marshall Berman, among others. Clark notes that "Bythe end
of the 1860s he [Haussmann] could boast that Paris had twice as many trees as in 1850 ... it had
policemen and night patrols, bus shelters, tap water . . ."; however, Haussmann's project also failed
because of his lack of faith in electric light, the cholera outbursts in 1867, and the "tuberculosis
imminent threat" (38). In addition, "Haussmannization was unpopular in Paris: the defeat of the
official slate in the city in the 1869 elections was bound to that fact, as was the decisive no which
Paris gave the emperor's plebiscite in 1870" (Clark 41).
2
Although Cernuda's and Paz's urban poems are not situated in Paris, their critiques of the modern city's versions of progress convey a similar disappointment. Cernuda's poetry even uses the
image of the broken staircase as a metaphor for progress in order to expose what he believes to be
the nihilistic, empty ideals upon which modernity is built. Paz displays a similarly pessimistic vision
- not through the metaphor of the staircase to nowhere, but through the metaphor of the street
that leads to nothingness.

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COMPARATIVE
LITERATURE
/1 42

the evanescent"present"and its manynewurbanfaces.

Nowhereis this more evidentthan in his poem "LeCygne"(The Swan). In the
firststanzaof thatwell-knownworkthe speakerevokesthe Andromacheof Aeneid
3, who lamentsthe death of her husbandHector beside an artificialreconstruction of the Simos,a rivernear Troy.The riverreflectsher pain, not her beauty,
and is filled by her tears.In the baroquetopos of ruins, the riveris traditionally
the symbolof eternityand nature,the witnessof historywho survivesto tell the
tale. Here, however,preciselybecauseit is an imitation,the riverdoes not represent "nature,"nor is it a trustworthywitness (see Burton). The river is thus a
metaphorof the poem itself;it "lies"and yet it is the sourcethatmakesthe speaker'smemoryfertile.3
In "LeCygne"remembranceis the creativeforce that links the real and the
unreal,the modern and the mythical.AsWalterBenjaminstates,"'LeCygne'has
the movementof a cradlerockingbackand forth betweenmodernityand antiqIn this text Andromaqueis not a symbolof the Ideal,but of pain, not only
uity."4
because she has lost her husbandHector but also because she has lost her freedom, like the blackwomanin the poem who searchesfor Africaon the horizon.
Both women link antiquityand modernityin their displacement;both are characterizedby the melancholicgaze thatalwayslooksback.
Andromaque,des brasd'un grandpoux tombe,
Vilbtail,sousla maindu superbePyrrhus,
Auprsd'untombeauvide en extasecourbe;
Veuved'Hector,hlas!et femmed'Hlnus!
Je pense la ngresse,amaigrieet phtisique,
Pitinantdansla boue, et cherchant,l'oeilhagard
Lescocotiersabsentsde la superbeAfrique
Derrirela murailleimmensedu brouillard.
Andromache,fallenfromthe armsof a greatand noble husband,
Commonchattelin the handsof haughtyPyrrhus,
Crouching,in ecstasy,overan emptytombHector'swidow,alas!Nowthe wifeof Helenus!
I thinkof a blackwoman,emaciatedand consumptive,
Flounderingin the mud,and searchingwitha haggardeye
Forthe missingpalmtreesof splendidAfrica
Frombehind an immensewallof fog.5
3RossChambers
points to this readingof the riverwhen discussingthe structureof the poem:
"Forit is a 'streampoem' or 'pomefleuve'itselfa 'Simosmenteur'. . . thatit is remarkablefor the
doubleopennessof itsstructure"(156). In Lepeintredela viemoderne
Baudelairearguesthatmemory
is the defining factor that molds perceptionand motivatesthe harmoniousreunion of opposites.
Baudelairethusprivilegesmemoryas an artisticsourcefor the painter/poet:"IIdessinede mmoire,
et non d'aprsle modle"{Oeuvrescompltes
2.698;He drawsfrom memory,and not in frontof the
model [mytranslation]) . RichardTerdiman,amongothers,providesa detailedhistoricalandsemiotic
analysisof "LeCygne."
4 TheArcades
Project356. Benjaminargues that for Baudelairemodernityis "markedwith the
fatalityof being one dayantiquity"(22). Therefore,even though modernityis constantlyreinventing itself, it is alwaysmarkedby the past and what it evades.With the evocationof Andromache,
Baudelaireseemsto be signalingthe antiquityof modernity.
5The Frenchtext of "Le
1.85-87).The
Cygne"is takenfrom LesFleursdu mal {uvrescompltes
Englishtranslationis byMaryTrouilleand can be found in LesFleursdu mal:TheFlowersofEvil,91.

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BAUDELAIRE,
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Antiquity and modernity share the same destructive elements; the text immobilizes the women with their nostalgia for a past that is buried in an empty tomb or
stuck in mud, hiding in the fog.6 "Le Cygne" thus foresees modernity's own destructive nature by integrating the modern and the antique in a world where
Andromaque, the swan, and the speaker coexist as symbols of pain and displacement within blocks of the new Carrousel and the Louvre.7
In "Le Cygne" Baudelaire describes as traumatic this nostalgic process of remembering the old city:
A fcond soudain ma mmoire fertile,
Comme je traversaisle nouveau Carrousel.
Le vieux Paris n'est plus (la forme d'une ville
Change plus vite, hlas! que le coeur d'un mortel) ;
Suddenly watered my fertile memory,
As I crossed the new place du Carrousel.
The old Paris is gone (the face of a city
Changes faster, alas! than a human heart) .

The comparisonof the changing city to the changing heart of any mortal bestowsan unsettlinglack of permanenceon those transformations.So, too, does
the connection between Parisand the changing images of the animalsand carriageson a movingcarrousel.Baudelairechose the phrase "Levieux Parisn'est
plus"("Theold Parisis gone") to echo the sentimentsof so manyParisianswho
felt overwhelmedby their "new"city.The speakeralso hints that the city has its
own mortality,its own capacityto "disappear."8
Nonetheless, the thirstyswanis
the symbol,not of a dead city,but of the chaotic Paris,both beautifuland grotesque. The lost swanand the overwhelmedspeakerare exiles within this new
Paris,linkedbya melancholiawhoseimmobilizingeffect causesit, as RossChambersargues,"tobe experiencedas an oppressiveweight"(168).9
6 See Brombert: "At
every level, the poem illustrates a nostalgia for the past, or rather an essentially hopeless effort of retrieval which - as Baudelaire himself seems to suggest determines the
well
as
a
a
as
or
exile:
the
Fall
telescoping of the
present implies distancing,
allegorical process.
beforeand the after . . . Slave, widow, and wife all are telescoped in one image. The stanza, in its
powerful figuration of pain, mourning, and beauty, immobilizes a statuesque Andromache in a
pose that continues into an eternal present" (98-99). The immobility of Andromache also suggests
that she is a symbol of melancholia, literally and metaphorically paralyzed in time.
7Terdiman notes that in 1859, when "Le
Cygne"was written, Pariswas still undergoing Haussmann's
reconstruction: "In the moment of 'Le Cygne,' the remaking of the city had not yet demolished the
memory of the city it remade" (119). He also explains the historical implications of the allusion to
the new Carrousel: 'The Carrousel remembered in 'Le Cygne' in 1859 had been abruptly razed in
1852. Indeed, its demolition was the first, the founding act in the transformations that remade Paris
under the Second Empire."Whereas the Second Republic wanted to demolish the old Carrousel in
order to construct low-cost housing for workers, Napoleon III finally destroyed it as part of the
grand remodeling of the rue de Rivoli. At the old Carrousel, moreover, "agroup of artists who had
made a strategic investment in representing themselves as figuratively homeless in Parisfelt at home.
For this segment of the nascent avant-garde, the razing of the quartier was a symbolic eviction - an
exile"(116).
8
Jauss reads in these verses the representation of urban estrangement: "Afterthe paradoxical and
abrupt change in expectation aroused by the sentimentally evoked "vieux Paris" ("Le Cygne," 1.78), that world appears as chaotic, smashed 'forme d'une ville,' as the disorderly, desolate burial
ground of a vanished past" (249) .
9 In the edited notes on this
poem, Claude Pichois indicates that in 1846 there was a newspaper
story that reported that four wild swans had entered les Tuileries searching for the pond, and they
stayed there until it was filled with water {Oeuvrescompletes1.1005) .

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COMPARATIVE
LITERATURE
/1 44

In "LeCygne"the new Parisis constructedand destroyedby the nostalgicgaze

of the speaker,whose memoriesweigh as much as the stones that make these
newpillars:
Parischange!maisrien dansma mlancolie
N'a boug! palaisneufs,chafaudages,blocs,
Vieuxfaubourgs,tout pour moi devientallgorie,
Etmes cherssouvenirssont pluslourdsque des rocs.
Aussidevantce Louvreune imagem'opprime:
Je pense mon grandcygneavecses gestesfous
Commeles exils, ridiculeet sublime. . .
Parisis changing.Butnothingin mymelancholy
Haschanged!Newmansions,scaffoldings,blocksof stone,
Old neighborhoods,everythingbecomesallegoryfor me,
And myfond memoriesweighheavierthanrocks.
Standingin frontof the Louvretoday,an imageoppressesme:
I thinkof mygreatswan,thrashingwildly,
Likeexiles, ridiculousand sublime. . .

The new palaces of Haussmann'sParisdo not erase the "vieuxfaubourgs"because the metaphorof memoriesas stones providesthe speakerwith the materials to "rebuild"the pastof his city.Benjaminputs it succinctly:"Allegoriesare, in
the realm of thoughts,what ruins are in the realm of things"(Origin178). The
ruins are the building blocks for the constructionof a historicalpast, the allegoricalgroundfromwhichthe modern cityemerges.In Baudelaire,the allegorical use of the modern cityin ruinsassertshis politicaland historicalrvaluation
of progress.
Although "LeCygne"expressesthe melancholiaso commonlyassociatedwith
the romantictopos of ruins, this poetic self is not solipsistic.He is neither "stagnant"nor immobile,but walksthroughthe city.Thus, his emotionalstatediffers
from that of both the swanand Andromache,who have been interpretedas the
two main figures of melancholiaand nostalgiain the text (see Starobinski4748) . Chambers,for example,readsthis poem as a critiqueof the Second Empire:
Andromache. . . thus becomes the figurefor a certainsense of history- the melancholythat turns
memoryinto a remembranceof lossandlinksthe presentto a feelingof repetitionandinauthenticity.
The fate of the widowedqueen, wrappedin the "immensemajesty"of her grief but simultaneously
"fallen"with the fall of Troy. . . makesher symboleasilyappliedto the recent historyof republican
France.(159)

Andromache'spain symbolizesthat of France;fallen over her husband'sfake

tomb,her melancholyimmobilizesher,but not the poem or the speaker.Although
the speaker,like the swanin the lake of dust, is lost in Haussmann'sParisand
frustratedboth by the failuresof the revolutionof 1848 and by the authoritarian
Second Empire, it is no accident, as Chambersemphasizes,that the poem is
dedicatedto VictorHugo, one of the most famouspoliticalexiles of the regime.
Indeed, the dedicationconfirmsthat the text is a "disguisedexpressionof revolutionaryregretand of solidarityshownby someone exiled withinan oppressive
regimetowardthose who wereexiled outsideFranceafter1851"(161).10
10Terdiman
emphasizesthat,becausein 1859Napoleon IIIoffered amnestyto the opponentsof
the regime,Hugo could havereturned,but insteadchoseexile. AsTerdimanso eloquentlysuggests:

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BAUDELAIRE,
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Does the process of destruction and reconstruction of the city provoke and
intensify the "spleen," the internal exile? Or is the melancholic simply looking
for motives that willjustify his emotional state? The socio-political context conditions the text, but the poem cannot be reduced to its historical referent (Starobinski 65). Baudelaire's internal exile is both a political and an aesthetic position.
For Baudelaire, beauty is alwaysstrange and its poetic subjects must be estranged.
The speaker connects his own melancholy, determined by the changing space of
Paris,with that of multiple nostalgic figures- the swanwithout a lake, Andromache
without Troy, the black woman without Africa, the orphans without a home, the
sailors without a ship, the prisoners, the vanquished, and the exiles - who also
desire the impossible: to return to their place of origin.
Richard Terdiman reads the poetics of exile and loss of "LeCygne"as a historical production: "Memorysignifies loss. The memory crisis of post-Revolutionary
Europe manifested itself in feelings of exile, anxiety, and displacement" (106).
All the exiles in the poem are traumatized by the "without,"the absence that
determines their present state, and that is why they cling to memory; it is their
only anchor to the past, to that loss. But how does Baudelaire change the way we
read melancholy? This is not a romantic melancholia that emerges from his own
existential conflicts; the speaker is both moved by and stuck in melancholia because Paris changes, history takes its course, and the new hollow monuments of
the Second Empire reiterate the shallow faade of progress.11Can melancholia
be a collective experience? Does the melancholic share his melancholia with
other social outcasts? In Loss, The Politics of Mourning, David Eng and David
Kazanjianclaim that melancholy is a "continuous engagement with the past"and
that texts that focus on what has been lost also value what remains: "This attention to remains generates a politics of mourning that might be active rather than
reactive, prescient rather than nostalgic, abundant rather than lacking, social
rather than solipsistic, militant rather than reactionary" (2) . Because melancholy
produces a politics of mourning, melancholy is not timeless. The poetic representations of ruins as remains of the past and the melancholy they provoke are in
fact fundamental to the construction of historical memory. "LeCygne"is a poem
about remembrance, and within the context of an authoritative regime its melancholia regarding the past is not a reactionary or conservative stand, but, on
the contrary, it is a protest against collective amnesia.12
Still, one may ask, how is this approach to melancholia particularly modern?
How is this different from the romantic notion of ruins and anxiety about indus"Amnestythus attempts to induce a State-mediated amnesia, to upset the process of rememoration,
the story told about the past, the very substance of signification itself" (108) .
11Baudelaire's melancholia
plays a crucial role in his critique of progress, which some critics like
Elizabeth Wilson have read as an example of an "hostility to urbanization" that Vas more likely to
come from opposite extremes [both Left and Right] of the political spectrum" (91) .
12Baudelaire's criticism of
Napoleon Ill's and Haussmann's versions of "progress"focuses on the
marginalization of common but disturbing urban figures and icons. Hugo Friedrich proposes that
"Baudelaire knew that a poetry suitable to his time could be achieved only by seizing the nocturnal
and the abnormal: . . . [ to] escape the triviality of 'progress,' the disguise of a terminal era . . .
Baudelaire defined progress as 'the progressive decay of the soul and the progressive domination of
matter'" (25).

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COMPARATIVE
LITERATURE
/1 46

trialistprogress?Baudelaire'saestheticsreactto, but at the sametime stem from,

romanticvisions of the extraordinary,even as he distanceshimself drastically
fromthe romanticvisionof naturebyimaginingan artificialparadiseand uncovering its fake nature.Metaphorsof negation abound in Baudelaire's,Cernuda's,
and Paz'sworks,because modern poetry constitutesitself as "negative"as it reacts againsta previoustraditionor canonical stance;this is whatPaz has called
"latradicinde la ruptura."Depersonalization,disintegration,and deformation
are some of the negative terms that are appropriatedby this poetics of disillusionment,where the romanticsublimeand the predominant"I"tend to perish,
and the spleen, the grotesque,and the strangeflourish.13
Cernuda'sHollow City
Cernuda'spoemson ruinsexemplifythispoeticsof disillusionmentin twentiethor
centurySpanishliterature.Cernudahas often been called a "Neo-Romantic"
a "Post-Romantic"
Serano
de
to
la
Torre
I
do
not
want
100-101), yet
poet (see
limit his workto those categories.LikeBaudelaire,Cernudamanipulated,parodied, and playedwith romanticdiscourse,while at the same time incorporating
and Coleridge'saestheticideals and seeing in Bcquera
manyof Wordsworth's
romanticprecursor.Nonetheless,Cernuda'spoem "Otrasruinas"(OtherRuins)
enacts a critique of a decadent modern realitywithout nostalgicallyidealizing
the naturaland the mythicalpast. Cernuda'sruins are "other"ruins, not the
same,not the typical.
Despite the greattemporalgap betweenCernudaand Baudelaire,in the texts
I analyzetheyboth reactin a similarwayto modern urbanprogressand its social
tensions. In 1928 and 1929, Cernuda spent an academicyear as a lecturer in
Toulouse.Althoughhe wasalreadyan avidreaderof Baudelaireand the French
literarytradition,his visitsto Parisand Toulousewerefundamentalfor his development as a poet, especiallyin Un rio, un amor(1929). Indeed, Cernudareveals
his earlyinterestin, and admirationfor, Baudelaire'spoetry in both Historialde
un libro(1958) and "Baudelaireen el centenariode Lasfloresdel mal"(1959).14
When confrontedwith Baudelaire'srepresentationof Parisand his depiction
of modern "details,"Cernuda emphasizesthe subtleties that characterizethe
Frenchpoet'sparadoxicalpoetics:"deun lado, la vidaurbanamoderna,de otro,
la vidaelementalinalterable.No se tratade aquelviejoponcifsobrela oposicin
13Rousseau,
Coleridge, and Hugo, among others, explore diverse notions of grotesque beauty
that influenced Baudelaire's own aesthetics of the bizarre and the grotesque. But, as Virginia E.
Swain argues, "Baudelaire builds on and yet departs from Rousseau's theory and practice to create a
new, modernist idiom ... if Rousseau wanted to do away with the grotesque and, implicitly, the
absolute monarchy that sponsored it, Baudelaire welcomed the grotesque, which he understood as
a principle of instability or a destabilizing force. For Baudelaire, the grotesque was a subversive
force in oppressive times" (6-7).
14See, for
example, his statement that "Baudelaireno pertenece ya solamente a la tradicin potica
literaria
de Francia, sino a la de todo el occidente ... es el primer poeta moderno" (Prosa Complta
y
1037; Baudelaire does not only represent part of the French poetic and literary tradition, he is
crucial for the Western canon ... he is the first modern poet) . All translations from Spanish into
English are mine unless otherwise indicated.

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ANDPAZ/147
BAUDELAIRE,
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ciudad y campo (Baudelaire, es bien sabido detestaba el verdor y lo natural),

sino una oposicin mucho mas sutil entre norte y sur, entre urbanismo y primitivism" (Prosa Complta1046; on one side, modem urban life, on the other side,
the essential, unchangeable life. It is not about that old poncif about the opposition between city and country [it is well known that Baudelaire hated everything
green and natural] , but it is about something more subtle between north and
south, urbanity and primitivism) . Baudelaire's wild swan symbolizes the primitive and the bizarre in the great urban sphere, one of the many misplaced subjects in Tableauxparisiens. In Cernuda's version of the modern city, the primitive
seems to be buried among the crumbled buildings, and the marginal figures of
Tableauxparisiens are not really the protagonists of his poems.
The main character of "Otrasruinas,"from his book Vivir sin estar viviendo, is
the city itself. Its aristocrats and its crowds come and go, and its streets are made
for the passer-by'sconvenience: "Hechas para los pasos del ocioso transeunte,/
El matinal jinete o la nocturna carretela" (Intended for the stride of the leisurely
passer-by,/The morning rider or the night cab).15 "Otras ruinas" recaptures
Baudelaire's paradoxical vision of a modern city in ruins, but takes a clearer
critical position against the ambitions of capitalist progress. Cernuda's text also
lacks the melancholic mood of "Le Cygne,"in which the speaker feels lost and
nostalgic in the new city but at the same time is enthralled with the ugly faces of
urban life. In "Otrasruinas" there is no nostalgia, no melancholia, and no allure.
The ruins of this unnamed city are simply the remains of old buildings scattered
unnoticed around the many new constructions of the modern city.16Why are
these poets looking at the past, anxious about its possible disappearance, instead
of being mesmerized by the future? Cernuda's gaze is not anachronistic because
it is multiple, contradictory, full of ambiguities, and perplexed by the paradoxical aspects of modernity.
The first verses of "Otrasruinas" highlight Cernuda's critique of the paradoxical consequences of progress. Machines construct and destroy buildings, constantly re-shaping the urban landscape: "La torre que con mquinas ellos
edificaron,/Por obra de las mquinas conoce la ruina" (Machines turn into ruins,
/That tower they built with machines"). Cernuda's text thus immediately distances itself from the baroque topos of the ruins, in which time and nature overtake the symbols of power and civilization. For example, a baroque poem like
Rodrigo Caro's "Cancin a las ruinas de Itlica" portrays the ruined houses of
the Roman imperial leaders as invaded by plants and inhabited by lizards. The
15Poesia
Complta401-403. The unpublished translation of Cernuda's "Otras ruinas" is by Pedro
Garcia Caro.
16In the second
chapter of my book project, "Citiesin Ruins in Modern Poetry," a more thorough
study of the correspondences between Baudelaire's and Cernuda's works, I consider Bcquer and
Eliot as key readers of modernity, whose works bridge different time periods and cultural backgrounds. As Luis Fernandez Cifuentes suggests, Cernuda is not the first Spanish poet touched by
this French poet's modern gaze, yet he is the one who reaches in his own way "(los) originarios
extremos de Baudelaire" (Baudelaire's original ideas). Cernuda's gaze "podra parecerse anacrnica si no aportara su propia variante ... su propia adopcin de la multiplicidad" (Cifuentes 167;
could seem like an anachronism ... if it did not contribute its own vision ... its own incorporation
of multiplicity).

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COMPARATIVE
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/1 48

modern cityin ruins is not overtakenby naturebut by the epitome of the artificial: machines.Cernuda'stext also eschewsthe romanticvision of ruins,where
the externallandscapeis a melancholicreflectionof the speaker'sinternalconflicts,his ruined self. Bycontrast,these poems historicizethe processof destruction, whichis often causedbywarand progress,not time and nature.
Criticshaveoften overlooked"Otrasruinas,"yet fewpoems by Cernudaexemplify so well the aesthetics of the modern city in ruins, crowdedyet sterile, a
victimof its own contradictions.The personifiedruinsin the second stanzaclaim
possessionof the citywalls,rotten,broken,and perforated:"Laruinaha clamado
por suyostantosmuros/Sobrehuecosdisformesbostezando"(Ruinshaveclaimed
for themselvesso manywalls/Yawningovershapelessholes). Thophile Gautier's
complaint about the abandoned staircases of Parisian houses is echoed in
Cernuda'sline "Otramode escaleraque conduce a la nada"(Or a flight of stairs
leadingnowhere).In the devouringprojectof reconstruction,progressas a rupture between the past and the future seems like an "old"staircasethat leads
nowhere.
Althoughin Cernuda'stext, time and natureare not the destructiveelements
withinthe city,"Otrasruinas"does have a didacticpurposein common with the
baroque toposof the ruins:namely,to teach its readernot to be vain and not to
take for granted the emblems of imperialpower.For the seventeenth-century
eye (here exemplified by Franciscode Quevedo's "ARoma sepultada en sus
ruinas"),the classicalruins of Athens and Rome expose the fugitivenature of
what might appearpermanent and eternal: "jOhRoma, en tu grandeza,en tu
hermosura/Huylo que era firme,y solamente/Lo fugitivopermanecey dura!"
(Oh Rome, in your greatness,in your beauty/Whatwasfirm has fled, and only/
The fugitive rests and lasts!). Cernudaalso underlines the recurrentparadox
thatapparentlyeverlastingemblemsof powerinevitablydisappear:
Intacto nada queda, aunque parezca
Firme, como esas otras casas hoy vacas,
Hacia cuyos salones las ventanas permiten
El vislumbre de espejos, oros sobrecargados,
Entre los cuales discurra la vanidad solemne
De ilustres aristcratas . . .
Nothing remains intact, although it seems
Firm, like those other empty houses
Windows in their drawing rooms allow
A glance at their mirrors, ornate gold,
In their midst took place the solemn vanity
Of illustrious aristocrats . . .

Cernudaworkedon "Otrasruinas"fromJanuary1948untilJanuary1949,and
he considereda varietyof titles,among them "Londres"
and "Babel"(see Harris
and Maristany809). He had in fact lived in Englandfrom 1939 until 1947, in
London the last two years.Thus, he witnessedthe effects of the Germanbombardments.Eventhough Cernudadecided not to particularizethe cityin "Otras
ruinas,"the metaphorof the sterile city as a desert clearlyalludes to Eliot's The
WasteLand.Indeed,Cernuda's"Comodesierto,adondemuchedumbres/Marchan
dejandoatrsla ruta decisiva/Estrilera esta ciudad"(Likea desert,wheremul-

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BAUDELAIRE,
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titudes/March leaving behind the decisive route,/Sterile was this city) recalls
Eliot's famous lines: "Unreal city ... a crowd flowed over the London Bridge, so
many,/I had not thought death had undone so many" (55) . Eliot's verses, in
turn, allude to Baudelaire's "Les sept vieillards"as well as to Canto 3 of Dante's
Inferno, where Dante encounters "a crowd of Neutrals," those who were barely
admitted into Hell.17
Cernuda's critique of a capitalist society sustained by colonial products is intensified by the city's inability to produce food:
Toda ella monstruosa masa insuficiente:
Su alimento los frutos de colonias distantes
Su prisa lucha intil con espacio y con tiempo,
Su estruendo limbo ensordecedor de la conciencia.
A whole monstrous insufficient mass:
Its food are the fruits of distant colonies,
Its hurried life a futile fight with time and space,
Its roar the deafening limbo of conscience.

The speakerfeels lost and disturbed,like the swanin Baudelaire's"LeCygne,"1*

and the fastpace and deafeningnoise of the citynumb the people's conscience,
creatinga crowdanalogous to the Neutralsso despised by Dante. Unlike Baudelaire'stext, however,where men are captivevictims,Cernuda'spoem finally
blames men for being accomplicesin the city'sabsolute ruin: "Elhombre y la
ciudadse corresponden/Comoal durmienteel sueno, al pecadorla transgresin
oculta"(Manand citysuit each other,/Like dreamand dreamer,the sinner and
the secret/Transgression). The cityand modern man arejoined by a destructive
symbiosis;they are connected to each other like the dreamerwho hides in the
dream and is ultimatelydefined by the dream,or the sinner who is defined by
his transgression.
Cernuda's"Otrasruinas"projectsthe emptinessand hopelessnesssymptomatic of "elyo en crisis."Nevertheless,the apocalypticend of "Otrasruinas,""Del
dios al hombre es don postrerola ruina"(Fromgod to man is a belated gift the
ruin) lacksin my view a melancholicfeeling. The melancholicsubjecttends to
be self-absorbedand to drownin his own miseries,while Cernuda'sspeakeris
not looking for a reflectionof the self in the cityin ruins.The past,represented
bythe once-luxurioushouses,is parodiednot idealized.It epitomizeswhatManuel
Ulacia described as "un castillo medio en ruinas, con un interior lleno de
comodidades (la edad moderna)" (51; a castle partlyderelict,with an interior
full of comforts[the modern age]) .

17Emilio Baron shows how Eliot and Cernuda share a

strong interest in Baudelaire, although he
compares their poems without analyzing them in a formal way. Eliot's influence on Cernuda's work
has been thoroughly examined by (among others) Fernando Ortiz, C.G. Bellver, and Octavio Paz
("Lapalabra edificante") .
18This also resembles the situation of the
speaker at the end of "Lessept vieillards": "Etmon me
dansait, dansait, vieille gabarre,/Sans mts, sur une mer monstrueuse et sans bords" ("Mysoul like a
dismasted wreck went driving/over a monstrous sea without a bourn"; TheFlowersof Evil, trans. Roy
Campbell, p. 113).

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COMPARATIVELITERATURE/1 50

Crossingthe Threshold:Baudelaire'sand Paz's UrbanTrips

Although in his essay on Baudelaire,Cernuda complains that the Hispanic
literaryworldhas failed to payhomage to the 100thanniversaryof LesFleursdu
Mal, at the end of the essayhe mentions one contemporarypoet who recognized Baudelaire'sgiantfootprint:"Baudelairefue 'un poeta de la poesia' (como
escribiOctavioPaz)"(1047;Baudelairewasa "poetof poetry"[as OctavioPaz
wrote]) . Particularlyimportantfor both Cernudaand Pazwas the wayin which
Baudelaire'skeen consciousnessof self generated poetic worksthat constantly
reflect upon the present and its defining elements. For Paz, Baudelaireepitomized the contradictorynature of modernity,"latradicinde la ruptura":"Fue
el primerpoetade la modernidady su critico,su apologistay su detractor.Nuestra
modernidadno es la de Baudelaire,pero sin ella la nuestrano existiria. . . Fue
el primeroen senalarque el arte moderno esta fundado no en principioseternos o metahistricossino en la temporalidadmisma"("Rupturas"
193; He was
the first poet of modernityand its first critic, apologist, and its detractor.Our
modernityis not Baudelaire's,but withouthis, ourswould not exist. He wasthe
first to indicate that modern art is not based on eternal or metahistoricvalues,
but in temporalityitself) ,19
Pazalso aimsto graspthe historicalevolutionof the city,and, like Baudelaire,
he seems to be disturbedby nocturnalvisions of the repercussionsof modern
progress.Paz's "Crepsculosde la ciudad"(The City'sTwilights)establishesa
dialogue with Baudelaire's"Crpusculedu soir" and "Crpusculedu matin,"
notjust throughthe titlesof the poems, but more importantlythroughthe tone
and imagery they share. Broken staircasesand unfinished buildings are not
the only ruins in the metropolis.There are also human ruins, epitomized in
these three poems by prostitutes.The texts are framedby the beginning and the
end of the day,thus situatingthe speakerin a citythat still "sleeps"at the threshold of awakening.
In "Crpusculedu soir"the reductivecomparisonsof prostitutesto antsand to
gaslightsthatilluminatethe night are open to a varietyof interpretations.In any
case,Baudelaireseems to referto prostitutionas an institutionratherthan to the
prostitutes themselves:"LaProstitutions'allume dans les rues;/Comme une
fourmilireelle ouvre ses issues"("Prostitutionspreadsits light and life in the
The prostitutesare
streets:/Likean anthill opening its issues it penetrates").20
the main workersof the night because they "rule"over the commerce of their
19In this
passagePazstressesBaudelaire'sconsciousnessof time and describesthe Frenchpoet as
double-sided, both fascinated and horrified by modernity.In doing so, Paz evades the other
Baudelaire,the poet who wasequallyobsessedwithcapturingthe "eternal"withinthe "ephemeral"
elements of the modern city- the depiction of the stampof time, "lareprsentationdu prsent."
Benjaminalso recognizedthat Baudelaire'shunt for a lyricpoetry that wouldseize modernity"by
the neck"is a historicalendeavor:"Hisworkcannotmerelybe categorizedas historical,like anyone
else's,but it intended to be so and understooditselfas such"("OnSome Motifs"168). Baudelaire's
workthus constantlyreflectsupon how historydeterminesour waysof perceivingrealityand aestheticallyinterpretsit. See also SusanBlood'scommentthat "ThedistinctionBenjaminmakeshere
is crucial.... a poetry that maybe categorizedas historicalshould not be confusedwith a poetry
whoseconstitutivecategoryis historicity"(99).
20The translationfor Baudelaire's
"Crpusculedu soir" (Comes the CharmingEvening) and
"Crpusculedu matin"(MorningTwilight)arebyDavidPaulin TheFlowersofEvil

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ANDPAZ/151
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own bodies, and, like the commodities in the arcades, they are displayed throughout the streets of Paris.21
In "Le Crpuscule du matin," Baudelaire depicts the prostitutes 'physical degradation after a hard night's work:
Lesfemmesde plaisir,la paupirelivide,
Boucheouverte,dormaientde leur sommeilstupide,
Lespauvresses,tranantleursseinsmaigreset froids,
Soufflaientsurleurstisonset soufflaientsurleursdoigts.
Womenof the streets,sunkin stupidsleep,
Seemedall raweyelid,andgaspinglip.
- And the poor'swomenfolk,huggingthe chillydroop
Of lankbreasts,blewon theirfingers,and theirsoup.

The description is grotesque: the prostitutes' open mouths bespeak the hunger,
exhaustion, anguish, and horror of the devouring capitalist project. Nonetheless, as Christine Buci-Glucksmann argues, there is considerable ambiguity in
the stereotypical representation of women in Baudelaire's poetry: "Partoutl'obsession baudelairienne de la prostitue inscrit un imaginaire masculin de la femme
ambivalent- ange ou bte-, o Benjamin dchiffre l'angoisse de l'impuissance
masculine, les stations de croix du mlancolique"(84; Baudelaire's obsession with
prostitutes everywhere inscribes an ambivalent male image of women, angel or
beast, in which Benjamin sees the anguish of male impotence, the melancholic's
stations of the cross [my translation]). Baudelaire's texts alwaysdepict prostitutes
through a male lens; they are poetic imagery, part of the urban landscape, both
the producers and the products of modernity.22
The decrepitude of the city in "Crpuscule du soir"and "Crpuscule du matin"
represents the metaphorical and literal twilight of Paris. The prostitutes and the
sick disappear with the arrival of sunlight. It is undeniable, of course, that
Baudelaire's discourse here (and elsewhere) is misogynistic, but I do not want to
disregard it or empty it just because of that fact.23Baudelaire's ambivalence to21See Weinbaum:"Womanis a commoditywho harborsa peculiarsecretaboutthe constellation
of socialrelationshipsin whichshe is ensnared... As Baudelaireinsists,the workingwomanlabors
to transformher substanceinto surface... In contrastwith the idealizedwomanwho'sborn and
bred into her role as superficialbauble, the workingwoman'svalue lies in her abilityto market
herselfas a commodity,for it is herjob to transformher body into a livingshowcasedisplayingthe
economicrelationsof productionand exchange ... In contrastto the idealizedwoman,prostitutes
inhabitthe citystreetsand the worldof financialtransactions"(404-405). And we mayadd that,in
contrastto the workingwoman,the idealizedwomandoes not inhabitanyworld;her unreal,impalpable self seems as aestheticizedand artificialas the depictionof prostitutesas modern commodities seems"real."
22In ElizabethWilson'swords,"Prostitutesbecame, in any case, a metaphorfor the whole new
regimeof 19th centuryurbanism.Both Baudelaireand Benjaminviewthe metropolisas the site of
commodityand commodification. . . Prostitutioncomes to symbolizecommodification,massproductionand the riseof the masses"(105).
23Fora
comprehensivediscussionof the waysin whichBaudelairecontributesin this poem to the
misogynisticliteratureof modernity,even as he incorporatesmarginalizedwomen into his representationsof the city,see Wolff:"Theprostitute. . . elicitsa similarlyambivalentattitudeof admiration and disgust.. . . Moreunequivocalis Baudelaire'ssympathyfor those other marginalwomen,
the old womanand the widow.. . . But none of these women meet the poet as his equal. They are
subjectsof his gaze,objectsof his 'botanizing'"(42). Wolffalso arguesthatbyequatingthe modern
withthe public,male thinkerssuch as Baudelaire,Benjamin,Simmel- and, more recently,Berman
and Sennet- haveignored the experiencesof women,restrictingthem to the privaterealm.For a
convincingcritiqueof Wolff,see Wilson99-100.

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COMPARATIVE
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wardwomen as subjectsof modernitycomplicateshis discourseand permitshim

to writea text like "Aune passante,"where the womanin blackis both an object
and a subjectof desire.24
Paz'ssecond sonnet of the five that comprise "Crepsculosde la ciudad"depicts an urban landscapesimilarto Baudelaire's,where the prostitutesalso arrange themselvesin the sick body of the city,described as leprous stones and
wallsfull of sores. Paz'spoem portraysa modern city in ruins, illuminatedby a
violentburningsunset:
Arde el anochecer en su destrozo;
cruzo entre la ceniza y el bostezo
calles en donde, annimo y obseso,
fluye el deseo rio sinoso.
Dusk burns in its wreck;
among ashes and yawns, I cross
streets from where, anonymous and obsessed,
desire flows, devious river.

The open-mouthed figures of Baudelaire's poem and the yawing ruins of

Cernuda'spoem are connected here to the dead-end streetin which death and
sleep mingle, "entrela ceniza y el bostezo."The ashes and the yawn serve as
metonymiesof death and sleep, both encounteredin the darknessof the night.
The topos of ruins is usuallyaccompaniedby the presence of a riveras the witness of history.Here Pazcomparesdesire to a deviousriverrunningthroughthe
streets,like the undergroundcurrentof the sewers.Fromthis disturbingscene,
death and the prostitutesemerge:
la domstica muerte cotidiana,
surgen, petrificadas en lo oscuro,
putas: pilares de la noche vana.
from the domestic, daily death,
they emerge, petrified in darkness,
whores: pillars of vain night.

Death loses its aura.There is no grandeurin domesticity,in the dailychore of

dying. The petrified prostitutesare not mere sculpturesdecoratingthe urban
night. They are the pillarsof the night, ironicallythe mainstaysof a vain society
- the emblems of a petrified present. But Paz'srepresentationof prostitutesis
just as misogynisticas Baudelaire's:they do not talk,look, or listen. They are the
ultimateobjectsof the night; they are the unmovablestones of the urbanlandscape,petrifiedby socialimmobilityand economic injustice.
In both Baudelaire'sand Paz'spoems, the crpusculesrepresenta threshold
in time, tinged by the violence of change. In Baudelaire's"Crpusculedu matin"
the duel betweenthe artificialand naturallight is evidentin the depictionof the
red sun as both a bloody eye and a big blinding lamp, the beating heart of the
24Wilson
eloquently explains how Baudelaire's representations of marginal female figures- outcasts that seem artificial, mysterious, and beautiful - eroticize the changing city: "In Baudelaire's
writing, women represent the loss of nature, which appeared a key feature of urbanization. The
androgynous woman, the lesbian, the prostitute, the childless woman, all indicate new fears and
new possibilities, raising questions - even if they don't provide answers- as to the eroticization of
life in the metropolis" (106).

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city: "comme un oeil sanglant qui palpite et qui bouge,/la lampe sur le jour fait
une tache rouge; o l'me . . . Imite les combats de la lampe et du jour" (When,
quaking and cringing like a blood-shot eye,/The lamp stains the coming day
with its dye;/When . . . The soul, like the lamp, renews its unequal fight.) In nineteenth-century Paris, gaslights were still very much a source of fascination; by
depicting the sun as an artificial cultural product, Baudelaire is also signaling
the tensions raised by modern progress.25As in Baudelaire's poem, Paz's depiction of the sky in "Crepsculos de la ciudad" is bloody: "Elcielo se desangra en el
cobalto" (The sun bleeds to death in the cobalt). Here the predominant symbol
of a ruined nature is the sky,obsessively portrayed as broken, empty, heavy, "fosa,"
"piedra y pozo" (a grave, a stone, and a well). Paz's paradoxical imagery of the
sky as a grave or a well underlines its symbolic meaning as a place for the dead,
but by substituting for the elevated nature of the sky the hollowness and the
concreteness of a stone, he is treating the sky as another broken piece of this
artificial landscape of urban ruins.
Finally,Paz's poem stresses the speaker'sjourney through the ruined city,while
in the two poems by Baudelaire the speaker appears mainly at the end of "Crpuscule du soir." This dazed speaker emphasizes his need to stop hearing the
roaring city in order to be able to reflect, retire, and "gather"himself: "Recueille
toi, mon me, en ce grave moment,/Et ferme ton oreille ce rugissement" (Collect yourself, my soul, this is a serious moment,/Pay no further attention to the
noise and movement) . The call for introspection demonstrates the level of selfawareness of the poet, who needs to speak to himself ("mon me") to reflect
upon the city and the social decline it projects. In a similar move, Paz's speaker
in the last sonnet tries to face himself: "Hacia mi mismo voy; hacia las mudas,/
solitarias fronteras sin salida" (I move towards myself; towards the mute,/lonely
frontiers, with no way out) . The journey through the city has evolved into a journey into the self, and in that sense the speaker seems to share the romantic view
that ruins are a reflection of the self in crisis. However, as in Baudelaire's and
Cernuda's texts, these ruins are not merely a reflection of the speaker's internal
turmoil; they are also the producers, the provokers, of the crisis of the modern
subject. Finally,in the post-world war context, Paz'spessimistic vision of the modern city in ruins is closer to that of Baudelaire, Eliot, and Cernuda's "Otrasruinas"
than to, say,Neruda's poetics of solidarity and poems on ruins, which were products of the Spanish Civil War.
Paz's "Crepsculos de la ciudad" and Baudelaire's "Crpuscule du soir" and
"Crpuscule du matin"portray a modem city that devours itself, an overbearing
modernity entangled in an endless process of destruction and reconstruction.
25In The Arcades
Project,Benjamin notes that "On Baudelaire's 'Crpuscule du soir': the big city
knows no true evening twilight. In any case, the artificial twilight does away with all transition to
night. The same state of affairs is responsible for the fact that the stars disappear from the sky over
the metropolis" (343). In the artificially illuminated modern city "technological" products seem to
replace nature. The lack of stars implies a lack of hope, a lack of vision. In Les tableauxparisiens the
stars are usually perceived through the eyes of the ideal, of the beloved, and through her eyes the
speaker seems to see in the night. But in the poems discussed here, there is no particular subject
besides the poet or the speaker himself. The prostitutes, the sick, the workers, the robbers: they are
all collective subjects without a face.

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COMPARATIVE
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/1 54

And in the twilightzone of this modern city,the emphasisis not so much on its
reconstructionendeavorsas on its darkcornersand its desolate, shadowymodern subjects.Cernuda'sand Paz'spoetics of disillusionmentrevealtheir critique
of the failing promisesof urbanprogress.The mysteryand the fascinationthat
Baudelairehad found in modern ruins seems to be exhaustedand erasedby the
middle of the twentiethcentury.
The Modern Cityin Ruins
In her book on Benjamin,Susan Buck-Morssnotes that, while the Baroque
*
allegoristsconsidered"theruin . . . emblematicof the futility,the transitorysplendor' of human civilization,out of which historywasread as a 'processof relentless disintegration/"Benjaminused the ruin in TheArcadesProjectas "anemblem
not only of the transitoriness and fragilityof capitalistculture, but also its destructiveness"(164). Cernuda's"Otrasruinas"is an allegory of the destructive
natureof modernity.Nonetheless, the constantreinventionand reconstruction
Paz's"Crepusculos"
of the citycontrastswithits sterilityand lackof productivity.26
also servesas a criticismof the newversionsof progress,where "todo,se arrastra,
inexorablerfo, haciala nada, sola certidumbre"(everything[is] draggedby the
inexorablerivertowardsnothingness,our only certainty). As Paz suggestsin his
essay "Rupturasy restauraciones,""Seha quebrantadonuestravision de la historia como un proceso lineal ... La estrella del progreso se desvanece en el
horizonte"(193;Ourvisionof historyas a linearprocesshas broken. . . The star
of progressvanishesin the horizon).
"Crepsculosde la ciudad"exemplifieshis interpretationof modernpoetryas
"latradition de la ruptura."By constructinga poem out of five sonnets, Paz inscribeshis text in a traditionalform, even though he also distanceshimselffrom
tradition.In the onlyessaythatPazexclusivelydedicatesto Baudelaire,"Presencia
y Prsente,"he also remarkson the tensionsproducedby Baudelaire'sparadoxical definitionsof modernity:
No es difcil comprenderla reticencia de Baudelaireante las definiciones:. . . lo moderno y lo
bizarroson realidadescambiantese imprvisibles... la rflexionde Baudelairedesembocaen una
paradojainsostenible. . . la victoriade la modernidades su ruina . . . (47)
26FranciscoRuizSoriano
emphasizesthe destructiveside of the moderncityand howBaudelaire,
Eliot, and Cernudaevade it through a melancholicgaze: "Laciudad moderna aparece. . . como
elemento destructorde los valoreshumanospositivosy de las mismaspersonas,por eso los poetas
proyectansu ideal y amorhaciael pasadomitico o lugareslejanos:en "LeCygne"de Baudelaire,la
negra tisicabusca con la miradalos ausentescocoteros. . . detrsde la pared de bruma;Eliot en
TheWasteLand,mirahacialosjardinesde Munichdonde se tomabacaf y charlabaun rato ... ; y
Cernudaen Unrio, un amor,proyectasu amorhacialugareslejanoscomo Daytonao Nevada"(49;
The moderncityappears... as destructiveof the positivehumanvalues,and of people themselves,
that is why poets project their ideal and their love towardsa mythicpast and far awayplaces:in
Baudelaire's"LeCygne,"the sick black woman searcheswith her gaze the absent palm trees . . .
coveredby the fog; in Eliot's TheWasteLand,he looks at Munich'sgardens,where he chattedand
drankcoffee ... ; and in Cernuda'sUnrio,un amor,he projectshis love towardsforlornplacessuch
as Daytonaor Nevada). There is indeed a nostalgicvein in the poems RuizSorianomentions,but
they are also characterizedby an ironic distancethat recognizesthe impossibilityof reachingthe
past,mythicor not.

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BAUDELAIRE,CERNUDA,AND PAZ/ 155

It is not difficultto understandBaudelaire'sreluctancewhen it came to definitions:. . . the modern

and the bizarreare changingand unpredictablerealities. . . Baudelaire'sreflectionculminatesin
an untenableparadox. . . the victoryof modernityis its ownruin . . .

In short,the paradoxicalrepresentationof the moderncityin ruinsis an allegory

of modernity'sself-devouringprocessof constantreinventionand self-destruction.
As Anthony Stanton has argued, because Paz and Cernuda are "dos poetas
conscientementemodernos"(224;twopoets consciouslymodern), they are in a
constantdialogue with the modern tradition.Stantonalso emphasizesthat for
Paz and Cernuda "el exilio no es un fenmeno histrico que empieza en un
momento determinadosino que es la condicin esencial,ontolgica,del poeta
moderno"(225;exile is not a historicalphenomenon thatbeginsin a determined
momentin time;it is the essential,ontologicalconditionof the modernpoet) .
Baudelaire,Cernuda,and Paz thus conveythrough their differentlenses and
diversepoetic traditionsa similarpreoccupationin theirportrayalof the modern
city in ruins; all three want to prevent the historicalremains of the city from
being treatedas waste.Althoughtheyparticipatein a dialoguewith their respective French, Spanish,and Mexican literarycircles, they all also cross national
borders.Baudelaire'sconceptualizationof modernity'sdestructivenature provides the allegoricalground from which Cernuda'sand Paz'spoetics of disillusionmentstem, and Baudelaire's,Cernuda'sand Paz'spoems of the cityin ruins
beartheirstrongestpoliticalcritiqueof modernity'sversionsof progress.27
Universityof Oregon
Works Cited
RevistaHispnicaModerna
Baron,Emilio."Retratodel poeta:Baudelairevistopor (Elioty) Cernuda."
48.2 (1995):335-48.
Vol.1 and 2. Ed.ClaudePichois.Paris:Gallimard,1976.
Baudelaire,Charles.Oeuvrescompltes.
Ed.
Marthiel
andJacksonMathews.Norfolk:NewDirections,1955.
Evil
. TheFlowers
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. LesFleursdu mal:TheFlowersofEvil Trans.MaryTrouille.Boston:DavidR. Godine, 1982.
Bellver,C.G. "LuisCernudaand T.S.Eliot:A Kinshipof Messageand Motifs."RevistadeEstudios
Hispnicos17.1 (1983): 107-24.
Benjamin,Walter.TheArcadesProject.Trans.HowardEiland and KevinMcLaughlin.Cambridge
and London:HarvardUniversityPress,1999.
. TheOriginof German
TragicDrama.Trans.John Osborn.Londonand NewYork:Verso,1998.
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