‘Modern art’ in the context of 19th century France, can be defined by its place in a world

of transition. Developments in technology, the sciences of the mind and body and

politics on a global level creating a rapidly changing society, one can say that

modernity, at the time, sought to interpret this new world and one’s place within it, as

well as looking inward at the process and nature of art itself. According to Baudelaire

in Peintre de la Vie Moderne (1863) “Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the

contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable”. This

effort to capture the evanescent essence of life can be seen as the impossible pursuit

of the modern artist, and while it’s a diverse collection of themes and ideas, this is an

undeniable tenet on which Spleen de Paris is based.

In the collection’s prologue, a letter to his editor Arsène Houssaye, Baudelaire prefaces

his poetry with a mission statement of sorts, explaining his reason for this

experimentation of form. He draws attention to the boon of the poetry’s brevity, “We

can cut wherever we please, I my dreaming [...] the reader his reading” and notes that

he has done away with “superfluous plot” in favour of ‘vertebrae’ that can exist as

independent works. In this reflection on his experimentation, one can see both the

ambition in this reinvention of form (“Which one of us [...] has not dreamed of the

miracle of a poetic prose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme”) as well as the

artist’s turmoil at the prospect of failing to achieve their momentous goals (“an accident

which [...] can only deeply humiliate a mind convinced that the greatest honour for a

poet is to succeed in doing exactly what he set out to do”)

This exploration of the role of the artist as the interpreter of reality, and the

overwhelming sense of burden that can accompany this impossible task, can be seen

throughout Spleen. In ‘The Artist’s Confiteor’, Baudelaire describes the euphoria of

existence (“What bliss to plunge the eyes into the immensity of sky and sea!”) which

gradually wanes into frustration and despair; the artist is consumed by the enormity of

the experience (“These thoughts [...] grow too intense”) and is torn between revelling

in the moment and the unattainable urge to capture life in its entire detail (“Stop

tempting my desires and my pride”). By the poem’s conclusion, the artist’s sense of

wonder has become despair at the gulf between the enormity of the muse’s brilliance

and the limits of artistic expression (“The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist

shrieks with terror before being overcome.”). Baudelaire’s frustration at the ephemeral

nature of inspiration can be seen, too, in Le desir de peindre, wherein the narrator

describes a ghost-like, monstrous muse that both inspires and overwhelms (“I am

consumed by a desire to paint the woman who appeared to me so rarely and who so

quickly fled”). This rare and elusive spectre can be said to personify artistic inspiration;

the narrator is struck by her power (“like a lightning flash, her glance illuminates : it is

an explosion in the dark”) yet she cannot be captured in her entirety. This fleeting

moment of clarity seems ultimately futile, lost, one might say, in the self-doubt of the

artist who is doomed to be tormented by the insurmountable task of taming their

inspiration (“fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze”).

But how much of the modern artist’s search for the impossible can be attributed to the

nature of art, and how much rests on the ego, or the culture in which the artist works?

One O’Clock is, unlike most of Spleen’s layered and metaphorical texts, conspicuously

frank and satirical. In this poem, Baudelaire offers a humorous and scathing look at the

life of the modern artist through his narrator’s thoughts while reentering (“At last! the

tyranny of the human ! face has disappeared”). His narrator reflects on the lack of

meritocracy in the Parisian world of modern art (“he is the dullest, stupidest and most
celebrated of our authors”) and the performative and false nature of these social circles

(“boasted (why?) of several ugly things I never did”). The anxious, fragile egotism of

the artist is the poem’s focal point (“dissatisfied with myself, I long to redeem myself

and to restore my pride”) and it is hard to see, from this narrator’s viewpoint, the

transcendent or noble nature of art that can be felt in the aforementioned work. In this

sense, the impossible pursuit of the modern artist is most evident, perhaps, in the

poem’s closing, “grant me grace to produce a few beautiful verses to prove to myself

that I am not the lowest of men, that I am not inferior to those whom I despise”; For this

artist, his work serves to elevate him above the commoners, and to prove his place

among those he resents so deeply.

While Spleen de Paris is a diverse collection exploring many themes, it’s undeniable

that Baudelaire’s reflection on the artistic process, what it means to be an artist, and

the unique challenges and possibilities posed to modern artist at the time informs much

of its texts. The potential of newfound artistic liberty and experimentation facing the

anxiety, self-doubt and fickle nature of inspiration can be seen in the above texts and

beyond, and its in this that the modern artist’s search for the impossible is evident in

Baudelaire’s Spleen de Paris.