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Figures du ‘Cygne’: Baudelaire, l’allégorie, la métamorphose
| Summary: | Metamorphosis shapes several characters in Charles Baudelaire’s great poem titled “Le Cygne [The Swan]”. Memory is the major stage of the poem: mourning and melancholy have the capacity to bring certain figures of antiquity into modernity. In this “Parisian tableau”, the form of the city is in metamorphosis: the old city seems to disappear into new constructions or it is minimized into a sketch. The city appears as a picture or tableau only in the speaker’s memories. Baudelaire constructs a poetic tableau in alternating emptiness and overflow: the earth is dry as the desert, the sky is too blue, the ocean too great. From Ovid through baroque theater, urban architecture, and the arts of modernity, Baudelaire’s swan renews the tradition of the metamorphosis and situates it at the heart of modern poetics. |
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| Subject: | Ovide Métamorphoses Poetry Aesthetics Poèmes Poétique de la ville Metamorphosis Esthétique Charles Baudelaire Poetics of the city Ovid |
| Country: | Portugal |
| Document type: | journal article |
| Access type: | Open |
| Associated institution: | Carnets, Revista Electrónica de Estudos Franceses |
| Language: | French |
| Origin: | Carnets, Revista Electrónica de Estudos Franceses |
| Summary: | Metamorphosis shapes several characters in Charles Baudelaire’s great poem titled “Le Cygne [The Swan]”. Memory is the major stage of the poem: mourning and melancholy have the capacity to bring certain figures of antiquity into modernity. In this “Parisian tableau”, the form of the city is in metamorphosis: the old city seems to disappear into new constructions or it is minimized into a sketch. The city appears as a picture or tableau only in the speaker’s memories. Baudelaire constructs a poetic tableau in alternating emptiness and overflow: the earth is dry as the desert, the sky is too blue, the ocean too great. From Ovid through baroque theater, urban architecture, and the arts of modernity, Baudelaire’s swan renews the tradition of the metamorphosis and situates it at the heart of modern poetics. |
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