This essay will discuss Baudelaire’s exploration of nineteenth century Paris, making detailed references and discussing a variety of poems from the section entitled “Tableaux Parisiens” of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. Charles Baudelaire is one of the most compelling poets of the nineteenth century, praised for his modernist innovative style and often shocking subject matter the poet is acclaimed for his interactions and observations with every aspect of Parisian life. In “Tableaux Parisienne”, his 1868 addition to Les Fleurs du Mal Baudelaire explores themes such as exile, death, the city’s landscape and fleeting love while also managing to find beauty in unexpected places and people. In his “Salon de 1846” Baudelaire writes about
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The speaker hears the birds singing and compares the street lamps to stars. The poet also invokes the concrete and fixed details of Paris “Les tuyaux, les clochers, ces mâts de la cite.” The poet also paints the city as place of fantasy and dreams, where the poet finds “des horizons bleuâtres, Des jardins, des jets d'eau pleurant dans les albâtres” and where he can “ bâtir dans la nuit mes féeriques palais.” When the winter comes in the city the poet closes his shutters and resigns “de faire De mes pensers brûlants une tiède …show more content…
In this poem the speaker endeavours to expose the dark underside of the city at night. The night is the “ami du criminel” in which all sin, violence and spleen are unleashed. The poet depicts the Demons that come out at night and “cognent en volant les volets et l'auvent” and “La Prostitution s'allume dans les rues.” The poet compares the different aspects of the city to wild beasts and anthills. In the last verse of the poem Baudelaire describes the hospitals at night where “les douleurs des malades s'aigrissent!” and we once again feel and eerie and ever looming sense of death, “La sombre Nuit les prend à la gorge; ils finissent Leur destinée et vont vers le gouffre commun.” As night falls Paris becomes a threatening circus of death and danger where the poet does not feels
The speaker hears the birds singing and compares the street lamps to stars. The poet also invokes the concrete and fixed details of Paris “Les tuyaux, les clochers, ces mâts de la cite.” The poet also paints the city as place of fantasy and dreams, where the poet finds “des horizons bleuâtres, Des jardins, des jets d'eau pleurant dans les albâtres” and where he can “ bâtir dans la nuit mes féeriques palais.” When the winter comes in the city the poet closes his shutters and resigns “de faire De mes pensers brûlants une tiède …show more content…
In this poem the speaker endeavours to expose the dark underside of the city at night. The night is the “ami du criminel” in which all sin, violence and spleen are unleashed. The poet depicts the Demons that come out at night and “cognent en volant les volets et l'auvent” and “La Prostitution s'allume dans les rues.” The poet compares the different aspects of the city to wild beasts and anthills. In the last verse of the poem Baudelaire describes the hospitals at night where “les douleurs des malades s'aigrissent!” and we once again feel and eerie and ever looming sense of death, “La sombre Nuit les prend à la gorge; ils finissent Leur destinée et vont vers le gouffre commun.” As night falls Paris becomes a threatening circus of death and danger where the poet does not feels