sonnets Flashcards
(23 cards)
what did gautier want to become and why was this important?
poet or painting, choosing poetry, he incorporated lots of artist imagery into his poems
what was a key philosophy in 19th cent. french parnassianism (which developed into symbolism)
art for arts sake, rather than didatic/ moralising art
what does art for arts sake argue?
- art in itself has its own principal of morality.
- a piece of art without a moralising purpose has a stronger moralising power than one that didnt
- morality is in the form of art NOT its subject matter
what is a notable feature of Baudelaire’s poetry (s)
structure: one of his principle passions is the passion for order, for symmetry and for sculpture
what does Baudelaire consider a poem to be
the discipline of form imposed upon emotion and experience and thought
Baudelaire on order/ disorder
-one of the first modern poets to be aware of disorder in the world and in himself
what does Baudelaire like to focus upon
-attitudes to the dandy, attraction to the unhealthy and the morbid, scorn, provocation
how did Baudelaire different from other poets?
- whereas traditionally in poetry the symbolism used was fairly homogenous, oceans= sadness, fire of love etc, he chose to focus on different things
- Baudelaire’s art involved making something which wasn’t typically beautiful magnificent:
what stage of life was particularly important for Baudelaire?
- childhood: he had an extremely close relationship with his mother
- poetry allows you to recover the joys of childhoood
what is an alexandrine form?
- rhymically made up out of 12 beats, with a hemistitch in the middle
- four stressed syllables per line, 1 at the end, one before the caesura. The others vary
- two quatrains followed by two tercets
- rhyme scheme typically: abba, abbba, cdc dee
what is rime plat, croissee, embracee?
plat: rhyming couplets
croissee: ABAB
embracee: ABBA
key difference between gautier and baudelaire?
Gautier: restrict the poets role as a maker, making them a spectator of the visible world. Gautier was a sculpture of words
Baudelaire: poet is actively experiencing things, they find their own meanings
what happens in spleen pluviose
- Paris and the poet’s room are the site of transformations and substitutions
- dead in the cemetery receive the rain , soul of dead poet roams the rooftops, smoking log wheezes, dirty pack of cards talk about a former passion
- life and death are seen as merged or confused . Inanimate objects are given human characteristics
what is Baudelaire’s spleen?
- Baudelaire entitled the first and largest section of his anthology fleurs du mal Spleen
- In this context, spleen depicts something much more like clinical depression or psychosis (as a result of perceived inadequacies) rather than a world-weariness
what does the journey into Baudelaire’s spleen involve?
and what can this be connected to
- a decent into a kind of no mans land, the intermediate between life and death in which objects are anthropomorphised and the poet is depersonalised in a series of lucid self-explorations
what is the allegorical figure in spleen
- a figure pouring water, which can be seen as a destructive allegorical force
- pluviose and spleen combine to destruct reality
who are the dialougic figures in pluviose and what do thye tal abou
Jack of Hearts and Queen of Spades, they come from a dirty pack of cards and discuss lost love affairs grimly
quick summary of Rimbaud’s life
- started writing at a very young age
- ran away from home during the franco prussian war
- completely stopped writing at 21 years.
what movement did rimbaud belong to/ what did he influence
symbolism, but influenced many surrealists
what are key features of his poetry/ thought
- find a new language (often by radically re-imagining language)
- revolt against everything which is order
- language loses its referential purpose and becomes a series of sounds
- un rhetorique de silence
- l’alchemie du verbe
what was verlaines aim?
he wanted to be recognised as a poet who continued the tradition begun by Rimbaud
Verlaine context (rebellous)
- escaped form school
- deserted his wife and young child
- lived and travelled with Rimbaud and they had an affair
- he shot Rimbaud
what is the importance of la decadence?
- began in the Satiricon: Petronius speaks of the vices of a civilisation taht si celebratign its gradual death
- in many of Verlaines poems, melacholy as a disease is almost a philosophical theme
- Verlaine, inspired by Baudelaire, was obsessed with depicting the morbid, the obscene, and the perverse
