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He manipulated paint like an "old master" and did astounding things with the higher tones of the colour scale. He was not an impressionist until he met Monet. Then in audacity he outstripped his associates. Discouraged by critical attacks, his courage had been revived by Charles Baudelaire, who fought for Richard Wagner as well as for Poe and Manet.
In the Crimean camps, on the Parisian boulevards, in London parks, Guys strolled, crayon in hand, a true reporter of things seen and an ardent lover of horses, soldiers, pretty women, and the mob. Baudelaire called him the soldier-artist. He resembled in his restless wanderings Poe's man of the multitude, and at the end of a long life he still drew, as did Hokusai. Who was he?
Ninnies, simperers, and simpletons have vanished. The poor, suffering human frame becomes a horrible musical instrument from which the artist extorts exquisite and sinister music. We turn our heads away, but the tune of cracking souls haunts our ear. As much to Rops as to Baudelaire, Victor Hugo could have said that he had evoked a new shudder.
James admired the view: what a romance we should have had from Gautier of illicit joys and their requital by a knife, what a strophe from Baudelaire half-obscene, half-mournful, wholly melodious. But Theophile Gautier tarried in Venice, and, as for M. Charles, the man of pronounced tastes and keen nose, stuck in the main to Paris.
So set in his anonymity was he that Charles Baudelaire, his critical discoverer, was forced to write a long essay about his work and only refer to the artist as C.G. The poet relates that once when Thackeray spoke to Guys in a London newspaper office and congratulated him on his bold sketches in the Illustrated London News, the fiery little man resented the praise as an outrage.
Gods and archangels might certainly indulge exclusively in the literature and art for which Baudelaire may stand in this discussion. But gods and archangels require neither filters nor disinfectants, and may slake their thirst in the veriest decoction of typhoid. Baudelaire, who admired persons thus afflicted, has a fine line: "De la réalité grands esprits contempteurs";
Unamuno is probably the Spanish contemporary poet whose manner owes least, if anything at all, to modern developments of poetry such as those which take their source in Baudelaire and Verlaine.
In its inception, it arose out of a group of young poets who worked in a conscious imitation of the methods of the French decadents; chiefly of Baudelaire and Verlaine.
What great record is yours, and were Hell a reality how many souls would we find wreathed with your poisonous blossoms. The village maiden goes to her Faust; the children of the nineteenth century go to you, O Baudelaire, and having tasted of your deadly delight all hope of repentance is vain.
That trick that full stop at the end of nearly every fourth line it impairs the charm of the music and renders its flow jerky; coming, as it does, like an ever-repeated blow, it grows wearisome to the ear, and finally abhorrent. Baudelaire, in form, is more cunning and variegated. He can also delve down to deeps which the other never essayed to fathom.
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