Correspondence Theory and the Case of Baudelaire's Sphinx Intertext

References

• 1977 . Les Quatres vents de iesprit (2d poème liminaire), cited by Yves Vadé, “Le Sphinx et la chimère,” . Romantisme , : 15 – 16 . in two parts, I, 8
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• Paul Ricoeur's term . 1965 . “ which he uses interchangeably with “double sens”. ” . In De I interprétation: essai sur Freud Paris : Seuil. . For a thorough discussion of the multivocal nature of the symbol, see chapters 1–3
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• In the essay on Freud, Ricoeur speaks of “la texture paradoxale qu'on pourrait exprimer comme unité du cacher-montrer. Les vrais symboles sont au carrefour des deux fonctions que nous avons tour à tour opposées et fondues l'une dans l'autre; en même temps qu'ils déguisent, ils dévoilent; en même temps qu'ils cachent les visées de nos pulsions, ils découvrent le procès de la conscience de soi: déguiser, devoiler; cacher, montrer; ces deux fonctions ne sont plus du tout exteriéures l'une à l'autre; elles expriment les deux faces d'une unique fonction symbolique” (pp. 478–79). The “cacher-montrer” is a property not only of dream symbolism (the specific case in this passage) but also of two other “zones d'émergence”: the myth and the poem.
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• Which Derrida defines in “La Mythologie blanche” as follows: “l'effacement par frottement, l'épuisement, l'effritement, certes, mais aussi le produit supplémental d'un capital, l'échange qui, loin de perdre la mise, en ferait fructifier la richesse primitive, en accroîtrait le retour sous forme de revenus, de surcroît d'intérêt, de plus-value linguistique, ces deux histoires du sens restant indissociables” (250). The reputed incompatibility of Ricoeur's and Derrida's tropological theories seems to me to be undercut by their apparent agreement concerning the dialectical nature of the trope. In “Le Retrait de la metaphore,” Poésie 6 (1979), Derrida candidly admits that “je souscris à certaines propositions de Ricoeur” (p. 108) and protests, rather, against Ricoeur's critique of him in La Métaphore vive (Paris: Seuil, 1975), which is based, he takes pains to show, on a misinterpretation of “La Mythologie blanche.”
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• Baudelaire's sequential numbering of them in the 1861 edition is followed by page numbers in Pichois' edition of the CEuvres Complètes: XVII (21), XXVII (29), LXVI (66), LXXVI (73)
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• Vadé's study documents, in particular, the widespread incidence of the symbol in French literature of the nineteenth century, placing it in opposition to another recurrent image, “la chimère.”
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• The order of exposition does not necessarily conform to the order of composition. “Les Chats” was first published in 1847 and the other three in 1857, leading to the widely held assumption that “Les Chats” is the earliest work. Establishing dates of composition in Baudelaire is often an inconclusive and not always a particularly relevant task. More important, it seems to me in this case, is the concatenation of poems in the recueil, which Baudelaire arranged carefully and revised considerably but which always maintains the same sequential relationship between the four sphinx poems
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• Tumell , Martin . 1953 . Baudelaire: A Study of His Poetry 226 London : Hamish Hamilton. .
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• Pasinetti , P. M. 1948 . “The ‘Jeanne Duval’ Poems in Les Fleurs du Mai,” . Yale French Studies , 1 ( 2 ) Fall-Winter : 114
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• Riffaterre , Michael . 1971 . “La Description de structures poétiques: deux approches du poème de Baudelaire, ‘Les Chats’” (first published 1966 in English). ” . In Essais de stylistique structurale Edited by: Delas , Daniel . 331 – 32 . Paris : Flammarion. .
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• Cf. Aristotle's reasoning, in the Nichomachean Ethics, that all things aim for the good, that happiness is the highest good humans seek and that contemplation is the one self-sufficient human activity that most perfectly attains the goal of happiness
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• Baudelaire's poetic alchemy works something like this: the fine-grained sand (“sable fin”) transmutes into something purer, better (“plus fin”), namely, the “parcelles d'or” that denote an eternal dream-vision (“un reve sans fin”)
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• Cellier , Léon . 1971 . “‘Les Chats’ de Charles Baudelaire: essai d'exégèse,” . Revue des sciences humaines , 142 avril-juin : 209
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• Jakobson , Roman and Lévi-Strauss , Claude . 1977 . “‘Les Chats’ de Charles Baudelaire” (first published 1962), rpt. in Roman Jakobson. ” . In Huit questions de poétique 170 Paris : Seuil. .
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• Bahti , Timothy , ed. 1982 . Toward an Aesthetic of Reception xxiv University of Minnesota Press. . From Paul de Man's introduction to Hans Robert Jauss
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• These vers represent a grotesque transformation of the poetic vers of line 3, as Jauss points out (p. 156), producing a particularly macabre effect
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• According to Jauss, “debouche” as a rhyme for “Boucher” effectively negates it (him), creating an unanticipated image of “the grotesque: the still harmonious representation of the last perfume escaping from the uncorked bottle overturns into the dissonant connotation of a ‘decapitated’ rococo painter Boucher” (p. 157). De Man seizes upon this insight—he calls it “a rare Lacanian moment” (p. xx)—as an exception to Jauss's usual practice of paying “little attention to the semantic play of the signifier.” The difference between the two critics' approaches is clearly evident in Jauss's reluctance and de Man's readiness to extend the semantic play. “After having gone this far,” de Man admits, “it becomes very hard to stop. Should one not also notice that this bloody scene is made gorier still by the presence of a proper name (Boucher) which, as a common name, means butcher, thus making the ‘pâle Boucher’ the agent of his own execution?” From a psychological perspective, this grotesque association of rhymes, which bursts from the semantic field like a nightmare from the unconscious, is altogether consistent with the attitude of self-disgust and horror that pervades the poem
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• Refuting Jakobson and Lévi-Strauss's supposition of a desert scene in the first tercet of “Les Chats,” Riffaterre argues that “le sonnet n'actualise pas dans les mots une telle image” (p. 346). His criticism of their particular use of “le principe des équivalences” to derive “désert” from “solitudes” seems altogether justified, but the desert image might reasonably be inferred when elements of Baudelaire's sphinx intertext are examined closely. Riffaterre cites, by contrast, the example of “Spleen II,” where “le désert est une réealité géographique: il est nominé.” The allusion is metonymically unmistakable in the phrase, “dans le fond d'un Sahara.” The case of “Avec ses vêtements” is even more overt, since the signifier itself occurs in the simile, “Comme le sable morne et l'azur des déserts.” In “La Beauté,” the reference is less explicit, although I think it is sufficiently implicit in the verse, “Je trône dans l'azur comme un sphinx incompris.” The association of “azur” with “désert” in the previous example, I would argue, can be adduced intertextually as supporting evidence because of the common link of the sphinx. A sphinx reclining majestically beneath an azure sky is assuredly a sphinx located in a desert. A similar process of correspondence can be applied to “Les Chats,” where the pertinent line is, “Des grands sphinx allongés au fond des solitudes.” Riffaterre's point that “solitudes” does not in and of itself suggest “désert” is certainly valid, even if a desert is a vast, empty, “solitary” space. But the phrase, “dans le fond d'un Sahara,” of “Spleen” is syntactically parallel to “au fond des solitudes” of “Les Chats,” and the two poems are related intertextually by the sphinx. The desert association of “fond” in one thus spills over into the other, rendering the inference of a desert setting altogether credible in “Les Chats.” We have here, then, a compelling case of intertextual correspondence in which the ensemble of the permutations of a symbol informs the individual examples of it.
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• In addition to the passage from Jobes quoted earlier, see Larousse, XIV, 1005–06; The Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1910), XXV, 662–63; La Grande Encyclopédie (Paris: Société Anonyme de la Grande Encyclopédic, n.d.), XXX, 386–87
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• Cellier's contention that “Les chats évoqués ici sont des chats entiers, des mâles, des matous” (p. 215) seems predicated upon outdated and discredited male and female stereotypes. Georges Legros, “Du sexe des chats ou de l'art de lire,” Cahiers d'analyse textuelle 13 (1971), who agrees with Cellier's dismissal of Jakobson and Lévi-Strauss's androgynous reading, is nonetheless bothered by “la raideur” of Cellier's affirmations and even doubts “la pertinence de la question” (pp. 126–27)
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• Pellegrin , Jean . 1972 . “Felices Feles,” . Poétique , 9 : 93
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• The same line of reasoning can be applied to the dichotomy, “amoureux fervents/savants austères.” Both male and female embodiments of these two fundamentally opposed human types are implcit in the the masculine plural
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• Ricoeur , Paul . 1969 . Le Conflit des interprétations: essais d'herméneutique 68 Paris : Seuil. .
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• Cf. Vadé's remarks in this regard: “Appréhension du monde comme énigme, sens du symbolisme universel, souci d'un équilibre entre les contraires, affirmation de l'absolu et de l'unité finale, telles sont done les caractéristiques essentielles qui peuvent aider à définir la vision du monde qui utilise le sphinx comme une figure privilégiée” (I, 6)
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• Here, I disagree with de Man's interpretation of the song as “not the sublimation but the forgetting, by inscription, of terror” (Jauss, p. xxv). To the degree that the sublimation of his fear and melancholy by an act of art produces a catharsis conducive to purging himself of these emotions, there is forgetting or an attempt to forget. De Man nevertheless rightly draws attention to the phrase “Oublié sur la carte,” where the forgetting, in my reading, is canceled by the map's fixing (remembering) of the sphinx's location, just as the poet's desire for absolute oblivion in death is checked by the inscription of that desire in the poem
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• “Correspondances,” my emphasis. “Choses infinies” is only one of the possible subjects of the relative clause
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