BAUDELAIRE’DE ESİN PERİSİNİN İŞLEVİ

Abstract

In the two sonnets entitled the Sick Muse and the Venal Muse, which appear in the first publication of Flowers of Evil (1857), Baudelaire, who tries to escape from spleen through artificial paradises, elaborates again on a very well-known theme favored by the Pléiade poets too and demonstrates the characteristics of his muse and his sincere approach to this inspiration. The poet who is devoted to this imaginary phenomenon mediating between God and each intellectual having a creative power, and who moves away from the brutal reality to the ideal, in order to extract beauty better from evil, reflects as a matter of fact the tragedy of the muse peculiar to that of mankind. Similar to a poet who feels like a stranger among people who do not understand him, this muse that sticks in the mind with traces like those of a woman, is living a life full of financial problems, pain of a love affair with satanic power. The poet feels breathless next to such a muse who is seduced and in a pathetic situation. This source of his creativity and productivity is a mirror at the same time reflecting the miserable situation of mankind. The poet wishes that the poverty of the muse would not give him the opportunity to sell his skill to an ordinary person who could not appreciate its value and that his Christian muse would express himself as much determined as his pagan muse. The muse presents this psychic spleting of the pset.