ANDRÉ GIDE’İN KADINLAR OKULU’NDA BAUDELAIRE’İN ÜÇ ŞİİRİ

Abstract

In The School for Wives by André Gide, written in diary form by the novel character Evelinewho loses all her hope for happiness after a very difficult period in her marriage and who tries toovercome this difficulty which turns into an inevitable tragedy, Sara, a young Jewish girl playsan important role in this educative short story by reading three poems by Baudelaire. The poemsare: The Death of Lovers, Invitation to the Voyage and The Fountain. The death which presents apositive look is considered as being much more beautiful than life itself. In that world, a unificationof lovers take place, where they preserve their senses despite the fact that they have no bodies. Inthe second poem which is not set in France, lover are invited to a place where “scent is in harmonywith the magnificence of the East”. In the last poem, the spirit of the poet rises towards the Ideallike water that spurts from a sprinkler (fountain). The most common feature of all these threepoems is sublimation of love, beauty and aesthetics by means of an imaginary voyage which is a sort of escape. The lovers of Baudelaire are more liberated than the couples Gide portrays who are not a good match for one another and whose marriage cracks under the pressure of strict Catholic morals