jane dark's sugarhigh!

"at this stage of his life"

From the annals of Anglophilia, this fantasia from the estimable Enid Starkie. Gathering momentum as it goes, it consigns Baudelaire's talent to the paternalistic mercies so redolent of Empire, with an easy confidence that, had he only been heir to such management strategies, he could really have had a chance to straighten up and fly right, never doubting the desirability of this imagined outcome, a kind of starched quasi-achievement which is invested with more and more libidinal force with each clause before collapsing back down to the fleshpots of Paris.

In England Baudelaire, at this stage of his life, would have gone to either Oxford or Cambridge, as an undergraduate, where, under proctorial and tutorial supervision, he would have done himself no permanent harm. He would probably have made a name for himself in undergraduate circles, in artistic and literary clubs, and this might have satisfied his need for eccentric self-expression. In this simple and adolescent manner he would have grown out of his 'green-sickness', and, under tutorial pressure, might even have learned to work at set hours, in order to pass his examinations. It is, however, probable that he would have been a serious student, for, with his facility and felicity in Greek and Latin, he might have been a Balliol Scholar, and have read with distinction for Honour Moderations, while his taste for metaphysical and philosophical argument might have led him finally to Greats. But, in whatever manner he chose to spend his time, he would have been kept under kindly supervision during these critical years. Unfortunately the university system in France does not fulfil the same function as it does in England, and the life into which artistic and literary young men and plunged, on leaving school, is the Bohemian life of the Latin Quarter, the life of cafés, literary circles and student balls.

— Baudelaire, Enid Starkie

Posted by jane at October 2, 2006 04:10 PM | TrackBack