4 - Romantic temperament and “Spleen and Ideal”

Summary

THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF EXPERIENCE

Walter Benjamin's germinal insight was to have read “Spleen and Ideal” in conjunction with Freud's analysis of memory and perception in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. This enabled him to understand the aesthetics of both “Correspondances” and “Spleen” as facets of Baudelaire's poetic response to the crisis of experience in market society, a response he dubs the “shock-defense.” Benjamin's perspective has its limitations: in making the “Spleen and Ideal” section the core of his entire reading, Benjamin neglects important developments in the “Tableaux Parisiens” and the Petits Poëmes en prose; he even overlooks the importance of the projects of beautification and evilification in “Spleen and Ideal” itself; finally, he somewhat hastily merges the textual figure of the Poet with the historical figure of Baudelaire himself. On this last point, it is worth recalling that “Some Motifs in Baudelaire” was only a draft portion of a larger study of the poet that Benjamin never finished: an examination of Baudelaire's early art criticism will largely corroborate Benjamin's assessment of his historical significance, which is presented in shorthand, as it were, in the unfinished essay. Then Benjamin's psychodynamic reading of “Spleen and Ideal” can be broadened to encompass the projects of beautification and evilification, as well as correspondences and spleen.