French Symbolist Aesthetics I From Baudelaire to Valéry

[@EinsZwo0]

Cool

[@russellbrickey7698]

This is great stuff. Wish I could take your class. Man is an encyclopedia.

[@jamespotts8197]

I straight out love these lectures. Very few have the same passion for Literature, Philosophy, Writing, History.......etc. Keep it up, I one day hope to master as well teach these great and important subjects, because without the arts what are we? Animals, primates that swim in violence. History proves as such.

[@mathiaswarnes6350]

Thanks so much James!! I'm taking a bit of a break from constant producing of these, but the Classical Mythology class, and last semester's Tempest lectures are the best so far.

[@ExcitedAnacondaSnake-hg8ec]

Even in the English departments these days literature is becoming rare. Instead of aesthetics the focus is diversity politics and social history. As if aesthetics didn’t matter.

[@lunasingz]

Great lecture.Thank you so much.

[@cosmiczeuk]

Thank you. Excellent. Very meditative!

[@walterforsyth1414]

what a ride..thank you.

[@EinsZwo0]

Dont judge a talk on wether it starts with a wikipedia definition. Eliphas Levi with some never heard take on the aphinx might pop in.

[@ExcitedAnacondaSnake-hg8ec]

I never considered Baudelaire decadent. That implies deterioration. His musings on luxury , he was a studious student for many years with humbler surroundings. When he had access to high living it was new. His father had died and had a cash influx which he quickly blew through. He grew through the experience. And course it is highly symbolic.

[@domdom9496]

11:28 12:00 12:37 12:40 13:11

[@edwardrichardson8254]

German aesthetics "felt behind the times"? One German (Wagner) had more global aesthetic influence than every French writer of the 19th century. He was the Metallica of opera, and the most famous artist on the planet. This is some fan mail from Baudelaire to Wagner: Dear Sir: I have always imagined that however used to fame a great artist may be, he cannot be insensible to a sincere compliment, especially when that compliment is like a cry of gratitude; and finally that this cry could acquire a singular kind of value when it came from a Frenchman, which is to say from a man little disposed to be enthusiastic, and born, moreover, in a country where people hardly understand painting and poetry any better than they do music. First of all, I want to tell you that I owe you the greatest musical pleasure I have ever experienced. I have reached an age when one no longer makes it a pastime to write letters to celebrities, and I should have hesitated a long time before writing to express my admiration for you, if Id did not daily come across shameless and ridiculous articles in which every effort is made to libel your genius. You are not the first man, sir, about whom I have suffered and blushed for my country. At length indignation impelled me to give you an earnest of my gratitude; I said to myself, “I want to stand out from all those imbeciles.” The first time I went to the Italian Theatre in order to hear your works, I was rather unfavorably disposed and indeed, I must admit, full of nasty prejudices, but I have an excuse: I have been so often duped; I have heard so much music by pretentious charlatans. But you conquered me at once. What I felt is beyond description, and if you will be kind enough not to laugh, I shall try to interpret it for you. At the outset it seemed to me that I knew this new music, and later, on thinking it over, I understood whence came this mirage; it seemed to me that this music was mine, and I recognized it in the way that any man recognizes the things he is destined to love. To anybody but an intelligent man, this statement would be immensely ridiculous, especially when it comes from one who, like me, does not know music. The thing that struck me the most was the character of grandeur. It depicts what is grand and incites to grandeur. Throughout your works I found again the solemnity of the grand sounds of Nature in her grandest aspects, as well as the solemnity of the grand passions of man. One feels immediately carried away and dominated. Quite often I experienced a sensation of a rather bizarre nature, which was the pride and the joy of understanding, of letting myself be penetrated and invaded - a really sensual delight that resembles that of rising in the air or tossing upon the sea. And the music at the same time would now and then resound with the pride of life. Generally these profound harmonies seemed to me like those stimulants that quicken the pulse of the imagination… There is everywhere something rapt and enthralling, something aspiring to mount higher, something excessive and superlative. For example, if I may make analogies with painting, let me suppose I have before me a vast expanse of dark red. If this red stands for passion, I see it gradually passing through all the transitions of red and pink to the incandescent glow of a furnace. It would seem difficult, impossible even, to reach anything more glowing; and yet a last fuse comes and traces a whiter streak on the white of the background. This will signify, if you will, the supreme utterance of a soul at its highest paroxysm. From the day when I heard your music, I have said to myself endlessly, and especially at bad times, “If I only could hear a little Wagner tonight!” There are doubtless other men constituted like myself… Once again, sir, I thank you; you brought me back to myself and to what is great, in some unhappy moments. Ch. Baudelaire I do not set down my address because you might think I wanted something from you.

[@mathiaswarnes6350]

Yes, of course, and then there was Nietzsche’s discovery of, love, envy and more for Baudelaire’s relation to Wagner. The German inferiority/superiority complex re. French art and aesthetics goes further back. See Schlegel’s Dialogues on Poetry, for example. I was half joking and just wanted to give the French some love after all those German philosopher lectures.

[@ExcitedAnacondaSnake-hg8ec]

@@mathiaswarnes6350the French don’t have a superiority complex? My feeling while reading most French writers is they consider Paris the center of the universe. I still love French poetry however.

[@Harrison-wo4eg]

A wonderful lecture -- I do wish I could stop the music, it is so distracting -- I loved the information imparted but the music I could not take and had to stop the lecture. It's really jarring to try to listen and absorb information with this bizarre choice of loud background noise.