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Document Details : Title: Sacred and Profane Remotivated Subtitle: Baudelaire's Autotelic Centralization of the Self Author(s): MEADOWS, Patrick Journal: Studies in Spirituality Volume: 22 Date: 2012 Pages: 175-211 DOI: 10.2143/SIS.22.0.2182852 Abstract : While considering the relevance of certain modern and traditional perspectives on the psyche as backdrops for a reading of the nineteenth-century canonical French author, Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), the analysis concerns the opposition, emphasized in sacred scripture, between man and Satan, which is transposed by Baudelaire onto the level of his own dichotomous psyche, the artistic expression of which is shown, by reference to metaphysical doctrine, to be an allegory of the ‘desire’ inherent in manifestation to detach itself from the Principle and to remain in an illusion of self-contained autonomy. Thus the essay argues that, despite his latent mystical tendency, Baudelaire’s writings involve a spiritual retrogression toward a quasi-Manichaeistic perspective, which is paradoxically counterbalanced by the elaboration of an idiosyncratic artistic ‘unity’ that installs the individual self in the place of the divine Self. |
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