WALTER BENJAMIN READER OF BAUDELAIRE

the poet against the crowd and the emergence of modernity

Abstract

Based on the analysis of Marcel Proust’s literary work and, especially, Charles Baudelaire’s poetic work, as well as philosophical texts by Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin develops, in On Some Motifs in Baudelaire, some key concepts, such as “experience” (Erfahrung), “shock”, “isolated experience” (Erlebnis) and their relations with the decline of “experience”. The phenomenon of the masses of large cities is also carefully examined by the author, who locates the figure of “shock” at the heart of Baudelaire’s work, starting from there to diagnose the decline of the “aura” in his poetry. Benjamin highlights the unique and visionary character of Charles Baudelaire’s poetry, analyzing poems from The Flowers of Evil and also from The Parisian Prowler to illustrate what would be the apex of his mission: “the destruction of the aura in the experience of shock,” which would be the price of the sensation of modernity earned by the poet. The aim of this article is to rescue and update Walter Benjamin’s reading of Charles Baudelaire’s work, in addition to establishing relationships between the philosopher’s critical-literary enterprise and some more contemporary readings on the emergence of modernity, of which the French poet was, in addition to being a witness, a determining subject.