Paris Spleen is a collection of prose poems written by Charles Baudelaire between 1857 – 1867. It was published posthumously in 1869 by his sister after he died of syphilis.
The book presents the reader with a series of anecdotes capturing incidents and moments experienced by Baudelaire throughout those years. It is intended to create a tapestry effect, capturing the essence of city life, taking in sex, sin, poverty, ennui, cruelty and social inequality.
The term ‘spleen’ in this context is not a reference to the bodily organ. Rather, it embodies melancholy, a general disgust with everything, plus rage, eros, and resignation.
The Illusion Of Intimacy
One piece in the collection, called ‘The Eyes of The Poor’, stands out for me in particular, since it combines social commentary with a rather stinging depiction of what you might call ‘the illusion of intimacy’—that is, the illusion that human beings can ever truly connect with one another on an intimate level.
It begins with the somewhat uncompromising line ‘Ah! So you would like to know why I hate you today?’ This is a man addressing his wife (and make no mistake, this is a tale about what Baudelaire calls ‘feminine impermeability’ that would be deemed politically incorrect today, although it is not that aspect that interests me here).
The man describes a visit the pair pay to a new, ‘dazzling’ cafe.
We had spent a long day together which to me had seemed short. We had duly promised each other that all our
thoughts should be shared in common, and that our two souls henceforth be but one — a dream which, after all,
has nothing original about it except that, although dreamed by every man on earth, it has been realised by none.
Already, we see the dream of what we commonly mean by ‘intimacy’ punctured. The dream that thoughts can be shared, that two souls can be one has, the poet tells us bluntly, been ‘realised by none’.
The rest of the piece presents us with an illustration of this. First, Baudelaire describes the grandeur and decadence of the cafe —‘the blinding whiteness of the walls, the expanse of mirrors, the gold cornices and mouldings’ and so on.
Then, he proceeds to depict a poor family—a man and his two children out for an evening stroll—who the couple see through the window.
The man, who is described as ‘worthy’, is about forty years old. He is holding a small boy by the hand, and carrying another in his arm. All are in rags, and all ‘stared fixedly at the new cafe with admiration’.
The eyes of the father, we are told, say ‘How beautiful it is! How beautiful it is! All the gold of the poor must have found its way onto those walls.; while the little boy’s says ‘But it is a house where only people who are not like us can go.’
The narrator is touched by this sight, and feels ‘ashamed of our glasses and decanters, too big for our thirst.’
And then we get this extraordinary passage:
I turned my eyes to look into yours, dear love, to read my thought in them; and as I plunged my eyes into your eyes, so beautiful and so curiously soft, into those green eyes, home of Caprice and governed by the Moon, you said:
“Those people are insufferable with their great saucer eyes. Can’t you tell the proprietor to send them away?”
So you see how difficult it is to understand one another, my dear angel, how incommunicable thought is, even between two people in love.
No doubt that the woman is portrayed extremely unsympathetically here. We could make much of this, but as I said it is not my principle interest.
Instead, I draw your attention to the lack of connection we see between these ‘two people in love’. The narrator turns his eyes to his lover ‘to read my thought in them’.
Naturally, he assumes that the woman with whom he is intimate shares his thoughts. He is mistaken. In fact, she is thinking something entirely different to him. The opposite, in fact.
The piece ends with the narrator noting how ‘incommunicable thought is, even between two people in love.’
And therein lies the problem with ‘intimacy’. However much we may want to be intimate with another human being, in practice it is simply not possible. We are separate entities. We inhabit not just different bodies, but different minds, different souls. We are sealed off from one another, whether we like it or not. We are atomised.
Which is why it makes me smile when people talk of intimacy in romantic relationships when such a state is not truly possible.
Closeness is real, yes. Love is real. But intimacy is an illusion.
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To read more about the modern playboy’s dilemma go here.
