FRENCH 269: Transfigurative Lyric: Baudelaire and Mallarmé

Course Description

What happens when injustice runs rampant, when democracy fails, and when it's no longer possible to believe in ancient forms of faith? Can lyric poetry console? Can it inspire? Can it re-enchant a disenchanted world? Together we'll read some of the most powerful poetry from late-nineteenth-century France, including what may possibly be the greatest 100-word sonnet ever written. (Poems to be read in French; discussion to be held in English.) We'll think about what modernity is, how "modernist" forms were born, when writers turned away from nature and toward artifice, why poets started trying to outdo music, whether it's possible to fool oneself knowingly, who's left when a lyric poet strives for "impersonality," and which poems have the greatest chance of saving our lives. The class may even serve as our own little haven, twice a week, from the growing chaos around us.