Topicality of Baudelaire

Abstract

In this essay, it is a question of tackling Baudelaire’s topicality from his perception of notions of “modernity”, “progress” and “evil”. Indeed, in his definition of modernity, the poet engages in a dialectic in which eternity triumphs in art, the eternity of art. Now, too often this founding argument is retained in the relative part, which relates to the transient, to the fugitive. The idea that Baudelaire has of progress is inseparable from his sense of evil, a progress which is individual through the “diminution of original sin”, and not by material progress, that false progress celebrated in his time (and our days).