Extract
[...] However, the sailor uses a 'brûle-gueule', in other words, a pipe. This act evokes a torment inflicted on the poet's mouth, as if trying to silence him by burning him. In verse 12, another sailor turns the bird-poet into ridicule by imitating him as he limps, thus confirming that the animal has been injured by the sailors. Allegory of the critics who seek to ridicule Baudelaire, like the satires published in Le Charivari, a satirical newspaper that regularly mocked writers deemed 'incomprehensible', 'too modern', or judged ridiculous by the bourgeoisie. [...]
[...] This poem appears to us then as symbolizing the very heart of Spleen and Ideal. Les Fleurs du mal stages the role and suffering of the poet, an unrecognized creator, rejected but carrying a mission. "L'Albatros" is followed by the poem "Elévation", the other side of poetry, the victory of the spiritual over the flesh, access to the ideal. "L'Albatros" shows a bird captured by sailors and humiliated by sheer boredom. In what way does 'L'Albatros' illustrate the condition of the poet, between grandeur and humiliation, thus condensing the fundamental tensions of The Flowers of Evil? [...]
[...] Here, the albatross is both a royal divinized figure and a ridiculed animal. In the image of the first poem of the section 'Spleen et Idéal', 'Bénédiction', the poet is also born as cursed as he is blessed, king in the skies and jester on the ship. He is thus master in spirituality, in his domain of creation, but also completely misunderstood in materiality, the cruel world he inhabits. In verse the albatross is presented as an angel with 'great white wings', just after being juxtaposed with the adverb 'piteously', he who is oversized for this deck, like too beautiful for this squalid place. [...]
[...] Being a pivot in the section 'Spleen and Ideal' because it is situated between 'Benediction' and 'Elevation', 'The Albatross' is the midpoint between the two poems that show the birth of the cursed poet and spiritual triumph. [...]
[...] Yet, he seems to be also condemned to misunderstanding and ridicule. He is driven by a constant existential unease, he, this soul in search of an ideal trapped in a mundane and cruel world. Baudelaire seeks beauty in pain, elevation in fall, ideal in spleen. In 1857, Les Fleurs du mal appear, a collection dedicated to his will to extract beauty from evil and spleen. The Spleen and Ideal section opens with Benediction, the birth of the poet as a social curse and divine blessing. [...]
