In February, 1865, he writes: "As for my present state, it is an absolute abdication of the will. (C'est une parfaite abdication de la volonté.)" What reason, I wonder, was there for him to "abdicate" the one element in our natures by which we live at our greatest, the very root of our passions (as Balzac said), "nervous fluids and that unknown substance which, in default of another term, we must call the will?" Man has a given quality of energy; each man a different quality: how will he spend it? That is Balzac's invariable question. All these qualities were always in Baudelaire.
Had he finally, after so many years in which his energy was supreme, lost some of his energy, struggling, as he seems to do, against insuperable difficulties that beset him on either side, like thieves that follow men in the dark with the intention of stabbing you in the back? Does he then try to conjecture what next year might bring him of good or of evil? He has lived his life after his own will: what shall the end be? He dares neither look backward nor forward. It might be that he feels the earth crumbling under his feet; for how many artists have had that fear—the fear that the earth under their feet may no longer be solid? There is another step for him to take, a step that frightens him; might it not be into another more painful kind of oblivion? Has something of the man gone out of him: that is to say, the power to live for himself?
In the summer of 1865 Baudelaire spent several days in Paris, seeing Banville and other friends of his. They found him unchanged; his eyes clear; his voice musical; he talked as wonderfully as ever. They used all their logic to persuade him to remain in Paris. He refused, even after Gautier had said to him: "You are astonishing: can one conceive your mania of eternalizing yourself in a land where one is only bored to extinction?" He laughed; promised to return: he never did; it was the last day when his friends possessed him entirely.
In his years of exile he printed Poe's Histoires grotesques et sérieuses (1864); Les nouvelles fleurs du mal in La Parnasse contemporaine (1866). In 1865 Poulet-Malassis printed Les épaves de Charles Baudelaire. Avec une eau-forte de Félicien Rops. Amsterdam. A l'enseigne du Coq. 1865. 165 pages.
"Avertissement de l'Éditeur.
"Ce recueil est composé de morceaux poétiques, pour la plupart condamnés ou inédits, auxquels M. Charles Baudelaire n'a pas cru devoir faire place dans l'édition définitive des Fleurs du mal.
"Cela explique son titre.
"M. Charles Baudelaire a fait don, sans réserve, de ces poëmes, à un ami qui juge à propos de les publier, parce qu'il se flatte de les goûter, et qu'il est à un âge où l'on aime encore à faire partager ses sentiments à des amis auxquels on prête ses vertus.
"L'auteur sera avisé de cette publication en même temps que les deux cents soixantes lectures probables qui figurent—à peu près—pour son éditeur bénévole, le public littéraire en France, depuis que les bêtes y ont décidément usurpé la parole sur les hommes."
I have before me two copies of this rare edition, printed on yellow Holland paper; one numbered 100, the other 194. The second has inscribed in ink: A Monsieur Rossetti pour remplir les intentions de l'auteur avec les civilités de l'éditeur A. P. Malassis. This was sent on the part of Baudelaire to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It is superbly bound in a kind of red-purple thick leather binding, with pale gold squares, in the form of the frame of a picture; done, certainly, with great taste.