But the poet's own words are the best explanation of his aim and intention:--
"Poetry, though one delve ever so little into his own self, interrogate his own soul, recall his memories of enthusiasms, has no other end than itself; it cannot have any other aim, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the name of poem, as that which shall have been written solely for the pleasure of writing a poem. I do not wish to say that poetry should not ennoble manners--that its final result should not be to raise man above vulgar interests. That would be an evident absurdity. I say that if the poet has pursued a moral end, he has diminished his poetic force, and it would not be imprudent to wager that his work would be bad. Poetry cannot, under penalty of death or forfeiture, assimilate itself to science or morality. It has not Truth for object, it has only itself. Truth's modes of demonstration are different and elsewhere. Truth has nothing to do with ballads; all that constitutes the charm, the irresistible grace of a ballad, would strip Truth of its authority and power. Cold, calm, impassive, the demonstrative temperament rejects the diamonds and flowers of the muse; it is, therefore, the absolute inverse of the poetic temperament. Pure Intellect aims at Truth, Taste shows us Beauty, and the Moral Sense teaches us Duty. It is true that the middle term has intimate connection with the two extremes, and only separates itself from Moral Sense by a difference so slight that Aristotle did not hesitate to class some of its delicate operations amongst the virtues. And accordingly what, above all, exasperates the man of taste is the spectacle of vice, is its deformity, its disproportions. Vice threatens the just and true, and revolts intellect and conscience; but as an outrage upon harmony, as dissonance, it would particularly wound certain poetic minds, and I do not think it would be scandal to consider all infractions of moral beauty as a species of sin against rhythm and universal prosody.
"It is this admirable, this immortal instinct of the Beautiful which makes us consider the earth and its spectacle as a sketch, as a correspondent of Heaven. The insatiable thirst for all that is beyond that which life veils is the most living proof of our immortality. It is at once by poetry and across it, across and through music, that the soul gets a glimpse of the splendors that lie beyond the tomb. And when an exquisite poem causes tears to rise in the eye, these tears are not the proof of excessive enjoyment, but rather the testimony of a moved melancholy, of a postulation of the nerves, of a nature exiled in the imperfect, which wishes to take immediate possession, even on earth, of a revealed paradise.
"Thus the principle of poetry is strictly and simply human aspiration toward superior beauty; and the manifestation of this principle is enthusiasm and uplifting of the soul,--enthusiasm entirely independent of passion,--which is the intoxication of heart, and of truth which is the food of reason. For passion is a natural thing, even too natural not to introduce a wounding, discordant tone into the domain of pure beauty; too familiar, too violent, not to shock the pure Desires, the gracious Melancholies, and the noble Despairs which inhabit the supernatural regions of poetry."
Baudelaire saw himself as the poet of a decadent epoch, an epoch in which art had arrived at the over-ripened maturity of an aging civilization; a glowing, savorous, fragrant over-ripeness, that is already softening into decomposition. And to be the fitting poet of such an epoch, he modeled his style on that of the poets of the Latin decadence; for, as he expressed it for himself and for the modern school of "decadents" in French poetry founded upon his name:--
"Does it not seem to the reader, as to me, that the language of the last Latin decadence--that supreme sigh of a robust person already transformed and prepared for spiritual life--is singularly fitted to express passion as it is understood and felt by the modern world? Mysticism is the other end of the magnet of which Catullus and his band, brutal and purely epidermic poets, knew only the sensual pole. In this wonderful language, solecisms and barbarisms seem to express the forced carelessness of a passion which forgets itself, and mocks at rules. The words, used in a novel sense, reveal the charming awkwardness of a barbarian from the North, kneeling before Roman Beauty."
Nature, the nature of Wordsworth and Tennyson, did not exist for Baudelaire; inspiration he denied; simplicity he scouted as an anachronism in a decadent period of perfected art, whose last word in poetry should be the apotheosis of the Artificial. "A little charlatanism is permitted even to genius," he wrote: "it is like fard on the cheeks of a naturally beautiful woman; an appetizer for the mind." Again he expresses himself:
"It seems to me, two women are presented to me, one a rustic matron, repulsive in health and virtue, without manners, without expression; in short, owing nothing except to simple nature;--the other, one of those beauties that dominate and oppress memory, uniting to her original and unfathomable charms all the eloquence of dress; who is mistress of her part, conscious of and queen of herself, speaking like an instrument well tuned; with looks freighted with thought, yet letting flow only what she would. My choice would not be doubtful; and yet there are pedagogic sphinxes who would reproach me as recreant to classical honor."
In music it was the same choice. He saw the consummate art and artificiality of Wagner, and preferred it to all other music, at a time when the German master was ignored and despised by a classicized musical world. In perfumes it was not the simple fragrance of the rose or violet that he loved, but musk and amber; and he said, "my soul hovers over perfumes as the souls of other men hover over music."
Besides his essays and sketches, Baudelaire published in prose a novelette; 'Fanfarlo,' 'Artificial Paradises,' opium and hashish, imitations of De Quincey's 'Confessions of an Opium Eater'; and 'Little Prose Poems,' also inspired by a book, the 'Gaspard de la Nuit' of Aloysius Bertrand, and which Baudelaire thus describes:--
"The idea came to me to attempt something analogous, and to apply to the description of modern life, or rather a modern and more abstract life, the methods he had applied to the painting of ancient life, so strangely picturesque. Which one of us in his ambitious days has not dreamed of a miracle of poetic prose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of the soul, to the undulations of reverie, and to the assaults of conscience?"
Failing health induced Baudelaire to quit Paris and establish himself in Brussels; but he received no benefit from the change of climate, and the first symptoms of his terrible malady manifested themselves--a slowness of speech, and hesitation over words. As a slow and sententious enunciation was characteristic of him, the symptoms attracted no attention, until he fell under a sudden and violent attack. He was brought back to Paris and conveyed to a "maison de santé," where he died, after lingering several months in a paralyzed condition, motionless, speechless; nothing alive in him but thought, seeking to express itself through his eyes.