Sartre's failure: Reading the Baudelairean dilemma

Jean-Paul Sartre's 1947 book-length essay on Charles Baudelaire constitutes at once one of the most provocative and the most seminal studies of the poet's philosophical orientation and how it might relate to his art. Sartre discerns the attitude of an homme penche in Baudelaire's demeanor, and alleges that the poet's greatness is based on a philosophical fraud, that is, the poet's desire to be other than others. As numerous critics have remarked, Sartre's argument appears to be theoretically sound. It is therefore puzzling that Sartre's essay has done little to displace Baudelaire's prominence in the French literary canon. This essay examines an aspect of Baudelaire's alterity that seems to especially trouble Sartre: Baudelaire, by practicing poetic prose a "harmful" literary exercise in Sartre's opinion , has found a means of challenging the conventional connotations of masculinity. Without violating patriarchal codes, Baudelaire has revealed an alterity inherent to the masculine's place in phallocentric culture.