Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,
Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us:
Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous,
Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other
Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime;
The hidden harvest of luxurious time,
Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech,
And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep
Makes the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep:
And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each,
Seeing as men sow men reap.
• Algernon Charles Swinburne, "Ave Atque Vale" (1871), stanza III, Fortnightly Review (January 1868; later published in Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Second Series (1878)
The imagination eulogized by Baudelaire is in his own case more often than not a synonym for desire or despair. His critical exigencies are, like those of the profoundly sick man that he was, harsh and imperative and illusory in the sense of release temporarily obtained. Yet imagination is also the faculty that gives Baudelaire a royal sense of equality with other creative artists; he uses his status as a poet to boost his activities as a critic, claiming, with total justification in his case, that criticism is a creative affair, a fine rather than applied art.
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The imagination eulogized by Baudelaire is in his own case more often than not a synonym for desire or despair. His critical exigencies are, like those of the profoundly sick man that he was, harsh and imperative and illusory in the sense of release temporarily obtained. Yet imagination is also the faculty that gives Baudelaire a royal sense of equality with other creative artists; he uses his status as a poet to boost his activities as a critic, claiming, with total justification in his case, that criticism is a creative affair, a fine rather than applied art." in the context of "Anita Brookner, "Baudelaire," from The Genius of the Future (Cornell University Press, 1971, ), p. 70
Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,
Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us:
Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous,
Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other
Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime;
The hidden harvest of luxurious time,
Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech,
And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep
Makes the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep:
And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each,
Seeing as men sow men reap.
• Algernon Charles Swinburne, "Ave Atque Vale" (1871), stanza III, Fortnightly Review (January 1868; later published in Swinburne's Poems and Ballads, Second Series (1878)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.
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About Charles Baudelaire