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BauDebord/03: Romance&Anarchie!


7. Conclusion

Baudelaire and Debord: they are both French and they are both dead; what more do they have in common?

At first glance, very little. Baudelaire and Debord represent opposing eras, ideas, approaches and personalities. My only motivation in bringing them together in this lecture was that I was personally interested in both of these cultural figures as personalities, and they just simply happened to be both French and dead. However, a handful of slender parallels emerges through closer inspection.

But first, to reiterate some of their differences in style:

Baudelaire was a convulsive emotional creature who craved illusion and artiface in a desperate thirst for a conscious but illusory escape from the stresses of his reality... Debord was a rationalist whose mission was a comprehensive liberation and return to reality from the illusions defined by the political systems he opposed.

Baudelaire was a neurotic insecure artist who maintained a faith in the value and significance of his poetic artifacts, but often lacked the focus and concentration to successfully to organize and present his efforts to his audience... Debord was a theorist who did not intentionally pursue commerical sales, but was adroit enough to arrange for the continued distribution and availability of his work.

Baudelaire suffered from an unstable and lonely life, unable and unwilling to sustain lasting personal relationships. He often intentionally avoided consummation with the women who were the objects of his fancy, prefering to generate states of unrequited erotic desire in order to fuel his poetic invention. His extended intermittent relationship with the 'Black Venus' Jeanne Duval was an inherently frustrating and acrimonious experience... Debord enjoyed a seemingly happy love-life; he was married twice, both times in relatively stable long term relationships.

Now a glance at these slender parallels:

The main thematic link between Baudelaire and Debord is in their exploration of Parisian PsychoGeography. Both cultivated similar theories about the relationship of the individual, not mrerely to a human society of other individuals, but also to the individual's urban environment based upon an immediate human scale. They both took the idea of the individual perception of the 'street-level' quite literally, and both viewed architecture as the medium by which an individual experiences a sense of place, or a lack of sense of place: a dislocation or alienation. Both craved the convolutions, imperfections, surprises and tawdry historical resonances of the vestiges of old medieval Paris, and scorned the sterile, inhuman solutions of faulty 'modernist' urban planning. Both venerated aimless noctural ambulation or wandering as a ritual designed to casually unviel the hidden and possible within the scope of the immediate world. Baudelaire was a spiritual father of the Debordian practice of PsychoGeography. Both tended to avoid the easy edenic idealism inherent in the early Romantic fascination with natural landscapes.

There is a subtle connexion in their respective methods regarding their descriptions of the human senses in the perception of the world. When Baudelaire's alter-ego in The Mauvais Vitrier smashes the panes of clear glass windows, he is acting almost like a virtual reflected parody of Debord's grand project of attempting to release the individual from the tyranny of visual accumulation.

As individuals both stand clearly detached from the societies they inhabited. While Baudelaire's fervant dedication to his art obviously precluded any thought of social conformity, his complex soul craved an acceptance of his work from society, which when denied caused him to lash out in frustration... Debord assumed a pose of Olympian superiority over the world which he passed judgement upon. Perhaps one might notice in both individuals the suggestion of a pretence to an aristocratic attitude. Sartorially, they both sported austerely tailored wardrobes.

As human personalities, they both enjoyed a glass of wine. Baudelaire's substance abuse problem was intermittent, and he indulged in melancholic binges between phases when he was too preoccupied, reclusive, or sometimes too poor to afford a drink. Aside from those times when he celebrated the liberating aspects of intoxication, he remained acutely aware of the perils of Dionysian degredation wrought by the elixor of the gods... Debord drank steadily throughout his career, but avoided allowing overindulgence to subvert his air of regal self-assurance. On occasion he would declare that alcohol was the fuel for the medium in which he functioned. Towards the end of his life, constant alcoholic consumption replaced conventional human pursuits.

In mixed company both Baudelaire and Debord were well known as charming conversationalists.


FIN.


The reader is advised to be aware of any biases evident in my interpretation.

The prudent reader is advised, as always, with this document or any other, to be aware of as wide a variety of source material as possible.

Caveat: serious practictioners of Situational Theory have been highly critical of both my analysis and the veracity of the apparently error-ridden data I have relied upon for Debord's biography; please read sceptically.



Bibliography:

Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and The Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830-1930 by Jerrold Seigal (1986); as mentioned previously, this book has been an inspiration for this essay: informative, provocative, and dazzlingly entertaining; super highly recommend; read it!

Baudelaire by Enid Starkie (1958); the main biographic reference for Part 3 of this essay; at times her style can seem fairly dated and clunky, but there are a few inspired moments buried in there. Perhaps preferred for general reading is Baudelaire by Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler (1989).

Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus (1989); a fairly loose but entertaining conglomeration of Situationalism, Dadaism, Punk-Rock, Anabaptism, and youth rebellion in general; a good introduction to these concepts, recommended for the young and curious, with interesting illustrations.

The Game of War: The Life and Death of Guy Debord by Andrew Hussey (2001); the main reference for Part 6 of this essay, the essential Debord biography, well-written and fascinating; however, I haven't read Guy Debord-Revolutionary by Len Bracken (1997), which also sounds intriguing.

Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and The Messenger by Philip Marchand (1989) is the book I would recommend to anyone interested in McLuhanesque concepts; I would suggest this to the curious before any of McLuhan's own works.

Internet resources:

It seems curious that while Baudelaire has functioned as a sort of icon to the young Goth subculture, there appears to be relatively little in the way of good internet pages in English about him. The oasis of choice is Piranesia.net by Cat Nilan of Seattle, who has provided a good selection of her translations, including the somewhat elusive Petits Poemes en Prose.

The Bureau of Public Secrets by Ken Knabb of San Francisco offers his translations of a stack of Situationalist texts; his site has also introduced me to the powerful and lucid literary criticisms of the poet Kenneth Rexroth, a most delightful discovery. Check it out.

The Dub Selector may have nothing to do with tonight's show, but it is tons of fun for the whole family.

I listened to lots of Scott Walker while writing this.







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