Quelques interprétations de la religion de Baudelaire

For Suarès, Baudelaire was the first poet to take himself as an object of reflection : as an innovator in introspection, he was inevitably pessimistic. Bringing in light his history of misfortune and his guilt, Suarès sees him as a theologian, among other things, especially in his assertion : « What is natural is vile ». Since nature is corrupt, art is purification. If Baudelaire is religious, it is in a strange way indeed. Nevertheless, one finds in him the presence of a religious idea of « redemption », to which the poet aspires with all his might. « The flowers are not all ‘of evil’, as one might imagine. Sin insinuates its singular virtue there, prompting great remorse in the sinner and then leading him towards redemption ». Starting from Suarès, as well as the reflections of Benjamin Fondane and Yves Bonnefoy, J.-P. Jossua attempts in these pages to understand what Baudelaire’s religion was.