Abstract
Both Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) and Charles Baudelaire (1821– 67) invented unique literary genres in order to launch spiritual revolutions. Their various works can be interpreted in terms of aesthetic, ethical, and religious dimensions of human experience. The esthetic favors the quest for ideal beauty and sensory or imaginative stimulation—what Kierkegaard calls “immediacy.” The ethical confronts fantastical impulses with the reality of other beings, human or otherwise; Kierkegaard labels this system of moral values the “universal.” The religious dimension points to the “Absolute,” a mode of experience beyond words, beyond concepts. The reality of God is “incommensurable” with the “ethical,” whereas the “esthetic” ignores morality, transcendent meaning, or God. These categories are not always separable in life.
I am convinced that God is love; this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity.
—Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
O Creator! Can monsters exist in the eyes of the only One who knows why they exist, how they were made and how they might have been able not to be made?
—Baudelaire, “Miss Scalpel”
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© 2013 Joseph Acquisto
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Kaplan, E.K. (2013). Baudelaire through Kierkegaard. In: Acquisto, J. (eds) Thinking Poetry. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137329288_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137329288_2
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