Baudelaire, Toujours Pareil à Lui-même

Abstract

Although it has been generally neglected, Baudelaire's sonnet Semper eadem is a carefully constructed poem with many merits providing valuable insights into the poet's art, as a close reading of the text makes clear. Adopting the form of an intimate conversation between two lovers who have just consummated their relationship, the poem presents two opposing interpretations of that event. The reaction of the female partner, evoked only fleetingly, serves to introduce and accentuate that of the poet, who seizes the occasion to expound on his own original conception of love and its function. Against the woman's preoccupation with the immediate enjoyment of sensual pleasure, the poet develops a metaphysical notion of love as a means of resolving, if only temporarily, the existential problem posed by our mortality. Introducing in the Fleurs du Mal the poem cycle dedicated to Mme Sabatier, Semper eadem throws a revealing light on Baudelaire's relationship with la Présidente and on the other poems that she inspired. The poem also presents a dense network of intertextual associations with numerous other texts in the Baudelairian corpus and thus can be seen as a kind of poetico-sentimental manifesto.