The New Criterion

In 1852, the March and April issues of La Revue de Paris carried an essay by Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), “Edgar Allan Poe, His Life and Works.” This was the first version of Baudelaire’s preface to his influential translation of Poe’s tales. In Poe’s view, poets possessed “the immortal instinct for the beautiful which makes us consider the earth and its spectacles as a revelation, as in correspondence with Heaven.” Above all, poetry must be constructed; it was not a naïve outpouring: “construction, armature, so to speak, is the most important guarantee of the mysterious life of works of the mind.” Poe’s “correspondence” of earth and heaven would be the Symbolism of the movement that appeared in the 1880s, and his insistence on the “music” of poetry was equally important to the Symbolists—the rhythms and sounds of their poems were intended ...

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