1966 was an important year for Baudelaire, marking a turning point in the reception of his work towards Le Spleen de Paris. But above all, it was the year of a centenary: Baudelaire was in Brussels in 1866, experiencing increasing health problems; it was a bad year for the poet, the year of his irremediable illness. In 1967, a memorable issue of the Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France celebrated the centenary of the poet's death. Georges Blin's signature does not appear in this fine tribute, but he was at the Collège de France, where he lectured on Baudelaire between 1965 and 1969. Blin wanted to clear up a misunderstanding and address the increasingly common identification of Baudelaire with the modern. In Les Antimodernes, Baudelaire remained a ghostly presence, an essential but fleeting figure. Along with Chateaubriand, he served as a model of the antimodern. He signified modernity's resistance to the modern; this was already Blin's ambition.
This year's lecture aims to extend this reflection on the poet's recalcitrance to progress, the press, photography, painting and the modern more generally. There is a singularity to this protest against the modern world, from which Baudelaire is nonetheless incapable of separating himself. "Finally, I think I could escape the horror of the human face at the end of the month. [...] This whole world has become abject. [...] I loathe life. But Baudelaire would never leave Paris, on which he was dependent.
The emphasis in the lecture on the Petits Poèmes en prose was on Baudelaire's final ambivalences, on the resistance to modernity that is inherent in modernity.
The expression "Petits poèmes en prose" doesn't seem to have entered Baudelaire's vocabulary until he reads Sainte-Beuve's article of January 20, 1862, praising Le Vieux Saltimbanque and Les Veuves as jewels. Baudelaire always spoke of "poèmes en prose" or "poems, en prose". the term "Petit poème" was used previously, as opposed to "Grand poème" or "poème" to refer to tragedy. Rousseau does indeed speak of "petit poème, en prose", but in the plural the expression is much less frequent. "Petits poèmes en prose" was never used again by Baudelaire, and remains rare in French, being applied to Ossianic poems rather than works in French.
