Telling Stories in Baudelaire's Spleen de Paris

An analysis of representative texts shows that by sabotaging prose itself, Baudelaire tests the boundaries of both time and genre. "Le Mauvais vitrier" and "Portraits des maîtresses," refer to "killing time," an equivocal notion signifying depleting the finite time of life, and abolishing time to attain infinity. This conundrum recalls the intrinsic paradox of any text called a prose poem. In these revealing works, the desire to arrest time parallels a tendency to manipulate temporal progression on the narrative plane. These story-laden prose poems elude time by resisting its progression within the very structure and discourse meant to advance it. (CK)