The 'Poet-Philosopher' and the 'Physician-Philosopher': A Reading of Baude-laire's Prose Poem 'Assommons les pauvres!'

In the second half of the nineteenth century, French alienists, imbued with the ambitions of the emerging psychiatric discipline, often regarded themselves as public figures. They did not hesitate to speak to philosophical, social, political, and even aesthetic matters. Louis François Lélut is a case in point: in Du démon de Socrate (1836) he used his medical expertise to diagnose Socrates as a lunatic. In the wake of the Revolution of 1848, he launched a fierce critique against proponents of equality such as Proudhon (Egalité 1849). Through an analysis of Baudelaire's prose poem "Assommons les pauvres!" this essay explores Baudelaire's subversive critique of Lélut's intellectual claims. Baude-laire depicts a narrator who displays similarities with the allegedly "lunatic" Socrates and yet defies any simplistic equation between philosophical "genius" and pathology. Baudelaire's parody is directed at Lélut's medical and political views: the narrator's stand on equality overtly challenges Lélut's inegalitarian beliefs. (In English) (FV)