'La Beauté': Enigma of Irony

In recent years, the traditional acceptance of "La Beauté:" as a Parnassian poem has been questioned. A study of the work reveals a substratum of irony. This observation is based upon an investigation of the vocabulary, the sounds and the rhythms (à la Maurice Grammont), the contradictions between the marmoreal position of the poet within the poem ("Je hais le mouvement") and the poet's æsthetic of 1857, and Baudelaire's inherent conviction that all artists fail in describing their highest aspirations (the later prose poem, "Le Confiteor de l'artiste.") Architecturally "La Beauté" follows "Le Châtiment de l'Orgueil," which terminates in an ironic twist, and as the first poem of the cycle on beauty, "La Beauté" subtly mocks the Parnassian motif and prepares the reader for the poet's dualistic concept of beauty in the culminating poem of the cycle, namely "Hymne à la Beauté." (FSH)