Paradise Regained: The Flâneur, the Badaud, and the Æsthetics of Artistic Reception in Le Poème du haschisch

This article examines Baudelaire's Les Paradis artificiels as an embodiment of the poet's aesthetic theories of the production and reception of meaning in a work of art. Where the haschischin as producer of hallucinations is explicitly and unfavorably compared to the poet, as perceiver of these hallucinations he is tacitly compared to the reader. The haschischin, as passive, intoxicated observer, mirrors the hapless badaud of the Parisian boulevard, absorbed by the spectacle to the point of losing his individuality. Conversely, in keeping with Baudelaire's own references to the flâneur, the artist and the active reader observe and reflect, bringing a personal vision to the increasingly impersonal and depersonalizing scene of modern experience. (AKW)