On Le Spleen de Paris

An examination of Baudelaire's manuscript lists of projected prose poems reveals that his original intention to include a hundred poems in Le Spleen de Paris was abandoned in July 1865, when he decided that the collection could be considered as complete with 50 poems, the remainder being reserved for a second independent volume at some future date. It follows from this that Le Spleen de Paris as we know it is a finished work arranged in an order chosen by the poet, and not, as is often supposed, an incomplete collection in a haphazard sequence. It also appears that there are good grounds for assuming that the title is definitely Le Spleen de Paris rather than Petits Poèmes en prose and that the order in which the poems are printed is meaningful and not merely aleatory. (AWR)