Citation

Cagnat-Deboeuf C. Romantisme 2012; (157): 101-115.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

We propose here to turn back to Baudelaire's taste for mystification through "La Corde" " The Rope ", a poem from Paris Spleen which took its inspiration from the suicide of a young model of Manet's, which the poet turned into an enigma testing the reader's shrewdness. Our analysis first reconstructs the causal sequence of events imbedded in the story line, which reveals the child's suicide to have been a drama of lead poisoning. Does this interpretation allow for a referential reading of the poem? If the study confirms, through allusions unexplained until today, the identity of the painter in "La Corde" as Manet's, it is nonetheless clear that the invention by Baudelaire of a number of specific details makes of the poem a bizarre play on the game of proverbs.

Language: fr