-
Essay / Carrion: Undying Love in Face of Vile Death
Charles Baudelaire uses his works to describe his idea of the spleen, or “the restless unease that affects modern life” (Bedford 414). The spleen is an organ that removes toxins from the human body, but for Baudelaire it is also a symbol of melancholy, moral degradation and destruction of the human spirit, caused by the constraints of modern life. Baudelaire uses shocking and grotesque imagery to attack readers' sensibilities, aiming to expose the beauty inherent in even the most reviled aspects of life. Baudelaire highlights the toxins, purified by the spleen, so that society can accept and overcome them. In Carrion, the author uses his shocking style to make the reader understand the beautiful and eternal nature of love. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayCarrion is the memory, from one lover to another, of a day when the lovers came across a carcass in decomposition. The speaker of the poem recounts, in grisly detail, the purification of the carcass. Baudelaire's vivid description of decadence is his way of expressing the spleen. As he describes the corpse having “its belly covered with deadly sweat/and swollen with foul-smelling gases” (ll 7-8), the image reflects the toxins from which the spleen purifies the body. Through the vivid imagery of decadence, Baudelaire draws the reader's attention to the loathsome nature of Death. The image of the dog "waiting for the opportunity to resume its interrupted feast" (ll 35-36), alerts the reader to the imminent presence of Death and to his duty to reclaim his precious life. By reminding the reader of its impermanence and the dark reality of death, Baudelaire also has the dual purpose of showing the beauty that lies beneath the surface of humanity's destiny. The speaker attempts to relay the beautiful side of the grotesque mechanics of death. All living things must die, but this death leads to the continuation of life. Baudelaire illustrates this circle of life in these lines: “The tide of trembling vermin descended,/then boiled again/as if the corpses, breathing,/through their lives were coming back to life” (ll 21-24). Using the image of imitating the breathing of the carcass is a way for the author to show the reader that life continues after death. Although this life in death is a macabre spectacle, the imagery of "the sun illuminated this rottenness" (ll 9), "like a wide open flower" (ll 14), and "made a curious music there -/like l 'running water or the wind' (ll 25-26) alludes to the beauty that Baudelaire is trying to convey. Only through the death of a creature can other life flourish. The image of life in the death of the body is the author's preface to the eternal beauty of love and its transcendence of death itself. The memory of the lover, provided by the author, may be disgusting in its graphic nature, but Baudelaire uses it to illustrate that love can survive even the decadence of death. The author writes this poem to a love, he considers its "soul", so it is understandable that the poem was not written to shock this love, but to give it a deeper meaning. The author goes so far as to underline “Yet you will arrive at this offense, / at this horrible decline” (ll 37-38), to lend the weight of an inevitable death to the message of his love. Baudelaire's message about the eternal nature of love is summed up in the lover's final declaration: "But as their kisses devour you,/my Beauty, tell it to the worms/I have kept the sacred essence, saved/the form of my rotten loves. ! » (1145-48). This last stanza shows the true meaning of the macabre memory of Baudelaire's lover. Love is an eternal beauty, which.