An introduction to Modern Poetry : A Search for ennui and aversion in Baudelaire's Creation/ আধুনিক কবিতার ভূমিকা : বোদলেয়ারের সৃষ্টিতে বিষণ্ণতা ও বিতৃষ্ণার অন্বেষণ

Abstract

Baudelaire's poems of 'Les Fleurs Du Mal' (Flowers of Evil,1857), unlike much chewed romantic literature are ladden with frustration, emptiness, agony and ennui along with distasteful disgust of people. The poet is different in his thoughts and conscience, never devoid of day- to -day scenerio of his time. A majestic modern poet Charles Baudelaire made himself a royal road for modern poetry that could suit his dignity. Beauty can have its breed in hell rather in than heaven only. Here beauty arrogantly walks over remorse, filthy, death- shaken dead body. The poet enters the arena of modern poetry with disease ladden empty, have - less beggars. The poet got himself dipped into a hole of bitter hatred. In his poems there is interest hungry money lender, drunkard, vagabond, cannabis addicted, bankrupt, thief, hooligans, rowdy, libertine, prostitute, sex-workers, syphilis patients, slum dwellers, and tuberculosis patients. His poems are enriched with all these figures. There is enjoyment of desolate, unhappy, loveless sex. In such a detrimental, dirty and swampy terrain, the poet blooms the buds of his poetic art. Seperation, discord, loneliness come again and again along with hopelessness in 'Albatrosses’, ‘Le Cygne'. The shadow of sin and destruction in 'Les Phares’, 'Le Vampire' strongly shake us. In 'Une Martyre' the poet's pen hits a cut-throat body with oozing blood. Another side a fatigue bed projects a naked human body lying with midnight preperation for a game of dirty sex for a narrow, mean and perverted satisfaction. 'Un Voyage a Cythere' claims a very sensitive attention for a heart rending image. A hanging body from the gallows beam is being torn by some hungry vultures. On the ground foxes and dogs with extremely cruel hunger are jumping ceaselessly to have the dead flesh. Beside the distorted and torn body is staring his beloved with unuttered talks in her blank eyes. Yes, there is the unexhausted search for beauty amidst the dirt and reek of hell in 'La Voyage'. Thus our majestic Baudelaire left, for modern poet, access to a very big opportunity with huge range and horizon of possibilities. Ennui, disgust, discord, sex and self-destruction, realistic approach to society, destruction, creation and construction --- with all these beads he made life and death self- reliant on one single thread with the symbol of his poetic art.