The Burgosian Reading of The Imaginary and The Analysis of The Notion of Time in The Poems of Charles Baudelaire

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• zahra abangah ¹
• Ali Abbassi ²

¹ Department of French Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Human Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

² Department of French Language and Literature Faculty of Literature and Humanities Shahid Beheshti University Tehran Iran

10.22067/rltf.2025.91564.1136

Abstract

The presence of a threat creates anxiety and the desire to be safe encourages shelter. Observing the arrangement of spaces to find an interior shelter in the poems of Charles Baudelaire, 19th century French poet, we see that he is afraid of threats and tries to escape. In fact, Baudelaire finds in his poems the opportunity to escape his worries. The mortality of human material life on one hand, the desire for immortality in his mind on the other hand, are Baudelaire’s constant desires and tendencies. These two always keep him in a swing between spleen and ideal. Our goal in this section is to determine if Charles Baudelaire is worried about the passage of time and death, as the end of time or not. Is it the threat of time that makes him take refuge in his poems? If the answer is affirmative, how does Baudelaire convey his anxieties in his poetry? We will try to answer these questions with the reading of the literary imaginary of The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) by Charles Baudelaire. Jean Burgos' approach to combining the system of poetic language and the poetic of imaginary will help us find a scheme that Baudelaire uses to deny time and get rid of its anguish. In conclusion, we will see that the fear of the flight of time occupies a central place in the mind of Baudelaire. To the extent that it causes him to be anxious and, consequently, to escape to a secret and safe refuge.

Keywords

• refusal
• anguish
• refuge
• immortality
• literary imaginary
• time

Main Subjects

• french literature

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