Black Venus (2013) is set in Paris in 1842. Charles
Baudelaire is 21 years old, a budding poet, impeccably dressed, and smitten
with a 32-year-old Haitian cabaret singer, Jeanne Duval, known as Black Venus.
Auguste Poulet-Malassis, heir to one of the oldest
publishing businesses in France, is searching for a writer – “playwright, poet,
or novelist, it didn’t matter” – who could help his firm return to its former
commercial success and status.
Duval becomes Baudelaire’s muse, his inspiration, and
so begins a volatile and passionate affair. Baudelaire’s attachment to his London-born
mother, Caroline, is strong and almost unbreakable – until his father Francois
dies and she marries Jacques Aupick. Caroline Aupick thinks her son’s romantic
interest is a whore and a peasant.
By 1848 revolutionary fever grips Paris. Whereas Alexandre
Dumas (author of The Three Musketeers) stages a successful play, Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, extolling
the triumphant nationalism of the Revolution, Baudelaire declares his art is
his revolution. But he would go on to play a greater part in the Revolution than
anyone ever imagined.
Baudelaire’s mother stage-manages his meeting with
the intelligent and beautiful Apollonie Sabatier, whom he showers with his
poetry. Baudelaire “could never have written those poems to his snow-white …
milkmaid by the sea if it had not been for his Black Venus.”
On June 25, 1857, Les
Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) is published. It is nine years since
Poulet-Malassis had met Baudelaire, seven years since Poulet-Malassis had seen
Baudelaire’s poems, and seven years to “get a sllim volume into the bookshops.”
It was dispatched to Englan, throughout Europe and the United States. Tennyson,
Browning, and Wordsworth received copies accompanied by a hand-written note
from Baudelaire – in English. Longfellow and Victor Hugo also received copies.
Baudelaire cried when he read Hugo’s response. “Finally someone understands
me,” he told his friends, “and not just anyone – the great Victor Hugo.” But
his work was condemned as “an obscene monstrosity” and the entire print run was
confiscated. Baudelaire faced trial on the grounds of obscenity.
In August 1857 the courtroom was packed. The result
of the trial affected Baudelaire, his publisher, the Black Venus, and Apollonie
for years. Baudelaire writes to his mother: “I cannot write. I feel as if I
have been buried alive, like one of Poe’s characters. I am dying.”
Three years later when Baudelaire writes of “death,
damnation, drugs, and disease” his publisher suggests he writes of something
else. Baudelaire responds: “I have written about love, and look where that got
us.”
Black Venus is a work of fiction, but grounded in
fact. Interesting in its account, easy to read, and with a flowing
unembellished style, the novel is one for lovers of Baudelaire. Charles
Baudelaire (1821-1867) is buried at the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris. Edouard
Manet’s painting of Jeanne Duval called Baudelaire’s Mistress, Reclining (1862)
hangs in the Budapest National Gallery.
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