Baudelaire, el irreductible

Considered by many to be the prophet of modernity, Baudelaire's attitude towards the dogma of progress, symbolized by the press, photography, the big city and so many other social and cultural phenomena, was ambiguous. The manifestations of the newest repelled and captivated the poet in equal parts. He disowned the creations and dynamics of modernity due to their social, psychological, moral, artistic and even metaphysical consequences, but returned to them endlessly; large-circulation newspapers disgusted him, but he besieged the "scoundrels" of the editors to publish it; he lashed out at photography, and yet he is the subject of some of the best writer portraits we know of. This eternal ambivalence constitutes the backdrop of El esplín de París, the sum of the contradictions of the last Baudelaire, a true modern conscientious objector, as unsuspected as he is irreducible, that Compagnon, with his characteristic perspicacity and finesse, invites us to discover.