Another Baudelaire: on the Free Form of “Paris Spleen” and “The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas”

ABSTRACT

Through minute analysis of a prose poem from Paris Spleen and a chapter from The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, this paper seeks to elucidate the formal proximity between the two oeuvres and to show how, while a tradition of young baudelairians readers of The Flowers of evil was being consolidated, a small group of writers, among which Machado, was practicing the free form of Baudelaire’s poetical prose.

KEYWORDS: Machado de Assis; Charles Baudelaire; Paris Spleen; Prose poems; The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas