There was an entirely forgotten leftist called Allen Ginsberg, a so-called beat poet (surely an oxymoron) who once produced a work entitled ‘Howl’. That was appropriate. It reads like a wolf on hallucinogens. The author whined that he had seen the best minds of his generation destroyed. ‘Best minds’: how would he have known? This was hardly Dunbar lamenting the makars of his era. Such of their verse that survives may now be an unyielding read. But in their day they were names to conjure with. Nor did they put their minds up their noses, or inject their hopes into ravaged veins.
I was thinking about poetry, decadence and self-destruction because I have decided that after a gap — horrifying thought — of 50 years, it is time to make a new assault on the French 19th century, before my grenouille rusts away completely. I revisited the Pleiades over the summer. Ronsard’s enchantment is undimmed: his enthusiasm for carpe diem more relevant than ever — and my French can still cope with him. So what about moving on a few centuries to the harder task of Baudelaire et al?
Although they got up to some exotic carpe-ing in their diem, some of them do excite sympathy. One is Gérard de Nerval, who took a pet lobster for walks around the Palais–Royal, using a ribbon as a leash, and was promptly locked up in a madhouse. Poor fellow: in Paris of all places, what did he expect? Misusing a delicious crustacean, perhaps encouraging others to do likewise, thus undermining French gastronomy in the name of lobster liberation: he was probably better off in a fortified asylum, whose thick walls would protect him from the wrath of French gourmets.
Then there was Villiers de l’Isle Adam, an unhappy member of a family of unhappy fantasists, all of them qualifying for the role of Prince à la Tour Abolie.
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