Baudelaire e Faust: storia di Una (falsa) incomprensione

[Autom. eng. transl.] We propose a trivially quantitative reflection: Faust is not a massively present theme in Baudelaire's work, we can even say that the direct occurrences are scarce, and some irrelevant (we did not concern for example the pages that Baudelaire dedicates to the recitation of Rouvère , that there seemed to be no determinants for our purposes). Faust appears in the critical pages: literary criticism for the Prométhé délivré by Louis Ménard (1846), art critic for the pages of the Salon dedicated to Chifflart and Ary Scheffer (1859); in the dramatic project of the Fin de Don Juan (1852/1853), in which the character of Don Giovanni is directly assimilated to the protagonist of Goethe in the caption; in the Fleurs du Mal, in two sonnets (Sed non satiata, 1842/1843, Sonnet d'automne, 1859). Seems to be able to say, given the numbers, that Baudelaire is not interested in Faust, or worse (as Balmas claims) does not understand it. We can respond negatively to both propositions, and we will begin, with a certain obviousness, from the second (we are interested only in what we understand). In all the critical interventions of Baudelaire on the character or the theme of Faust it seemed evident that the poet rejects the romantic interpretation in the most banal sense of the term: "demonic" taste for Mephistopheles, tearful sensitivity on Margaret. He prefers the heroic look on the adventure of knowledge, and for this reason he appreciates the interpretation given by Chifflart in his dark incisions. In the dramatic project on Don Giovanni, in which Baudelaire directly takes up a scene from Faust, it appears instead evident that the reading of the character has reached an assimilation of it: Don Giovanni / Faust is a dandy, a man tormented by the ennui, disposed for this reason to play the card of evil and to get, at any cost, a dip in the inconnu. In the Fleurs du Mal a similar sentiment is shared by the two sonnets in which a direct allusion to Faust is detectable: although apparently very different, both compositions associate Goethe's character with an unbridgeable desire, of pleasure in the first case (“le Faust de la Savane ", with eyes like cisterns in which to drown the ennuis), of Absolute in the second (" Je hais la passion et esprit me fait mal "). In this perspective, the Second Faust becomes useless: what is behind the plunge into the darkness of the sky is not known for Baudelaire. Above all, it is not conceivable that this plunge translates into the abstract language of philosophy. Poetry does not need philosophy, it is knowledge itself, in its pure making; in adhering to the theory of universal analogy, Baudelaire does not reason philosophically: Now, Faust enters Baudelaire's work as a fruit of a man's imagination and art, in which he feels he can identify himself, or at least be able to find a part of one's inspiration. In doing so, Faust becomes a character of Baudelaire, he is so to speak completely assimilated to his poetic universe: it is what happens, we believe, to all the great artists, who know “qu'il n'est permis de traduire les poètes que quand on sent en soi une énergie égale à la leur "