Giddy symbols

There is really no occasion for a short excursion into Baudelaire territory, except that one brought about by random thought events. Or probably some kind of sliding association recalled by the word "symbol." Just a re-reading of a few pieces you would be astonished by the sprawl of rhetorical matter, and the powerful subjective modes of his poems.

My point of entry here is a cursory review of the poem "Correspondances" (http://odautrey.free.fr/coresspondances.htm), nothing more, since any serious consideration of Baudelairean semantic economy will take a lot of time. I just want to point out how in this poetic fantasy (of "decadent" romanticism) the old mythic connection between human beings and nature is mediated by a semi-mystical passage through the refined perception of symbols. Here, symbol is expanded to include olfactory, tactile, visual etc material. These materials can have the quality of infinite things, so they're not just ordinary, as they mingle musically to sing the transports of the mind and the senses. This is the whole state of being in the temple of nature, where mystery and clarity join up in a profound and dark unity.

What is interesting here is the way the poem associates nature to speech (with variants symbols, and echoes), and to all the terms of the sonnet through a framework of animistic personification unifying object and subject (mind and sense). The temple of nature speaks confusedly, and is a forest of symbols, which, like echoes recalling each other, form a set of syndetic elements co-responding in a state of transport both intellectual and sensuous, capable of evoking the "measure" of infinite things.

This is a lot to hang together, like the transports in Tintern Abbey. I don't know if a pop folk song that goes "You filled up my senses" would be in the same league, shy of adding the symbolist notion of language. But probably today, with newer media and means, a semi-mystical experience like this, with our deeper incredulity, is nothing more than just giddiness induced by techno-capital.

Poetry, too, is less the source and expression of such experience. Nothing new here, just probably a review of the distance in sensibilities. What is symbol for us but plain logo and font? What is unity, except a political ad? What are esprit and infinity but brand names? Everyday, we are born to symbols with copyrights. For nature, too, we need to make reservations.