Poe with a cross, that's what you are, adored of the gangster age.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Baudelaire compares Poe to a cross, suggesting he is a symbol of sacrifice or burden in a violent era.
- In plain terms
- Poe is portrayed as a burdened figure in a ruthless time.
- What can you take from it?
- Recognize how art can embody societal struggles.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What does the cross represent for Poe?
- How does the gangster age shape the image?
Another view
The metaphor is obscure and may not resonate with all readers.
More from Charles Baudelaire
Baudelaire is the great symbol of l'art pour l'art (art for the sake of art): sickness as beauty. Baudelaire is thus Liberalism in literature, disease as a pri…
Permalink to quote #69 The poet, says Baudelaire, is a decipherer, a Kabbalist of reality, a decoder. Ordinary life, if it is not a message in code, a system of symbols for something…
Permalink to quote #71 Being pre-eminently a moralist, he needed a medium that enabled him to illustrate a moral insight as briefly and vividly as possible. Being an artist and sensu…
Permalink to quote #68
Related quotes
Fra tutti il primo Arnaldo Daniello Gran maestro d'amor; ch'a la sua terra Ancor fa onor col suo dir strano e bello.
Arnaut DanielArnaut Daniel quote #5 The nineteenth century will colonize; so, in its fantasies, did the nineteenth century soul. When Emma [Bovary] turns spendthrift and buys curtains, carpets an…
V. S PritchettV. S Pritchett quote #8 Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the seventeenth, poetry.
David HareDavid Hare quote #8