The imagination eulogized by Baudelaire is in his own case more often than not a synonym for desire or despair. His critical exigencies are, like those of the profoundly sick man that he was, harsh and imperative and illusory in the sense of release temporarily obtained. Yet imagination is also the faculty that gives Baudelaire a royal sense of equality with other creative artists; he uses his status as a poet to boost his activities as a critic, claiming, with total justification in his case, that criticism is a creative affair, a fine rather than applied art.

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…

Poe with a cross, that's what you are, adored of the gangster age.

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…

You advise me, too, not to stray far from the ground of experience, as I become weak when I enter the region of fiction; and you say, 'real experience is peren…

'I would take a twirling baton and use it as my 'icaphone' - that's what I called it - and lay a towel on the floor as my stage.'

When working on my choreography I am not always receptive to outside suggestions or opinions. I believe that if you have something in mind in the way of a crea…