SOURCE: "Intimacy and Distance in Baudelaire's Prose-Poems," in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. XII, No. 1, Spring, 1970, pp. 241-47.

In the following essay, Hubert finds that Baudelaire 's prose poems present true intimacy as virtually unattainable.

In his Poesie in prosaischer Welt, Fritz Nies claims that some typical Baudelairean themes, such as love, do not fully belong to the world of the Petits poèmes en prose. To be sure, Baudelaire, by emphasizing the contemporary scene either in its everyday aspects or viewed as a satanic city haunted by humble but disturbing creatures, recasts, as it were, the traditional lyrical themes. Nonetheless, love is present, in all its diversity, from the mysterious charm of a beautiful woman in "Un hémisphére dans une chevelure" and "La Belle Dorothée," or woman's paradoxical nature in "Laquelle est la vraie?" and "Le Désir de peindre" to man's...