SOURCE: "The Art of Suggestion," in Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du Mal, Edward Arnold Ltd., 1960, pp. 22-32.

In the following excerpt, Fairlie demonstrates how Baudelaire's careful choice of words shapes the overall effects of his poetry.

'Manier savamment une langue', said Baudelaire, 'c'est pratiquer une espèce de sorcellerie évocatoire' [Oeuvres completes, 1954, p. 1035]. It is only by the most acute and exact sense of the exciting possibilities of words, their associations, their sounds, and the ways of combining them, that the poet can create ideas, feelings or sensations. 'Il n'y a pas de hasard dans l'art . . . L'imagination est la plus scientifique des facultés' (621). Far from thinking of poetry as a matter of vague divine inspiration separated from man's other activities, he compares it not only to music and to mathematics for the fascination of its controlled patterns, but also to cooking and cosmetics for its capacity to produce...