Ricerc@Sapienza

The essay reconstructs the ancient poetic tradition of astronomical 'adynata', where the observation of the sky becomes expression of erotic suffering. After a short excursus on this kind of 'adynata' from ancient Greek and Latin poetry to the 17th century, the essay focuses on two modern authors who seem to revive this tradition: Baudelaire and Proust. Baudelaire in his “poèmes en prose” (Spleen de Paris) refers to two “impossible” events: the black sun and the moon pulled out of the sky by the magic art of the Thessalian witches.

This paper aims to show how the Baudelaire’s prose poem The Thyrsus, in Paris Spleen, constitues the exemplary exhibition of the idea of art itself and of its ontological and epistemological statute, according to the theoretical Baudelairian perspective.