Tip of the WIng

BAUDELAIRE--FLOWER OF EVIL--Francois Porche--Horace Liveright ($3.50).

The great as well as the infamous have apologists. Baudelaire, who was a little of both, has had many. The greatest were Arthur Symons and James Huneker who adored him with exquisite words. The least lyric and most informative was Eugene Crepet. The latest is the sympathetic Francois Porche. He, the fashion of many easy-going raphers, did little more than rewrite in better prose and form the Crepet biography. But his dedication gracefully admits it.

In his life Baudelaire achieved fame by publishing Les Fleurs du Mal, by espousing Dandyism, by living with the negress Jeanne Duval. Only the most enthusiastic Baudelairians know his brilliant Salons, the pitiful Journaux Intimes, his Petits Poemes en Prose. And today it is only in Les Fleurs du Mal that Baudelaire exists.

Yet Baudelaire, in spite of arduous anc meticulous polishing, was not a skilful nor always successful prosodist, and his vocabulary was comparatively small. Gautier, his master, wrote better verse. Anc Joris Karl Huysmans, his disciple, was more artistically erotic.

But Baudelaire, the tormented Catholic Satanist, sometimes achieved in poetry grandeur that: was Wagnerian. In French literature his niche will eventually be tha of his kinspirit Poe in English. Once Baudelaire wrote "Yesterday I felt the wing of imbecility brush me." It was also perhaps the tip of the wing of greatness.