commentary on A une passante

‘A une passante’, taken from Baudelaire’s major work ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ appeared in 1857. In Baudelaire’s work, symbolist poetry found its origins. Although his poems at that time were found to be decadent, the symbolist movement was the main literary stream until well into the 1890’s. The symbolist stream was founded in the late 19th century in France. This literary stream ‘encouraged writers to express their ideas, feelings, and values by means of …

…the I-figure describes the woman and experiences love, he does not explicitly describes his feelings, he rather describes the woman. Thirdly there is a lot of mystery and illusion present in the descriptions of settings and in what is to happen with the woman after she leaves him. Lastly, the poem was written by the symbolist poet in the time and country of symbolist poetry: Baudelaire wrote this in the late 19th century in France.