Nietzche and Baudelaire: Genealogy of Decadence Problems in Translation

Abstract

The article considers how Nietzsche interpreted the posthumous works by Charles Baudelaire, belonging to the autobiographical essay “My Heart Laid Bare”. It states that Nietzsche viewed ideas of the French poet as one of the most important sources of the key problems of decadence. Moreover, due to the exceptionally unique understanding of R. Wagner’s music, Baudelaire was for German philosopher, who had entered the period of illness, a kind of existential “counterpart”, an obscure object of identification of inflamed critical consciousness. In the last months of his conscious life, Nietzsche literally fell ill with Baudelaire, as he had previously been ill with Wagner. Obsessed by the idea, in the French poet he saw himself. However, the image of Baudelaire flashed his mind more often that of Wagner. Refs 13.