Baudelaire

I became somewhat intrigued with Baudelaire last semester when Mrs. Garner told me that a few lines of a poem I had written for her creative writing class reminded her of his poem The Corpse. While reading through this and other poems I also started to read about him and discovered his adoration for Edgar Allan Poe. He translated Poe's work and garnered a lot of attention for this task. He held Poe in high regard which caught my attention even more, being that I prefer Poe's work over pretty much anyone.

In reading the sections from Baudelaire's The Painter of Modern Life, I felt that Baudelaire fit in the category of flaneur. To write about people in the way that he did would have required a great deal of people watching and studying their tendencies. I'm a people watcher myself and tend to only interact when I want to learn something about somebody. So I definitely understand the appeal of this lifestyle from that aspect.

The way the dandy was described reminded me of the hipsters(they are also called scenesters, but I'm pretty sure only hipsters use that word) that we have today. The type that wears more daring fashions, ones that most people think are kind of cool looking but would never actually wear, and are always trying to stay ahead of the new fashions and even help create the new trends. These dandies, I'm sure, would have been just as hilarious to me as the hipsters of today. Every time I see fedoras, skinny jeans, feathers in peoples hair, or just anyone that dresses like Denise Cosby in the first few seasons of The Cosby Show, I can't help but smile and think how dandy it is that we live in the time that we do.