Of course, Baudelaire
I placed the box on the kitchen island and sliced through the tape with the knife I most commonly use for vegetables, not knowing this book would be as healthy for me as grated carrots or steamed broccoli. I hadn't remembered ordering a book and certainly not one that would cause me to think this much. Call it my subconscious understanding what I needed or simply my immediate, and ostensibly insignificant, response to yet another invitation to peruse a possible creative writing textbook, but something knew I would find this book inspiring.
The book is a collection of essays by acclaimed writers reflecting on lines from literature and poetry that profoundly marked them or even changed their lives. From the introduction, beautifully and honestly rendered by the book's editor, to Mary Gaitskill's interaction with Tolstoy to Billy Collins's exploration of Yeats, exciting and diverse worlds immerse readers in the power of language. And of dreams. And humanity.
So I began to catalogue the insight I've encountered in books over the years. I studied French literature as an undergrad and could pull beautiful phrases from Hugo, Voltaire, St. Exupéry, Sand. I've been stunned, more recently, by Jonathan Franzen and Alice Munro and Anthony Marra. I've felt connected to great poets, local and international, past and contemporary, inspired by words and sounds from Auden and Bishop and Baudelaire.
Baudelaire. There it was. Of course, Baudelaire.
I must admit that I’ve been drawn to the French language since childhood and that I also studied French lit in graduate school. At 25, I spent months in the library with the 19th century poet as I composed my thesis on elements of his writing. Baudelaire's works include poignant lines, surprising (and shocking at the time) images, and more moments of sadness than I can articulate. He was troubled, haunted, brilliant. A poet, art critic, and man struggling, screaming, to understand his place in the world and believe in his own value.
My line doesn't come from his poetry nor from his criticism; the striking words that have stayed with me for years, inspiring me both as a writer and as a person who sometimes encounters difficulties and sorrow and frustration, were written in a letter to his mother. As I sat alone one evening at a wooden table filing through volumes of letters the poet wrote to sa mère, I came across these words: J'ai pétri de la boue et j'en ai fait de l'or. I didn’t close the book. I looked at the thousands of books that surrounded me, at the clusters of other students silently making sense of their own studies, at my notes, my computer, the words again. I kneaded through mud and made gold.
Baudelaire was referencing his art, attempting to prove, justify even, his talent to his mother. But he was also, 150+ years later, speaking to me at 9 pm in the library at San Francisco State University. He was telling me that despite the difficulty, the mess, the sh** we sometimes encounter, we can create beauty. We can knead through that mud and build something more valuable than we know.
I don’t remember his mother’s response but I remember mine: Yes, Baudelaire, you did.
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