Introduction
The concept of finding one’s place in the world has been addressed in various poems. For example, the classic theme of the person and the crowd is presented in the Charles Baudelaire poem Albatross in the traditions of both romantic and symbolic art. Eugenio Montale also touches on this topic, but he considers the concept of finding one’s place in the world through the prism of naturalism. Thus, the global issue of a person’s place in the world takes on different shades depending on the worldview.
Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal
Albatross is the most programmatic poem by Charles Baudelaire. Baudelaire is also represented as an Albatross in those publications where each poet is given only one sample of his work. The program and fame of the poem are due to the fact that the theme of finding one’s place in the world is most vividly presented in this passage in the general context of the writer.
The bipolarity underlying Charles Baudelaire’s entire work is reflected in the poem Albatross. From romanticism comes, first of all, the two worlds of the poem. Albatross is divided into two spheres. The first, connected with the poet, is the realm of nature, freedom, and the royal flight of the human spirit. The other is the world of people, the realm of unfreedom, captivity, rudeness, and pettiness. The juxtaposition of these worlds gives rise to an all-consuming irony. A poet as a lyrical subject in a crowd is a tragicomic situation. The idea of duality plays a crucial role in the internal structure of the work (Baudelaire 118). Special vocabulary, color, sounds — everything works to emphasize the contrast between heaven and earth. Baudelaire’s desire to depict the spatial extent of the world is also connected with romantic art. The infinity and vastness of space are associated with images of the abyss and the sea.
Speaking directly about correspondences, the author refers to phenomena when some feeling or sound evokes another feeling related to perception: for example, a person remembers a color or taste. That is, certain emotions can cause people to have an associative connection, awakening their memories. The Baudelaire correspondences themselves are not something fixed and stable, on the contrary, they have a dynamic character. Under the influence of a person or his thoughts, familiar things begin to transform and acquire liveliness, gradually revealing their profound essence (Baudelaire 118). At the same time, the main role is assigned not to some higher forces, but to the person themselves. That is, it is people who, with the help of imagination, animate this world, bringing the human principle into it and achieving with the help of this communion with everything that exists.
Baudelaire’s tossing between Heaven and Earth, Good and Evil, God and Satan gives rise to a symbolic comparison of the poet with an albatross. The life of both of them is inextricably linked with flight, they are both wanderers, and their wings are a power in the sky and a hindrance not to the earth. Albatross is a surprisingly simple and clear poem in composition, with a special rhythm. This form was able to most fully and accurately express all the tragedy and inconsistency of the restless human soul with the help of its place in the world.
Eugenio Montale’s Cuttlefish Bones
This poem by Eugenio Montale is characterized by a philosophical tonality. He tries to comprehend the complex world, both external and internal, the poet perceives it in all its fullness of sounds, smells, and colors. Although at first glance it seems to the reader that Eugenio Montale demonstrates global pessimism about a person’s place in the world, at the same time he does not capitulate to despair but continues to search for his poetic and life path.
In the selected extract, the author, on the one hand, withdraws himself as much as possible. He draws the world around him very realistically, and accurately, conveying sounds (singing, rustling, trills), smells (the smell of sweet peas), and colors (red ants). On the other hand, he does it picturesquely, and poetically, while not focusing on whose eyes the reader sees all this (Montale 227). A person should merge with the landscape and, as an author, abandon their Self. The world of Eugenio Montale is the world before man; however, this world is not static – it lives: the sea moves, and ants are busy with their business. However, with all this, the question arises: who goes along the fence and where, who sees the sea, and ants, hears cicadas? The subject’s place in the world remains extremely free in the text. With all the realism and the lack of stylistic excesses, the extract is very poetic, lyrical in its inner intonation, and philosophically deep in essence.
Infinitive constructions (to immerse oneself, to observe, to see, to be surprised) create the impersonality of the artistic picture of the world – and this fully corresponds to the poet’s worldview and his artistic plan. Verbal constructions – such as the word incandescent – indicate that the wall is an object of external influence (Montale 227). This gives the passage an additional emphasis on the beingness of things. The use of such an expression emphasizes the subjective nature of an inanimate object.
The lyrical hero Eugenio Montale is a protesting, suffering, tormented person, not an Epicurean one. His inner perception of the world led him not to futurism, but to metaphysicians with their thoughtful study of life, the search for its meaning, with their inquisitive gaze into the unknowable process of death. The passage shows that the author denies the Nietzschean idea of a strong personality, the idea of a superman, which was popular in his time. The line between the love of one’s homeland and one’s people and the nationalistic idea of one’s people being chosen over others in the work of Eugenio Montale is imperceptible. He recognizes that all people, regardless of culture and nationality, are only insignificant particles of the big world of nature. Therefore, the global issue of man’s place in the world is very important in the work of Eugenio Montale. At the same time, his poems are active guides and reliable sources of the poet’s lyrical worldview, based on the denial that man is the center of a naturalistic picture of the world.
Conclusion
Baudelaire makes it clear to the reader that both microcosms, natural and human, communicate with each other. He speaks not only about the relationship between people and nature but also about the fact that all material things are in a kind of secret relationship. The source of these close kinship ties or analogies is the supernatural unity of the universe, that is, the cosmos which defines the place of a person in the world. Eugenio Montale exists in a space of dialogue with the inner self and with the world that surrounds it in a more cultural, civilizing context. Perfectly feeling the beauty of the world even in simple details, the poet is aware of it, moving away from all kinds of illusions and prejudices. Although he is emphatically lonely, the poet’s loneliness is a constant internal monologue; his loneliness seems to be a conscious choice. Thus, the poets’ search for one’s place in the world has different directions: Baudelaire suggests considering man as a part of the whole surroundings, and a microparticle of the universe, while Montale is convinced that it is necessary to look for the answer inside one’s own Self.
Works Cited
Baudelaire, Charles. Les Fleurs Du Mal. David R. Godine, 2008.
Montale, Eugenio. Cuttlefish Bones. W. W. Norton & Company, 1994.