Bernard-Henri Lévy, Purple Magazine, Spring/Summer 2009
On what compelled him to write his book on the French poet, Charles Baudelaire:
“His metaphysics. It may seem bizarre, but it is nonetheless true. There is a metaphysic of Baudelaire, and it’s the true subject of the book I dedicated to the man. The Baudelaire who was a disciple of Joseph de Maistre, the ant-naturalist Baudelaire, the Baudelaire who praises artifice and make believe over spontaneity, the Baudelaire who only liked women wearing makeup, the Baudelaire who believed that those who said they were friends of the human race had a good chance of becoming it’s assassins. The Baudelaire who despised Robespierre, the Baudelaire who did not believe in community, the Baudelaire who who knew that men are born alone, and die alone, and they go through life almost alone as well. This is the Baudelaire who fascinated me. It is he who, twenty years after I put myself inside his skin in order to feel his agony, accompanies me still today.”
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Les Derniers Jours de Charles Baudelaire, 1988
B
History of Our World 
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