“Meditations on Charles Baudelaire: What place(s) for literature in the museum”.

>A Culture Masterclass proposed by the School of Public Affairs, prepared and moderated by par Marie Badiane, Lena Cabrespines, Marie Diehl, César Desse, Gabrielle Dubreuil, Min Gao, Camille Gaumont, Lara Labrun, Léonie Lhommelais, Elsa Marchitto, Carla Potavin. Article by Camille Gaumont. Translation by Min Gao. 

Sciences Po students of the Culture policy stream (both French and English tracks) at the School of Public Affairs met with Patrick Chamoiseau during the Masterclass on October 20th, 2021. As winner of the 1992 Goncourt Prize, Patrick Chamoiseau is renowned for his works Texaco and Le Conteur, la Nuit et le Panier. In residence at the Musée d'Orsay for the 200th anniversary of Baudelaire, he was invited to delve into Baudelaire's poetry by Donatien Grau, the advisor of contemporary programmes for both Musée d'Orsay and Musée de l'Orangerie, as well as a doctor of literature. Mr Grau recalled a phrase by Patrick Chamoiseau: “Baudelaire is the name of our wound”. Although no one, not even the author himself, identified the exact location of this well-known phrase, the wonderful occasion granted the students a rich and inspiring exchange with both of the men.

Patrick Chamoiseau started by referring to his residence. He appreciated it as an opportunity to devote himself to a poetic work for a few weeks. The fact of residing within the walls of Musée d'Orsay added to this experience, since he could roam in the museum at will, day and night. “A museum cannot be exhausted; it has to be lived and relived,” he said. However, as a writer of the 21st century, Patrick Chamoiseau found it not easy to forge immediate connections with the 19th-century poet. An obstacle for all writers from formerly colonised countries: there are two languages, one of the coloniser and the other of the native. 

Patrick Chamoiseau traced back to the specificities of the West Indian cultural heritage. “Every time I imagine a slave ship, I have the impression that it makes a drop of tear in the Atlantic. And it is from this drop that the contemporary world emerges”. With the shock of Western colonisation came the creolisation of the Americas as a meeting of all cultures. Instead of being triggered by “micro fusions” such as miscegenation, as one might think, this phenomenon led to an unprecedented “anthropological precipitation”. Creolisation moulds the matrix of the Americas and has given rise to new cultural imaginations, new rhythms and new dances. 

How does creolisation materialise at the level of the writer? Through his “jagged family tree”: the influences are numerous, the ancestry diverse. With such a lineage, it can be challenging to voice oneself in a society where the vision of the world is shaped throughout colonisation. To create, the Creole author must first sort out the enigma of understanding who he is. Thus, Patrick Chamoiseau stated that “[his] aesthetic is a process of clarification”. Breaking through the identity maze, the writer reverses the established schemes of centre and peripheries, and reshapes his locality as the centre.

In accepting the residence at the Musée d'Orsay, Patrick Chamoiseau remained faithful to his quest for clarification. He explored beyond the classic figure of Baudelaire, the celebrated poet depicting 19th-century Paris. For instance, this is how Patrick Chamoiseau understood Baudelaire’s presence in Césaire's work. In Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, the Négritude poet describes a “comical and ugly negro” whom he met on a train journey. This episode demonstrates how Césaire internalised the degrading vision of the colonialists despite himself. But Patrick Chamoiseau spotted something else: the expression of “comical and ugly” comes straight from Baudelaire's poem L'Albatros. If the poet is there in Césaire's work, then he is already “in the game”, and everything turns possible.

To interpret Baudelaire, as in approaching each of the subjects that he writes about, Patrick Chamoiseau has brought him “back to an inner authority”. He sought to establish parallels between the poet's work and his own. In this way, the writer identified the “driving forces” mutual to his writing and that of Baudelaire. For Patrick Chamoiseau, the driving forces are the major tendencies that vitalise society, the underlying mechanisms that enable the explanation of human relations and behaviours.

The writer has identified two driving forces in Baudelaire's time which remain relevant today: the “individuation process” and the city. In the 19th century, society witnessed the emergence of cities as monsters of stone swallowing up communities and spitting out individuals. “Baudelaire enjoyed precipitating his solitude into a crowd of solitudes”. Nowadays, people no longer identify themselves in the “ready-made way of living” of communities but are ushered into an individualistic and neoliberal regime. Patrick Chamoiseau recognises the crowd of solitaries that accompanied Baudelaire: when he walks through the city, he sees “individual solitudes crowding onto terraces till midnight, in coldness”.

Our conversation then shifted from Baudelaire’s solitudes to the bonds that museums are capable of establishing as cultural institutions. Donatien Grau pointed out the importance of considering the museum as a complex of connections open to the world, rather than as singular artworks enclosed within walls. Works of art reveal their full significance only when they are associated with each other. Donatien Grau quoted Cézanne, that “the Louvre is the great book in which we learn to read”. In Cézanne's time, the Louvre was the museum of the near past. Nowadays, it is the Musée d'Orsay. By strolling through the works of Monet and Gauguin, by considering the connections between them, we can contemplate the past and better understand today’s world. Finally, Donatien Grau expressed thanks to Patrick Chamoiseau: “Thanks to creative figures like you, it is possible for us to consider things as what we have never seen before, and as what they truly are”.

What did our exchange with Patrick Chamoiseau allow us to see as we have never seen before? The work of Baudelaire, the impact of colonisation on the creative process, the individualism in which we may evolve. But also, the possibilities presented to us: we can “build our existence based on terms that are not those imposed by capitalism and colonialism”. The writer ended his speech by saying that “if you construct your future with economists, you will be lost; because what matters most is the aesthetic stimulation”. Let us follow his advice: go to the museums, immerse ourselves in masterpieces, and perhaps we may stand a chance to rethink our world and witness true Beauty.

Two more questions for Patrick Chamoiseau:

The lights of the Musée d'Orsay went out at 9 pm, but we would have liked to continue this exchange by sending questions to Patrick Chamoiseau afterwards. Here is what he replied. 

César: In his youth, Charles Baudelaire faced the pain of voyaging to the South Seas. Would you say, Patrick Chamoiseau, that this experience of uprooting, disorientation, even decentralisation, is something that you share with the poet and that nourishes your work?

PC: What is miraculous is that this compelled journey put Baudelaire in direct contact with the "elsewhere", and that this "elsewhere" remained for him a precious "possibility" of the world. The "elsewhere" remained alive in him. To be able to live with the "elsewhere" while being "here" (to live with the Other, with the different, with the impossible, with the unthinkable) is a grace for all human existence, it infinitely opens up the body, the mind and the sensibility. 

Lena: A writer is first and foremost a creator of words and imaginations enclosed between the pages of a book; his work is reinvented in the intimacy of each reading. In contrast, the museum, as a shared open space, gives rise to a public scenography of the works. Faced with this difference, how can writers and literature find their places in a museum? In your opinion, how can the encounter take place, and is it desirable?

PC: When we "encounter" a work of art, it can become an aesthetic stimulation, a lightning bolt that touches our sensitivity and opens us up to a more acute perception of Beauty. The problem is that, as we read or look at a work, we can be in contact with it without this precious "encounter" taking place. This is why we need to develop an "aesthetic" in ourselves, that is to say, an availability of the mind and body to experience wonder, celebration, depth in everything, a kind of permanent desire for Beauty, a taste and attention for the Beautiful. Museums are among the devices that help us to experience such "encounters". Literature too. As you start on a great book, it is as if you were entering a huge museum. Literature and museums are among those that grant us the possibility of a "visit to Beauty". The day will undoubtedly come when, thanks to digital technology, texts will be alive in museums, on every wall, alongside the works of art.

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• The Culture policy stream (French track) at the School of Public Affairs
• The Cultural Policy and Management policy stream (English track) at the School of Public Affairs