A kaleidoscope in the midst of the crowds: Poetry and the city in Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass' and Charles Baudelaire's 'Petits Poemes en prose'

This dissertation examines the theme of the city in Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Charles Baudelaire's Petits Poèmes en prose. In the critical tradition, these two poets are considered as diametrically opposed; but what brings them together is their common fascination with the large cities they lived in and wrote about. Historically, New York and Paris both underwent radical transformations in the nineteenth century: populations increased, city limits expanded, and new networks of circulation developed. I argue that the quintessentially urban experience of circulating among the crowds proved decisive both for Whitman and for Baudelaire, and that it presided over a radical redefinition of the lyric voice. Both observing the crowds and blending into them, the lyric self became a persona behind which a multiplicity of other personae were both hidden and visible. In these fleeting apparitions of faces in the crowd, the city is perceived, both in Leaves of Grass and in the Petits Poèmes en prose, as a spectacle. I argue that the new urban poetry, instead of painting a “realistic” picture of city life, presents an insubstantial and exaggerated vision of the city, which places death at its center. The dissertation concludes with a reflection on poetry, the city, and time, in which I argue that the modern city alters the perception of time, conflating present, past, and future in a prophetic configuration.