On the use of the pantoum in Baudelaire's Harmonie du soir

Benoît de Cornulier (1)

1 LLING - Laboratoire de Linguistique de Nantes

Baudelaire's poem "Harmonie du soir" is a real "pantoum". The metrical structure of this poem-form is analysed: it implies a semantic alternance between two alternating series of distich-modules. Understanding this alternance requires a careful interpretation of the Catholic liturgical rhyming-notions in the poem, "encensoir", reposoir", "ostensoir", and precisely taking into account the Eucharist sacrament in which they were used. But, instead of a religious Sacrament realizing the death of Jesus and presence of God, this is a poem realizing the presence of a lost, beloved person in the poet's memory.

Mots clés: Baudelaire; pantoum; pantun

Domaines: Linguistique

Benoît de Cornulier. On the use of the pantoum in Baudelaire's Harmonie du soir: From metrical analysis to interpretation. 2015. ⟨hal-01247831⟩