On Baudelaire Benjamin and Sartre

Although the French poet Charles Baudelaire was well-known for his extraordinary life and poetic genius, he was the first poet to describe the city that made him as a privileged and an active figure. Instead, Baudelaire offers us the time and place where he lives in a striking manner, rather than a romantic world. For this reason, it is essential to understand the contradictions of modernity in the development phase of the city in order to present a portrait of Baudelaire sensitive to concrete and historical conditions. For this purpose, the work of Benjamin's Arcades project and Sartre's Baudelaire is based on two important Baudelaire interpretations. While examining these two different interpretations, a critical approach was taken. Baudelaire's historical location, conditions and the turning point of modernity were highlighted in the light of Benjamin's readings and the problems of Sartre's Baudelaire reading were examined. The source of these problems is that Sartre’s reading Baudelaire on the axis of absolute freedom and responsibility, and in the most general sense condemns him to the basic conditions specific to human existence. As a result, despite Sartre’s existential reading, in my work, adopting an attitude that handed over Baudelaire's right to Baudelaire, deeply perceptible and experiencable contradictions of modernity in the privileged character of being a poet will be discussed and justified by choosing historical, concrete conditions and modernity or city (Paris) oriented reading of Benjamin