Abstract

ABSTRACT The traditional conception of the link between Melancholia and a creative disposition finds its climax in the artistic-literary environment of France in the nineteenth century in Baudelaire’s poetry: he illustrates this paradigm by praising Spleen and Idéal, depicting the interplay of sweetness and bitterness as a specific and aesthetic principle that his ‘sickly flowers’ are based on. But the mental gloom of the spleen can also have its paralyzing shadows. How spleen, ennui and melancholia behave to each other and how the poet confirms the classical conception of genius, will emerge by facing Baudelaire’s mourning cult. With Spleen as a central motif of his poetry his lyrical work represents simultaneously the perception of modern times: the culture of the black tails enters the streets of Paris. Starting from the poet’s observations of the morbid city, the contribution proceedes to other cornerstones from fine arts and music that illuminate the position of mélancolie in the new feeling culture within the hexagon.