Analysis of Baudelaire’s The Firing Range and the Graveyard

Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen is a collection of poems with all sorts of different themes and content, Baudelaire had consistently used a form which enhances the poem’s content, though had he used a more traditional form at the time, these poems may have not be as powerful and gotten popular. An example of Baudelaire’s form that went away from traditional forms of poetry, is seen through the poem, “The Firing Range and the Graveyard,” a free-form poem that seems to have no structure and seemly similar to a short story, for the poem is rather clever with the form. The nature of this writing seems simple to some, but to indulge and dig deeper into the poem, one may see more than they wanted to; a journey of a character who goes to a graveyard hears voices, but the poem is more than a first time reader would ever think of. Digging into the poem, one can realize the symbolism of things and interpret what their ideals come from this poem, for this poem’s seemingly straightforward way of writing, brings a whole lot more than just a man going to the firing range and a graveyard. The poem is enhanced through a certain word choice, the way the poem is structured and themed, using 4 stanzas, and the narrative way of writing.

Though Baudelaire’s poem is of a free form nature, the poem does have a simple structure as in, there being 4 stanzas all having a different action and narration for the character. The first stanza, being the setup, starts off with the character seeing the tavern which inevitably brings the character in, due to a sign, and through the character talking of how he feels the owner might have enjoyed previous poets and might have been fond of ancient Egyptian artifacts, leading to the second stanza. The second s...

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...all now as, “The Firing Range and the Graveyard,” a poem, who’s word choice made the poem so much better.

Free form broke the walls of structure and created something new, through no form, we get a form that doesn’t rely on old traditional methods and can create poetry just as worthy. As form changes, our choice in words also changes, words create a deeper meaning, if used correctly, but with deeper meaning, people create something new; a new interpretation, creates a new idea of thinking. Through the great word choice of Baudelaire, the free form style Baudelaire uses, and the viewpoint, that complements the style, we get one of the poems in Paris Spleen, “The Firing Range and the Graveyard.”

Works Cited

Baudelaire, Charles. "The Firing Range and the Graveyard." Paris Spleen. By Charles Baudelaire. Trans. Louise Varese. New

York: New Directions, 1970.