McCarty 1

Gideon McCarty
10/29/2019
Gideon McCarty

SCTH 36012

10/29/2019

Professor Rosanna Warren

Midterm Essay

The Inevitable Darkness of Man and Sea

In Man and Sea, Charles Baudelaire takes on a classic idea: the sea as a manifestation of

our subconscious. However, rather than explore what he finds of his subconscious in the sea, he

opts to attempt to impart why the man and the expanse of the ocean have the connection that they

do. By observing key images from across the poem, we will begin to understand how Baudelaire

conceives of this communion, and how he understands the benefits we reap from our interactions

with the watery abyss. And if this appears to grant us no insight into our subconscious, fear not

— through attacking the poem in this way, we will see how Baudelaire reveals a great deal about

his conception of the human psyche and the liberating, nightmarish power of the infinite.

First, we must attempt to understand what constitutes the relationship between man and

the sea — only after this can we begin to understand why we turn to its depths. Let us begin by

observing the second quatrain. Baudelaire begins this stanza by referring to the sea as an “image

of himself” into which the contemplative man “dives”. In describing the sea as an image of a

man, Baudelaire obscures the relationship between man and sea. The sea is not described as an
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exact projection of a man’s soul or a separate entity, but rather a way to reflect man’s own image

of himself back to him. However, there is something compelling man to dive into the sea beyond

simply an image of himself. Baudelaire writes that man dives into the sea with “arms and eyes

wide open”. It is evident from this image that man is more than willing to let himself engage with

the sea, something moving him. If the sea was truly only an image of man himself, he would not

need to dive in: simply looking would be enough.

To understand what it is about the sea that encourages man to dive in and open himself to

its vastness, we can turn to the third stanza. To begin at the end: the last line of this quatrain

reads “so jealously they guard their secrets, both!” In granting the sea secrets, Baudelaire invites

us to consider how man views diving into the sea as a quest, a pursuit that can bring spoils of

war. But what are these spoils? Simply put, they are the same as those contained within the man

— those of a rich inner life.

Baudelaire, in this poem, claims that enlightenment is hidden in, and only in, the infinite:

in this case, the sea. If we travel back to the poem’s first stanza, we see how Baudelaire grants

primacy to our engagement with the infinite. He begins the poem in the imperative, writing that

man “always loves” the sea and “will contemplate his soul” in it. If the movement to the sea is so

a command, what makes it so? We find answers to this if we observe how Baudelaire juxtaposes

this image with the other central idea of the first quatrain: — the vastness of the sea, and of our

suffering. It is clear the immensity of man’s counterpart, from the “endlessly unrolling surge” to

the “gulfs” that “gape”. Baudelaire interpolates the vastness with the inevitability — lines one and

three speak to the inevitability of the relationship between man and sea, while two and four

reckon with the violent size of the sea. For Baudelaire, our mental torment is inescapable and

immense — we must go somewhere of equal size and volatility to begin to understand it.
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Returning to the third stanza, we can further elucidate how man perceives his relationship

to the sea and why he must externalize the pursuit of understanding. In the lines Howard f we

observe the lines set off places in between em-dashes by Howard, we see clearly how man

attempts to make distinct the secrets of the titular characters. While the heart must be “sounded to

its depths” (with minimal success), the sea has “riches” that some attempt to “pluck” (also

unsuccessfully). By placing the riches of the sea at a distance, we are further motivated to reach

for them. The “riches” promise reward, and the challenge of obtaining them enables us, forces us

to dive into the infinite. If we supplement this reading with the notion that enlightenment is

found within the infinite, we can see how looking to a different infinity could nevertheless allow

us to begin to sound our heart to its depths by virtue of its size and its power.

What we must now inquire about, however, isBut why must we continually return to the

sea? What is it that draws us back to its depths? To begin to answer this, let us look to the end of

the second stanza, and one of the poem’s most striking images: Baudelaire refers to the sea as an

“untamable complaint”. In naming the sea as “untamable”, Baudelaire further situates man as

conqueror, plunging into previously undefeated depths for the promise of a great reward. Thus, it

is clear how our incapacity to tame the sea is a benefit to us — we enjoy the magnitude of the

challenge. But we must further examine the notion of the sea as complaint. If we understand the

sea as a place of reflection, referring to it as a complaint appears almost contradictory, but if we

attempt to understand this imagery through the nexus that Baudelaire finds between love and

pain we can find a more satisfactory understanding of how the sea assists us and is a complaint.

When he communes with the sea, Baudelaire writes, a man’s heart is “sometimes diverted

from his own dead march…” In this way, we can understand the sea as forcefully breaking us out

of a lethargy, cracking open our ennui through its disruptive force. For Baudelaire, that which
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gives us assistance is not always that which gives us solace or calm. We can understand the sea

as jostling us out of our default state, one that provides a measure of resigned satisfaction but not

true happiness — thusly, we can understand how the sea might be a complaint, be a violent

awakening, but still one that we require for any sort of deeper understanding. Furthermore, if we

refer back to the first quatrain, we can see how Baudelaire encourages this reading, reminding us

that the sea encourages a pursuit of self-reflection because, like the tides of the untamable

complaint, “gulfs as bitter gape” within the mind of the reflector. This whole stanza reminds us

that we need the violence of the sea, as it allows us to free our minds and our hearts.

We must now, however, consider the fourth quatrain, and thus reconsider the poem as a

whole. We have just posited that the communion between man and sea is painful but ultimately

noble. In this final stanza, however, Baudelaire presents us with a different reading of this

relationship. He writes that man and the sea “wage their unrelenting war / for sheer delight in

carnage and in death…” How are we supposed to understand this seemingly rapid pivot, that our

impetus for self-reflection now seems to be carnage and death rather than enlightenment?

Perhaps the relationship between love and pain was not as kind as we had assumed. In

fact, we can see the violence presented in the final stanza as Baudelaire presenting to us our

inherent masochism and the potential nightmare of the infinite. In searching for this knowledge,

in reaching to the depths of the human heart, we open ourselves to the very real possibility that

we will find unsettling darkness contained therein. Therefore, we can understand how our

“unrelenting war” with the sea could bring pain. But from where does this masochism find its

defense? If we consider two moments from the first two stanzas, we can begin to see the roots of

this masochism present. In the very first line of the poem, Baudelaire writes that in order to “love

the sea” one must be “a free man” and that free men “always love the sea”. Thusly, we observe
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how, being freed from the bonds of transcending our ennui, we must be ready, and derive some

enjoyment from, engaging with this pain. Furthermore, we can see how in the second stanza, our

heart, that which we are looking to sound to its depths, is “diverted from its own dead march”

when it comes into contact with the sea. Here, Baudelaire makes even clearer the notion that pain

is necessary to free ourselves from the bonds of an ordinary life — from death.

We can also observe how this masochism gets more prevalent as the poem progresses. In

the first stanza, Baudelaire presents us with the bitter gulfs within our minds — certainly an

image trending toward darkness, but one that does not scream its pain. In the second stanza, we

learn about our dead march, and are presented with the sea as a complaint: these images tend a

bit further towards a painful communion, but the poem still appears to be about liberation,

especially with our “arms and eyes wide open”. In the third quatrain, we are told that the combat

between man and the sea is “grim” and we are introduced to the jealous guarding of secrets.

Furthermore, it is implied that the riches are rarely if ever plucked from the sea and the heart is

rarely sounded to its depths. Here, Baudelaire is making more clear the grim tone of the poem.

Finally, in this last stanza, the masochism of our relationship with the sea is made abundantly

clear. We can understand this progression as an example of form and function working together

— as we dive deeper into the sea, our hearts, and the poem itself, the masochistic impulse grows

stronger and the darkness with which we are grappling becomes more and more apparent.

Baudelaire is mirroring this transition in the poem, introducing more dark language as the

stanzas progress — our masochistic impulse grows the more we are able to feed it.

Finally, we should examine how the final two lines of the poem serve as a microcosm for

the parallel desires of man and sea, pain and enlightenment. Baudelaire, describing the

“unrelenting war”, expresses that the combatants take part in it “for sheer delight in carnage and
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in death,” and in the poem’s final line, professes that they are “implacable brothers and eternal

foes!” While these lines certainly place the poem in a register of grisly negativity, Baudelaire

hints at how the relationship between man and sea may be one that benefits both parties, further

enforcing the masochism of obtaining knowledge. As the two combatants go to war out of

“delight”, it is clear that they find joy in their war, and situating them as “implacable brothers”

creates a sense of inevitability to this fight. Though they are foes, they are not so by choice. And

furthermore, they will not cease their struggle. As man and sea plumb each other’s depths,

looking for their secrets, Baudelaire tells us that we may find joy in the pain, both ours and our

opponent’s, that we might love to spiral into the depths of ourselves with them.