n My Heart Laid Bare, an apodictic work of aphorism, maxim, note, and extended reflection, we encounter a fierce dandy who revolts against utilitarianism: to be useful, Baudelaire gibes, is to be hideous. Yet, contrarily, it is not dissolution that this poète maudit praises or celebrates. Although he rejects Progress, he prizes what he calls true progress, for him moral, the work of the individual alone. To Nietzsche, My Heart Laid Bare contains “invaluable psychological observations relating to decadence of the kind in which Schopenhauer’s and Byron’s case has been burned.” Also included in this volume are other texts of Baudelaire’s such as the Consoling Maxims on Love, the equally burning Flares, his notes for a projected magazine, The Philosopher Owl, and select pieces from his cahiers.
