« Me voici en mesure d'accomplir tous mes plans »

Autograph letter signed by Charles Baudelaire, written in ink and addressed to his mother. A few underlinings, deletions, and authorial corrections.
This letter was first published in Charles Baudelaire, Dernières lettres inédites à sa mère in 1926.
Former collection of Armand Godoy, no. 197.

A precious letter from Baudelaire's Brussels period, during the poet's voluntary exile at the end of his life.

« Il est douteux que j'habite quelque part à Paris. Je crois que j'habiterai surtout une voiture dans laquelle je ferai, si je peux, toutes mes courses en un ou deux jours. » Haunted by Paris – the city of vice and creditors – he dreads this brief return. His exile in Brussels is, in his eyes, a sign of failure, and ever since arriving in Belgium he has delayed his return to France. Yet weary of the flat country he despises, he mocks its inhabitants: « On est lent ici. »

The poet, like the seventeen-year-old student who once promised his mother he would get back on track, now vows: « Me voici en mesure d'accomplir tous mes plans. Je ne sais comment t'exprimer ma reconnaissance ; et je crois que la meilleure manière sera d'exécuter mes promesses. » Literally obsessed with this sacred mother « who haunts [his] heart and [his] mind », the « grateful son » sees himself as incapable of fulfilling his poetic destiny without her undivided attention.