« Tu sais cependant bien que ma destinée est mauvaise. »

Autograph letter signed by Charles Baudelaire, written in pencil and addressed to his mother. Dry-stamped stationery of the Grand Hôtel Voltaire, Faubourg Saint-Germain. Address to Madame Aupick in Honfleur (Calvados) in the author's hand, together with several postal markings dated 13 and 14 July 1858. Several underlinings, deletions and corrections by Baudelaire. Trace of a wax seal bearing Charles Baudelaire's initials in pencil, probably in the author's hand. A small portion of the second leaf has been excised, with no loss of text.
This letter was first published in the Revue de Paris on 15 September 1917.
From the former collection of Armand Godoy, no. 102.

The letter is preserved in a half black morocco chemise with abstract-patterned paper boards, housed in a matching slipcase edged in the same black morocco and covered with abstract-patterned paper boards.
A precious document, bearing witness to a decisive moment in the poet's life: his reconciliation with the now widowed Madame Aupick, that revered mother «who haunts her son's heart and mind».

Victorious, Baudelaire had overcome the obstacle represented by his burdensome stepfather, whose death he had at times wished for; he was now ready to reclaim his place beside the mother by whom he had so often felt neglected. Following the death of her husband in April 1857, she invited her son to come and live with her in her « toy-house » at Honfleur. This letter reveals a Baudelaire torn by complex emotions: divided between his longing for an ideal union with his mother and his irresistible attraction to spleen.
For the « low bohemian » (as the Goncourts called him), hounded by creditors, Honfleur and the exclusive attention of his mother held out the promise of fulfilling his poetic destiny. The poet expressed this hope to his friends, notably Antoine Jaquotot (mentioned at the end of the present letter): « Je veux décidément mener cette vie de retraite que mène un de mes amis, [...] qui, par la vie commune qu'il entretient avec sa mère a trouvé un repos d'esprit suffisant pour accomplir récemment une fort belle œuvre et devenir célèbre d'un seul coup. » (20 February 1858)
«Tu vas, dans peu de jours, recevoir le commencement de mon déménagement [...]. Ce seront d'abord des livres – tu les rangeras proprement dans la chambre que tu me destines.» By entrusting his books to her, he asks his mother to create for him an ideal world in which to write and create.
Yet alongside these promises and hopes of a life finally serene and peaceful, Baudelaire also reveals his attachment to the existence of the cursed poet: «Tu sais cependant bien que ma destinée est mauvaise.» Beyond his «nouveaux embarras d'argent», it is above all his work that keeps him in Paris: «Si mon premier morceau à la Revue contemporaine a été retardé, c'est uniquement parce que je l'ai voulu ; j'ai voulu revoir, relire, recommencer et corriger.» The «premier morceau» referred to here is none other than « De l'Idéal artificiel, le Haschisch », the first text of the future Paradis artificiels (1860), which would not appear until the issue of 30 September 1858. This passage, illustrating Baudelaire's relentless perfectionism, recalls the extraordinary complexity of the poet's drafts and proofs, which he continued to revise meticulously until the very last moment (even on the first copies of Les Fleurs du Mal; see the copy we offer). Despite his financial difficulties, Baudelaire revised and altered his texts incessantly, limiting the number of articles he could produce. Yet he remained convinced that writing would bring him prosperity and confidently declared: «Cette fois-ci je m'en tirerai à moi tout seul, sans emprunter un sol.»
Baudelaire ultimately left Paris for Honfleur only in January 1859, and did not remain there long. After only a few weeks he began to miss the excitement of Paris, and above all Jeanne Duval, who was calling him back. He left his mother for his mistress and returned to his Babylon, irresistibly drawn once more toward spleen. Thereafter he made only brief stays in Honfleur before his exile to Belgium. Yet these Norman interludes, far removed from the temptations of the capital, proved exceptionally fruitful: « Les séjours à Honfleur durant l'hiver et au printemps correspondent à une étonnante période de fécondité et à un état physiologique relativement satisfaisant. [...] C'est le second apogée de sa vie créatrice, le premier devant être situé entre 1842 et 1846. » (Claude Pichois & Jean Ziegler, Baudelaire, p. 385). It was indeed while staying with his mother that the poet reshaped Les Fleurs du Mal, rebalancing the collection after the suppression of the condemned poems by composing several new « Flowers ». He thus gave his readers the monumental « Voyage », as well as « L'albatros » and « La chevelure ».
Through this moving announcement of a return home, the poet once again becomes, for a time, the prodigal son, promising his «chère petite mère» that he will prove worthy of her affection: « Il faut des miracles et je les ferai », while proclaiming his vital need to exist in her eyes: «Seulement, admire-moi!»