Baudelaire's "Hymn to Beauty" vs. Rimbaud's "Drunken Boat"

Essay by thatvwkidUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, March 2006

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Reading the poem entitled Hymn to Beauty by Baudelaire, I picked up on some familiar characteristics that I myself find in some of my random writings I do in my spare time. I often think of a simple subject to focus my thoughts on; sometimes these subjects being complex but often I find at the end of my writings, they have begun with no specific subject, but something brings it all together in the end and many times, they can be boiled down to one specific word or idead. Baudelaire chose to write about beauty.

Now, when I read this poem, I didn't move on to read the next one because I think that poetry needs to be analyzed deeply without outside distraction. In this case, I figured that reading on to the next poem would pollute my mind with the ideas and emotions that the writer (Arthur Rimbaud) conveyed through his poem.

By reading through both poems from the initial standpoint, I think that myself, as well and anybody else would, in a sense, combine the emotions and the meanings behind the writings. To me, any poetry or song lyric needs to be read and studied alone in order to find out what the emotional state the writer was in and the overlying message the writer was attempting to portray. Maybe I am wrong by doing this for this class assignment but I am sure that my approach would be accepted by the writers of both of these literary works.

Hymn to Beauty: Obviously, this piece is about Beauty. But why does this writer want to speak of beauty? He questions beauty and I like it. To me personally, I believe beauty is a learned thing. It differentiates between personalities. What is one man's junk is another...