Gli ossimori del riso in Baudelaire

Abstract

Laughter, in Baudelaire’s poetry, is a symptom of evil: it often arises from the abysses of self-consciousness, from contact with material and spiritual death, from the vision of evil and chaos. Laughing, like art itself, disguises spiritual emptiness while it doscovers it, and poetry redeems the misery of man. So, the comic gesture of British clown excites an “absolute”, metaphysical laugh.