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Charles Baudelaire

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Delacroix, Wagner, Baudelaire — all great theorists, bent on dominating other minds by sensuous means. Their one dream was to create the irresistible effect — to intoxicate, or overwhelm. They looked to analysis to provide them with the keyboard on which to play, with certainty, on man's emotions, and they sought in abstract meditation they key to sure and certain action upon their subject — man's nervous and psychic being.
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Paul Valéry, "Autour de Corot" (About Corot), preface to Vingt Estampes de Corot (Éditions des Biblioth?ques Nationales, 1932); printed in Degas Manet Morisot (Princeton University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-691-01882-0), p. 136

 
Charles Baudelaire

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