What happens between seeing a stranger and imagining that stranger’s life? Two of Baudelaire’s prose poems make that interval their subject. Read each observer’s language closely: sympathy, curiosity and self-interest can inhabit the same act of looking.
“Windows”: how little can become a story
out of nothing almost
The speaker watches a woman across the rooftops and builds an account of her life from a few visible details. The poem turns an ordinary window into a place where looking becomes invention. The phrase above openly acknowledges the small amount of evidence involved.
As you read, underline descriptions of things the speaker can see. Circle statements about the woman’s experience. Then ask what connects the two sets of words. Is the connection something the woman has communicated, a reasonable possibility or an assertion supplied by the observer?
These selections use Arthur Symons’s English translation in Poems in Prose (1913). Its phrasing belongs to a particular translation. Keep the translator’s name with a quotation, especially when comparing another English version.
The observer tells us that he invents
I have made up the woman's story
The speaker takes pride in entering another life imaginatively. Yet the poem also introduces a challenge about whether the imagined story is true. That question puts pressure on the pleasure of identification: what does the stranger gain, and what does the observer gain?
Two readings to test
Imaginative sympathy: the observer reaches beyond a private life to feel with someone else. Self-directed invention: the stranger becomes material for the observer’s own emotional experience. Find one detail supporting each reading, then decide whether the poem lets them coexist.
The strongest response explains how the words produce that tension. A general verdict about whether imagination is good leaves the poem’s specific movement unexplored.
“The Eyes of the Poor”: a look receives several meanings
that I might read my own thought in you
At a glittering café, the narrator imagines what a poor father and his children express with their eyes. He then looks toward his companion, hoping for a shared response. Her spoken request to have them sent away breaks that expectation.
Distinguish the narrator’s interpretations of the family’s looks from the companion’s quoted speech. The first comes through his account of other people’s thoughts; the second gives him an unwelcome answer. His wish to recognize himself in his companion also makes looking a test of intimacy.
Read the first-person voice as a shaped speaker within the poem. When making a claim, use “the narrator assumes” or “the speaker imagines” where those words describe the evidence. Reserve a claim about Baudelaire’s personal beliefs for evidence that actually addresses them.
Compare the observers in three passes
- Visible detail: choose one object, gesture or position from each poem. Describe it without adding a motive.
- Assigned meaning: identify the feeling or life story the speaker attaches to that detail.
- Resistance: find a question, admission or response that complicates the speaker’s account.
Write a paragraph beginning with an action: “The speaker turns…” or “The reply interrupts…”. Include one short quotation and explain a particular word. End by naming what the poem leaves unresolved.
For an everyday exercise, describe a view from a window in two sentences. In a separate paragraph, invent a story prompted by it and label it as fiction. The separation makes the creative choice visible. It also gives you a practical way to recognize the same movement in a prose poem.
Continue with Barthes on how interpretation builds its claims or Blake on acts of seeing.
About these selections
Source notes identify the wording and edition used. Interpretations and exercises are Yenra’s. Follow the linked text when citing or comparing a passage.