"We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose"
About this Quote
Time, for Baudelaire, isn’t a neutral backdrop; it’s an oppressor you can feel on the skin. The line lands with the claustrophobia of modern life arriving early: every moment “weighed down” by awareness of passing hours, by the mind’s compulsive accounting. He frames Time as a “nightmare,” not because clocks are scary, but because consciousness is. To be awake to duration is to be haunted by finitude.
Baudelaire’s neat, almost moralistic binary - “pleasure and work” - is a trapdoor into his deeper cynicism. Pleasure is not liberation here; it’s anesthesia with a cost. “Pleasure consumes us” suggests a self that dissolves into appetite, intoxication, sex, spectacle: the classic Baudelairean repertoire of escape. It works, briefly, by shrinking the horizon to the sensation of now. But it also devours agency, turning the person into fuel for the moment.
Work, by contrast, “strengthens us” not as Protestant virtue-signaling but as self-construction. Labor disciplines attention; it builds form against the formlessness of time. This is a poet arguing, maybe against his own temptations, that making something - art, craft, effort - is the only exit that doesn’t leave you emptier.
The context is mid-19th-century Paris, where the city is being rebuilt, capitalism is speeding up daily life, and boredom (ennui) becomes a cultural diagnosis. “Let us choose” reads less like a sermon than a dare: you can’t stop time, but you can decide whether you’ll be eaten by distraction or fortified by creation.
Baudelaire’s neat, almost moralistic binary - “pleasure and work” - is a trapdoor into his deeper cynicism. Pleasure is not liberation here; it’s anesthesia with a cost. “Pleasure consumes us” suggests a self that dissolves into appetite, intoxication, sex, spectacle: the classic Baudelairean repertoire of escape. It works, briefly, by shrinking the horizon to the sensation of now. But it also devours agency, turning the person into fuel for the moment.
Work, by contrast, “strengthens us” not as Protestant virtue-signaling but as self-construction. Labor disciplines attention; it builds form against the formlessness of time. This is a poet arguing, maybe against his own temptations, that making something - art, craft, effort - is the only exit that doesn’t leave you emptier.
The context is mid-19th-century Paris, where the city is being rebuilt, capitalism is speeding up daily life, and boredom (ennui) becomes a cultural diagnosis. “Let us choose” reads less like a sermon than a dare: you can’t stop time, but you can decide whether you’ll be eaten by distraction or fortified by creation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Time |
|---|
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