Charles Baudelaire Character Analysis in The Art of Travel

The famous 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire, whom de Botton profiles in his second essay, grew up as something of a misfit in French society: he did not get along with his family, schoolmates, or peers in the aristocracy. He always dreamed of traveling and loved spending time around ships, which he saw as elegant marvels of human ingenuity, in part because their departures reflected the promise of a better life elsewhere. He once left on a trip to India but forced the ship’s captain to turn around halfway after they reached Mauritius and Baudelaire realized he was just as miserable as he used to be in France. He praised “poets” who sought fulfillment outside of ordinary society, and his ambivalent relationship to traveling reflects the disappointment of realizing that foreign places will not relieve one of one’s fundamental problems, as well as the thrill that de Botton shares in anticipating and imagining travel.

Charles Baudelaire Quotes in The Art of Travel

The The Art of Travel quotes below are all either spoken by Charles Baudelaire or refer to Charles Baudelaire . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

). Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Vintage edition of The Art of Travel published in 2002.

“Life is a hospital in which every patient is obsessed with changing beds: this one wants to suffer in front of the radiator, and that one thinks he’d get better if he was by the window.”

Related Characters: (speaker),

Page Number and Citation: 32

Explanation and Analysis:

The twenty-four-hour diner, the station waiting room and the motel are sanctuaries for those who have, for noble reasons, failed to find a home in the ordinary world—those whom Baudelaire might have dignified with the honorific poets.

Related Characters: (speaker), ,

Page Number and Citation: 51

Explanation and Analysis:

Charles Baudelaire Character Timeline in The Art of Travel

The timeline below shows where the character Charles Baudelaire appears in The Art of Travel. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

From his childhood onwards, de Botton writes, the 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire never quite fit into any social environment: he hated his family, got expelled from “a... (full context)

Art, Travel, and the Search for Happiness Theme Icon

Baudelaire’s apprehensive desire to travel appeared frequently in his poetry and writing, and he admitted that... (full context)

Baudelaire saw travel as the distinctive mark of “poets,” people whose dissatisfaction with home led them... (full context)

...finds comfort in “the ceaseless landings and takeoffs of aircraft,” just as after a breakup Baudelaire used to watch ships dock and depart at a quayside, promising to “set sail for... (full context)

In addition to traveling places, Baudelaire also loved “machines of motion,” and especially ships, which he found a technological wonder representing... (full context)

...to look more like mutating steam than the “horizontal ovoids” people see from the ground. Baudelaire wrote about the clouds in his poem “The Outsider,” asking, “what do you love, you... (full context)

Hopper actually read Baudelaire throughout his life, which de Botton finds understandable given their “shared interests in solitude, in... (full context)

...corner of the world” and found herself without “a home in the ordinary world,” like Baudelaire’s “poets.” (full context)