In the 1860s, the Italian Scapigliati (literally ‘the dishevelled ones’) promoted a systematic refusal of traditional literary and artistic values, coupled with a nonconformist and rebellious lifestyle. The Scapigliatura movement is still understudied, particularly outside Italy, but it plays a pivotal role in the transition from Italian Romanticism to Decadentism. One of the authors most frequently associated with Scapigliatura in terms of literary influence as well as eccentric Bohemianism is the French poet Charles Baudelaire, certainly amongst the most innovative and pioneering figures of nineteenth-century European poetry. Studies on the relationship between Baudelaire and Scapigliatura have commonly taken into account only the most explicit and superficial Baudelairian aspects of Scapigliatura’s poetry, such as the notion of aesthetic revolt against a conventional idea of beauty, which led the Scapigliati to introduce into their poetry morally shocking and unconventional subjects. Furthermore, these studies have not focused on drawing a detailed and systematic picture that portrays the connections not only between Baudelaire and the poets of Scapigliatura, but also among the Scapigliati themselves. As a result, the true extent of Baudelaire’s influence has not been acknowledged. This study strives to fill the gaps in the existing scholarship. My thesis posits that Baudelaire’s influence on the poetry of Scapigliatura, almost exclusively related to the first two editions of the verse collection Les Fleurs du Mal, is more profound and substantial than scholarship has heretofore recognised. The thesis consists of three chapters, each dedicated to one of the three most important poets of Scapigliatura, namely Arrigo Boito, Emilio Praga, and Giovanni Camerana. The investigation of Baudelaire’s influence on the Scapigliati is conducted both individually, searching for Baudelairian features in their work, and comparatively, contrasting differences and aiming to locate similarities. The main focus is on the major poetic works that are strictly related to the phases in these poets’ careers when they were associated with Scapigliatura: Boito’s Il libro dei versi and Re Orso; Praga’s Tavolozza and Penombre; and Camerana’s poems written between 1863 and 1869. My aim is to establish if there was what can be called a ‘Baudelairian school’ within Scapigliatura. Ultimately, I argue that the relationship between Baudelaire and the poetry of Scapigliatura is more complex than has previously been understood. I demonstrate a vast and wide-ranging influence – on a conceptual, lexical, and stylistic level – on the three poets discussed in this work, which can be traced back to the very beginning of their careers in the early 1860s. Far from being simply an element of aesthetic and moral rebellion in order to épater le bourgeois, the Baudelairism of Boito, Praga, and Camerana in their Scapigliatura years accomplished two ends: on the one hand, it preserved some of the more traditional aspects of Baudelaire’s poetry, which have been largely overlooked by Italian literary scholarship on Scapigliatura; on the other hand, it introduced a thematic and formal modernity into Italian poetry, paving the way for the Decadent movement as well as the twentieth-century avant-gardes.

Même pendant l’époque moderne, qui se définit elle-même en opposition à une organisation reli-gieuse de l’univers, la poésie n’a pas cessé de s’identifier, de manière complexe, avec le problème de la transcendance. Nous dirons, dans un premier temps, que c’est bien de cela qui témoigne la situation toujours exceptionnelle de la poésie à l’intérieur de la pensée moderne, qui la caractérise comme une expérience limite, inassimilable à sa propre conception séculaire de l’histoire, du lan-gage et de la littérature, mais indispensable pour la délimiter. La pensée poétique de la modernité, qui insistera sur une interprétation immanente du processus de création en stricte corrélation avec son propre idéal d’autonomie, ne sera pas en mesure d’éviter l’institution du poème comme un espace privilégié et illégitime de réflexion autour de tout ce qui précède ou dépasse les contours de sa figure, les limites de sa raison. Dans ce contexte, il n’est pas surprenant que l’approche moderne au phénomène poétique témoigne d’une prolifération de figures autour de l’indicible, dont la plus décisive sera peut-être celle du poème. Le recours systématique à ce genre de figures relève d’un processus laborieux d’assimilation de la transcendance aux structures de la pensée poétique de la modernité. Ce processus récupère, de manière explicite ou implicite, toute une série des procédés spéculatifs et rhétoriques visant un rapprochement négatif à la divinité absolument transcendante connu, dans la longue durée de l’histoire, sous le nom d’apophase ou via negationis. Ce travail de thèse a pour objectif d’examiner de près la situation et la signification du poème, figure de l’indi-cible, au sein de la pensée moderne, les types des liens qui établit avec la question de la transcen-dance, ainsi que la spécificité de son inscription, qu’on appellera ici « l’expression de l’indici- ble ». Afin de mieux saisir la spécificité de cette inscription, il est capital de revoir la manière dont l’écriture poétique interprète l’héritage apophatique chiffrée dans la figure du poème. A travers la lecture d’un corpus moderne de poésie latino-américaine et arabe, ce travail de recherche propose que le poème, dont l’écriture réclame un corps et une présence pour ce qui est absent, se refusant à séparer l’expression de son objet indicible, résiste à l’assimilation négative de la transcendance à l’intérieur de la pensée moderne. / Throughout modernity, which defines itself in opposition to a religious ordering of the universe, poetry hasn’t ceased to rise questions intricately related to the problem of transcendence. This can be recognized in the exceptional situation of poetry within modern thought, which characterizes it as a limit-experience, necessary to outline its secular conception of history, literature, and language, but not easily assimilated to it. Modernity, while emphasizing the immanent character of both po-etry and the creation process in accordance with its own alleged ideal of autonomy, codifies the poem as a privileged and illegitimate space of reflection about everything that predates or exceeds the margins of its figure, the limits of its reason. In this context, it is not surprising that the modern approach to poetry witnessed a proliferation of figures of unsayability, at the forefront of which is the poem itself, suggesting a laborious assimilation process of transcendence into the conceptual scaffolding of modernity’s poetic thought. Such a process reenacts, implicitly or explicitly, a neg-ative approximation to the absolutely transcendent God known, in the long term of history, as apophasis or via negationis. This thesis aims to examine the situation of the poem as a figure of the unsayable within modern thought, its relationship with the question of transcendence, as well as the specific modes of inscription of the latter, which I call “the expression of the unsayable”. To gain better grasp of this specificity, it is crucial to understand the way in which poetic writing deals with the apophatic heritage of the poem. Through a close reading of a corpus of Latin American and Arabic modern poetry, I will argue that the poem, whose writing claims for a body and a presence for what is absent (and thus refuses to detach the expression from its intended unsayable object), resists the negative assimilation of transcendence into modern thought. / Incluso durante la era moderna, que se define a sí misma en oposición a un ordenamiento religioso del universo, la poesía no ha dejado de identificarse, de manera compleja, con el problema de la trascendencia. De esto rinde testimonio, en primer término, la situación siempre excepcional de la poesía al interior del pensamiento moderno, que tiende a caracterizarla como una experiencia lí-mite, inasimilable a su concepción secular de la historia, el lenguaje y la literatura, pero definitoria de ella. El pensamiento poético de la modernidad, que propondrá una interpretación inmanente del proceso creador en concordancia precisa con su propio ideal de autonomía, no puede evitar instituir al poema como un espacio privilegiado e ilegítimo de reflexión en torno a aquello que precede o excede su figura, los límites de su razón. No extraña, en este contexto, que la aproximación mo-derna al fenómeno poético se encuentre frecuentemente mediada por figuras en torno a lo indecible, de las cuales tal vez la más prominente sea la del poema mismo. El recurso a estas figuras sugiere un arduo proceso de asimilación de la trascendencia al pensamiento poético de la modernidad que recupera, de manera explícita o implícita, una serie de procedimientos especulativos y retóricos de aproximación a la divinidad absolutamente trascedente conocidos, en el tiempo largo de la historia, como apófasis o via negationis. La presente tesis tiene como objetivo examinar la situación y la significación del poema, figura de lo indecible, al interior del pensamiento moderno, el tipo de vínculos que establece con la cuestión de la trascendencia y sus formas específicas de inscripción, a las que me refiero como “la expresión de lo indecible”. En el marco de estas preocupaciones, es crucial revisar la manera como la escritura poética confronta su propio legado apofático. A través de la lectura de un corpus de poesía latinoamericana y árabe moderna, en esta tesis argumento que el poema, cuya escritura reclama un cuerpo y una presencia para lo ausente y por lo tanto se rehúsa a separar la expresión de un indecible objeto, resiste la asimilación negativa de la trascendencia al interior del pensamiento moderno.