The poet insists that he is a privileged witness to this exotic world : “Car Lesbos entre tous m’a choisi sur la terre/.../ Et je fus dès l’enfance admis au noir mystère”. [“Because Lesbos chose me above all on earth/.../I was welcomed into its black mystery”] (13). Thus lesbianism, for Baudelaire, is a wonderful and beautiful fleur du mal [flower of evil]. Broadly, the figure of the lesbian conforms to Baudelaire’s vision of woman as morally deviating, as “infernal et divin” [“diabolical and divine”] (14). Equally he frequently describes female beauty itself as satanic : “L’éternelle Vénus (caprice, hystérie, fantaisie) est une des formes séduisantes du diable” [”The eternal Venus (embodying whimsy, hysteria, fantasy) is a seductive form of the devil”] (15). The lesbian lover performs an extraordinary almost heroic transgression and it is that which Baudelaire glorifies. “Le cadavre adoré de Sapho” [“the adored corpse of Sappho”] (16) makes flesh the cult of martyrdom. Walter Benjamin argues that, for Baudelaire, the figure of the lesbian is “the heroine of modernism”. (17) In reference to Baudelaire’s ode to lesbian love, Delphine et Hippolyte, he writes :

“Greece supplies him with the image of a heroine who seemed to him worthy and capable of being carried over into modern times...In her an erotic ideal of Baudelaire - the woman who speaks hardness and mannishness - has combined with a historical ideal, that of greatness in the modern world.” (18)

As Walter recognises, Baudelaire approves the general “masculinisation of woman” in the 19th century in line with the spirit of modernism. Yet he rightly adds : “It would not be surprising if his profound antipathy to pregnancy has been involved”. (19) It is true that for Baudelaire, pregnancy is a terrible mark of the natural. For an artist devoted to self-creation and to the wonders of artifice, child-bearing is despised as “une maladie d’araignée” [“a spider’s sickness”] (20). I suggest, also, that for Baudelaire, the lesbian is a female double to the figure of the Dandy. In his essay Le Dandy (Le Peintre de la vie moderne, 1863), Baudelaire celebrates the Dandy as an elite, unconventional male type, self-generating, self-inventing and non-reproductive. He is also an extra-moral thing of beauty. The childless and autonomous erotic character of the lesbian thus makes her a sterile sister of the Dandy. The representation of the lesbian in the poetic imagination can therefore be seen as fetishised figure where her femininity is negated and her maternal identity refused. Baudelaire privileges the creative role of lesbian love, highlighting its importance as a metaphor of modernism, yet he does not celebrate her personal and political importance. Contrasting the lines in Lesbos “Que veulent les lois du juste et l’injuste ?” and “Votre religion comme un autre est auguste” with Delphine et Hippolyte, Benjamin further contends that Baudelaire ultimately decries lesbianism :

“Lesbos is a hymn to lesbian love while Delphine et Hippolyte, on the other hand, is a condemnation of this passion, whatever the nature of compassion that animates it... In the second poem Baudelaire says : Descendez, descendez, lamentables victimes/Descendez le chemin de l’enfer éternel.
(Hence, lamentable victims, get you hence ! Hells yawn beneath you, your road is straight and steep)” (21)