Poesia e funzione di contrasto

One of the most typical features of modernity is the acceleration of experience, systematically ruled by the economic principle. In Benjamin's interpretation, Baudelaire's poetry identifies in that acceleration some very notable points: it is a powerful multiplier of the transience of the world; it is the domain of a movement which is paradoxically static and which sustains no change in social structures; and it represents a constitutive threat to poetry. With a radically antagonistic gesture, Baudelaire drafts various strategies to contrast modernity: to give it an accomplished form, which includes all its negativity; to represent authentically his impoverished degraded experience; to fight it with his own means, through poetry of impact and shock.