The Pagan School

From this starting point, Baudelaire criticised a broader trend of striving for material beauty and sensory pleasure, which he said would leave people unsatisfied and make it hard to maintain relationships.

Baudelaire described the man as part of a trend of neopagans who had read too much Heinrich Heine and come to resent Christians while evoking ancient gods and celebrating beauty.

[4] Baudelaire's attack on the "pagan school" was connected to his general aversion to pathos, rural lyricism and worldviews that see something sacred in nature, which he in a letter to Fernand Desnoyers dismissed as the belief in "sanctified vegetables".

[3] The historian of literature Michel Brix [fr] says the principal targets of "The Pagan School" were Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier and Heine.

[7] The theologian George Pattison writes that the essay's specifically modern rejection of classicism highlights the complex relationship between Christian and secular or nihilist iconoclasm.

[8] According to Pattison, "The Pagan School" shows "how the spirit of the second commandment has had an impact on western culture that cannot be limited to the narrow puritanical form of hostility to images".

[13] When Baudelaire alluded to this, the young man said Pan was alive, argued that paganism contained "the true doctrines" but had been obscured by Christianity, and that it will "save the world".

[15] The English critic George Saintsbury called "The Pagan School" remarkable and said it highlights Baudelaire's ability to look at a subject from multiple sides.

[16] A brief anecdote in the essay about a man who gave a counterfeit coin to a beggar was later developed into Baudelaire's prose poem "La Fausse Monnaie [fr]".