Poem fractal

Correspondances

by Charles Baudelaire

9 April 1821 to 31 August 1867 (~46)

Browse poets 678
In their words

“Il y a dans tout homme, à toute heure, deux postulations simultanées, l’une vers Dieu, l’autre vers Satan.”

Expressing his view of human nature as divided between spiritual and destructive impulses · Journal, Mon cœur mis à nu

More remarks (4)

Drawing the boundary…

Read the poem Another poem

A fractal is a shape that keeps its pattern when you look closer. Coastlines, trees, shells, and weather do this. A poem can be drawn the same way.

The poem’s constant is read from the build of its lines: their length, the size of the stanzas, and the share of vowels. Poems whose constants lie closer together are built more alike. The same poem always draws the same picture. Change the length of a line, the stanza, or the vowel share, and both the number and the picture move.

Primunia is the name for the source of that order: the pattern under the pattern, already there in a tree, a shell, and a verse.

Poems nearby in the constant

A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.

  1. Ford Madox Hueffer · −0.2416 + 0.1585i · 0.013 away · Compare side by side
  2. Dylan Thomas · −0.2086 + 0.1441i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge · −0.2309 + 0.1734i · 0.027 away · Compare side by side
  4. Siegfried Sassoon · −0.2075 + 0.1493i · 0.028 away · Compare side by side
  5. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson · −0.2639 + 0.1523i · 0.029 away · Compare side by side
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