This Sonnet is the nineteenth poem of the Fleurs of the evil of Charles Baudelaire.

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Charles Baudelaire was very impressed by the large things. In the living room of 1859 it says: “In nature in art, I prefer, by supposing the equality of merit, the large things with all the others, the large animals, the great landscapes, the large ships, the great men, the large women, the large churches, and, transforming like as well others, my tastes in principles, I believe as dimension is not a consideration of no importance with the eyes of the beauty. ”

Baudelaire was undoubtedly influenced in the drafting of this sonnet by a tale of Cazotte: the Insane one of Baghdad or the giants, tells antédiluvien . In this account it is question of giants “monstrueusement beautiful, superbly avoided. ”

This poem can lend to many psychoanalytical interpretations. It is a vision of the woman like mother. The narrator seems to want to return at the period former to his birth. He wants to be absorbed by the woman like Jonas in the Baleine.

the Giantess inspired with Philippe Ramos his film Capitaine Achab (2003) with Valerie Crunchant and Frederic Bonpart. In this film, the whale is symbolized by close-up on a body of woman, seen like a giantess…