Charles Baudelaire’s La Mort des Amants (transcribed in both the original French and in translation to English below), which Dulac incorporates into her film with lengthy title cards that demand the viewer’s attention, had already gained a cultural significance in France at the time of The Smiling Madame Beudet‘s release – the poem was apart of Baudelaire’s most successful series, Les Fleurs du Mal, released in 1857. The book of poems catalyzed Baudelaire’s ascension to the highest artistic ranks, mainly because of the controversy it stimulated: Baudelaire touched on many themes that had previously remained left out of the public discourse: principally, sex and death. [4] 
This fact makes it all the more empowering that Madame Beudet reads a piece from this series, specifically. Reading this poem specifically can be seen as an extension of her fight against the restraints of her husband and her domesticated lifestyle – it represents a further rejection of the accepted social norms. She reads the text with hesitation, questioning whether or not she should continue to break with tradition – nevertheless, she does, asserting her strength and individuality.
The text of the poem itself holds many of the same themes as The Smiling Madame Beudet. Most prominently, Baudelaire describes an ongoing struggle between two lovers, who each look entirely to the future – as opposed to the present – to find happiness. It is in their dreams, their ideas about their relationship, and not the relationship itself, that happiness remains possible.
In the third stanza, though, everything changes; the lovers can no longer look ahead to the future, as they will finally exchange a ‘unique flash,’ which will shock each of them like a long weep – in other words, the truth of their tragic relationship will make itself plain. This trajectory of the poem plays itself out in the film, when Mr. Beudet asks his wife, after nearly killing her, “How could I live without you?” In the film, the bullet represents the ‘flash,’ and the subsequent question marking their final dealing with the truth of their love.
| -Isaiah Zeavin-Moss |
La Mort des Amants
Nous aurons des lits pleins d’odeurs légères,
Des divans profonds comme des tombeaux,
Et d’étranges fleurs sur des étagères,
Ecloses pour nous sous des cieux plus beaux.
Usant à l’envi leurs chaleurs dernières,
Nos deux coeurs seront deux vastes flambeaux,
Qui réfléchiront leurs doubles lumières
Dans nos deux esprits, ces miroirs jumeaux.
Un soir fait de rose et de bleu mystique,
Nous échangerons un éclair unique,
Comme un long sanglot, tout chargé d’adieux;
Et plus tard un Ange, entr’ouvrant les portes,
Viendra ranimer, fidèle et joyeux,
Les miroirs ternis et les flammes mortes.
— Charles Baudelaire
The Death of Lovers
We shall have beds full of subtle perfumes,
Divans as deep as graves, and on the shelves
Will be strange flowers that blossomed for us
Under more beautiful heavens.
Using their dying flames emulously,
Our two hearts will be two immense torches
Which will reflect their double light
In our two souls, those twin mirrors.
Some evening made of rose and of mystical blue
A single flash will pass between us
Like a long sob, charged with farewells;
And later an Angel, setting the doors ajar,
Faithful and joyous, will come to revive
The tarnished mirrors, the extinguished flames.
— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)