At the time he wrote Serres Chaudes disease was fashionable, that is all; and, beside the main influence of baudelaire, there was the fear of death instilled by the Jesuits.
"Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck"
Jethro Bithell
To Maeterlinck, with reference to The Intruder, has been applied what Victor Hugo said to baudelaire after he had read The Flowers of Evil: "You have created a new shudder."
"Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck"
Jethro Bithell
Since the critics would not admit that any unrhythmical prose is poetry, it is little wonder that baudelaire founded as a distinct and conscious form the composition he called "poem in prose."
"The Literature of Ecstasy"
Albert Mordell