Abstract: Baudelaire’s La Beauté and Valéry’s La Jeune Parque are analysed from the perspective of the diversions of the woman’s poetic praise topos. The comparative study interrogates the choice of a female poetic subject by two male poets, as well as the forms and issues of the self-praise that the female figure expresses. She is the absolute otherness, mysterious and harmonious, and seems to embody some of the most ambiguous fundaments of Baudelaire’s and Valéry’s poetics.
