Intro
Paul de Man performs a famous close reading of this sonnet in his essay "Anthropomorphism and Trope in Lyric." It's a tough text, but de Man was never one to shy away from difficulty. Fittingly, then, de Man interprets Baudelaire's poem as about the difficulty that lyric poetry has in getting beyond itself—to the "truth" that it is so often promises.
Quote
There are perfumes as cool as the flesh of children,
Sweet as oboes, green as meadows
— And others are corrupt, and rich, triumphant,
With power to expand into infinity,
Like amber and incense, musk, benzoin,
That sing the ecstasy of the soul and senses.
Analysis
There's no way to do justice to de Man's insanely close reading of these lines. So we'll just give you a sneak preview of that reading by saying that his understanding of "Correspondances" hinges on a single word: the "like" in "Like amber and incense, musk, benzoin."
Mind. Blown. Are we right?
Check out "Anthropomorphism and Trope" itself if you're wondering how a critical reading could ever hinge on a single word, let alone one as innocent-looking as "like." Now that you've been through our Deconstruction Boot Camp, we bet you'll like what you see.