Baudelaire named modernity and gave the first answer to poetry’s problem under capitalism.

Evidence

Baudelaire, the poet of modernity, a word he himself had coined in 1859, had articulated the problem of the modern poet more acutely than any before him: how is poetry possible in a technologized and capitalistic society? His poems and his writings on the theory of poetry gave the answer: modern poetry must be `supple and resistant enough to adapt itself to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the wave motions of dreaming, the shocks of consciousness’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 229

Categorization

• DEFINE: The coinage of ‘modernity’ in 1859 and the poetry-against-industry framing is a concrete reference point for the term.
• XREF: connects to: Baudelaire coined the word modernity in 1859 while articulating how poetry survives capitalism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 860; Baudelaire defined modernity as half transient and half eternal — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 105
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Baudelaire coined the word modernity in 1859 while articulating how poetry survives capitalism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 860; Baudelaire defined modernity as half transient and half eternal — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 105