the flower of evil by charles baudelaire

He sees himself as a hero, as in “Don Juan in Hell,” but knows that this means he may suffer. He wants to exist in a pure state (“Elevation”) but is constantly frustrated by his particular flaws and proclivities for vice. The poet is an outsider and is misunderstood (“Benediction,” “The Albatross,” The Gypsies”) but has the task of using language to convey deeper truths (“The Beacons,” Correspondences”). In several of the opening poems Baudelaire makes a case for the singularity of the poet and his vision. To begin, Baudelaire addresses a poem to the reader, appropriately titled “To the Reader.” Here he lays out a phantasmagoria of sins and vices and monstrous creatures that beset modern man, then proclaims that the worst of them all is ' Ennui' (boredom), who more than anything else quells man’s desires for virtue. However, we can trace a few pertinent developments and themes throughout the first portion of the work, “Spleen and Ideal,” in order to attain a general understanding of what Baudelaire is doing. The condemned poems nevertheless continued to be widely circulated through clandestine and often illustrated editions, including Le Parnasse satyrique (1864), Les Épaves with a frontispiece by Félicien Rops (1866), Les Pièces condamnées with woodcuts by Jean Gabriel Daragnès (1917), all exhibited here.It is difficult to briefly summarize Flowers of Evil due to the sheer number of poems and their themes, symbols, and images. These erotic, sometimes lesbian poems were then excluded from all regular editions of Les Fleurs du Mal until the rehabilitation of Baudelaire and his collection by the Cour de cassation in 1949.

On August 20, 1857, a few weeks after publication of the collection by Poulet-Malassis, six poems from Les Fleurs du Mal were indicted by the Tribunal correctionnel of the Seine for affront to public decency (“ outrage à la morale publique”) because of their alleged “crude realism”: “Les Bijoux”, “Le Léthé”, “Femmes damnées”, “Les Métamorphoses d’un vampire,” “À celle qui est trop gaie”, and “Lesbos” (the last two reproduced here with translations by Samuel N. Currently the most revered and studied collection of French lyric poetry, Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) was the subject of one of the most famous literary trials in France.

The flower of evil by charles baudelaire