The historical importance of the “Fleurs du Mal”
The historical importance of the “Fleurs du Mal” is indisputable, and as Auerbach writes “the human figure that appears in them is just as and equally significant for the change in the European tradition as that of Ivan Karamazov … with traces that they will find in Gide, Proust, Joice, Thomas Mann, and obviously in Rimbaud, Mallarmè (“I’m really afraid to start where our poor and sacred Baudelaire finished, he wrote“ the difficult auteur ”), but also Rilke and Eliot. .. because “the Baudelairian style is more alive than ever”.
Charles Baudelaire was born on April 9, 1821 in Paris, son of Joseph Francois, a man of refined culture and of the young Caroline, he will soon be orphaned by his elderly father. Her mother will remarry the future general Jacques Aupick, which Charles will never forgive her. A restless student with fluctuating results, in 1840 he enrolled in the Faculty of Law, where he attended prostitutes and circles execrated by the family who sent him on a journey to Calcutta to remove him from bad acquaintances.
Refusing to continue his journey, he will stop on Bourbon Island, to return soon to Paris. Having come of age and having taken possession of his father’s inheritance, he will lead a life dissipated between the refinements of a dandy and sleepless nights in which he experiments with the use of drugs. It contracts syphilis and gonorrhea. The worried mother will try to put him under guardianship. After the judicial proceedings, Baudelaire will be awarded a maintenance allowance.
In 1845, his refined reviews of the Salon are of appreciation for his beloved Delacroix. In 1852 he translated Poe. In 1855 some of his poems appear under the title “Les Fleurs du mal” which he will publish in 1857. The book is seized for outrage to public morality and morality. Baudelaire is sentenced to a fine. Six poems are to be deleted from the collection. In 1859 he prepares a new collection of “Les Fleurs du Mal”, with in addition thirty-five new compositions, which will be released two years later. He reconciles himself with his widowed mother and a year later he publishes “Les paradis artificiels”. In 1864 he settled in Brussels. In 1866 he published “Les épaves”. Shortly thereafter he suffers from hemiparesis. Admitted to a Parisian clinic, he died on August 31, 1867.