Baudelaire, Charles
Baudelaire, Charles ( 1821 – 67 ),French poet. His Les Fleurs du mal ( 1857 ), a series of 101 exquisitely crafted lyrics in a variety of metres, including many sonnets, is one of the great collections of French verse. It represents a determined attempt to create order and beauty, notably by the discovery of hidden relations or ‘correspondences’, in a world which is largely perceived as ugly and oppressive. In musical language and evocative images, the poet explores his own sense of isolation, exile, and sin, his boredom and melancholy, the transporting power of love, the attractions of evil and vice, the fascination and the degradation of Paris life. On publication of Les Fleurs du mal Baudelaire was fined and six of the poems were banned from subsequent editions as offensive to public morals; these were accordingly omitted from the second ( 1861 ) and the third, posthumous, edition ( 1868 ), by which time...
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