Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867):

Life
 Was very attached to his mother following the death of his father. After his mother’s
remarriage, Baudelaire was bitter towards his stepfather for the rest of his life, at least in part
because he placed financial limits on Baudelaire to avoid the squandering of an entire
inheritance on a dandy lifestyle.
 Frequented prostitutes in the Latin Quarter during his time of study, contracted several
venereal diseases that later killed him.
 Received literary acclaim before being published as a poet. Before Les fleurs du mal, he
received notoriety as an art critique (particularly for his fondness of Delacroix) and as a
translator of the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
 He was constantly in need of money and to some extent even bankrupted his first publisher.
 The poems in Les fleurs du mal received high praise among the literary community, but
society at large found them scandalous. Baudelaire was forced to remove several poems from
the collection and was even fined for publishing what was considered “pornographic” content
 Baudelaire, particularly later in his life, was a heavy user of opium and hashish.

Poetry
 His poetry serves as a bridge from romanticism to a more modern style. He transitioned from
the explicit expression of emotion to the more abstract use of symbols and suggestions that
the symbolists would later champion.
 Juxtaposition of two main themes characterized much of his work and they are represented in
the title of his collection of poetry Les fleurs du mal. First, he focused heavily on sensuality
and the concept of beauty. Secondly, he describes the harsh side of beauty, his oppressive
“spleen”, and the idea of oncoming death.
 Common Baudelarian imagery:
o Evening time/sunset leading to the night
o Sensory stimulation, particularly smells
o Elements of the exotic
o Morbid elements: blood, the body, hearts, brains
o The toll of living an urban lifestyle

Source:
Burnshaw, Stanley. The Poem Itself. Fayettville, University of Arkansas Press, 1995.

Burton, Richard D.E., “Charles Baudelaire.” Encylopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica,

inc. www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Baudelaire/Les-Fleurs-du-mal. Date
Accessed 22 January 2020.
 Charles Baudelaire

Correspondances

 The profound effect of this poem on literary tradition is summed up in the title. Baudelaire
attempted to capture the invisible correlations between the spiritual and physical and among
our corporeal experiences. This represents a shift from the plainly-expressed emotions of
Romanticism to something more veiled and figurative.
 The title references a Swedish mystic, and the imagery of the poem–particularly in the first
seven lines–offer an almost “agnostic” assertion of what exists beyond the human
experience.
 Sonnet form – there is little experimentation with the structure and sounds. The focus of the
poem is on the ideas.

 The first and second quatrains evoke a type of spiritual correspondence in that all of nature
serves as a temple. The world around us is structured to worship something outside of
ourselves, and our senses are the only link we have to this other transcendent realm.

 There is a shift in the discussion towards the correspondences of our senses. Our senses only
perceive representations of the spiritual, but they also mix with one another to form mysteries
of their own. The synesthesia described relates each sense to an art form: perfumery, music,
and painting, with an emphasis on their olfactory effect.
 To Baudelaire, all of mankind’s attempts at creation–even the corrupted–resonate with a
deeper, independent meaning outside of humanity.

 It seems to me that Baudelaire is making a philosophical argument. He notes that while our
senses mingle into a unified perception of the world that parallels the infinite, there are
limitations to our human experience. The mysteries of nature are indistinct to us, and the
closest that we may get to understanding the world beyond ourselves is to examine the veiled
meaning of our surroundings.
 Charles Baudelaire

Hymne à la Beauté

 The Baudelarian concept of beauty encompasses both romantic passion and ominous,
impending destruction.
 The personification of Beauty is that of a goddess either from Heaven or Hell, but who
regardless leads men to their demise. At one point, Beauty is described similarly to a
prostitute, which is rather ironic considering Baudelaire’s eventual death was linked to the
venereal diseases he contracted while frequenting prostitutes.
 Baudelaire places heavy emphasis on the different parts of the body in this poem: her eyes,
her mouth, her belly, her smile, her foot. The entire poem is structured as if Baudelaire is
working his way down her figure, and the repeated questions at the poem’s conclusion
suddenly have an answer after he has taken his pleasure from her.
 I think the imagery in the lines « L’amoureux pantelant incliné sur sa belle / A l’air d’un
moribond caressant son tombeau » really hammers home the message of the poem.
Baudelaire was infatuated with both love and death; together his own demise was caused by
his lust; and rather than escape into a world of fairytale beauty like the Romantics, he
explores all the contrasting facets that beauty has to offer to stave off a mundane and trivial
life.

Charles Baudelaire

Le Balcon
 The form of this poem is of great interest. There is rocking back and forth as the last line of
each stanza repeats the first. In general, the shape of the poem is like a series of chevrons,
with the middle line of each stanza delivering the “hit” of each new idea.
 The punctuation is notable with at least one exclamation in each stanza.
 Overall, this poem is the epitome of Baudelaire. The setting is twilight as night solidifies
around lovers, while the poet lauds the pleasure, pain, and smells of their love-making. The
last lines mention the rejuvenation of a sun following a night of passion, the poet’s lover
serving as both a call to his death and his only redemption.
 Charles Baudelaire

Harmonie du Soir

 The poem is Baudelaire’s variation of a pantoum, a popular form of Malay poetry. The
poem’s rhyme scheme oscillates between ABBA and BAAB in each stanza as well as
repeating lines from previous stanzas in a tightly-knit collection of ideas. Baudelaire
additionally varies the pantoum structure by making the last lines original instead of
repeating the first and third lines.
 The poem is riddled with V and L sounds–both soft, melancholy sounds. In combination with
the weaving of the lines, the poem is almost contrapuntal or fugue-like.
 The poem additionally makes use of only –ige and –oir rhymes which further tighten each
line and make a more cohesive melody.
 The harmony of the evening is reflected not only in the mechanics of the poem, but the
imagery Baudelaire uses. He references the scent of flowers, the vertigo of swirling senses,
the quivering violin, a bright red sky, a vast void, a drowning sun. The harmony here is that
his senses work together in agreement about the oncoming dread of death. The religious
symbols referenced throughout evoke the idea of a funeral, and only the luminous traces of
the past–the memory of his lover–shine through the coming darkness.

Charles Baudelaire

Spleen

 The imagery of this poem is quite gothic, and possibly influenced by Edgar Allan Poe.
Baudelaire compares his despair to a groaning spirit, a dungeon, a bat, a prison, spiders,
frenzied tolling bells, howling dogs, long hearses, and a drooping skull.
 The poem is framed such that the pressing lid of his spleen described in the first few lines
weighs on the entirety of the poem until anguish declares victory at the end. There is a sense
that the reader is being compressed while encountering metaphors describing the futility of
hope and the triumph of despair.