Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (April 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867) was one of the most influential French poets of the 19th-century, known for inspiring the French Symbolist movement of the late-19th and early 20th-centuries. Baudelaire was sadly overlooked as a poet during his own life-time; his poetry, with its provocative themes of sex, death and religion, was labelled obscene by the French government, and Baudelaire never tasted literary success. He was also a notoriously fastidious poet, and by his death he had compelted a relatively small body of work. Nonetheless, in the decades of the latter 19th-century, poets and critics alike would recognize the genius contained in Baudelaire's little volumes. Baudelaire was one of the first poets to champion the notion of art for art's sake—his poems are meant to be self-contained, beautiful in themselves without reference to any meaning or interpretation imposed upon them. Stylistically, Baudelaire is also one of the first poets to experiment with prose poetry.
In addition to his career as a poet, Baudelaire is also renowned as a critic. Baudelaire was active in the visual arts world, and he corresponded closely with a number of influential French painters, among them Eugene Delacroix. Baudelaire was also a translator, and he introduced the works of Edgar Allen Poe—whom Baudelaire considered to be a kindred spirit—to a French-speaking audience with translations that are still considered classic. Baudelaire's influence on French art and literature was unrecognized in his own life, but it is now generally agreed that he is one of the most influential figures in all of 19th-century French letters.
Life
Baudelaire was born in Paris. His father, a senior civil servant and an amateur artist, died in 1827, and in the following year his mother married a lieutenant colonel named Aupick, who later became a French ambassador to various courts. Baudelaire was educated in Lyon and at the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris. On gaining his degree in 1839 he decided to embark upon a literary career, and for the next two years led a somewhat irregular life. It is believed he contracted syphilis about this time. To straighten him out, his legal guardians, in 1841, sent him on a voyage to India. Baudelaire jumped ship, however, in the Caribbean, an experience which would change his life. Although Baudelaire only lived in the tropics for a matter of months, his poetry would return again and again to images of tropical paradise. When he returned to Paris, after less than a year's absence, he was of age and could receive his inheritance. However, in a year or two his extravagance threatened to bankrupt him, and his family obtained a decree to place his property in trust. It is in this period that he met Jeanne Duval, a mulatto woman who was to become his longest romantic association.
His art reviews of 1845 and 1846 attracted immediate attention for the boldness with which he propounded his views: many of his critical opinions were novel in their time, but have since been generally accepted. He took part with in the revolutions of 1848, and for some years was interested in republican politics, although his political reviews remain ambiguous. Regardless, during this time of political upheaval Baudelaire devoted himself to his writing. He was a slow and fastidious worker, and it was not until 1857 that he produced his first and most famous volume of poems, Les Fleurs du mal ("The Flowers of Evil"). The poems found a small but appreciative audience, but greater public attention was given to their subject matter. The principal themes of sex and death were considered scandalous, and the book became a by-word for unwholesomeness among mainstream critics of the day. Baudelaire, his publisher, and the printer were successfully prosecuted for creating an offense against public morals, and Les Fleurs du mal remained banned in France until 1949. In the poem "Au lecteur" ("To the Reader") that prefaces Les fleurs du mal, Baudelaire argues that there should be poems for the vulgar things in life just as there are poems for the sacred:
- ... If rape or arson, poison, or the knife
- Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
- Of this drab canvas we accept as life—
- It is because we are not bold enough!
Six of the most scandalous poems in the volume were suppressed, but printed later as Les Épaves ("The Wrecks") in Brussels, 1866. Another edition of Les fleurs du mal, without these poems, but with considerable additions, appeared in 1861.
Baudelaire had learned English in his childhood, and Gothic novels, such as Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk, became some of his favorite reading matter. In 1846 and 1847 he became acquainted with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, in which he found tales and poems which had, he claimed, long existed in his own brain but never taken shape. From this time till 1865 he was largely occupied with his translated versions of Poe's works, which were widely praised. These were published as Histoires extraordinaires ("Extraordinary stories") (1852), Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires ("New extraordinary stories") (1857), Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym ("The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym"), Eureka, and Histoires grotesques et sérieuses ("Grotesque and serious stories") (1865). Two essays on Poe are to be found in his Oeuvres complètes ("Complete works") (vols. v. and vi.).
Meanwhile his financial difficulties increased, particularly after his publisher Poulet Malassis went bankrupt in 1861, and in 1864 he left Paris for Belgium, partly in the hope of selling the rights to his works. During these troubled times he began experimenting with opium, and in Brussels Baudelaire began to drink to excess. He suffered a massive stroke in 1866 and paralysis followed, and the last two years of his life were spent in "maisons de santé" in Brussels and in Paris, where he died on August 31, 1867. Many of his works were published posthumously.
He is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.
Work
His other works include Petits Poèmes en prose ("Small Prose Poems"); a series of art reviews published in the Pays, Exposition universelle ("Country, World Fair"); studies on Gustave Flaubert (in Lartisge, October 18, 1857); on Theophile Gautier (Revue contemporaine, September, 1858); various articles contributed to Eugene Crepet's Poètes francais; and Un Dernier Chapitre de l'histoire des oeuvres de Balzac ("A Final Chapter of the history of works of Balzac") (1880).
Bibliography
- Salon de 1845, 1845
- Salon de 1846, 1846
- La Fanfarlo, 1847
- Les Fleurs du mal, 1857
- Les paradis artificiels, 1860
- Réflexions sur Quelques-uns de mes Contemporains, 1861
- Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne, 1863
- Curiosités Esthétiques, 1868
- L'art romantique, 1868
- Le Spleen de Paris/Petits Poémes en Prose, 1869
- Oeuvres Posthumes et Correspondance Générale, 1887-1907
- Fusées, 1897
- Mon Coeur Mis à Nu, 1897
- Oeuvres Complètes, 1922-53 (19 vols.)
- Mirror of Art, 1955
- The Essence of Laughter, 1956
- Curiosités Esthétiques, 1962
- The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, 1964
- Baudelaire as a Literary Critic, 1964
- Arts in Paris 1845-1862, 1965
- Selected Writings on Art and Artist, 1972
- Selected Letters of Charles Baudelaire, 1986
- Critique d'art; Critique musicale, 1992
Online texts
in French
- An analysis of Baudelaire's poetry (in the "poèmes" topic)
- Original works by Baudelaire at the French Wikisource
- full online texts in french
- Madame Bovary par Gustave Flaubert
- Peintres et aquafortistes
- Les Fleurs du Mal: full online downloadable text
in English
- "The Painter of Modern Life" Complete Annotated Text at Lines of Advance
- Selected works at Poetry Archive
- Another selection
- Les Fleurs du Mal full text online with Translations
- Au Lecteur (to the reader) - English Translation
- Les Foules (The Crowds) - An English Translation
External links
- Works by Charles Baudelaire. Project Gutenberg
- FleursDuMal.org Definitive online presentation of Fleurs du mal, featuring the original French alongside multiple English translations
- A large site in English
- A comprehensive website in French
- Baudelaire's Paris - An ebook literary tour with suggested poems in English and French at each location
- larvatus' LiveJournal Memorable baudelaire Entries A work in progress, in English, translating, interpreting, and commenting prose poems and critical writings by Baudelaire, with references and links to other resources
- Poetes.com
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