“Flowers” and “evil” are not terms that would normally be found together, and in so naming his work, he is signaling that he will show us both the contradictions of existence and the beauty that can be found in things that society might normally deem to be immoral or ugly.

The title of the collection, The Flowers of Evil, shows us immediately that he is not going to lead us down safe paths. Baudelaire, on the other hand, is not afraid to explore all aspects of life, from the idealistic highs to the grimiest of lows, in his quest to discover what he calls at the end of the volume “the new.”

Before him, romantic poets of the earlier 19th century often saw themselves as solitary visionaries, more at one with nature than with modern civilization. Les Fleurs du Mal stands apart from any volume of poetry that came before it both in the scale of Baudelaire’s ambition and the unflinching exploration of the poetic self. As all the translations on the site date from over 60 years ago, you may wish to buy Anthony Mortimer’s stylish and clear modern translation it is available as an e-book or in traditional book form and comes with the original French versions. The 1868 edition contains all the poems that are now commonly used. It is this volume of poetry that I would like to discuss today.īefore we start, I would thoroughly recommend that you visit this website devoted to Les Fleurs du Mal, where you can consult the full text of the different editions, along with a variety of published translations. Six poems (mostly depicting lesbian desire) were suppressed, and a fine was imposed on the poet. The second was the volume of poetry called Les Fleurs du Mal ( The Flowers of Evil ), by Charles Baudelaire. The first was Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, which unblinkingly depicted the adulterous relationships of a bored provincial housewife. Two groundbreaking works, one published the year before, the other that year, were both subjected to trials for obscenity. The year 1857 was an important one in the French literary landscape. You may choose to read this analysis of Les Fleurs du Mal here or listen to it on the audio file at the end of the article. To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Baudelaire on April 9, we are rerunning Nick Hammond’s piece on him from last December.

The flowers of evil les fleurs du mal