Loneliness, temptation, the fragility of man in a soulless new ageย .ย .ย . The controversial, banned masterpiece from the nineteenth-century French poet.
ย
Sparking scandal in France, declared โan outrage to public moralsโ and โan offense to religious moralsโ by the Ministry of the Interior, The Flowers of Evil plunged Charles Baudelaire into a controversy that his public image never quite overcame. Nevertheless, the collection has since been lauded as a landmark in literary history and its writer extolled as the first modern poet.
ย
With themes of love, world-weariness, beauty, and death, The Flowers of Evil juxtaposes the sublime with the commonplace. In the section titled โParisian Scenesโ are some of Baudelaireโs greatest poemsโโThe Swan,โ โThe Little Old Women,โ and โThe Seven Old Menโโwhich give readers an unsentimental view of the City of Light and of a bleak urban existence. As the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, โThere is a sense in these angry, eructating late fragments of a man fully releasing himself to what he called โthe joy of downward descent.โ And where Baudelaire went, modernity tended to follow.โ
ย
โThe essence of a genius.โ โThe Guardian
ย
โThe profound originality of Charles Baudelaire is to represent powerfully and essentially modern man.โ โPaul Verlaine