Charles Baudelaire – Flowers of Evil (1857)

Years ago, prior to my interest in French Decadent literature, I'd read several of Baudelaire’s poems out of curiosity. My reaction was: interesting voice, powerful poet, but a little of him goes a long way. 

Two things led me back to Baudelaire. First, his name kept cropping up in Decadent novels and short stories, as well as in essays about the movement. He was held up both as an exemplar of the Decadent mindset as well as a key inspiration or forerunner of the movement. Second, the next work in my project of reading J.-K. Huysmans’ novels in order of publication was his collection of prose poems: Parisian Sketches (1880). Since prose poems aren’t my favorite form, I figured reading Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil (1857) would be a great introduction and perhaps help me better appreciate Parisian Sketches.

I purchased the New Directions edition of Flowers of Evil, edited by Marthiel and Jackson Mathews, which compiles a slew of translators from Aldous Huxley and Edna St. Vincent Millay to Karl Shapiro and Richard Wilbur. Probably not ideal. It also includes several drafts of Baudelaire’s preface, which appears to have morphed through the years. In reading it, one immediately understands why he is considered a founding father of the Decadent Movement. 

In his preface, Baudelaire references several Decadent themes. For example, he veers toward art for art’s sake in stating he wrote Flowers of Evil “with no other aim than to divert myself and to practice my passionate taste for the difficult”. Elsewhere, he sneers at the herd (“happy hides so thick that poison itself could not penetrate them”), claiming to “enjoy hatred and feel glorified by contempt” and that he would be happy “to be taken for a debauchee, a drunkard, an infidel, a murderer.” He also describes himself as a seeker of unique sensation: “Though I have sung the mad pleasures of wine and opium, I thirst only for a liquor unknown on earth.” These are all decadent sentiments.

As to the prose poems themselves, a few speak directly to Decadent themes (most notably opener “To the Reader”), and Baudelaire’s overall stated interest in “extracting beauty from evil” is very Decadent. However, no matter how tempting it might be to consider Baudelaire a Decadent, it’s probably a stretch to do so. At least now, by placing Baudelaire in the flow from Romanticism to Naturalism to Decadence, I better appreciate his contribution to French literature generally and the Decadent movement specifically. However, I still feel a little Baudelaire goes a long way!