Charles Baudelaire was a French poet known for his Decadent movement and Les Fleurs du Mal. He translated Edgar Allan Poe’s work and influenced Symbolism. Baudelaire’s life was chaotic, and he had financial difficulties. He died in 1867, but his work became acclaimed posthumously.
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet whose work epitomizes the Decadent movement in literature. He also produced influential critical essays on other important writers of his era and translated much of the work of Edgar Allan Poe into French. Baudelaire is best known for his collection of poems entitled Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil). His work also had a significant influence on the emerging Symbolist movement in art and literature.
Baudelaire was born in Paris on April 9, 1821. At the age of 16, his father died and his mother remarried the following year to a lieutenant colonel who later became an ambassador. Baudelaire graduated from the Collège Louis-le-Grand in 1839 and planned to begin a literary career. However, his life became quite chaotic and as a result his guardians sent him on a trip to India in 1841. When he returned, Baudelaire was old enough to collect the money he had inherited from his father, but managed to spend almost all of it next year or so and the rest went to a trust fund. Around this time, Baudelaire met Jeanne Duval, the inspiration for many of his poems, with whom he continued to have a relationship until the end of his life.
Baudelaire’s career as a writer began with a few art magazines in 1845 and 1846. Shortly thereafter, he discovered Poe’s works in English and was amazed. He worked on translations of Poe’s stories into French for the next 20 years and his versions remain highly acclaimed. Baudelaire also wrote reviews of the work of his contemporaries, including Theophile Gautier, Gustave Flaubert and Honore de Balzac.
When Les Fleurs du Mal was published in 1857, it shocked most readers and critics with its themes of deviant sexuality, death, and dissolution, but Baudelaire also gained a loyal, if small, following. Baudelaire, along with his printer and publisher, were sued for producing the offending work, and five of the poems were censored from the first version. The next edition, published in 1861, included the previously purged poems.
In 1861, Baudelaire’s publisher went bankrupt and the poet’s financial difficulties became severe. He moved to Belgium in 1864, where he started smoking opium and drinking heavily. In 1866 he suffered a severe stroke and was paralysed. He was hospitalized in Brussels and in Paris for the rest of his days and died on August 31, 1867. After his death, Baudelaire’s work became far more accepted and acclaimed than it had been during his lifetime, and Les Fleurs du Mal is now considered a classic of French literature.
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