Baudelaire is perhaps best known for his intriguing collection of poetry, “Les fluers du mal” (The Flowers of Evil), a book once partially banned but today widely translated. This poet of darkness was better loved after his death and he became the intriguing Poe of Paris.
The Poe Connection
Baudelaire’s highly creative work exudes a dark beauty with themes of sensual love, romance, and evil all strangely intertwined. Also a critic, he admired his American contemporary, Edgar Allan Poe (then barely known), whose works he ambitiously translated from English into French. Indeed, it was Baudelaire who brought recognition to him in Europe long before Poe was famous in his own country; arguably, if not for Baudelaire, the great Poe may have been lost to obscurity. Much of Baudelaire’s writings reflect Poe’s themes of melancholy and the macabre.
Temperamentally, both shared depression, abandonment, poverty, substance abuse, and a love of the fantastic. Their unusual writings reflect these same themes, although Poe did not utilize the erotic undertones often found in Baudelaire's works.
Baudelaire's Writing Style
Translations of Baudelaire’s writings from French into other languages widely range from modern to more ornate versions (the classic translations are probably most accurate, because, ironically, Baudelaire’s bold and radical writing closely followed traditional and grammatical rules).
Even so, most modern translations seem to carry a touch of his darkened magic:
"[...] you, my angel and my passion! [...] after the last sacraments, when you will go, under the grass (...) to smolder among the dead bones. Then, O my beauty, say to the vermin who will devour you with kisses, that I have kept the form and divine essence of my decomposed loves." *(1)
“[...] your vast mourning black clouds are the hearses of my dreams, and your shafts of light are the reflections of hell, where my heart is at home." *(2)
Baudelaire’s romantic spirit carried over into his poetry as well as his essays and prose. In one particular short piece from his collection in Paris Spleen (The Generous Gambler), Baudelaire describes an accidental meeting with a romanticized and elegant version of the Devil who takes him to a hidden subterranean place beneath the streets of Paris, where they have wine together and philosophize about the state of the universe. In Baudelaire’s symbolic and fascinating description, the Devil's not really such a bad fellow, he's merely misunderstood.
Baudelaire's Life and Loves
Unafraid to challenge the morals and beliefs of his time, Baudelaire felt very much at home with life’s darker elements. Like Poe, he suffered from mood swings and drug addiction, and – though he never married (unlike Poe, who married his first cousin, Virginia, who was only fourteen at the time) – had lovers and mistresses. His longest and most important romance involved a Creole woman who inspired much of his sensuous and lamentful poetry, enduring through twenty years.
"This girl of another race who like a slave let him drape her in his exotic dreams. He loved her for her savage blood, defiantly." *(3)
Impoverished, but Lived Life Extravagantly
Although in perpetual debt Baudelaire lived very extravagantly. In fact, Baudelaire was indebted throughout most of his life and it was said he went through money like water. For this reason his stepfather obtained a court order to supervise money he inherited from his deceased father. This made life hard for him.
Liberal in his thoughts, words, and deeds, Baudelaire’s haunting works seem to accurately mirror his soul and short life. After a long bout of illness and poverty, he died at the age of 46 worn out and destitute. He was buried in the ghostly Montparnasse Cemetery, in Paris, 1867.
*(1) A Carcass, p. 30, Charles Baudelaire, Selected Poems, by Carol Clark, Penguin Books, 1995
*(2) Sympathetic Horror, p. 80, Charles Baudelaire, Selected Poems, by Carol Clark, Penguin Books, 1995
