Charles Baudelaire Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (April 9, 1821–August 31, 1867) was one of the most influential French poets. He was also an important critic and translator.
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2 Influence 3 Bibliography 4 Online texts 5 External links |
Life and work
Baudelaire was born in Paris. His father, who was a civil servant in good position and an amateur artist, died in 1827, and in the following year his mother married a lieutenant colonel named Aupick, who was afterwards an ambassador of France at various courts. Baudelaire was educated at Lyons and at the Collège Louis-Ie-Grand in Paris. On faking his degree in 1839 he determined to enter on a literary career, and during the next two years pursued a very irregular way of life, which led his guardians, in 1841, to send him on a voyage to India. When he returned to Paris, after less than a year's absence, he was of age; but in a year or two his extravagance threatened to exhaust his small patrimony, and his family obtained a decree to place his property in trust.
His salons of 1845 and 1846 attracted immediate attention by the boldness with which he propounded many views then novel, but have since been generally accepted. He took part with the revolutionaries in 1848, and for some years interested himself in republican politics, but his permanent convictions were aristocratic and Catholic. Baudelaire was a slow and fastidious worker, and it was not until 1857 that he produced his first and famous volume of poems, ' 'Fleurs du mal' '. Some of these had already appeared in the ' 'Revue des deux mondes' ', when they were published by Baudelaire's friend Auguste Poulet Malassis, who had inherited a printing business at Alencon. The consummate art displayed in these verses was appreciated by a limited public, but general attention was caught by the perverse selection of morbid subjects, and the book became a by-word for unwholesomeness among conventional critics. Victor Hugo, writing to the poet, said ' 'Vous dotez le ciel de l'art d'un rayon macabre, vous créez un frisson nouveau' '. Baudelaire, his publisher, and the printer were successfully prosecuted for offending against public morals. In the prefatory poem of "Les fleurs du mal" Baudelaire accuses his readers of being as guilty of sins and lies as the poet:
- ''... If rape or arson, poison, or the knife
- Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
- Of this drab canvas we accept as life--
- It is because we are not bold enough!''
His other works include ' 'Petits Poèmes en prose' \'; a series of art criticisms published in the ' 'Pays, Exposition universelle' '; studies on Gustave Flaubert (in Lartisge, 18th of October 1857); on Théophile Gautier (' 'Revue contemporaine' ', September 1858); valuable notices contributed to Eugene Crepet's ' 'Poètes francais' '; ' 'Les Paradis artificiels: opium et haschisch' ' (1860); ' 'Un Dernier Chapitre de l'histoire des oeuvres de Balzac' ' (1880), originally an article entitled ' 'Comment on paye ses dettes quand on a du genie' ', in which his criticism turns against his friends Honoré de Balzac, Théophile Gautier, and Gerard de Nerval.
Baudelaire had learnt English in his childhood, and had found some of his favorite reading in the English Satanic romances, such as Lewis' ' 'The Monk' '. In 1846 - 1847 he became acquainted with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, in which he discovered romances and poems which had, he said, long existed in his own brain, but had never taken shape. From this time till 1865 he was largely occupied with his version of Poe's works, producing masterpieces of the art of translation, in ' 'Histoires extraordinaires' ' (1852), ' 'Nouvelles Histoires exlraordinaires' ' (1857), ' 'Adventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym' ' (see ' 'The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym' '), ' 'Eureka' ', and ' 'Histoires grotesques et sériouses' ' (1865). Two essays on Poe are to be found in his ' 'Oeuvres complètes' ' (vols. v. and vi.).
Meanwhile his financial difficulties grew upon him. He was involved in the failure of Poulet Malassis in 1861, and in 1864 he left Paris for Belgium, partly in the vain hope of disposing of his copyrights. He had for many years a liaison with a colored woman, whom he helped to the end of his life in spite of her gross conduct. He had recourse to opium, and in Brussels he began to drink to excess. Paralysis followed, and the last two years of his life were spent in ' 'maisons de santé' ' in Brussels and in Paris, where he died on the 31st of August 1867. Many of his works were published after his death.
He is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.
Influence
Baudelaire is one of the most famous decadent poets, but before the 20th century, when his work underwent considerable re-evaluation, he was generally considered by many to be merely a drug addict and a very vulgar author. His importance among serious literary critics and writers was, however, rarely in dispute. He was one of the first to recognise and to commend Poe's literary worth, and was also a noted art critic.
Baudelaire's confrontation of depression with the consumption of drugs such as opium, hashish and alcohol, influenced several future generations of depressed people. Many of his poems were influenced by his interest in ' 'les correspondances' ', or synaesthesia. Synaesthesia is the mixing of the senses, that is, the ability to smell colors or see sounds. He wrote several poems about the subject itself, such as ' 'Correspondances' ', and used imagery and symbolism based on the experiences of synaesthesiacs. In general, Baudelaire was a sensualist, in love with sensations, and he tried to experience them and express them in abundance.
He was claimed by Andre Breton as a surrealist.
Baudelaire was affected by bipolar disorder, commonly known as manic depression.
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Online texts
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