"Genius is childhood recaptured."

One of the greatest French poets of the 19th century, who formed with Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine the so-called Decadents.

Baudelaire was born in Paris. He studied at the Collège Royal, Lyon (1832-36) and Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Paris (1936-39), from where he was expelled. His intention was from his early age to live by writing, but still he enrolled as a law student in 1840 at the École de Droit. Probably at this time he became addicted to opium and contracted syphilis, which turned out to be leathal. During this period Baudelaire fell heavily in debt and he never finished his law studies.

In 1841 Baudelaire was sent to on a voyage to India, but he stopped off at Maurius. On his return to Paris in 1842 he met Jeanne Duval, a woman of mixed race, who became his mistress and inspiration for such poems as 'Black Venus'. From 1842 Baudelaire lived on his inheritance from his father. Two years later this income was deprived by law of control over it by the Counseil Judicaire.

In the late 1840s Baudelaire become involved in politics. He fought at the barricades during the revolution of 1848 and in the same year he also cofounded the journal Le Salut Public. He was associated with Proudhon and opposed the coup d'état of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte in December 1851. Subsequently Baudelaire remained aloof from politics and adopted increasingly reactionary attitude. In the 1850s he was involved with Marie Daubrun (1854-55) and Apollonie Sabatier (1857).

Baudelaire published his first novel, the autobiographical LA FANFARIO in 1847. From 1852 to 1865 he was occupied in translating Edgar Allan Poe's writings. When his LES FLEURS DU MAL appeared in 1857 all involved - author, publisher, and printer - were prosecuted and found guilty of obscenity and blasphemy.

The remaining years of Baudelaire's life were darkened by despair and financial difficulties. He returned to Paris in 1864 from extended stay in Brussels and stayed in a sanatorium. He died in Paris of aphasiac and hemiplagiac on August 31, 1867 in his mother's arms.

Although Baudelaire is chiefly known from his poems, his critical essays have also gained attention of researchers. His essays on art have been published under the collective title CURIOSITÉS ESTHÉTIQUES and those on literature and music under the title L'ART ROMANTIQUE. Baudelaire's starting point for his aesthetic analysis was the lived experience, not principles of aesthetics or abstract preconceptions about the beautiful. He was impressed by Wagner's music and the premiere of in Paris in 1861, enthusiastic of Poe and fascinated by the suggestiveness of caricatures. As a subjective idealist, he was unsympathetic to Courbet and to developments in French landscape painting that would lead to impressionism. This led to his negative attitude towards Édouard Manet (1832-83), whose works were also frequently rejected by the salon jury. However, Manet found defender from his friend Zola.

For further reading: Baudelaire the Critic by Margaret Gilman (1943); Baudelaire by Enid Starkie (1957); Baudelaire by Claude Pichois and Jean Ziegler (1989); Charles Baudelaire Revisited by Lois Boe Hyslop (1992); Baudelaire by Joanna Richardson (1994)

Selected works:

• SALON DE 1845, 1845
• SALON DE 1846, 1846
• LA FANFARIO, 1847
• LES FLEURS DU MAL, 1857
• LES PARADIS ARTIFICAELS, 1860 - Artifical Paradise
• RÉFLEXIONS SUR QUELQUES-UNS DE MES CONTEMPORAINS, 1861
• LE PEINTURE DE LA VIE MODERNE, 1963
• CURIOSITÉS ESTHÉTIQUES, 1868
• L'ART ROMANTIQUE, 1868
• LE SPLEEN DE PARIS/PETITS POÉMES EN PROSE, 1869
• EUVRES POSTHUMES ET CORRESPONDANCE GÉNÉRALE, 1887-1907
• FUSÉES, 1897
• MON COEUR MIS Á NU, 1897
• My Heart Laid Bare and Other Prose Writings, 1950
• OEUVRES COMPLÈTES, 1922-53 (19 vols.)
• Mirror of Art, 1955
• The Essence of Laughter, 1956
• CURIOSITÉS ESTHÉTIQUES, 1962
• The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, 1964
• Baudelaire as a Literary Critic, 1964
• Arts in Paris 1845-1862, 1965
• Selected Writings on Art and Artist, 1972 CRITIQUE D'ART; CRITIQUE MUSICALE, 1992

Compiled by Kuusankoski Public Library, Finland (© 1997) and René Märtin (© 1998-2001).