Flowers of Evil

Celebrate Poe

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Welcome to Celebrate Poe - Episode 317 - Flowers of Evil
Today I want to look at some of Baudelaire’s masterpiece - Les Fleurs du Mal - or The Flowers of Evil. First published in 1857, the poems were extremely controversial upon publication, with six of its poems censored due to their immorality. Now it is now considered a major work of French poetry. The poems in The Flowers of Evil frequently break with tradition, using suggestive images and unusual forms. They deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism, particularly focusing on suffering and its relationship to original sin, disgust toward evil and oneself, obsession with death, and aspiration toward an ideal world. The poems had a powerful influence on future French poetry. For the rest of this episode, I am going to read a portion of the poems - starting with a poem by Edgar Allan Poe that I am sure you are familiar with - Alone so you can compare it to Badelaire’s The Enemy. By the way, note how both poems use vivid imagery to describe the poet's tumultuous youth and the challenges faced in his later years, employing metaphors of storms to convey the respective poet’s emotional and creative struggles.
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