The Flowers of Evil

By: Charles Baudelaire

Narrated by: Stuart Walker

Length: 26 mins

Publisher's Summary

Les fleurs du mal, in english The Flowers of Evil, is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857, it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements. The poems deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism. Baudelaire dedicated the book to the poet Théophile Gautier, describing him as a "parfait magicien des lettres françaises" ("a perfect magician of French letters").The author and the publisher were prosecuted under the regime of the Second Empire as an "outrage aux bonnes mœurs" ("an insult to public decency"). As a consequence of this prosecution, Baudelaire was fined 300 francs.

Six poems from the work were suppressed and the ban on their publication was not lifted in France until 1949. These poems were : Lesbos, Les Métamorphoses du Vampire (or The Vampire's Metamorphoses), for example. These were later published in Brussels in a small volume entitled Les Épaves (Scraps or Jetsam). Upon reading The Swan (or Le Cygne) from Les Fleurs du mal, Victor Hugo announced that Baudelaire had created "un nouveau frisson" (a new shudder, a new thrill) in literature. Those poems, The Flowers of Evil, are a master piece of french literature.

©Domaine public (P)2015 Compagnie du Savoir

Beautiful Imagery

While some of the Classical references are not familiar, his invocations of the Ancients and Mythical figures are easily understood. I love hearing these verses in the original tongue.