Charles Baudelaire
I Fiori del Male

Sometimes it seems that things happen for a very specific reason. A choice that at the moment seems insignificant in the unfolding of time can change and turn out to be a turning point.

One hot August afternoon in 2006, I found myself in a bookstore, intent on browsing through books, feeling the paper, admiring the ink that elegantly delineated words, sentences, entire masterpieces. I already had a collection of Lovecraft stories in hand when I stopped in front of the poetry shelf. I said to myself, «Are you up for a challenge?». I had never ventured into reading a book of poetry, and the idea seemed interesting. I quickly scanned the titles on the spines of the books until I found what I was looking for. A timid smile spread across my face: "Charles Baudelaire - The Flowers of Evil." I had read about it somewhere, about a "cursed" poet, a bohémien who brought to life poems of overwhelming, dark, and mysterious force. I took it; I leafed through it, curious. I read some titles, considering whether it was worth buying. A few seconds and the little volume was in my hands, along with the Lovecraft collection. I mentioned before that a trivial choice might eventually prove to be decisive, capable of influencing our future. Well, this purchase was one of those decisions. The reading of "Les Fleurs du Mal" - although superficial and naive back then - paved the way for my current path, awakening an interest in me for something, something to which I wanted to dedicate myself. It was that harmless purchase that set everything in motion.

Charles Baudelaire is considered the father of modern poetry, the inspirer of multitudes of new poets, new styles, and new currents. He was born on April 9, 1821, in Paris. Like a true bohémien, Baudelaire led a dissolute life, contracting debts, indulging in alcohol, drugs (the so-called «paradis artificiels», artificial paradises, about which he would write a book), and various pleasures of life. It's thanks to him that Edgar Allan Poe's works circulated in Europe (Baudelaire being an admirer of Poe), as he translated several of his texts. He died on August 31, 1867, in the throes of paralysis and aphasia. Among other noteworthy works, he left us "Les Fleurs du Mal", the Flowers of Evil (which was initially to be called "Les lesbiennes", the lesbians), published in a first edition in 1857 and in a second edition, with additional compositions and a different order, in 1861; it's this latter edition that we still read and savor today. The collection was subject to censorship, a fate also shared by Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary".

The work - containing 126 compositions - is divided into 6 sections: "Spleen and ideal", "Parisian Scenes", "The Wine", "Flowers of evil", "Revolt" and "Death". In Baudelaire’s conception, the Flowers were meant to be read in order; one shouldn’t extract a composition and read it without following the predetermined "itinerary". This is because the text is an ideal journey, a path where the Poet seeks the new, the unknown.

The first section ("Spleen et idéal") reveals a dual vocation: one towards God - and thus the high, the sublime, the good, the ideal - and one towards Satan - and therefore the low, the deplorable, the evil, the spleen (a mixed feeling of boredom, weariness, pain, discomfort). It's a yearning for divinity that's constantly hindered by temptation. In the following section ("Tableaux parisiens") the Poet attempts to escape this dual reality by stepping out of the personal dimension, turning towards the Other, the people, society. Thus, the city appears, the suburbs, the people. He then turns to the "artificial paradises" ("Le Vin"), the dissolute life ("Fleurs du mal"), culminating in blasphemy and violent revolt ("Révolte"). In the final section ("La Mort") the Poet reaches a conclusion: to escape the spleen, he turns to Death, the captain of the ship on which to embark, to set sail towards the Unknown and discover something new.

The "Flowers of Evil" is a groundbreaking work, leading to the birth of Decadence and its trends of Symbolism and Aestheticism; it introduces the concept of «correspondences», believing that the world is a dense web of correspondences between different sensory spheres and the poet is the one who can read and understand this world made of correspondences.

Many compositions are important, but I'll limit myself to mentioning only the best-known ones. "Benediction" presents the figure of the poet - seen as a disgrace by his own family - trapped in a hostile world from which to escape; "The Albatross" depicts the poet's discomfort in society, his awkwardness and the target of mockery; "Correspondences", presents the aforementioned concept, the foundation of Baudelairian poetics; "Beauty", where a mysterious, imposing, and immortal figure - Beauty - reigns, a despot, over Man, who is annihilated if he tries to reach her; "Posthumous Remorse", with its dark, sepulchral, putrid tones; "Spleen" (composition number 78), the fourth of four poems with the same title, with its rainy tones, suffocating and desperate atmosphere, and prevailing black Despair; "The Litanies of Satan", a true ode to the Prince of Darkness, a masterpiece of blasphemy; and finally "The Voyage", where Baudelaire’s spiritual testament takes shape: the necessity to discover the Inconnu (the Unknown).

A note must be made regarding the title. The original French "Fleurs du mal" can be translated both as "Flowers of Evil" and "Flowers from Evil." This indicates a dual significance: it’s both the finest distillate of evil and the extraction from evil of what is golden, beautiful, and shining. Baudelaire would indeed write: «You have given me your mud, and I have turned it into gold».