The book is based on the introductory poem that is a dedication to the reader named 'To the reader' and on 28 compositions named 'Additional songs' that were not divided nor included in the already mentioned 6 cycles. The Flowers of Evil consist of over 160 poems that are divided into 5 units creating 6 cycles. When it comes to the form of the poems, we could say the book was written with strict rules. In todays analysis the book is not perceived as an immoral and shocking work and does not get many negative responses. Instead of them he decided to write about darker themes in his book of poems. Baudelaire wanted to torture the readers with his poems because they were used to reading nice verses that made their, in Baudelaires opinion, pretty but hypocrite lives even better.īaudelaire was not the kind of artist who wanted to write poems about beauty and an uplifted spirit. The Flowers of Evil was written for 15 years but at that time the book was not well accepted and became recognized as a work of art many years later. Four years later the book was published again but this time they've cut out all of the parts that could endanger public morality. He was also punished for some parts of this, at that time, misunderstood and immoral book. The condemned poems nevertheless continued to be widely circulated through clandestine and often illustrated editions, including Le Parnasse satyrique (1864), Les Épaves with a frontispiece by Félicien Rops (1866), Les Pièces condamnées with woodcuts by Jean Gabriel Daragnès (1917), all exhibited here.Charles Baudelaire was a great but yet unaccepted poet of that time. These erotic, sometimes lesbian poems were then excluded from all regular editions of Les Fleurs du Mal until the rehabilitation of Baudelaire and his collection by the Cour de cassation in 1949.

On August 20, 1857, a few weeks after publication of the collection by Poulet-Malassis, six poems from Les Fleurs du Mal were indicted by the Tribunal correctionnel of the Seine for affront to public decency (“ outrage à la morale publique”) because of their alleged “crude realism”: “Les Bijoux”, “Le Léthé”, “Femmes damnées”, “Les Métamorphoses d’un vampire,” “À celle qui est trop gaie”, and “Lesbos” (the last two reproduced here with translations by Samuel N. Currently the most revered and studied collection of French lyric poetry, Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) was the subject of one of the most famous literary trials in France.

The flowers of evil charles baudelaire