49 Poems from The Flowers of Evil

Written by Charles Baudelaire

Narrated by Paul Edwards

Les fleurs du mal, in English The Flowers of Evil, is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. The poems deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism. The author and the publisher were prosecuted in France under the regime of the Second Empire as an "outrage aux bonnes mœurs" ("an insult to public decency"). Because of this prosecution, Baudelaire was fined 300 francs. Victor Hugo announced that Baudelaire had created "un nouveau frisson" (a new shudder, a new thrill) in literature.

The list of the 49 poems from The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire: The Shooting-Range and the Cemetery, The Marksman, The Owls, The Little Old Women, The Ideal, The Invitation to the Voyage, The Glass-Vendor, The Ghost, The Gifts of the Moon, The Eyes of Beauty, The Flask, The Desire to Paint, The Double Chamber, The Confiteor of the Artist, The Corpse, The Death of the Poor, The Benediction, Robed in a Silken Robe, Sonnet of Autumn, Spleen, Sunset, The Accursed, Little Poems in Prose - The Stranger, Mist and Rain, Music, Reversibility, Gypsies Travelling, Intoxication, La Beatrice, Bien Loin D'ici, Contemplation, Every Man His Chimæra, Already, An Allegory, At One O'clock in the Morning, A Landscape, A Madrigal Of Sorrow, Venus and the Fool, What is Truth, To a Brown Beggar-Maid, To a Madonna, The Wine of Lovers, The Voyage, The Thyrsus - To Franz Liszt, The Sky, The Soul of Wine, The Swan, The Remorse of the Dead, The Seven Old Men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Astorg Audio
• Release date: Jan 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9782821108127

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a French poet. Born in Paris, Baudelaire lost his father at a young age. Raised by his mother, he was sent to boarding school in Lyon and completed his education at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he gained a reputation for frivolous spending and likely contracted several sexually transmitted diseases through his frequent contact with prostitutes. After journeying by sea to Calcutta, India at the behest of his stepfather, Baudelaire returned to Paris and began working on the lyric poems that would eventually become The Flowers of Evil (1857), his most famous work. Around this time, his family placed a hold on his inheritance, hoping to protect Baudelaire from his worst impulses. His mistress Jeanne Duval, a woman of mixed French and African ancestry, was rejected by the poet’s mother, likely leading to Baudelaire’s first known suicide attempt. During the Revolutions of 1848, Baudelaire worked as a journalist for a revolutionary newspaper, but soon abandoned his political interests to focus on his poetry and translations of the works of Thomas De Quincey and Edgar Allan Poe. As an arts critic, he promoted the works of Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix, composer Richard Wagner, poet Théophile Gautier, and painter Édouard Manet. Recognized for his pioneering philosophical and aesthetic views, Baudelaire has earned praise from such artists as Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Marcel Proust, and T. S. Eliot. An embittered recorder of modern decay, Baudelaire was an essential force in revolutionizing poetry, shaping the outlook that would drive the next generation of artists away from Romanticism towards Symbolism, and beyond. Paris Spleen (1869), a posthumous collection of prose poems, is considered one of the nineteenth century’s greatest works of literature.