Charles Baudelaire and his time

Les Fleurs du mal

Condemnation of the collection

In 1857, Napoleon III's Second Empire held France under its apparently autocratic tutelage; but the period brought about the development of industry, of the banking system, of the channels of communication, and this through men, many of whom were deeply corrupt. It is therefore astonishing to see that “Les Fleurs du mal”, Baudelaire's collection in which „Correspondences“ appears, was condemned shortly after its publication. The reason is that the dictatorship owed its support also to the milieux most conservative as regards the morals desired for the vast populations. Now, Baudelaire's book, sold at a modest price, contained pieces judged to give bad examples to the lower people. The close surveillance of aspirations towards more liberal mores than those of recent periods therefore accompanied the country's economic transformation. We shall scarcely go beyond this date of 1857 for our references to Baudelaire's texts. Possibly the following period owes something to „Correspondences“, but it would be comical to take as the source of the poem events that occurred after its publication.

Historical details

Charles Baudelaire began having “Les Fleurs du mal” published on 25 June 1857. The first print run, of 1,300 copies, was printed in Alençon. In an article in “Le Figaro”, Gustave Bourdin, on 5 July 1857, reproached Baudelaire for his writing and for what seemed to him to constitute the themes of the collection: «There are moments when one doubts the mental state of M. Baudelaire; there are others when one doubts no longer: — it is, most of the time, the monotonous and premeditated repetition of the same things, of the same thoughts. The hateful is there cheek by jowl with the ignoble; the repulsive joins with the foul…» On 7 July, the directorate of Public Security applied to the public prosecutor on charges of «an affront to public morals» and «an affront to religious morals». On 20 August 1857, the courts, through the 6th correctional chamber, sentenced Charles Baudelaire and his publisher Poulet-Malassis to fines of 300 and 200 francs respectively for «an affront to public morals and decency», and to remove from the collection six poems — „Lesbos“, „Doomed Women“ (LXXXI), „To One Who is Too Cheerful“, „The Metamorphoses of the Vampire“, „the Jewels“, „Lethe“. Initially thirteen poems were targeted, but in the end six were struck.

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Biography of Charles Baudelaire

Birth and childhood of the poet in the making

Charles Baudelaire is a French poet who lived from 1821 to 1867. His maternal grandfather was a French soldier who had served England against the French Revolution. His daughter, the poet's mother, was born in the English parish of Saint Pancras. The poet's father was a former priest who had very early become a tutor in the family of Choiseul-Praslin, leaving the Catholic Church before the Revolution. Having protected the children placed in his care, he received from his illustrious employers a copy of a monograph written in Italian, „le Antichità di Ercolano esposte“, a nine-volume work, dating from 1757–1792, which bore on the part of ancient culture preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79. At sixty, this art-lover married the woman who was to be the poet's mother. So the child grew up surrounded by Louis XVI furniture, by statues, pastels and gouaches. In the family or among friends, much was said, it seems, about aesthetics.

Adolescence and youth of the poet

The father died in 1827, and the mother remarried, in 1828, with an officer, Major Aupick. For many years the future poet got along very well with his stepfather, and undertook excellent classical studies, troubled only by his occasional indiscipline, which did not prevent him from being a master of Latin verse. Things took a turn for the worse when he sought his financial independence. The young man had to agree to a voyage to the Indies. Baudelaire cut short his forced journey, but kept a deep memory of what we today call Réunion and Mauritius, the islands of the Indian Ocean glimpsed at that time. Shortly after his return, judged too spendthrift, he was, in 1844, placed under a court-appointed adviser charged with giving him only sparingly what remained of his share of his father's inheritance.

Baudelaire's poetry

Charles Baudelaire spent considerable time in museums and exhibitions, and devoted himself to art criticism. For some years already, he had been frequenting at least one prostitute; he then began to live with a mistress, and another. Let us mention in particular a woman of mixed race, Jeanne Duval. Judging himself, very early, to be afflicted with Venus's disease, he treated himself with sharply irritating remedies and soothed himself with opium. He took part in the revolution of 1848, despite — or because of — the extremely conservative atmosphere of his milieu of origin, then gradually lost interest in the social question. On the other hand, he acquired a solid reputation, among his peers, as the poet of cats. He often composed also on the theme of the city, and on that of Paris in particular. Baudelaire translated Edgar Poe into French, and gradually composed the poems of what was to become his major work, “Les Fleurs du mal”. Over the years, he thought of other titles for this same collection in the course of formation: “Les Limbes” and “Les Lesbiennes”. In 1857, on the publication of the book, he was prosecuted, and was sentenced to a fine, and also to remove from the whole several poems deemed indecent.

Correspondences — Les Fleurs du mal

We leave aside the rest of Baudelaire's life, since „Correspondences“ was published in this year 1857, and since the best historical method — and, by that fact, intrinsic to the method employed in poetics — forbids judging by anachronism. Who, indeed, would dare maintain that the Baudelaire of 1866 influenced the Baudelaire of 1857?