Who is Charles Baudelaire?

Charles Pierre Baudelaire

• Charles Baudelaire was born on April 9, 1821.
• He died on August 31, 1867.
• He was a nineteenth-century French poet, critic, and translator.
• Famous for his book of poetry Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil)
• Baudelaire's father, François Baudelaire, a senior civil servant and amateur artist, was 34 years older than his mother, Caroline.
  
• Baudelaire's father died during his childhood and remained very close to his mother.
• Charles Baudelaire's relationship with his mother was comlex and dominated his life.
• His mother married Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Aupick a year after his father's death.
• Charles Baudelaire was forced to to board away from his mother (even during holidays) and accept his stepfather's rigid methods.
• Baudelaire
  
• Baudelaire's stepfather was concerned about his future.
• At 18 years old, Charles was still undecided about his future.
• He began to frequent prostitutes.
  
• Trying to change Charles' mind and behavior, his stepfather sent him to India.
• The arduous trip, however, did nothing to turn Baudelaire's mind away from a literary career or from his casual attitude toward life.
• He retuned home and spent a life of and squandred his money and his inheritance and even gone into depth.
• The most important work Baudelaire wrote was "Les fleurs du mal". When it was first published it was criticised and found a small, appreciative audience. But later "Les fleurs du mal" was supported by a number of notables like Victor Hugo and Flaubert
  

Charles Baudelaire's Work

BEAUTY
by: Charles Baudelaire

AM as lovely as a dream in stone,

And this my heart where each finds death in turn,

Inspires the poet with a love as lone

As clay eternal and as taciturn.




Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows,

My throne is in the heaven's azure deep;

I hate all movements that disturb my pose,

I smile not ever, neither do I weep.




Before my monumental attitudes,

That breathe a soul into the plastic arts,

My poets pray in austere studious moods,




For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts,

Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies,

The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.

'Beauty' is reprinted from The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire. Ed. James Huneker. New York: Brentano's, 1919.
More poems here:
Poems by Charles Baudelaire