Charles Baudelaire remains one of the defining figures of modern literature, so influential that for decades writers across europe were casually described as “baudelairean” whenever their work contained decadence, melancholy, eroticism or fascination with urban corruption.
His collection les fleurs du mal transformed poetry into something darker and more psychologically unsettling, mixing beauty with decay, sensuality with death and spiritual longing with degradation. Unlike romantic idealists before him, Baudelaire seemed fascinated by evil, boredom and sickness of modern city life.
Baudelaire also played crucial role in introducing Edgar Allan Poe to european readers, translating his stories and poems into french with extraordinary devotion. In many ways, Baudelaire recognized in Poe another doomed artist obsessed with madness, beauty and death. Through these translations poe gained enormous influence on european symbolism and decadent literature.
His own life was marked by debt, scandal and drug addiction, experiences reflected in his essay artificial paradises, meditation on hashish, opium and human desire to escape ordinary consciousness. Despite his self-destructive tendencies, Baudelaire’s influence on modern poetry, symbolism and dark aesthetics remains immense.
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