Poetry
The Flowers of Evil
Les Fleurs du mal
Charles Baudelaire · 1857
Opening lines
La sottise, l'erreur, le péché, la lésine,
Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps,
Et nous alimentons nos aimables remords,
Comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine.
Folly, error, sin and stinginess
Occupy our minds and work upon our bodies,
And we feed our pleasant remorse
As beggars nourish their vermin.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
One hundred poems in verse, arranged in five sections, from Spleen and Ideal to Death. A poet first addresses the reader, whom he holds to be his fellow, then moves from the impulse towards the ideal to the dejection of spleen. He sings of women he has loved, shows one of them a carcass by the roadside, seeks oblivion in wine and vice, rebels, and ends by turning to death as to a last journey.
Context
The collection appeared in June 1857 from Poulet-Malassis and De Broise. Prosecuted for offending public morality, its author was sentenced on 20 August 1857 to a fine of three hundred francs, and six pieces had to be removed from the book. The second edition, in 1861, brought the collection to one hundred and twenty-six pieces and added a new section, Tableaux parisiens. The condemned pieces appeared in Belgium in 1866, in Les Épaves.
Who it is for
A collection of regular verse, of about a hundred pieces, which can be read by sections or poem by poem.
Prizes and reception
It never ceases to be retranslated: in English, Nathan Brown produced a new complete version in 2025 with Verso.