Charles Baudelaire (Author of Les Fleurs du Mal)

Charles Baudelaire (Author of Les Fleurs du Mal)

Charles Baudelaire

 

born

April 09, 1821 in Paris, France

died

August 31, 1867

gender

male

genre

Poetry, Literature and Fiction

influences

Edgar Allan Poe

About this author

Charles Baudelaire was a 19th century French poet, translator, and literary and art critic whose reputation rests primarily on Les Fleurs du mal; (1857; The Flowers of Evil) which was perhaps the most important and influential poetry collection published in Europe in the 19th century. Similarly, his Petits poèmes en prose (1868; "Little Prose Poems") was the most successful and innovative early experiment in prose poetry of the time.

 Known for his highly controversial, and often dark poetry, as well as his translation of the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Baudelaire's life was filled with drama and strife, from financial disaster to being prosecuted for obscenity and blasphemy. Long after his death many look upon his name as representing depravity and vice: Others see him as being the poet of modern civilization, seeming to speak directly to the 20th century.

 

"Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.”
― Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

“One should always be drunk. That's all that matters...But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“One should always be drunk. That's all that matters...But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

 

 

“The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist.”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

“Remembering is only a new form of suffering.”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

 

 

“Be always drunken.
Nothing else matters:
that is the only question.
If you would not feel
the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders
and crushing you to the earth,
be drunken continually.

Drunken with what?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken.

And if sometimes,
on the stairs of a palace,
or on the green side of a ditch,
or in the dreary solitude of your own room,
you should awaken
and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you,
ask of the wind,
or of the wave,
or of the star,
or of the bird,
or of the clock,
of whatever flies,
or sighs,
or rocks,
or sings,
or speaks,
ask what hour it is;
and the wind,
wave,
star,
bird,
clock will answer you:
"It is the hour to be drunken!”

― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen




  

“Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose?”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

 

 

“I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;
We find delight in the most loathsome things;
Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,
And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“you walk on corpses, Beauty, undismayed,”
― Charles Baudelaire

“What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

“a multitude of small delights constitute happiness”
― Charles Baudelaire

“You are sitting and smoking; you believe that you are sitting in your pipe, and that your pipe is smoking you; you are exhaling yourself in bluish clouds. You feel just fine in this position, and only one thing gives you worry or concern: how will you ever be able to get out of your pipe?”
― Charles Baudelaire, Artificial Paradises



 

 

“The beautiful is always bizarre.”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

“Extract the eternal from the ephemeral.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, & which life reveals is the most living proof of our immortality.”
― Charles Baudelaire


  

 

“What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

“He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.”
― Charles Baudelaire





 

“The Poet is a kinsman in the clouds
Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day;
But on the ground, among the hooting crowds,
He cannot walk, his wings are in the way.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs Du Mal




 

 

“Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.”
― Charles Baudelaire, The Painter Of Modern Life And Other Essays




 

“Forest, I fear you! In my ruined heart your roaring wakens the same agony as in cathedrals when the organ moans and from the depths I hear that I am damned.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“I am a cemetery by the moon unblessed.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

“It is the hour to be drunken! To escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

“My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed,

Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,
Burning and dripping with poisons,
Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way
Its belly, swollen with gases.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs Du Mal

“We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose. ”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

“La, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté
Luxe, calme et volupté
There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Let us beware of common folk, common sense, sentiment, inspiration, and the obvious. ”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

“Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blasé ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days … the region of pure poetry.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Intimate Journals


 

“I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Even when she walks one would believe that she dances.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation.”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

“THE OWLS

by: Charles Baudelaire

UNDER the overhanging yews,
The dark owls sit in solemn state,
Like stranger gods; by twos and twos
Their red eyes gleam. They meditate.

Motionless thus they sit and dream
Until that melancholy hour
When, with the sun's last fading gleam,
The nightly shades assume their power.

From their still attitude the wise
Will learn with terror to despise
All tumult, movement, and unrest;

For he who follows every shade,
Carries the memory in his breast,
Of each unhappy journey made.
'The Owls' is reprinted from The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire. Ed. James Huneker. New York: Brentano's, 1919.”
― Charles Baudelaire




 

“There are women who inspire you with the desire to conquer them and to take your pleasure of them; but this one fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze.”
― Charles Baudelaire


 

“Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage.”
― Charles Baudelaire


 

“Dieu est le seul être qui, pour règner, n'a même pas besoin d'exister.”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

“Inspiration comes of working every day.”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

“Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!”
― Charles Baudelaire


 

 

“In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.”
― Charles Baudelaire


 

“It is at despair at not being able to be noble and beautiful by natural means that we have made up our faces so strangely.”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

“Aimer les femmes intelligentes est un plaisir de pédéraste.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“It is this admirable, this immortal, instinctive sense of beauty that leads us to look upon the spectacle of this world as a glimpse, a correspondence with heaven. Our unquenchable thirst for all that lies beyond, and that life reveals, is the liveliest proof of our immortality. It is both by poetry and through poetry, by music and through music, that the soul dimly descries the splendours beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings tears to our eyes, those tears are not a proof of overabundant joy: they bear witness rather to an impatient melancholy, a clamant demand by our nerves, our nature, exiled in imperfection, which would fain enter into immediate possession, while still on this earth, of a revealed paradise.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Selected Writings on Art and Literature

“Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

 

“Good sense tells us that earthly things are rare and fleeting, and that true reality exists only in dreams. To draw sustenance from happiness- natural or artificial - you must first have the courage to swallow it; and those who perhaps most merit happiness are precisely those on whom felicity, as mortals conceive it, always acts as a vomitive. ”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Ma jeunesse ne fut qu'un ténébreux orage, Traversé çà et là par de brillants de soleils; Le tonnerre et la pluie ont fait un tel ravage, Qu'il reste en mon jardin bien peu de fruits vermeils.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

 

“...and the lamp having at last resigned itself to death.
There was nothing now but firelight in the room,
And every time a flame uttered a gasp for breath
It flushed her amber skin with the blood of its bloom.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal



  

“Any healthy man can go without food for two days--but not without poetry.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity – that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are a essential part and characteristic of beauty.”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

“Charles Baudelaire: Get Drunk

One should always be drunk. That's all that matters; that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's horrible burden that breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without ceasing.

But what with? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.

And if, at some time, on the steps of a palace, in the green grass of a ditch, in the bleak solitude of your room, you are waking up when drunkenness has already abated, ask the wind, the wave, a star, the clock, all that which flees, all that which groans, all that which rolls, all that which sings, all that which speaks, ask them what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will reply: 'It is time to get drunk! So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk, and never pause for rest! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose!'

-- Charles Baudelaire, tr. Michael Hamburger”

― Charles Baudelaire, Twenty Prose Poems
 

 

“In order not to feel time's horrid fardel bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk!”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Nothing is as tedious as the limping days,
When snowdrifts yearly cover all the ways,
And ennui, sour fruit of incurious gloom,
Assumes control of fate’s immortal loom”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

 

“I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.”
― Charles Baudelaire, My Heart Laid Bare

“So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, be endlessly drunk. ”
― Charles Baudelaire


 

“But the true voyagers are only those who leave
Just to be leaving; hearts light, like balloons,
They never turn aside from their fatality
And without knowing why they always say: "Let's go!”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

 

“He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why so? He was forever in the act of conceiving it!”
― Charles Baudelaire




 

 

“An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.”
― Charles Baudelaire




 

 

“We revel in the laxness of the path we take.”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

“The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality.”
― Charles Baudelaire
 
 

“Through the Unknown, we'll find the New”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal


 

 

“Abolishers of the soul (materialists) are necessarily abolishers of hell, they, certainly, are interested. At all events, they are people who fear to live again--lazy people.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Intimate Journals




 

“Nature is a temple, where the living
Columns sometimes breathe confusing speech;
Man walks within these groves of symbols, each
Of which regards him as a kindred thing.”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

“To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world—impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito.”
― Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays

“Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul,
that soft summer morning
round a turning in the path,
the disgusting carcass on a bed scattered with stones,
its legs in the air like a woman in need
burning its wedding poisons
like a fountain with its rhythmic sobs,
I could hear it clearly flowing with a long murmuring sound,
but I touch my body in vain to find the wound.
I am the vampire of my own heart,
one of the great outcasts condemned to eternal laughter
who can no longer smile.
Am I dead?
I must be dead.”
― Charles Baudelaire


 

“Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where/ Latin ashes and the dust of Greece/ mingled with novels, history, and verse/ in one dark Babel. I was folio-high/ when I first heard the voices.”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

“Music fathoms the sky.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. The man who loves to lose himself in a crowd enjoys feverish delights that the egoist locked up in himself as in a box, and the slothful man like a mollusk in his shell, will be eternally deprived of. He adopts as his own all the occupations, all the joys and all the sorrows that chance offers.”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

“I have felt the wind on the wing of madness.”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

 

“With wine, poetry, or virtue
as you choose.
But get drunk.”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

“The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Il était tard; ainsi qu'une médaille neuve
La pleine lune s'étalait,
Et la solennité de la nuit, comme un fleuve
Sur Paris dormant ruisselait.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

“It's time, Old Captain, lift anchor, sink!

The land rots; we shall sail into the night;

if now the sky and sea are black as ink

our hearts, as you must know, are filled with light.

Only when we drink poison are we well —

we want, this fire so burns our brain tissue,

to drown in the abyss — heaven or hell,

who cares? Through the unknown, we'll find the new. ("Le Voyage")”
― Charles Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil and Other Works/Les Fleurs du Mal et Oeuvres Choisies : A Dual-Language Book

 

“Je ne suis pas le Styx pour t'embrasser neuf fois.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

“Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu'importe? / Au fond de l'Inconnu pour trouver du NOUVEAU! (rough translation : Into the abyss -- Heaven or Hell, what difference does it make? / To the depths of the Unknown to find the NEW!)”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

“A friend of mine, the most innocuous dreamer who ever lived, once set a forest on fire to see, as he said, if it would catch as easily as people said. The first ten times the experiment was a failure; but on the eleventh it succeeded all too well.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

 

 

“Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Fusées, Mon coeur mis à nu, La Belgique déshabillée

“Oh, Creator! Can monsters exist in the sight of him who alone knows how they were invented, how they invented themselves, and how they might not have invented themselves?”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

“Passion I hate, and spirit does me wrong. Let us love gently.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

“The Beautiful is always strange.”
― Charles Baudelaire


 

“Ascend beyond the sickly atmosphere
to a higher plane, and purify yourself
by drinking as if it were ambrosia
the fire that fills and fuels Emptiness.

Free from the futile strivings and the cares
which dim existence to a realm of mist,
happy is he who wings an upward way
on mighty pinions to the fields of light;

whose thoughts like larks spontaneously rise
into the morning sky; whose flight, unchecked,
outreaches life and readily comprehends
the language of flowers and of all mute things.”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

 

 

“That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal: from which it follows that irregularity - that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

“These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking.... Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind.”
― Charles Baudelaire



 

“Be Drunken, Always. That is the point; nothing else matters. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weigh you down and crush you to the earth, be drunken continually.

Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please. But be drunken.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, or on the green grass in a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and find the drunkenness half or entirely gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of all that flies, of all that speaks, ask what hour it is; and wind, wave, star, bird, or clock will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Be Drunken, if you would not be the martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“There is but a single second in a man’s life who’s mission is to bring good news – the good news, which strikes such inexplicable terror into everyone.

Yes, Time rules again; he has resumed his brutal tyranny. And he drives me on, as if I were an ox, with his duplicate threat: ‘Get on with it, churl! Sweat, slave! Live, and be damned!”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

 

 

“L'étude du beau est un duel où l'artiste crie de frayeur avant d'être vaincu.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Petits Poemes En Prose



 

 

“To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.”
― Charles Baudelaire

 

“From his soft fur, golden and brown,
Goes out so sweet a scent, one night
I might have been embalmed in it
By giving him one little pet.

He is my household's guardian soul;
He judges, he presides, inspires
All matters in his royal realm;
Might he be fairy? or a god?

When my eyes, to this cat I love
Drawn as by a magnet's force,
Turn tamely back upon that appeal,
And when I look within myself,

I notice with astonishment
The fire of his opal eyes,
Clear beacons glowing, living jewels,
Taking my measure, steadily.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal




 

“de satan ou de dieu, qu'importe! ange ou sirène,
qu'importe, si tu rends -- fée aux yeux de velours,
rythme, parfum, lueur, ô mon unique reine! --
l'univers moins hideux et les instants moins lourds?”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

“Le Poëte est semblable au prince des nuées
Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l'archer;
Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,
Ses ailes de géant l'empêchent de marcher.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal



 

“The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal's heart).”
― Charles Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil and Other Works/Les Fleurs du Mal et Oeuvres Choisies : A Dual-Language Book




 

“Doubt, or the absence of faith and naivete, is a vice peculiar to this age, for no one is obedient nowadays; and naivete, which means the dominance of temperament in the manner, is a gift from God, possessed by very few.”
― Charles Baudelaire, The Painter Of Modern Life And Other Essays




 

“C'est l'Ennui! —l'œil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,
Il rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
—Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal




 

“With heart at rest I climbed the citadel's
Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower,
Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,

Where evil comes up softly like a flower.
Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain,
Not for vain tears I went up at that hour;

But like an old sad faithful lecher, fain
To drink delight of that enormous trull
Whose hellish beauty makes me young again.

Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full,
Sodden with day, or, new appareled, stand
In gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,

I love thee, infamous city! Harlots and
Hunted have pleasures of their own to give,
The vulgar herd can never understand.”
― Charles Baudelaire




 

 

“On peut chercher dans Dieu le complice et l'ami qui manquent toujours. Dieu est l'éternel confident dans cette tragédie dont chacun est le héros.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Intimate Journals

  

“If rape or arson, poison or the knife
Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
Of this drab canvas we accept as life -
It is because we are not bold enough!”
― Charles Baudelaire




 

“and over your unconsecrated head
you'll hear the howling wolves
lament their fate and yours the livelong year;”
― Charles Baudelaire