Introduction

'Hypocrite reader, my fellow, my brother!' The Flowers of Evil opens with its address 'To the Reader', drawing the reader straight into the sin and ennui the poet portrays. On publication Baudelaire was prosecuted for 'offence to public morals', fined, and ordered to remove six poems. The book has six parts, 'Spleen and Ideal', 'Parisian Scenes', 'Wine', 'Flowers of Evil', 'Revolt' and 'Death': the poet struggles between ideal beauty and inescapable 'spleen'; in the streets of Paris he portrays rag-pickers, the blind, old women and a passing stranger glimpsed for an instant; he seeks escape in wine, love and sin; and at last sets out in death, 'to the depths of the Unknown to find something new'. Discovering beauty in ugliness and evil, he founded modern poetry. This translation follows the second edition of 1861.