Les Fleurs du mal

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Les Fleurs du mal (literal trans. "The Flowers of Evil") is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857, it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements. The subject matter of these poems deals with themes relating to decadence and eroticism.

The initial publication of the book was arranged in five thematically segregated sections:

Spleen et Idéal (Spleen and Ideal)
Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil)
Révolte (Revolt)
Le Vin (Wine)
La Mort (Death)

The foreword to the volume, blasphemously defining Satan as "thrice-great" and calling boredom the worst of miseries, neatly sets the general tone of what is to follow:

Si le viol, le poison, le poignard, l'incendie,
N'ont pas encore brodé de leurs plaisants dessins
Le canevas banal de nos piteux destins,
C'est que notre âme, hélas! n'est pas assez hardie.

If rape and poison, dagger and burning,

Have still not embroidered their pleasant designs

On the banal canvas of our pitiable destinies,

It's because our souls, alas, are not bold enough!

The preface concludes with the following malediction:

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!

It's Ennui! — his eye brimming with spontaneous tear

He dreams of the gallows in the haze of his hookah.

You know him, reader, this delicate monster,

Hypocritical reader, my likeness, my brother!

"l'Ennui" is here left as Ennui even though it is usually translated as "Boredom" in English due to the different idea of the word used in Les Fleurs du mal. Baudelaire intended it to mean a kind of sickening depression.

The author and the publisher were prosecuted under the regime of the Second Empire as an outrage aux bonnes mœurs (trans. "an insult to public decency"). As a consequence of this prosecution, Baudelaire was fined 300 francs. Six poems from the work were suppressed and the ban on their publication was not lifted in France until 1949. On the other hand, upon reading "The Swan" or "Le Cygne" from Les Fleurs du mal, Victor Hugo announced that Baudelaire had created "un nouveau frisson" (a new shudder, a new thrill) in literature.

In the wake of the prosecution a second edition was issued in 1861 which added 32 new poems, removed the six suppressed poems and added a new section entitled Tableaux Parisiens.

A posthumous third edition with a preface by Théophile Gautier and including some previously unpublished poems was issued in 1868.

Les Fleurs du mal is also the title of a painting by the artist Georges Rouault.