CHARLES

See also:

• PIERRE

PIERRE

See also:

• CHARLES PIERRE BAUDELAIRE (1821-1867)

BAUDELAIRE (1821-1867)  , French poet, was born in Paris on the 9th of April 1821 . His father, who was a civil servant in good position and an amateur artist, died in 1827, and in the following year his mother married a lieutenant-colonel named Aupick, who was afterwards ambassador of France at various courts . Baudelaire was educated at Lyons and at the College Louis-le--Grand in Paris . On taking his degree in 1839 he determined to enter on a literary career, and during the next two years pursued a very irregular way of life, which led his guardians, in 184r; to send him on a voyage to India . When he returned to Paris, after less than a year's absence, he was of age; but in a year or two his extravagance threatened to exhaust his small patrimony, and his family obtained a decree to place his property in trust . His salons of 1845 and 1846 attracted immediate attention by the boldness with which he propounded many views then novel, but since generally accepted . He took part with the revolutionaries in 1848, and for some years interested himself in republican politi but his permanent convictions were aristocratic and Catholic . Baudelaire was a slow and fastidious worker, and it was not until 1857 that he produced his first and famous volume of poems, Fleurs du mal . Some of these had already appeared in the Revue des deux mondes when they were published by Baudelaire's friend Auguste Poulet Malassis, who had inherited a printing business at Alencon . The consummate art displayed in these verses was appreciated by a limited public, but general attention was caught by the perverse selection of morbid subjects, and the book became a by-word for unwholesomeness among conventional critics . Victor Hugo, writing to the poet, said, " Vous dotez le ciel de fart d'un rayon macabre, vous creez un frisson nouveau." Baudelaire, the publisher, and the printer were successfully prosecuted for offending against public morals . The obnoxious pieces were suppressed, but printed later as Les Epaves (Brussels, 1866) .

Another edition of the Fleurs du mal, without these poems, but with considerable additions, appeared in 1861 . Baudelaire had learnt

English in his childhood, and had found some of his favourite reading in the English " Satanic " romances, such as Lewis's Monk . In 1846–1847 he became acquainted with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, in which he discovered romances and poems which had, he said, long existed in his own brain, but had never taken shape . From this time till 1865 he was largely occupied with his version of Poe's works, producing masterpieces of the art of translation in Histoires extraordinaires (1852), Nouvelles Histoires extraordinaires (1857), Adventures d' Arthur Gordon Pym, Eureka, and Histoires grotesques et ser ieuses (1865) . Two essays on Poe are to be found in his tEuvres completes (vols. v. and vi.) . Meanwhile his financial difficulties grew upon him . He was involved in the failure of Poulet Malassis in 1861, and in 1864 he left Paris for Belgium, partly in the vain hope of disposing of his copyrights . He had for many years a liaison with a coloured woman, whom he helped to the end of his life in spite of her gross conduct . He had recourse to opium, and in Brussels he began to drink to excess . Paralysis followed, and the last two years of his life were spent in nzaisons de saute in Brussels and in Paris, where he died on the 31st of August 1867 . His other works include:—Petits Fames en prose; a series of art criticisms published in the Pays, Exposition universelle; studies on Gustave Flaubert (in L'artiste, 18th of October 1857); on Theophile Gautier (Revue contemparaine; September 1858); valuable notices contributed to Eugene Crepet's Pates francais; Les Paradis artificiels opium et haschisch (186o) ; Richard Wagner et Tannhduser d Paris (1860; Un Dernier Chapitre do l' histoire des (euvres de Balzac (188o), originally an article entitled " Comment on paye ses dettes quand on a du genie," in which his criticism is turned against his friends H. de Balzac, Theophile Gautier, and Gerard de Nerval . Essais de bibliographie contemparaine; essays by Paul Bourget, Essais de psychologie contemporaine (1883), and Maurice Spronck, Les Artistes litteraires (1889) .

Among English

translations from Baudela ire are Poems in Prose, by A . Symons (1905), and a selection for the Canterbury Poets (1904), by F . P . Sturm .