“Baudelaire is indeed the greatest Exemplar in modern poetry in any language,” said T. S. Eliot. We experience Baudelaire in myriad ways through his multifaceted writing. His sensuous poems—dreams of escape to an impossible, preferably tropical, elsewhere—draw us in with their descriptive and perceptual richness. There is also the bitter, compassionate, and desolate Baudelaire. Ultimately, Baudelaire’s true genius might reside in his expressive force and in the tension between his passions and intellect. The latter is most evident in his control of rhetoric and poetic form, and—given the poems’ density of language, thought, and feelings astonishing clarity.
Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) was one of the most influential nineteenth-century French poets. His works include Les Paradis artificiels, Les Fleurs du mal, Les Épaves, and posthumous collections Le Spleen de Paris and Petits poèmes en prose, among others.