Lewis Piaget Shanks

Baudelaire: Flesh and Spirit Lewis Piaget Shanks

One of the most execrated literary figures of his day, Baudelaire has emerged in the judgment of moderns as a poet who led the revolt against the Romanticists, who founded a new school of poetry, who produced verse of surpassing beauty. This portrait of Baudelaire is a sympathetic and revelatory picture of the "poète maudit"-a psycho-analytic interpretation of the life and poetry of the great French symbolist poet. His work has lived. Of all the books of verse of the 19th Century, it is Les Fleurs du mal which is the most alive today. From it more than from any other book contemporary poetry descends, not only in France, but in England and America. Before Wagner, whom he first revealed to Paris by his passionate defense, Baudelaire advanced immeasurably the frontiers of poetry, and like Wagner he created a new art in his symbolism, the influence of which is still continuing. "If there are among our poets," says Monsieur Paul Valéry, "any who are greater and more gifted than Baudelaire, there are none more important." So we must study the poet=s life together with his work, instead of considering him merely a poète maudit or as a Flower of Evil.