The Flowers of Evil[edit]

The first edition of Les Fleurs du mal with author's notes

Baudelaire was a slow and very attentive worker. However, he often was sidetracked by
indolence, emotional distress and illness, and it was not until 1857 that he published Les Fleurs
du mal (The Flowers of Evil), his first and most famous volume of poems.[15] Some of these
poems had already appeared in the Revue des deux mondes (Review of Two Worlds) in 1855,
when they were published by Baudelaire's friend Auguste Poulet Malassis.[16][17] Some of the
poems had appeared as "fugitive verse" in various French magazines during the previous
decade.[18]
The poems found a small, yet appreciative audience. However, greater public attention was given
to their subject matter. The effect on fellow artists was, as Théodore de Banville stated,
"immense, prodigious, unexpected, mingled with admiration and with some indefinable anxious
fear".[19] Gustave Flaubert, recently attacked in a similar fashion for Madame Bovary (and
acquitted), was impressed and wrote to Baudelaire: "You have found a way to rejuvenate
Romanticism...You are as unyielding as marble, and as penetrating as an English mist."[20]
The principal themes of sex and death were considered scandalous for the period. He also
touched on lesbianism, sacred and profane love, metamorphosis, melancholy, the corruption of
the city, lost innocence, the oppressiveness of living, and wine. Notable in some poems is
Baudelaire's use of imagery of the sense of smell and of fragrances, which is used to evoke
feelings of nostalgia and past intimacy.[21]
The book, however, quickly became a byword for unwholesomeness among mainstream critics of
the day. Some critics called a few of the poems "masterpieces of passion, art and poetry," but
other poems were deemed to merit no less than legal action to suppress them.[22] J. Habas led
the charge against Baudelaire, writing in Le Figaro: "Everything in it which is not hideous is
incomprehensible, everything one understands is putrid." Baudelaire responded to the outcry in a
prophetic letter to his mother:
"You know that I have always considered that literature and the arts pursue an aim
independent of morality. Beauty of conception and style is enough for me. But this
book, whose title (Fleurs du mal) says everything, is clad, as you will see, in a cold
and sinister beauty. It was created with rage and patience. Besides, the proof of its
positive worth is in all the ill that they speak of it. The book enrages people. Moreover,
since I was terrified myself of the horror that I should inspire, I cut out a third from the
proofs. They deny me everything, the spirit of invention and even the knowledge of
the French language. I don't care a rap about all these imbeciles, and I know that this
 book, with its virtues and its faults, will make its way in the memory of the lettered
public, beside the best poems of V. Hugo, Th. Gautier and even Byron."[23]

Illustration cover for Les Épaves, by Baudelaire's friend Félicien Rops

Baudelaire, his publisher and the printer successfully were prosecuted for creating an offense
against public morals. They were fined, but Baudelaire was not imprisoned.[24] Six of the poems
were suppressed, but printed later as Les Épaves (The Wrecks) (Brussels, 1866). Another edition
of Les Fleurs du mal, without these poems, but with considerable additions, appeared in 1861.
Many notables rallied behind Baudelaire and condemned the sentence. Victor Hugo wrote to him:
"Your fleurs du mal shine and dazzle like stars...I applaud your vigorous spirit with all my
might."[25] Baudelaire did not appeal the judgment, but his fine was reduced. Nearly 100 years
later, on May 11, 1949, Baudelaire was vindicated, the judgment officially reversed, and the six
banned poems reinstated in France.[25]
In the poem "Au lecteur" ("To the Reader") that prefaces Les Fleurs du mal, Baudelaire accuses
his readers of hypocrisy and of being as guilty of sins and lies as the poet:
... If rape or arson, poison or the knife
Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
Of this drab canvas we accept as life—
It is because we are not bold enough!
(Roy Campbell's translation)