Baudelaire he was a convulsed man. With stick complexion, without many smiles allowed, and a prominent nose. This August 31, 152 years ago he died. Discredited by the society of his time, he was able to live more or less at ease from a wealthy family.
Paris in the early nineteenth century gave him drugs and women; A way of living. He never knew how to fit into the formalities of the French bourgeoisie and escaped almost sickly from good manners. Repeated in the brothels, he began to find beauty where no one had ever seen it before. Capture the urban moment. He changed his eyes, and that distinguished his speech and poetry. Even so, he never abandoned the search for formal beauty in his poems.
"Irregularity, that is, the unexpected, surprise or stupor are essential and characteristic elements of beauty."
He stood out in his role as an art critic. He had a very personal vision but also very contrasted on the painting. Although he also did music criticism. And well, he said his without many hairs on his tongue. He came to put Delacroix, painter of the moment, within the artistic scene. A plastic author whom no one had previously recognized his merits. However, today the ‘Freedom leading the people’ sounds even to the most selfless on the subject.
He was also an important translator, especially one of his great influences: Edgar Allan Poe. All very dark and presimbolist. He tried to make a living by giving lectures on art in Belgium, but it was never his thing. He was corroborated by the little assistance they obtained and the short time he devoted to this task: in less than two years he stopped doing them.
"It is never excusable to be evil, but there is some merit in knowing that one is"
His last years were convalescent. Due to the syphilis he suffered (contracted in the relations he had with a cross-eyed and bald prostitute), he lost part of the mobility of one of his sides and, more exaggeratedly, he was left without the ability to speak. He died lucid but physically crumbled. Years later he would be recognized as the father of modern poetry; post-romantic and presimbolist, there was never a clear drawer for him.
"What does eternal damn matter to those who have found for a second the infinite of enjoyment?"
His most recognized work are The flowers of Evil. Book that earned the author a series of fines and the suppression of six poems because they constituted an offense against public morals. And many judgments. In fact, until 1949 (many years after Baudelaire's death), he was not ‘removed’ from sentencing. From then on, the book could be published in its entirety legally. The poems, although of classical and romantic conception, laid the foundations of symbolism. The author reflects on the death, love or despair of the human being. How to put a dim light in the dark part of our existence.
Baudelaire died relatively young, at 46, so he probably had a lot more literature inside. This little tribute is just a nod to the recognition of what was, and what could have been.