What is Baudelaire's "Flowers of Evil" fraught with?

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Contemporaries of the famous French poet Charles Baudelaire did not accept and did not understand him, considering this great poet dangerous and crazy. He lived only 46 years, but this did not stop him from giving the world a wonderful collection of poems.

Idea

The poetic collection "Flowers of Evil" by Baudelaire - is a whole revelation, conceived by the author in his youth as a single work. It would seem that this is another collection, but all its parts are closely related and carry a common idea. It lies in the harmony and duality of our world: where there is good, there is evil, where there is happiness, there is a place for deep sadness. But what is remarkable is that Baudelaire does not divide the world, as many people are used to, into black and white; in his poems, these antagonistic concepts flow into each other: God is replaced by Satan, and the call of the flesh becomes prosperous. Baudelaire's "Flowers of Evil" gives us an understanding that evil and good can be the source of beauty in absolutely equal measure.

Images

One of the important places in the collection is the imagewomen - cheerful and sad, loving and cold as a statue, but they are all beautiful, and their charm haunts the poet. Baudelaire's poems "Flowers of Evil" reveal the essence of beauty from different angles, the author discusses where she came from, whether she came down from heaven, or maybe she rose from Hell. Not every reader is able to comprehend the mystery, to see between the lines, but imbued with the idea, he realizes that whatever the origin of beauty, it smooths out the blows of fate and makes the world more beautiful. Who, if not a poet, could best convey this? "Flowers of Evil" by Baudelaire - is not just a collection of individual poems, no, each creation is connected with others by a thin, but clear and strong thread. The poem "Albatross", located at the very beginning of the book, was loved by many. Majestic in the sea sky, the bird on the deck among the cruel sailors becomes helpless and pitiful. The pain and sadness of the author intensify with each new line, in which he again and again describes the magnificence of the albatross. The fun of the sailors turns his huge wings into nothing, and he is unable to fly, he is doomed. Perhaps the author identified himself with this helpless bird: misunderstood, crushed, unable to fly - such is the fate of the poet in modern society.

Evil Theme

Another poem from the collection "Flowers of Evil" by Baudelaire - "Abel and Cain", it was written after the revolutionary events in France in the mid-19th century. He does not hesitate to call people to rebellion, in which he himself took part. Standing on the barricades, Baudelaire was guided primarily notpolitical worldviews, but exclusively emotional impulses. The biblical idea, as it were, found a continuation in this frank poem, and it is the kind of Cain that expresses the will of people to rebel and reject the foundations and orders of that time. The theme of Evil runs like a red thread through the entire collection, the author talks about the nature of Evil and reveals its different sides, it is not in vain that such a name was chosen. Flowers are always something beautiful and positive, and the very word "evil" evokes only negative, and Baudelaire hints at this contradiction. "Flowers of Evil", a brief description of which is impossible, is worth reading in full, enjoying the combination of incongruous, discovering new sides of familiar concepts.