Over 50 Scandalous Poems Relating to Decadence and Eroticism

Poetry - Decadence and Eroticism

The Flowers of Evil

Charles Baudelaire

Translated into English Verse by Cyril Scott

FULL ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Les Fleurs du mal (English: The Flowers of Evil) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857 (see 1857 in poetry), it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements. The poems deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism.

The author and the publisher were prosecuted under the regime of the Second Empire as an outrage aux bonnes moeurs ("an insult to public decency"). As a consequence of this prosecution, Baudelaire was fined 300 francs. Six poems from the work were suppressed and the ban on their publication was not lifted in France until 1949. These poems were "Lesbos"; "Femmes damnees (A la pale clarte)" (or "Women Doomed (In the pale glimmer...)"); "Le Lethe" (or "Lethe"); "A celle qui est trop gaie" (or "To Her Who Is Too Gay"); "Les Bijoux" (or "The Jewels"); and " Les "Metamorphoses du Vampire" (or "The Vampire's Metamorphoses"). These were later published in Brussels in a small volume entitled Les paves (Scraps or Jetsam).

On the other hand, upon reading "The Swan" (or "Le Cygne") from Les Fleurs du mal, Victor Hugo announced that Baudelaire had created "un nouveau frisson" (a new shudder, a new thrill) in literature.

Includes:

• Obsession
• Magnetic Horror
• The Lid
• Bertha's Eyes
• The Set of the Romantic Sun
• Meditation
• To a Passer-by
• Illusionary Love
• Mists and Rains
• The Wine of Lovers
• Condemned Women
• The Death of the Lovers

and many more.......