His was a perverse nature, endowed with rare gifts which he persistently abused. Pure physical sensation supplied a large part of the material for his poetry, and among the senses it was especially the one that has the remotest association with ideas that he drew upon most constantly—the sense of smell. In his desperate search for new and strange sensations he went the round of violent and exhausting dissipations, and as his senses flagged he spurred them with all sorts of stimulants. Meanwhile he observed himself curiously ; the result in his poems is an impression of peculiarly wilful depravity. They reflect his physical and mental experience, are always without sobriety, often lacking in sanity. The title, les Fleurs du mal, is both appropriate and suggestive; they invite no epithets so much as "unhealthy" and "unwholesome."
He was extremely fond of Edgar A. Poe, and translated his works.
Works: les Fleurs du mal, 1857, new edition, 1861; Oeuvres posthumes, 1887.
For reference : Gautier, Portraits et souvenirs littéraires; E. Crépet, Oeuvres posthumes et correspondance inédite de Ch. Baudelaire, précédées d'une étude biographique, 1887; Bourget, Essais de psychologie contemporaine, 1883, F. Brunetière in Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1st, 1892; Henry James, French Poets and Novelists, London, 1884; George Saintsbury, Miscellaneous Essays, London, 1892.
The poems given here are all from les Fleurs du mal.
221. 19. BOUCHER; François Boucher (1703-1770) was a painter of pastoral and genre subjects.
PIERRE DUPONT.
1821-1870.
He enjoyed a moment of great popularity about 1848, paid for since by being too much forgotten. His chansons are simple, sincere, and sweet, breathing a delight in rural life and sympathy with the lot of the poor. Works: Chansons, 1860; Chansons et poésies is the title of the current edition of his poems.
For reference: Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. iv.