On April 9, 1821, in Paris, Charles Pierre Baudelaire was born.
To speak of him is to speak of the "Poètes Maudits"; that generation of French artists who carried out one of the greatest literary revolutions known to date. They were pointed at, censored. They were seen as demonic, failed, dark, repulsive, mysterious, strange.
Their poetics, endowed with a gothic and apocalyptic air, went against the prevailing romanticism of the time. Their extreme and irrational style gave them a bad reputation, which only the passing of the years could purify. Verlaine, used the term for the first time in his book "The Damned Poets," which included, among others, Baudelaire.
Not only was his poetry criticized, but the lifestyle these artists led kept them away from a puritanical and classist society.
They experienced firsthand disease, social rejection, and abandonment. They all shunned the public and official scene of French society. Baudelaire is credited with creating the concept of "modernity" as synonymous with the fervent social decay associated with the metropolitan and urban environments of his time.
Baudelaire, besides being a poet, was a dissenter from the death of his father when he was just 7 years old.
Shortly after, his mother remarried a military man. Charles' life changed from a loving upbringing to one of strict order.
Young Baudelaire never accepted his stepfather, and family conflicts were constant throughout his childhood and adolescence.
He studied in the city of Lyon until he returned with his family to Paris. He continued his studies, but not for long, as he was expelled for misconduct. Finally, he completed his studies at an unprestigious school. Later, he managed to enter the University of Paris to study Law, where he met all kinds of characters and immersed himself in the bohemian life, rubbing shoulders with literary greats like Gérard de Nerval and Honoré de Balzac. It was during this time that he also met Sarah, a prostitute who inspired several of his poems and infected him with syphilis, a disease that would end his life years later.
His stepfather, completely dissatisfied with the liberal and libertine life led by young Baudelaire, against his will, sent him on a long journey with the intention of distancing him from such bad and corrosive habits.
Baudelaire embarked on June 9, 1841, bound for India, but on the island of Mauritius, he escaped from the ship and somehow made his way back to France, without his stepfather knowing. He settled back in the capital and returned to his old free habits. He continued to attend literary and artistic circles and scandalized all of Paris with his affair with Jeanne Duval, a woman of African descent.
Upon reaching the age of majority, the first thing he did was to claim his paternal inheritance, but his disorderly life ensured that he squandered almost all the inherited money. His parents were baffled by this situation and opted to seek a judicial tutor to control the few remaining assets.
So, in 1844, he began receiving a small monthly income, a situation that provoked the fury of the young man and increased family conflicts. Shortly after, he began to consume hashish and wrote texts related to art criticism. By the age of almost thirty, he was already living in miserable places.
"Angel full of joy, do you know what anguish is,
guilt, shame, boredom, sobs,
and the vague terrors of those horrible nights
that press upon the heart like crushed paper?
Angel full of joy, do you know what anguish is?"
Shortly after, sick from syphilis and in the midst of a deep depression, he attempted suicide but was unsuccessful. Later, recovered from his crisis, he began to collaborate in magazines writing articles and poems. He also developed as a music critic, his best comments and analyses were made in reference to Wagner's work, which he considered the synthesis of a new art.
"Time eats away at life, and the dark enemy that gnaws at our hearts grows and strengthens with the blood we lose."
-Charles Baudelaire
He translated the works of authors E.T.A. Hoffmann and Edgar Allan Poe, admiring their avant-garde synthesis; the same that inspired him and he wanted to imitate in La Fanfarlo (1847), his only novel.
His personality sparked controversies everywhere, and these increased when he participated in the 1848 revolution and published "Les Fleurs du Mal" (1857). This constituted his main work and marked a milestone in French poetry. Due to a very controversial publication, justice ordered the seizure of the work and Baudelaire's trial, where he had to appear on charges of offenses against public morality and good customs.
The symptoms of syphilis returned, he suffered partial paralysis, and also experienced episodes of muteness, the disease gradually advanced mercilessly, later suffering an attack in the church of Saint Loup de Namur. He was in a clinic in Paris accompanied by his mother, remaining speechless but with a good appearance until his death on August 31, 1867.
Baudelaire, through his poetry, showed us a sinister beauty, an anguished feeling.
He spat out tragic verses, with heartbreaking nuances. He observed in detail the vices and pleasures of the body, the intoxication of the senses before beauty in contrast to the image of the cataclysm of a shaken world.
He focused his attention on describing incurable evil. In the apology of the infernal. In the treatment of man as a miserable, perverse being, owner of his own body as an instrument to achieve his misery.
Roberto Calasso said: "Only Baudelaire had access to a region of the purest pathos, immune to any sentimentality" and indeed he did.
Thus, the concept of the damned was born, known as the search for self-destruction and the immolation of the artist.
Poetry ceased to be descriptive art entrusted with embellishing everyday reality; Baudelaire promoted it from another perspective, giving free rein to emotion in its most primal state, as the only option towards a change in a blind and hypocritical humanity.
"Misfortune has a certain elasticity that is usually called human freedom."
Sartre was right: Baudelaire was an "open wound," as is very clear from the abject and pleading letters he wrote to his mother. All that darkness and perversity that he so beautifully portrayed form the permanent substrate of our psychic life.
His word reflects us, seduces us, questions us, and moves us.
"My heart is lost; the beasts have devoured it."
Baudelaire saw and lived the darkness of a marginalized existence and from there he speaks to us, guides us, pierces us with the dirt of the world.
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