Charles Baudelaire

The Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire

The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire Translated into English Verse by Cyril Scott Les Fleurs du mal or in English: The Flowers of Evil, is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857, 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"; "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 Epaves (Scraps or Jetsam).