A series of essays by the French poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire on various artists and art movements of his time, examining their cultural significance and aesthetic qualities. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Undeniably one of the modern world's greatest literary figures, Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) left behind a correspondence documenting in intimate detail a life as intense in its extremes as his poetry. This extensive selection of his letters—many translated for the first time into English—depicts a poet divided between despair and elation, thoughts of suicide and intimations of immortality; a man who could write to his mother, "We're obviously destined to love one another, to end our lives as honestly and gently as possible," and say in the next sentence, "I'm convinced that one of us will kill the other"; who courted and then suffered the controversy provoked by his masterpiece, Les Fleurs du mal; who struggled throughout his life with syphilis contracted in his youth, near-intolerable financial restrictions imposed by his stepfather, and conflicting feelings of failure and revolt dating from his school days. Writing to family, friends, and lovers, Baudelaire reveals the incidents and passions that went into his poetry. In letters to editors, idols, and peers—Hugo, Flaubert, Vigny, Wagner, Cladel, among others—he elucidates the methods and concerns of his own art and criticism and comments tellingly on the arts and politics of his day. In all, ranging from childhood to days shortly before his death, these letters comprise a complex and moving portrait of the quintessential poet and his time.

Before publishing Les Fleurs du Mal in 1857, Baudelaire was probably better known to his contemporaries as a critic than as a poet, and the articles translated here by P. E. Charvet illustrate the development of Baudelaire's critical ideas. The essays cover the visual, literary, and musical arts. From the early 'Salon' of 1846 Baudelaire's commitment to the cause of Delcroix was passionate and unswerving and it remains a theme of a number of these pieces. Baudelaire's literary criticism is represented by, amongst others, the two important articles on Poe, the spirited defence of Madame Bovary published shortly after Flaubert had been acquitted on a charge of offending public morality and the long article on Gautier, to whom Baudelaire dedicated Les Fleurs du Mal. The musician whom Baudelaire admired above all others was Wagner, and the article on Tannhäuser published at the time of the Paris production in 1861 shows his percipience as a critic: with no technical knowledge of music, Baudelaire nevertheless demonstrates an instinctive awareness of the magical power of suggestion in Wagner's music.