Baudelaire was born in
Paris. His father, a senior
civil servant and amateur
artist, died early in Baudelaire's life in 1827. In the following year, his mother married a
lieutenant colonel Jacques Aupick, who later became a French
ambassador to various
courts. Baudelaire was educated in
Lyon and at the
Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Upon gaining his
degree in 1839, he decided to embark upon a literary career, and for the next two years led an irregular life. He may have contracted
syphilis during this period. In the hope of reforming him, his
guardians sent him on a voyage to
India in 1841, but he never arrived. When he returned to Paris, after less than a year's absence, he received a small inheritance, but he spent it within a few years. His family obtained a decree to place his property in trust. During this time he met
Jeanne Duval, who was to become his longest romantic association.
His
art reviews of 1845 and 1846 attracted immediate attention for their boldness; many of his critical opinions were novel in their time, but have since been generally accepted. He took part in the
Revolutions of 1848, and for some years was interested in
republican politics, but his political convictions spanned the anarchism of
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the history of the
Raison d'Ėtat of
Giuseppe Ferrari, and
ultramontane critique of liberalism of
Joseph de Maistre.
Baudelaire was a slow and fastidious worker, and it was not until 1857 that he published his first and most famous volume of
poems, Les Fleurs du mal ("The Flowers of Evil"). Some of these poems had already appeared in the
Revue des deux mondes (Review of Two Worlds), when they were published by Baudelaire's friend
Auguste Poulet Malassis, who had inherited a
printing business at
Alençon. The poems found a small appreciative audience, but greater public attention was given to their subject matter. The principal themes of
sex and
death were considered scandalous, and the book became a byword for unwholesomeness among mainstream
critics of the day. Baudelaire, his
publisher, and the
printer were successfully
prosecuted for creating an offense against public
morals. In the poem "Au lecteur" ("To the Reader") that prefaces
Les fleurs du mal, Baudelaire accuses his readers of
hypocrisy and of being as guilty of
sins and lies as the poet:
:... If
rape or
arson, poison, or the
knife
:Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
:Of this drab
canvas we accept as life—
:It is because we are not bold enough!
::(
Roy Campbell's translation)
Six of the poems were suppressed, but printed later as
Les Épaves ("The Wrecks") (
Brussels, 1866). Another edition of
Les fleurs du mal, without these poems, but with considerable additions, appeared in 1861.
His other works include
Petits Poèmes en prose ("Small
Prose poems"); a series of art reviews published in the
Pays, Exposition universelle ("Country, World Fair"); studies on
Gustave Flaubert (in
L'Artiste,
October 18, 1857); on
Théophile Gautier (
Revue contemporaine, September, 1858); various articles contributed to Eugene Crepet's
Poètes francais;
Les Paradis artificiels: opium et haschisch ("French poets; Artificial Paradises: opium and hashish") (1860); and
Un Dernier Chapitre de l'histoire des oeuvres de Balzac ("A Final Chapter of the history of works of Balzac") (1880), originally an article entitled "Comment on paye ses dettes quand on a du génie" ("How one pays one's debts when one has genius"), in which his criticism turns against his friends
Honoré de Balzac, Théophile Gautier, and
Gérard de Nerval.
Baudelaire learned
English in his childhood, and
Gothic novels, such as
Lewis's The Monk, became some of his favourite reading matter. In 1846 and 1847 he became acquainted with the works of
Edgar Allan Poe, in which he found tales and poems which had, he claimed, long existed in his own brain but never taken shape. From this time until 1865, he was largely occupied with translating Poe's works; his translations were widely praised. These were published as
Histoires extraordinaires ("Extraordinary stories") (1852),
Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires ("New extraordinary stories") (1857),
Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym (see
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym), Eureka, and
Histoires grotesques et sérieuses ("Grotesque and serious stories") (
1865). Two
essays on Poe are to be found in his
Oeuvres complètes ("Complete works") (vols. v. and vi.).
His
financial difficulties increased, particularly after his publisher Poulet Malassis went bankrupt in 1861, and in 1864 he left Paris for
Belgium, partly in the hope of selling the
rights to his works. For many years he had a long-standing relationship with a mixed-race woman,
Jeanne Duval, whom he helped to the end of his life. He smoked
opium, and in Brussels he began to
drink to excess. He suffered a massive stroke in 1866 and
paralysis followed. The last two years of his life were spent in "maisons de santé" in Brussels and in Paris, where he died on
August 31, 1867. Many of his works were published posthumously.
He is buried in the
Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.
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