Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry

The Favours of the Moon Which is True? "L'Invitation au Voyage" The Eyes of the Poor Windows Crowds The Cake Evening Twilight "Anywhere Out of the World" A Heroic Death Be Drunk...

His parents were in despair; no doubt quite rightly so from their point of view. Théophile Gautier, perhaps remembering the many disappointments and martyrdoms of his own sad li...

He begins by attempting to prove that Nature is innately and fundamentally wrong and wicked. "The greater number of errors relative to the beautiful date from the eighteenth cen...

Incomparable flower, recaptured tulip, allegoric dahlia, it is there, is it not, in that beautiful country, so calm and so full of dreams, that you live and flourish? There, wou...

Fancioulle, shaken, roused out of his dream, closed his eyes, then re-opened them, almost at once, extraordinarily wide, opened his mouth as if to breathe convulsively, staggere...

I know that the Demon gladly frequents parched places, and that the spirit of murder and lechery is marvellously inflamed in solitude. But it is possible that solitude is danger...

"And then, suddenly, a light glowed in my brain, and I understood why the mother was so very anxious to wrest the twine from me, and by what traffic she meant to be consoled."

"Well, since I have disturbed them _fruitlessly_, I leave ten francs on the mantel.... They are so good and so kind, these folk! I discovered a little interne at the Pieté, pret...

A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the day. I have seen several literary men; one of them wished to know if he could get to Russia by land (he se...

This heavy Satan beat with his fist upon his immense belly, from whence came a loud and resounding metallic clangour, which died away in a sighing made by many human voices. And...

Madonna, mistress, I would build for thee An altar deep in the sad soul of me; And in the darkest corner of my heart, From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart, Carve of enamelle...

Ye whom my soul has followed into hell, I love and pity, O sad sisters mine, Your thirsts unquenched, your pains no tongue can tell, And your great hearts, those urns of love di...

The inaccessible blue of the soul-sphere To him whose grovelling dream remorse doth gall Yawns wide as when the gulfs of space enthral. So, heavenly Goddess, Spirit pure and clear,

If a poet asked the state for the right to have a few bourgeois in his stable, there would be considerable surprise; while, if a bourgeois asked for roast poet, it would seem qu...

Because the sea conveys the thought both of immensity and of movement. Six or seven leagues are for man the radius of the infinite. 'Tis a diminutive infinite. What matter, if i...