Immediately after the publication of Les Fleurs du Mal in 1857, Baudelaire was prosecuted and found guilty of obscenity and blasphemy. Today, Les Fleurs du Mal is considered by many to be the most important and influential poetry collection published in Europe in the 19th century.

 

For Baudelaire, love was the essence of the forbidden, and he saw the individual as a divided being, drawn equally towards good and evil, the ideal and the sensual. His originality sets him apart from the dominant literary schools of his time and his poetry is regarded as the last brilliant summation of Romanticism, the precursor of Symbolism, and the first expression of Modernity.

 

This volume brings together, for the first time, Les Fleurs du Mal and the original etchings by Odilon Redon inspired by the text. These wonderful examples of the work of Odilon Redon, the greatest of the French Symbolists, depict the world of fantasy, which he believed few dared to envision.