Poet of glory and misery: Who is Baudelaire?

His life and death were sad. Beyond hope, all of Baudelaire's prayers were answered. He suffered a lot throughout his life. These sufferings made him a poet loved and admired by those who came after him. Of course, the world after Baudelaire was not the same. The journey, the dream, the lust, and the bliss, became something boring, magical, and insensitive, emanating from the Flowers of Evil.

Music was always at the forefront of his poetry. Baudelaire always wanted to give a perfect form to his blurry dreams, to express his thoughts clearly and distinctly. In his poetry, the melancholy of François Renée de Chateaubriand, Lord George Gordon Byron, the philosophical despair of Alferd de Vigny, and the aesthetic nihilism of Gustave Flaubert and Leconte de Lisle are felt.

Charles Pierre Baudelaire (9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also worked as an essayist, art critic and translator. His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhyme and rhythm, containing an exoticism inherited from Romantics, and are based on observations of real life.

For Baudelaire, the world is a bad place. The poet, who is painful but equally conscious, tried to build a bridge between the real and the surreal world with his imagination, realizing that imagination was his last refuge.

No matter how unbearable the world may be, Baudelaire never gave up hope; because he thought that there could be salvation by being aware of the similitude universality of the real and the surreal world. Behind mediocrity there is always an ideal to be conquered, behind every pain there is a possibility of happiness.

Here, the poet's task is to establish a relationship between these two sides of the world, albeit fragile, and unity in multiplicity. Therefore, the poet takes refuge in his imagination. “Imagination is not a fantasy. Imagination is not a sensibility, although it is difficult to imagine an insensitive dreamer.

Imagination is, first of all, a demagogical faculty which, apart from philosophical methods, senses sincere feelings, mysterious things, often relations of unity and resemblance” (Notes on the Stories of Edgar Allan Poe), says Baudelaire.

In fact, Baudelaire admires François de Malherbe, judging by the scale and the vocabulary he uses. He is a poet who uses the twelve-syllable lines (alaxendren) divided into two and the sonnet abandoned by the romantics.

What makes him different from the others is the images he uses extensively in his poetry and his unique language. These images, harmonies, mostly unities, similes, and symbols manifest themselves.

As for Baudelaire, he was the son of a father who was bureau chief, pastor, and painter in the Senate. Before his father dies, he introduces him to the magical world of painting. A year after the death of his father, his mother marries General Jacques Opick, who will take on very important duties: ambassador, Second Empire senator, and director of the Polytechnic, a military engineering college.

Baudelaire could not love his very disciplined stepfather. But by a twist of fate, they both share the same grave today in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris. But according to some rumors, Baudelaire was lying in a corner of the same cemetery, under a wall, and few people knew about it.

The young Baudelaire was a kind of dandy who loathed society and the world. “It has always seemed to me a disgusting thing to be a useful man,” he would say.

He was a brilliant student at Louis-le-Grand, still considered one of the best high schools in Paris, and even received an award for his poems in Latin. But for some reason he is expelled from school; he will finally get his high school diploma.

His first lover was an ugly street woman named Sarah la Louchette. The stepfather does not like this relationship at all and wants to get rid of his by getting his on the first ship to Calcutta. The poet, on the other hand, escapes from the ship that stops at the island of Maurice and lives on this island for three months and then returns to Paris. This journey will develop his imagination and cause him to have a great interest in exoticism and the sea.

A bohemian life awaits him in Paris, where he believes cannabis and hashish will ease his suffering. Meanwhile, an ordinary vaudeville actress meets Jeanne Duval, a mulatto woman, black Venus "angel with jet black eyes and a sculpted bronze forehead". This woman will deeply affect his whole life and a part of his work.

Of course, Jeanne Duval will not be the first nor the last. He falls in love with the green-eyed actress Marie Daubrun, who will abandon him for the poet Thédore de Banville. Again, we should not forget Apollonie Sabatier, nicknamed the President, who was the mistress of a Belgian banker and hosted the artists and writers of the period in his house.

According to Judith Gauthier, daughter of poet Théophile Gautier, “Apollonie radiated light and happiness in his triumphant air.” This lover will also play a very influential role in Baudelaire's life and poems:

He will say, “I am an angel/muse, full of joy, light, and happiness, I am the guardian Mary.”

Meanwhile, his family appoints lawyer Narcisse Ancelle as guardian to Baudelaire. The poet, who was very angry at this, will try to kill himself with a knife. Fortunately, this attempt will not materialize, but it will present the reader with the purest and most memorable lines of French literature.

Baudelaire settled in Belgium in 1864. While thinking about returning to France, he suffers a stroke. In Brussels, it almost goes into a vegetative state. He is brought to Paris after suffering a heart attack. Paralyzed and unable to speak, the poet died in 1867 at the age of forty-six.