1. A Look Into Charles Baudelaire By: Kimberly Ulasiewicz

2. One of the greatest French poets of the 19th century, called 'the father of modern criticism,' who shocked his contemporaries with his visions of lust and decay. Baudelaire formed with Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine the so-called Decadents. Baudelaire was the first to equate modern, artificial, and decadent. In LE PEINTRE DE LA VIE MODERNE (1863, The Painter of Modern Life) Baudelaire argued in favor of artificiality, stating that vice is natural in that it is selfish, while virtue is artificial because we must restrain our natural impulses in order to be good. The snobbish aesthete, the dandy, was for Baudelaire the ultimate hero and the best proof of an absolutely purposeless existence. He is a gentleman who never becomes vulgar and always preserves the cool smile of the stoic. "There can be no progress (real, that is, moral) except in the individual and by the individual himself." (from Mon Coeur Mis À Nu, 1897) Charles Baudelaire was born in Paris, where he lived most of his

7. The Writer

8. LES FLEURS DU MAL The Flowers of Evil Information accessed at: http://www. kirjasto . sci . fi /baudelai. htm

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