Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire (1821. - 1867.) is the first European writer of modern lyric, a French critic, and poet. His hometown was Paris, and he comes from an aristocratic family. His family did not have much understanding for his sensibility as a child nor his talent for art.

He was very attached to his mother, but he got disappointed when she re-married after his father's death. His stepfather, a nobleman, belonging to the aristocratic, never cared much for Charles and his sensibility which he inherited from his father.

Charles decided to leave his family. He considered their relations to be hypocrite and fake. Charles met the real life and the life essence in the suburbs of Paris, but he met them through alcohol, narcotics, and women of questionable morality.

Even though he lived as a bohemian, he never forgot art. He studied Wagner's music and the poems of Edgar Allan Poe.

He wrote many literary, art and music critiques and that tells a lot about his talents. He wrote many poems in prose and was also an excellent translator of Poes songs, but his work and talent were never acknowledged.

Because he could not live with the fake moral and hypocrisy, he was attacked as a poet and man and called to court because of his book "Les Fleurs du Mal". The lyric that he wrote for 15 years was forbidden, and he had to cut out the inappropriate verses. His scandalous behavior reached its top when he got into a relationship with a mullato Jeane Duval who he called his muse.

He was 46 years old when he died from illness and tired from the search of a life goal and fulfillment. He did not live long enough to see the acknowledgment of his book "Les Fleurs du Mal".

Except for that book he also wrote critics and essays Curiosités Esthétiques and L'art romantique.