Abstract
Jean Giraudoux, if we are to believe certain of his friends, liked to claim he had never read Les fleurs du mal. Was this because of his scorn for a poet who had a conception of literary art too clearly opposed to that which Giraudoux proclaimed in his Prière sur la Tour Eiffel? The very fact that he expressed so strong a revulsion suggests rather that he had contemplated a sufficient number of the fleurs maladives to realize that Baudelaire's immodest genius offered only too many parallels to what his own was in danger of becoming. However unwonted such a comparison may at first appear, Giraudoux's early struggles with his conscience indicate a preoccupation with introspection strikingly similar to that of Baudelaire. Indeed we find in any careful examination of Baudelaire's works and character a young man who is hypersensitive about his uniqueness, a young man who so delights in finding himself different from other people that he does everything possible to further develop his narcissistic tendencies.
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