The Beauty of Ill-Being

Abstract

This chapter discusses the eighteen poems published in June 1855 under the title of ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ and shows how they recall earlier themes from the Lesbos and limbo poems while introducing new preoccupations—particularly the figure of Satan—that will inform the completed editions of Les Fleurs du Mal. It proposes that the relationship between melancholy and beauty now moves centre-stage, and it argues that Baudelaire here explores (as also in the so-called ‘Douze poèmes’ sent to Théophile Gautier in 1851–2) various scenarios of resistance to melancholy, notably the role of creative art in response to the destructiveness of ‘le Mal’. It is further argued that Baudelaire envisaged Les Fleurs du Mal as a Satanic counterpart to Dante’s Divine Comedy, both as a catalogue of ‘le Mal’ and as the account of a journey from birth to death under the auspices of Satan as rebel and alternative lawgiver.