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Charles Baudelaire: Romantic, Parnassian, and Symbolist Essay example

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Charles Baudelaire: Romantic, Parnassian, and Symbolist
Often compared to the American poet Edgar Allen Poe, the French poet Charles Baudelaire has become well-known for his fascination with death, melancholy, and evil and his otherwise eccentric yet contemplative style. These associations have deemed him as a “patron saint of modernist poetry” while at the same time closely tying his style in with the turbulent revolutionary movements in France and Europe during the 19th century (Haviland, screens 5-10). By comparing three of his poems, “Spleen,” “Elevation,” and “To One Who Is Too Gay,” from his masterpiece The Flowers of Evil, three evident commonalities can be found throughout the works in the influence …show more content…

Another significant part of Baudelaire’s life was women. Three women in particular are extremely significant in how they influenced his writing and what they represented in his philosophy of life. These three women were Jeanne Duval and Marie Daubrun, both actresses, and Apollonie Sabatier, a well-known French-hostess. On August 31, 1867, at the age of 46, Baudelaire ended up dying in his mother’s arms of the VD he contracted earlier in his life (Christohersen, Biography).
Although remembered most for his poetry, as a writer he was also an art and literary critic, translator, and author (Veinotte). One of his “earliest passions” had been art and literary criticism, partly due to his father’s influence on his interest of amateur art. He eventually came to be called “the poet-critic,” and a large number of his major criticisms appeared in the annual series of “Le Salon” for many years (Christohersen, The Critic). Other significant criticisms were found in his essay called “The Painter of Modern Life” and in a collection of his criticisms published posthumously called “Romantic Art.” Other major works include “La Fanfarlo,” a short story and fictional autobiography; Poe translations in “Extraordinary Stories,” “New Extraordinary Stories,” and “Grotesque and Serious Stories”; collections of poetry in “The Flowers of Evil” and “The Artificial Paradises”; and prose in “The Spleen of Paris” (Christohersen, The

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