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The Flowers Of Evil By Baudelaire

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The Flowers of Evil contains several poems titled Spleen. The significance of spleen relates to the ancient Greek belief that sadness originates from the fluids of the spleen (Puchner 468). In Baudelaire’s poems spleen becomes a representation of “thoroughgoing disgust with life” (468). In Spleen LXXXI readers experience a sense of despair. There are several key elements within the poem that evoke this feeling. The descriptions of rain, bats, spiders and the brain each contribute to despair and the inability to escape. For example, the rain becomes “prison bars” and the spiders “spin their meshes in the caverns of the brain” thus, making it impossible to escape (Baudelaire 475). The bat is symbolic to hope, however Baudelaire’s description

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