Charles Baudelaire: The Poet of Sickness and Evil

Introduction

Most students are fascinated by the works of Edgar Allan Poe and his macabre exploration of the human mind and madness. The "goth" movement and its themes of horror and the occult have inundated the modern teen, influencing contemporary movies, television, and music. Both French and World Literature classes can benefit from these influences by introducing the works of Charles Baudelaire, a 19th Century French poet who makes Poe look like Mary Poppins in comparison. In the 21st Century, students will thrill to discover that the WB-TV generation had a kindred soul in the 1800s. Death, vampires, depravity, and the devastating sense that no one understands the torture of being alone against the universe underpin the works of the Decadent poets of France, but none more thoroughly than Charles Baudelaire in his scandalous Les Fleurs du Mal - The Flowers of Sickness and Evil.

Guiding Questions (as appropriate to content and level):

Why do you think vampire movies and horror television shows are so popular? What authors throughout history dealt with these themes? What connection is there between the Romantic themes and the themes of the 21st century popular culture?

Learning Objectives for French Classes

Beginning Levels

• To give students practice reading and hearing French
• To practice working with cognates
• To recognize a variety of poetic forms, connecting with language arts instruction
• To become familiar with noted French poet Charles Baudelaire
• To appreciate universal themes prevalent in the 21st century popular entertainment venues as depicted in Baudelaire's poetry

• To give students practice reading and pronouncing French
• To practice working with cognates
• To practice translation
• To recognize a variety of poetic forms, connecting with language arts instruction
• To become familiar with noted French poet Charles Baudelaire
• To recognize Charles Baudelaire as a Decadent poet and the leading influence of the Symbolist movement
• To recognize Romantic themes present in poems of Les Fleurs du Mal
• To appreciate universal themes prevalent in the 21st century popular entertainment venues as depicted in Baudelaire's poetry

Learning Objectives for World Literature

• To expose students to a foreign language
• To practice working with cognates
• To create meaning using word-attack skills and knowledge of etymology
• To recognize a variety of poetic forms
• To become familiar with noted French poet Charles Baudelaire
• To recognize Charles Baudelaire as a Decadent poet and the leading influence of the Symbolist movement
• To recognize Romantic themes present in poems of Les Fleurs du Mal
• To appreciate universal themes prevalent in the 21st century popular entertainment venues as depicted in Baudelaire's poetry

Preparing to Teach this Lesson

Familiarize yourself with the details of the life of Charles Baudelaire and the time period by consulting all the links at the bottom of the article on Baudelaire. A short summary of essential information follows:

Romanticism is a literary movement of the 19th century that celebrated the spirit of the individual over the "norms" of society. It developed as a reaction to Classicism and the strict social demands of the Age of Reason, which promoted logic over emotion.

A sub-movement of Romanticism was the Symbolist movement. Most of its leading proponents were French: Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Gautier, and Laforgue. Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. Themes included the inner self -- especially a morbid fascination with the gap between imagination and reality, the realm of experience, the supernatural, and the connection -- or correspondences -- between images and the concepts they represent, including "synaesthesia" -- the correlation between senses. Rhetorical modes of comparison, either explicit (similes) or implicit (metaphors) are the chief literary devices, and the association between inner feelings and outer phenomena became the focus of the symbols used.

Many of the Symbolist artists felt the tension of the dichotomy between their imagined lives, with lush imagery, faraway exoticism, and idealized existence, and their humdrum real lives, with poverty, vices, and the pressures of urban living. Some artists saw Romanticism and Symbolism, with the focus on experience and the sanctity of the human spirit, as a call to rebel against social conformities, including those of accepted behavior. They rejected bourgeois values, challenged the Establishment, refused to conform and lived what was termed “la vie bohème.” These “Bohemians” were also called “Decadents” and “libertines,” because they took so many social and moral liberties and deviated from all norms. In addition, they took artistic pleasure in shocking their audiences, always pushing the envelope, risking censure and even imprisonment for indecency for celebrating their decadence and the decay of life in the city.

Charles Baudelaire was a Symbolist poet who was fascinated by the darker side of nature during the Romantic era. While everyone else celebrated nature's beauty as the revelation of God's goodness, Baudelaire, like Poe, also examined nature's less beautiful aspects such as death, decay, and carrion. While most Romantics examined the spiritual or divine supernatural, Baudelaire, like Poe and Irving in America or Stoker and Shelley in Europe, was more fascinated with supernatural monsters. Unleashing a wild and vivid imagination, he explored the extreme confines of human nature and empathized with such marginal characters as criminals, prostitutes, derelicts, outcasts, gamblers, as well as madmen, acrobats, widows, and all kinds of old, poor, sick, or dying people.

While Baudelaire still employed the standard poetic forms (such as sonnets or quatrains) and traditional rhetorical figures (such as metaphors and allegories), he radically altered them with brand new representations. His topics focused on human nature, especially life in the city. His book of poetry called Les Fleurs du Mal, which can be translated as "The Flowers of Evil" or "The Flowers of Sickness," was censored for sexual explicitness and obscenity, and six poems were banned from publication. Baudelaire was named "poète maudit" (cursed poet) and imprisoned at one point for immorality. His rich, evocative imagery and his focus on urban themes nevertheless paved the way for such modern poets as T.S. Eliot, Carl Sandburg, and Allen Ginsberg.

Poems for this unit can be found by following the following pathway:

Academy of American Poets,

Find a Poet,

Under Browse by Last Name, select B, then Charles Baudelaire

At the bottom of the page, select the link for "Charles Baudelaire - an audio introduction"

Select William Sigler's translation for English texts,

For French texts, at this site select "Dedication, Translator's Note and Links,"

Under the Translator Note, select the link for poetes.com,

Select "Les Fleurs du Mal" and again "Fleurs du Mal" from the pop-up menu

At the bottom of the page, select "Index des titres," for a complete index of all titles, by category, along with illustrative graphics which may be too intense for classroom use, especially at lower levels or grades.

Also at this site, in French, the link for Symbolisme themes leads to a page on "Décadences."

Select the poems "Le Vampire," "La Fontaine du Sang," "Horreur Sympathique," "Remords Posthume," and "Une Charogne" both in French and English (The Vampire, Fountain of Blood, Sympathetic Horror, Posthumous Remorse, and Carrion). It is helpful to illustrate the texts with appropriate graphics from the Internet Public Library Teen Collection; for example, under Arts and Entertainment, you can access and download graphics from television's "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" or "Angel," or from album covers of heavy metal bands, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, or Marilyn Manson.

Some background questions for this lesson:

• Why do you think vampire movies and horror television shows are so popular? (Possible answers: fascination with death, immortality, predators, violence)
• What other areas of popular culture deal with these themes of death and horror? (Possible answers: music, performers like Marilyn Manson, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, etc.; the "goth" movement, some art, Stephen King, movies and novels, etc.)
• What authors throughout history dealt with these themes? (Possible answers: Poe, Stephen King, Clive Barker)
• How would vampires and an interest in death fit in with the Romantic movement in literature? (Possible answers: isolation, supernatural, outcast hero, part of nature)
• What connection is there between the Romantic themes and the themes of the 21st century popular culture?

Print out and make copies for students of the two graphic organizers, provided in pdf format: Graphic Organizer for Analysis (or send students to the Interactive Version) and Graphic Organizer Baudelaire vs. The World.

1: Experiencing Baudelaire

2: What's so Romantic?

3: Baudelaire vs. the World!

For all French and World Literature levels - cooperative activity

Give some background information on the Decadent movement in Romanticism. Distribute French texts. Teachers of French should read the poems aloud or ask advanced students to read them aloud. Ask students to comment on the poetic forms; students should recognize sonnets, rhyme scheme, and quatrains. You may need to point out certain French punctuation conventions: << represent quotation marks and a long dash --- indicates someone is speaking, as opposed to narration.

1: Experiencing Baudelaire

Put students in groups of three, and assign each group a poem to read and "translate." Using cognates and basic knowledge of etymology, all students should be able to recognize basic horror words such as "vampire," "woman," "death," "poison," "pus," etc. Ask World Literature classes and lower levels of French classes to guess at the meanings of the poems. Remind them of basic vocabulary roots to assist, or allow the use of French dictionaries. Upper levels of French should be able to translate more accurately. Allow fifteen minutes for translation activity. Have each group read their translations aloud. Distribute accurate English translations and ask groups to read each aloud.

2: What's so Romantic?

Distribute the graphic organizer and ask students select at least three elements from the columns and to analyze the poems for the selected elements. At the end of each row, have students summarize Baudelaire's view of these elements: For example, what does he say about nature? About the supernatural? What makes his Romantic "hero" an outcast? At the bottom of each column, have students summarize the main theme of the poem itself. Lower level students can report their findings to the class. Upper level students can use the graphic organizer as a foundation for an essay on the topic of Baudelaire's Romantic view.

3: Baudelaire vs. the World!

Using the graphic organizer as a touchstone, students of World Literature classes can expand the chart to include Shakespeare's love sonnets, Marvell's To His Coy Mistress, Artur Rimbaud's The Sleeper in the Valley, or other works such as Goethe's Faust, Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner or Kubla Khan. In groups of three, students select at least two other Romantic texts from their experience to compare to and contrast with Baudelaire's works.

Extending the Lesson

1. Have students explore the French text and Sigler translation sites to select other poems by Baudelaire on their own.
2. Ask them to find other poems by Baudelaire which do not have the themes of death or horror.
3. Ask them to select illustrations for the poems they select on their own and present them as a poster for the class.
4. Have them report their findings to the class and comment on the scope of Baudelaire's interests.
5. Ask students to compose a sonnet in the style of Baudelaire or on the themes of Baudelaire and the Decadent era.
6. All students can compare works of Baudelaire to any modern artist from the music, art, or fiction industries in terms of attitude toward women, despair and nihilism, restlessness and dissatisfaction with life, etc.

Selected EDSITEment Websites

• Academy of American Poets http://www.poets.org/index.cfm
  • Find a Poet http://www.poets.org/poets/index.cfm
  • Charles Baudelaire - an audio introduction http://www.uvm.edu/~sgutman/Baudelaire.htm
  • William Sigler's translation for English texts httphttp://faculty.miis.edu/~amikheev/ramsden.htm
  • Dedication, Translator's Note and Links http://home.carolina.rr.com/alienfamily/dedication.htm
  • "Les Fleurs du Mal" and again "Fleurs du Mal"
  • http://web.poetes.com/baud/Fleurs0.htm
  • "Index des titres"
  • http://web.poetes.com/baud/indexa.htm