Цветы зла: Поэзия Шарля Бодлера

Volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire

Les Fleurs du mal (le flœʁ dy mal; The Flowers of Evil) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. Les Fleurs du mal includes nearly all Baudelaire's poetry, written from 1840 until his death in August 1867. First published in 1857, it was important in the symbolist—including painting—and modernist movements. Though it was extremely controversial upon publication, with six of its poems censored due to their immorality, it is now considered a major work of French poetry. The poems in Les Fleurs du mal frequently break with tradition, using suggestive images and unusual forms. They deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism, particularly focusing on suffering and its relationship to original sin, disgust toward evil and oneself, obsession with death, and aspiration toward an ideal world. Les Fleurs du mal had a powerful influence on several notable French poets, including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé.

Baudelaire's section Tableaux Parisiens, added in the second edition (1861), is considered one of the most formidable criticisms of 19th century French modernity. This section contains 18 poems, most of which were written during Haussmann's renovation of Paris. Together, the poems in Tableaux Parisiens act as 24 hour cycle of Paris, starting with the second poem Le Soleil (The Sun) and ending with the second to last poem Le Crépuscule du Matin (Morning Twilight). The poems featured in this cycle of Paris all deal with the feelings of anonymity and estrangement from a newly modernized city. Baudelaire is critical of the clean and geometrically laid out streets of Paris which alienate the unsung anti heroes of Paris who serve as inspiration for the poet: the beggar, the blind, the industrial worker, the gambler, the prostitute, the old, and the victim of imperialism. These characters whom Baudelaire once praised as the backbone of Paris are now eulogized in his nostalgic poems. For Baudelaire, the city has been transformed into an anthill of identical bourgeois that reflect the new identical structures that litter a Paris he once called home but can now no longer recognize.

The author and the publisher were prosecuted under the regime of the Second Empire as an outrage aux bonnes mœurs ("an insult to public decency"). As a consequence of this prosecution, Baudelaire was fined 300 francs. Six poems from the work were suppressed and the ban on their publication was not lifted in France until 1949. These poems were "Lesbos"; "Femmes damnées (À la pâle clarté)" (or "Women Doomed (In the pale glimmer )"); "Le Léthé" (or "Lethe"); "À celle qui est trop gaie" (or "To Her Who Is Too Joyful"); "Les Bijoux" (or "The Jewels"); and "Les Métamorphoses du Vampire" (or "The Vampire's Metamorphoses"). These were later published in Brussels in a small volume titled Les Épaves (Scraps or Jetsam). On the other hand, upon reading "The Swan" (or "Le Cygne") from Les Fleurs du mal, Victor Hugo announced that Baudelaire had created "un nouveau frisson (a new shudder, a new thrill) in literature. In the wake of the prosecution, a second edition was issued in 1861 which added 35 new poems, removed the six suppressed poems, and added a new section titled Tableaux Parisiens. Among the new poems was the widely studied "L'albatros" ("The Albatross"). A posthumous third edition, with a preface by Théophile Gautier and including 14 previously unpublished poems, was issued in 1868.

Baudelaire, Charles (1936). Flowers of Evil. Translated by Dillon, George; Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Harper & Brothers. Baudelaire, Charles (1954). The Flowers of Evil. Translated by Aggeler, William. Academy Library Guild. Baudelaire, Charles (1955). The Flowers of Evil. Edited by Marthiel and Jackson Mathews. New Directions. Revised edition published in 1963. Baudelaire, Charles (1961). The Flowers of Evil and Other Poems of Charles Baudelaire. Translated by Duke, Francis. University of Virginia Press. Baudelaire, Charles (1982). Les Fleurs du mal: Bilingual Edition. Translated by Howard, Richard. David R. Godine. Baudelaire, Charles (1993). The Flowers of Evil. Translated by McGowan, James. Oxford University Press. Baudelaire, Charles (2006). The Flowers of Evil. Translated by Waldrop, Keith. Wesleyan University Press. Baudelaire, Charles (2021). The Flowers of Evil. Translated by Poochigian, Aaron. Liveright.

The 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray opens with Lord Henry Wotton reading the book during a hansom cab ride to Basil Hallward's home. A voice over describing Lord Henry's amoral approach to life concludes: “ He diverted himself by exercising a subtle influence over the lives of others.” Telling the cabbie to wait, he tosses the book up to him. In Jean Luc Godard's 1965 film Pierrot le Fou, central character Ferdinand attends a dinner party, where he ends up having a conversation with the American filmmaker Samuel Fuller (played by himself). Fuller explains that he is there in Paris to film a movie titled "The Flowers of Evil." Ferdinand recognizes the reference to Baudelaire and goes on to engage the filmmaker on the subject of cinema. An episode of the 1960s television show The Batman was named "Fleurs du Mal" in reference to the poem. In addition to this, a florist's shop in the episode is named Baudelaire's. Don't Deliver Us from Evil (1971) is a French horror film in which two adolescent girls chant various poems from Les Fleurs Du Mal during a play before setting themselves on fire in a double suicide on stage. In a January 1997 episode of the sitcom Friends titled "The One with All the Jealousy", Monica (Courteney Cox) asks her coworker Julio about his book. He says it's ""Flowers of Evil" by Baudelaire" and when Monica asks if he enjoyed it, he replies, "I thought I would, but the translation's no good." In episode 13 of the TV series Saving Hopes first season (2012), a copy of The Flowers of Evil is among the personal effects of a patient. Later in the episode a doctor briefly discusses Baudelaire and a phrase from the book with that patient. The movie Immortal (2004, Dominique Brunner); In the scene on the Eiffel Tower, Jill (Linda Hardy) is reading from the book Les Fleurs Du Mal. She recites the third stanza from the poem "XLIX. Le Poison".

Chicago based artistic collective Theater Oobleck produced a series of cantastoria using Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal as text.

T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land (1922) references "Au Lecteur" with the line: "You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!" In Roger Zelazny's book Roadmarks the protagonist Red Dorakeen travels with a sentient speaking computer disguised as a cybernetic extension of the book Les Fleurs du mal named "Flowers of Evil". It befriends another computer which has disguised itself as Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.

Geographer and political economist David Harvey includes the poem "The Eyes of the Poor" in a book chapter called "The Political Economy of Public Space".

The 2009 manga Aku no Hana is named after Les Fleurs du mal. The main character, Takao Kasuga, is enamored with the book and the adult depravity that it represents. In 2013, a 13 episode anime adaptation was aired.