Summer with Baudelaire

The poems of Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), collected in the volume Flowers of Evil, challenged the literature and reading audience of his time with uncompromising individualism, sharp attention to the "rubbish" of urban everyday life, and the chaos of emotional impulses trampling all norms. The poet, who sought official recognition and did not aspire to be known as a revolutionary, by the will of history became the inventor of modernism, the author of the very concept of modernity that underpinned the worldview and culture of the 20th century. Literary historian Antoine Compagnon (born 1950) attempted to capture the kaleidoscopic universe of Baudelaire's personality and poetic imagination in a series of "snapshots" from different angles. The chapters of this book, originally presented as short talks on France Inter radio, show the "poet of modern life" as a dandy, socialist, Catholic, connoisseur of painting and photography, catching him in the company of friends, enemies, outstanding contemporaries, and mistresses, as well as, of course, before a mirror and a sheet of paper.