The Origin of the Name of Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil

In the turning point of literary history in the middle of19th century, Baudelaire declared: "Famous poets have long separated the most colorful provinces in the field of poetry. So I have to do something else. " What did Baudelaire do? He believes that "hypocritical morality prevailed in the18th century, and the resulting' beauty' was also hypocritical. Therefore, the18th century is an era of universal blindness. " Therefore, he made a drastic change in the nature of poetry: "What is poetry? What is the purpose of poetry? It is to distinguish between good and beauty and explore the beauty in evil. " "By washing white, I will dig a hell!"

Through this passage, we can easily see Baudelaire's sharp criticism of pseudo-morality, which is exactly what he tried to get rid of in his own poems. According to his idea, not all good things are rooted in "goodness", even in the evil hell, beautiful and dazzling flowers can be produced, which is probably the origin of the name "flower of evil". Baudelaire took part in the armed uprising in the 1848 Revolution, but the uprising failed, and louis bonaparte proclaimed himself emperor, crushing his utopian socialism of Saint-Simon style. In this case, Baudelaire, inspired by American poet Poe, wrote Flowers of Evil, which was published in 1857. As soon as this book came out, public opinion exploded and Baudelaire became famous. However, his name for The Flower of Evil was Notorious, and Baudelaire became a "devil poet". Although I personally don't agree with the idea of seeking beauty from evil, his works are still worth seeing. Only the exquisite and beautiful title "Melancholy in Paris" attracted me, but I later found that it was devoted to describing the dark and sinister side of society, and actually had nothing to do with the romance in Paris. Baudelaire's Saint-Simon-style Utopian Socialism is Disillusioned, and my beautiful imagination and expectation for this book are also disillusioned. Perhaps it is difficult for a writer who has experienced hardships to write pure and beautiful words. Even Shelley's poems, under the gentle cloak of romanticism, contain passionate cries for revolution and extreme dissatisfaction with the dark society.