The Flowers of Evil

Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal marked an important turning point in the history of world poetry, providing a crucial link between romanticism and modernism. This brand new translation, completed in 2014, preserves the metre and rhyme scheme of each original poem. Some of the poems are very beautiful, while others are not for the faint-hearted. Taken as a whole, they convey the 'spleen' or 'ennui' which Baudelaire felt so keenly, a state of mind that echoes the 'mal du siècle' of early 19th century France.