Apr. 9: Charles Baudelaire, French poet

BORN APRIL 9:

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a French poet, essayist, and art critic. Though his poems are Romantic in some respects, unlike those flights of fancy they are based on observations of real life. His most famous work was a book of lyric poetry entitled Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), which expresses the changing concepts of beauty as France industrialized during the mid-19th century. He seems to have coined the term modernity to describe the fleeting experience of life in the city, and the urgency for artists to capture that experience. His work influenced later French poets like Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé, among many others.

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