I'm reading through criticism on "The Flowers of Evil" because I'm revisiting the Symbolists again (just like I revisited other poetry that I liked before school began). I think this quote about the poems will help me:
But to emphasize the indulgent physicality of Les Fleurs du Mal is not to suggest that this is a poetry which is only skin-deep. On the contrary, no poet has delved in greater depth into the extremism of the human passions: to uncover the obsessions, the treacherous undercurrents, the destructive deviations, the sophisticated compromises. No poet has refined more courageously the study of the psyche: partly through the fluctuating moods of drugs in a kind of connaissance par les gouffres, but essentially through the more versatile self-exploration of poetry, probing the ambiguities, confronting the censored and the half-confessed, bringing to light the hidden layers, the threatened frontiers and the points of conflict.
~Peter Broome, "Baudelaire's Poetic Patterns: The Secret Language of Les Fleurs Du Mal"
Will probably have more to say later. But don't quote me on that.
But to emphasize the indulgent physicality of Les Fleurs du Mal is not to suggest that this is a poetry which is only skin-deep. On the contrary, no poet has delved in greater depth into the extremism of the human passions: to uncover the obsessions, the treacherous undercurrents, the destructive deviations, the sophisticated compromises. No poet has refined more courageously the study of the psyche: partly through the fluctuating moods of drugs in a kind of connaissance par les gouffres, but essentially through the more versatile self-exploration of poetry, probing the ambiguities, confronting the censored and the half-confessed, bringing to light the hidden layers, the threatened frontiers and the points of conflict.
~Peter Broome, "Baudelaire's Poetic Patterns: The Secret Language of Les Fleurs Du Mal"
Will probably have more to say later. But don't quote me on that.