The Flowers of Evil Literary Elements

First person; usually Baudelaire himself.

Varies

Simile:
1. "Odors there are, fresh as a baby's skin, / Mellow as oboes, green as meadow grass" (Correspondences): this simile asserts the fungibility of the senses when contemplating Nature's symbols
2."Watteau, this carnival, where many famous hearts / Wander about like bright, flamboyant butterflies" (The Beacons): this simile effectively associates the painter Watteau with a light and pretty emblem of Nature and renewal
3. "I reign in the air like a puzzling sphinx" (Beauty): Beauty for Baudelaire was a mysterious and alluring thing, and there is no better comparison than to a sphinx, the mythical creature proffering riddles and dire punishment for those who failed to interpret them
4. "And it rose and fell, and pulsed like a wave" (A Carcass): this simile reveals how the maggots on the carcass animate it and thus cause Baudelaire to ruminate on the nature of life and death, the power of poetry, etc.
5. "I'll strike you without rage or hate / The way a butcher strikes his block" (Heautontimoroumenos): this simile implies the methodical, dispassionate way Baudelaire intends to hurt his victim, but has also been interpreted as his drawing forth of poetry (i.e., the "carving" into disparate pieces of the bulk of "meat" of the poet's thoughts)

Metaphor:
1. Flying/Swimming for Transcendence in "Elevation": when Baudelaire reaches moments of spiritual transcendence he equates them to swimming and flying
2. Monk in a monastery as the damned poet in "The Wretched Monk": Baudelaire is as a monk trapped in a holy monastery, but rather than being holy he is obsessed with the graveyard and cannot feel comfortable here; that is how Baudelaire feels in the world
3. Worms attacking corpse as the act of sex in "I love you as I love...": the crawling, devouring worms spreading over the corpse is a metaphor for the rapacious poet mounting his lover's body
4. Nature as despair in "De profundis clamavi": The pitiless sun with its hot beams, the darkness of night, the "polar land" without greenery, the deep abyss are all metaphors for the depths of the poet's despair

Alliteration:
1. "Folly and error, stinginess and sin / Possess our spirits and fatigue our flesh" (To the Reader)
2. "Slumbering in some Sahara's hazy sands, / An ancient sphinx lost to a careless world" (Spleen II)
3. "For you old rover, spirit sadly spent" (The Taste for Nothingness)
4. "Since I seek for the black, the blank, the bare!" (Obsession)

1. Baudelaire notes the irony of people claiming that they are going to repent but know that they will go back to their sins. We "turn back gladly to the path of filth" even though we offer "mean tears" of contrition. (To the Reader)
2. It is ironic that Baudelaire chooses to compare himself to a monk, a man who has dedicated his life to God and holy living, to create an image of a "living spectacle of misery." (The Wretched Monk)
3. It is ironic that surrounded by the incredible beauty of nature in its "voluptuous calm," Baudelaire dedicated himself to his one care: "to probe and make more deep / What made me languish so, my secret grief." This irony reinforces the idea that Baudelaire's suffering is not related to the sublunary world but is far deeper and more spiritual; not even the glories of Nature can obviate his metaphysical despair. (A Former Life)
4. Personified "Theology" is elevated to the highest echelon of respect, but is then filled with "Satanic pride" and boasts of being able to use his power to denounce Christ if he had felt so inclined; this destroys him and throws him into a state of wretchedness and exile. His pride made him powerful, but ironically made him fall as well. (Punishment for Pride)
5. In a poem titled "The Ideal," Baudelaire ironically says he is not interested in purity or "pale roses;" rather, he wants a "soul confirmed in crime, Lady Macbeth" and a "heart abyssal in its depth."
6. The lines "Beauty, you walk on corpses, mocking them; / Horror is charming as your other gems, / And Murder is a trinket dancing there / Lovingly on your naked belly's skin" are ironic because Beauty is not normally associated with corpses, horror, and murder. Baudelaire seeks to fuse the lovely and the macabre in the new way, and uses irony to accomplish that. Furthermore, this poem is entitled "Hymn to Beauty," which is ironic because hymns are associated with religion and this depiction of beauty is avowedly sinful.
7. The tone, images, and language of "A Carcass" are exceedingly ironic. It is ironic that the language Baudelaire uses is beautiful and formal, yet what he describes is grotesque. It is ironic that he delights in something so terrible and is compelled to imagine his beloved in a similar state. It is ironic that "the object we saw / That beautiful morning in June" was a carcass.
8. In "To One Who Is Too Cheerful" Baudelaire ironically adopts a loving and worshipful tone but then proceeds to discuss how he rips apart flowers because he hates the beauty of Nature and wants to "slip my venom" into his beloved's lips.
9. Baudelaire uses ironic phrases such as "I will be tomb for you, beloved pestilence" and "Dear poison made by angels" in "The Flask."
10. The lines "If on some woebegone night / A generous Christian soul / Behind an old garbage-dump, might / Drop your proud corpse in a hole" are ironic because it does not seem particularly Christian to dump a corpse in the street or, for that matter, for a corpse to be "proud."

Poetry

Mid-19th century Paris

Varies: bitter, ironic, dreamy, weary, ebullient, apathetic, malevolent, gleeful, obsessive

n/a

There are conflicts within individual poems, but the larger conflict in the collection as a whole seems to be whether or not Baudelaire's "ideal" will triumph over his "spleen."

Again, there are climaxes within each poem, but a few poems seem to signify his ultimate capitulation to the spleen: "The Irreparable," "Autumn Song," and "To a Madonna" seem to be, with only one or two exceptions afterward, indications of the point of no return.

The opening envoy "To the Reader" forecasts the eventual doom and despair that will engulf the poet; Ennui will win in the end.

1. "Remember, my love, the object we saw / That beautiful morning in June: / By a bend in the path a carcass reclined" (A Carcass)
2. "Nothing can cheer him—game or falconry— / Not even subjects dying at his door" (Spleen III)

-Satan Thrice-Great (To the Reader): Hermes Trismegistus, an alchemist, associated with Egyptian god Thoth
-old Palmyra's wealth (Benediction): ancient capital of Syria
-Ernest Christophe (The Mask): sculptor friend of the poet's
-Antiope (The Jewels): sister of Amazon queen Hippolyte and consort of Athenian king Theseus
-Erebus (Cats): in Greek myths, son of Chaos, brother of Night, father of Styx and the Fates
-Hydra's heads (The Cask of Hate): a serpent-like monster with nine heads that grew back when one was cut off; defeating her was one of Hercules's labors
-Boucher (Spleen II): a French rococo painter
-Midas (Alchemy of Suffering): king who asks Dionysus to have everything he touched turn to gold, but that meant he could no longer eat or drink

Metonymy:
-"And courtesans, who dote on any prince, / No longer have the antics or the clothes / To get a smile from this young rack of bones" (Spleen III)

1. "He is Ennui!—with tear-filled eye he dreams of scaffolds, as he puffs his water-pipe." (To the Reader)
2. "I am lovely, o mortals, a stone-fashioned dream" (Beauty)
3. "O Beauty! do you visit from the sky / Or the abyss? infernal and divine / Your gaze bestows both kindnesses and crimes" (Hymn to Beauty)
4. "Charmed Destiny, your pet, attends your walk" (Hymn to Beauty)
5. "The moon tonight dreams vacantly, as if / She were a beauty cushioned at her rest / Who strokes with wandering hand her lifting / Nipples, and the contour of her breasts" (Sorrows of the Moon)
6. "Hate is a drunkard in a tavern's depths / Who feels a constant thirst" (The Cask of Hate)
7. "Hope, captured like a frantic bat, / Batters the wall with her enfeebled wing" (Spleen IV)
8. "Each instant eats a piece of the delight / A man is granted for his earthly season" (The Clock)

1. "I am the limbs, I am the rack, / The prisoner, the torturer!" (Heautontimoroumenos)

-"wheezing" (Spleen I)
-"purr" (The Cat)