On August 31, 1867

Death of Charles Baudelaire
(1821–1867)

When Modern Poetry Found Its Dark Mirror

On this day — August 31, 1867 — Charles Baudelaire died in Paris at the age of forty-six, leaving behind a body of work that helped define what modern poetry could become. Poet, critic, translator, and theorist of modern life, Baudelaire found poetic material in places earlier traditions often resisted: crowded streets, boredom, artificial beauty, erotic desire, decay, intoxication, loneliness, and the unsettling experience of life in the modern city.

His influence on English developed both through his poetry—above all Les Fleurs du mal—and through his extraordinary engagement with Edgar Allan Poe. Baudelaire translated Poe into French with such commitment that the two writers became permanently associated, and his readings of Poe helped shape Poe’s international reputation. In turn, Baudelaire’s imagery, prose poems, symbolism, and conception of the poet as an observer of modern urban life profoundly influenced English-language writers and critics, from the Decadents and Symbolists to later modernist poetry.

Baudelaire’s importance lies partly in making modernity itself a poetic subject. Beauty could coexist with corruption; the sublime with the sordid; fascination with disgust. His famous spleen gave a memorable name to a state of oppressive boredom, melancholy, and spiritual exhaustion that seemed peculiarly suited to modern existence. On this day, his legacy reminds us why even writers who resisted Baudelaire found him difficult to escape: he helped change not merely the language of poetry, but what poets believed poetry was allowed to notice.