Lesbians, prostitutes and sadists: the women for whom Baudelaire was censored

In the nineteenth century French poetry is experiencing a period of renewal. It is a time of divergences, of contrasts: many authors and artistic schools are beginning to apply a very personal way of seeing the world in their literature. This results in the enormous variety of literary currents of the time: romanticism, realism, naturalism, symbolism and decadentismamong others.

In this context of artistic diversity, authors like Charles Baudelaire. Later classified as one of the “damned poets”, Baudelaire lived the 19th century like the bohemian youth who surrounded him. From alcoholism to opium consumption, through prostitution and venereal diseases, the life of Baudelaire was far from the Catholic morality that prevailed in the society of the time.

Given the exploration of the personal universe that characterizes 19th century literature, it is not surprising that these themes came to permeate the author’s artistic production.

Baudelaire’s best-known work is undoubtedly The evil flowers. This collection of poems, which had such an influence on poetry for years to come, went through several rewrites and modifications until its final publication.

Two editions, still with the living author, were published with substantial modifications in their structure: that of 1861 did not include six censored poems, but added 32 more, while a partial publication by Auguste Poulet-Malassis in 1866 dared to include the “forbidden” poems. The first edition considered definitive is that of 1868, already posthumous. However, the 151 poems in this version also do not include the censored texts.

Since the first publication of The evil flowersJune 25, 1857, the sinful life (and therefore the literature) of Baudelaire arouses a lively controversy: six poems were censored for being considered blasphemous.

A few days later, in its edition of July 5, the famous newspaper Le Figaro published the following criticism on The evil flowers: “The book is a hospital open to all dementias of the soul, to all putrefactions of the heart; even if it was to cure them, but they are incurable.

After several journalistic chronicles accusing the work of immorality, the case was taken to court: on August 21 of the same year Baudelaire was found guilty of a crime of offense to good morals. In addition to the pecuniary penalty of three hundred francs, the court decided to prohibit the poems “Les bijoux”, “Léthé”, “To the one who is too gay”, “Lesbos”, “Cursed women” and “The metamorphoses of the vampire”.

It was not until 1949 that a French court lifted the ban on the publication of these texts.arguing nearly a century later that “the poems submitted to the prejudice do not contain obscene or even coarse terms and do not overstep, in their expressive form, the liberties left to the artist”.

One of the pillars of these complaints is the image of women which is featured in The evil flowers. Baudelaire explores the female figure from perspectives that were in deep disagreement with the moral standards of the French 19th century: lesbianism, sadism, prostitution and explicit eroticism they had no place for the Catholic censors of the time.

Let us recall that France, despite certain historical processes such as the French Revolution, was only a non-confessional state in 1905. The crimes of “undermining public morality” or “undermining religious morality” are still fully in force in the nineteenth century, which can give us an indication of the weight that the ideological group of the Church still had in the Gallic country. To give another example, the famous book Mrs. Bovaire was heavily attacked five months before The evil flowers for the same reasons.

To the idealized and deified woman of romanticism, Baudelaire juxtaposes the other side of the coin: prostitution and fatal Woman These are concepts as real for the author as the woman-object of worship.

So well between the sources of feminine inspiration of Baudelaire (Marie Daubrun, Madame Sabatier, Jeanne Duval or la propia madre del escritor) one finds revered figures for his sanctity and his bondad, Baudelaire analyzes in depth the aspects más oscuros de su relation con algunas of them.

In “Lesbos”, for example, the author explores, through various images, a sadism inherent in the female condition:

You get your forgiveness from eternal martyrdom

Relentlessly inflicted on ambitious hearts

that drives away from us the radiant smile

Visibly glimpsed at the edge of other heavens;

You obtain your forgiveness of eternal martyrdom.

Similarly, in “Les Métamorphoses du vampire”, Baudelaire adds a few images to this explicitly harmful desire which, given the context of the time, constituted a malignant and poisonous eroticism this could only shock the readers:

The woman, despite her strawberry mouth,

Writhing like a snake on the coals,

And kneading her breasts on the iron of her chest,

He let these words flow, all infused with musk:

‘-Yo, I got wet lips, and I know the science

To lose the old conscience at the bottom of a bed.

I dry all the tears on my triumphant breasts

And I make old people laugh with the laughter of children.

Finally, in the poem “Cursed Women (Delfina and Hipólita)”, Baudelaire unequivocally exposes a homosexual relationship between the two women. Throughout the poem, eroticism and reflection on lesbianism take place in equal parts:

Don’t look at me like that, you thought of mine!

You whom I love forever, my chosen sister,

Even if you were a trap

And the beginning of my fall!

Although from the point of view of a modern reader it may seem that these themes have already been abundantly addressed by the various arts, for the public of his time Baudelaire was a real provocateur.

The woman, hitherto idealized, now embodies an angel-demon duality which included the most sordid aspects of the author’s life experience. Furthermore, Baudelaire clarified certain ideological and moral conflicts whose foundations were neither more nor less than the confrontation between the unreal image of the “good woman”, catholic and pure, and the harsh reality that surrounded the poet. Kindness and crime, explicit sexuality and modesty, prostitution and moralizing censorship coexisted there.

Reason enough to consider censorship of the poet at that time, but not to stop the unstoppable fame they gained The evil flowers.

This article was originally published by The Conversation.

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