Most overly-sensitive-yet-thoughtful teenagers that I knew growing up had a Sylvia Plath phase at one point or another. She had rage and daddy issues, and was a complete solipsist. She was easy to relate to.
I found that more often than not, should this interest in literature continue into one’s twenties, a brief fling with Baudelaire was an inevitability. Urban, modern, and romantic, his work celebrates beauty, vice, the importance of art, and individual moral complexity. He is the awakening to something bigger than the self, but he never fails to acknowledge the self’s individual experience within that world.
It was so exciting to find a complete library of each addition of “Les Fleurs du Mal” online, and it gives me great pleasure to get to share this beautiful piece of art. Thank you to the wonderful fleursdumal.org for assembling this awesome library.
