Charles baudelaire is a French poet and literary critic. Losing his father since childhood, his mother remarried, and his stepfather's life was often at odds, which had a great influence on his mental state and creative mood. As an adult, he inherited the inheritance of his biological father and lived a dissolute life. During the workers' uprising in Paris 1848, he took part in the battle with the mentality of revenge and destruction on the bourgeoisie. He lived in contradiction, pain, resistance and decadence all his life. Baudelaire is a pioneer of French symbolism poetry and one of the founders of modernism. The Flower of Evil is his masterpiece, which established his position in the history of French literature. In addition, he has published a collection of essays and translated the works of American Allan Poe.
Baudelaire was an important French critic in the19th century. His two Salon Painting Reviews published in 1845 and 1846 caused a sensation in the critics. His criticism involves novels, plays, poems, paintings, sculptures, music and many other aspects. His views on literature and art and aesthetics not only inherit the tradition, but also have unique new ideas, which are manifested in the Collection of Artistic Prose, Collection of Literary Prose, Romantic Art, Preface to the Flowers of Evil and some letters.
He abandoned the traditional concept of "the unity of truth, goodness and beauty", and thought that nature was ugly and evil, while beauty was the result of reason and goodness was the result of some kind of art. He put forward the idea of "distinguishing good from beauty and exploring the beauty of evil" in order to express the evil of society and human nature as the object of artistic beauty. From this, he also thinks that melancholy is "the most glorious companion of beauty" and Satan in Milton's works is "the most perfect majestic beauty" He emphasized that every era and every nation has its own special beauty, and in his view, "sick city" Paris is the place where beauty can be found in that era. Flowers of Evil, a collection of poems, embodies his aesthetic thoughts.
In artistic expression, Baudelaire developed the "correspondence theory" of Swedish mystic philosopher Amnur Swedenburg, and introduced the "synaesthesia" in psychology into his creation. He believes that nature, as a mysterious existence, constantly sends out all kinds of induced and symbolic information to people, and people's own feelings can also communicate with each other. The poet wants to reveal the secret relationship between human heart and foreign symbols. Therefore, the poet can not use the method of reproduction, but can only resort to suggestion, "a kind of enlightenment witchcraft." Thus, he created a new creative method, which directly provided theoretical and creative basis for later symbolism.
Baudelaire is very fond of imagination. He called imagination "the queen of all functions" and "the real queen", and said that "only imagination has poetry". At the same time, he mentioned that imagination should have "observation results" as "helpers" and skills as "companions" in order to compete with ideals and shine all the glory.
Baudelaire's theory has many merits, but it has a strong decadent color and has a great influence on all kinds of decadent art later.