‘Say It With Flowers’

Benjamin Ivry is in error when he writes of “Les Fleurs du Mal” that this body of poetical work first appeared in 1857 [Arts & Letters, “Say It With Flowers,” January 9, 2007].

“Les Fleurs du Mal” of Charles Baudelaire first appeared in print under that title in “La Revue des Deux Mondes” on June 1, 1855.

A critical mass of 18 poems which remains more or less at the core of all subsequent editions was selected by the poet for publication at that time.

The issue is doubly important for, within a month of this historic publication, the first edition of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” the great American and English language counterpart to “Les Fleurs du Mal,” went on sale on July 4, 1855.

That these two greatest original works of their time and languages appeared virtually simultaneously was not coincidental.

Baudelaire’s greatest contribution to French and world literature was soon censored, the poet fined for his work, and so too, Whitman’s manners as well as his versification were denounced. Whitman’s original edition sold but six copies.

Although each poet in his own way was a “poete maudit,” the two works of 1855 indeed produced “un frisson nouveau,” a new trembling, in the words of Victor Hugo. Each poet shook out from the convention what was best within that convention, and each brought that best to bear to create a newly liberated poetic language of meaning, in a vision and a conception clearly announced both in Whitman’s famed introductory remarks and in Baudelaire’s “Au lecteur.”

It is important to remember this concurrence and the dates and inclusions of the original editions of these masterworks.

ALLEN TOBIAS
Brooklyn, N.Y.

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