The ministry of interior declared in 1857 that "Les Fleurs du Mal" constituted "an act of defiance in contempt of the laws which safeguard religion and morality" and both Baudelaire, the publisher and the printer was convicted on grounds of immorality, and all available copies of "Les Fleurs du Mal" was confiscated.
The courts verdict stated that whatever mitigating comments "Les Fleurs du Mal" might contain, nothing could dissipate the harmful effects of the images Mr. Baudelaire presents to the reader, and which, in the incriminated poems, inevitably lead to the arousal of the senses by crude and indecent realism.
"You know that I have only considered literature and the arts as pursuing a goal unrelated to morality, and that the beauty of conception and style alone are enough for me." ~ Baudelaire
The ban on the censored poems was not lifted until May 31, 1949!!
With "Les Fleurs du Mal" Baudelaire came to spearhead the Symbolist movement as a reaction against the prevailing naturalism in literature at the time. Baudelaire sublimated debauchery, spleen and hideousness to an art of studied elegance, but people often forget the wicked sense of cynical, black humour permeating many of his poems:
"I've just seen an adorable woman. She has the most beautiful eyes in the world - which she draws with a matchstick - the most provocative eyes - the brilliance of which is the clue solely to the khol on her eyelid - a voluptuous mouth - drawn with cochineal - and, on top of that, not a hair of her own - in short 'A GREAT ARTIST !` "
In Baudelaire's own words "A translation of poetry... may be an enticing dream, but can only ever be a dream" and therefore this dual-language book of "The Flowers of Evil/Les Fleurs du Mal" definetly is the one to get...