BAUDELAIRE

(April 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867) Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe.

His most famous work, Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire’s highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets.

He is credited with coining the term “modernity” (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.