"Reversibility" by Baudelaire

Part I: Familiarity with Work and Author

Charles Baudelaire was a nineteenth century French poet, translator, and literary and art critic; perhaps his most famous collection of poems, titled Flowers of Evil (Les FLeurs du mal), which was published in 1857, has come to represent what some literary critics have characterized as the poet's ironic, melancholic vision of life (Elkins, 50). Baudelaire died in relative poverty after a life of extravagance in which he was often shunned by the very people he sought to please; as a man known to be something of a "dandy," he faced the ravages of age and poor health. The specific passage to be analyzed herein is the entire text of "Reversibility," a five-stanza poem with fine lines to the stanza contained in Flowers of Evil. Interestingly, the entire volume of verse was initially banned in France as overly erotic and excessively "modern" in its attitudes mores; Baudelaire was forced to revise some of the poems. According to literary critic Katherine Elkins (49), Baudelaire and others of his generation in France were deeply affected by the not-too-distant French Revolution and the consequences of life in a somewhat unstable political environment. Much of his poetry, though not overtly political, was in fact highly introspective. It revealed the poet as a seeker of God without any strong or compelling religious beliefs (Veinotte, 1). Himself often moody and depressed, he lived a

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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1061
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page)