Charles Baudelaire Cenotaph - Paris, France
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Metro2
N 48° 50.246 E 002° 19.711
31U E 450726 N 5409601
Charles Baudelaire was a poet, author, critic and a translator of Edgar Allan Poe's works.
Waymark Code: WMD1ZJ
Location: Île-de-France, France
Date Posted: 11/07/2011
Views: 15
Baudelaire (1821-1867) is buried elsewhere in this, Montparnasse Cemetery, but this is his cenotaph (or empty grave). He was buried with his family against his wishes. The monument depicts Beaudelaire on a vertical column looking sternly with his chin resting in both his closed fists. On the horizontal plane lies a depiction of Beaudelaire's body wrapped almost like a mummy except for the head. The only engraving is at the foot of the horizontal base and reads"BEAUDELAIRE".
Wikipedia (
visit link) further informs us:
"His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé among many others. 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."