A new reading of the life of Charles Baudelaire: a biographical reception from the translation of his correspondence

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to propose another reading of the life of the poet Charles Baudelaire. In fact, the image of the poet of the Flowers of Evil seems petrified in an almost unison speech, present in numerous biographical notes of translations of great circulation in Brazil, which echoes the essay by Ivan Junqueira, “The Art of Baudelaire” (1985). He affirms that the poet, as a child, was revolted with his mother’s second marriage, a shock that profoundly affected his life, which was never understood by his military stepfather and his half-brother, and who, as an adult, would have had an incestuous relationship with his mother. In the face of these statements, whose argument is based mainly on the correspondence of the poet, the proposal goes through a detailed examination of the formation of that narrative of life. In this sense, the commented translation of letters should, if not shake that discourse, at
least offer another path for its biographical reception.