Lien actu

"Whatever we say, whatever we do, in matters of bibliophily, the original edition of Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire retains all its attractions. The history of its successive publications, the corrections caused or not by the trials, and a number of back and forths would constitute the equivalent of an annexed volume It all began in 1855, when the Revue des Deux Mondes published 18 poems under this title. from Fleurs du mal, a title found by the critic Hippolyte Babou. The publisher took care to precede them with a note: “What seems to us to merit interest here is the lively and curious expression, even. in its violence, of some failings, of some moral pains which, without sharing or discussing them, we must want to know as one of the signs of our time. was awarded €379, in Drouot, on December 13, 2019 by Pierre Bergé & Associés.

Baudelaire, fearing that his poems would be released to "too popular a distribution", turned to a young publisher whom Charles Asselineau had discovered in 1856. On December 30, the poet signed a contract with Auguste Poulet-Malassis and Eugène de Broise, printers in Alençon, providing for a print run of six thousand copies, each sold for one franc. The work, dedicated to Théophile Gautier, was finally released after multiple corrections and layout modifications, on June 21, 1857. A copy of this original edition in a box signed Julie Nadot, reproducing the cover of the work, was presented by the Feu Follet bookstore, priced at €60,000, during the Rare Book Fair.

On August 20, just a month after its release in bookstores, prosecutor Ernest Pinard (1822-1909) prosecuted the collection Les Fleurs du mal for “offending public morality, good morals, and religious morality.” The poet was fined 300 francs and had to remove six poems from his collection; the publishers, each fined 100 francs, had the pages containing the censored poems torn out, and the adjoining ones. A few copies thus mutilated still circulate. The printers typographically recomposed the uncondemned pieces on “cardboards”. Other copies, in sheets, passed through the forks of justice. The condemned pieces remained prohibited on French territory until May 31, 1949.

The publishers prepared a second edition in the same format, without the six condemned pieces, but including 35 new poems, making this publication a “second original edition”, dated 1861, which was printed in one thousand five hundred copies, some of which were on vellum, Holland and 4 on China. The Le Feu Follet bookstore presented a paperback, with full margins and without foxing, in a box signed Julie Nadot reproducing the cover plates and the spine of the work, priced at €23,000.