Lust is not the same as Beauty, however for Baudelaire, Ideal Beauty was a cold and stonily pure thing, more akin to a statue than a living woman (“Hymn to Beauty,” “Beauty,” “The Mask”). Even his favorite animal, the cat, exudes a scent that Baudelaire connects with women. For him their perfume, their hair, their oiled skin all conjure up sensations of desire and transcendence (“Exotic Perfume,” “Head of Hair”). The women Baudelaire lusts for enchant him with their bodies, and, perhaps most conspicuously, with their scents. He occasionally wishes to do them harm (“Poison”) and delights in frightening them (“The Ghost,” “The Carcass”). He says he is enslaved, rendered insensate. They torment him, filling him equally with lust and hatred (“Lethe”, “The Vampire”). One of the ways that Baudelaire suffers is by his obsession with women, particularly women who are dark, sensual, mysterious, and cruel (“Beside a monstrous Jewish whore,” “You’d entertain the universe,” “Sisina,” and many more).
He sees himself as a hero, as in “Don Juan in Hell,” but knows that this means he may suffer. He wants to exist in a pure state (“Elevation”) but is constantly frustrated by his particular flaws and proclivities for vice. The poet is an outsider and is misunderstood (“Benediction,” “The Albatross,” The Gypsies”) but has the task of using language to convey deeper truths (“The Beacons,” Correspondences”). In several of the opening poems Baudelaire makes a case for the singularity of the poet and his vision. To begin, Baudelaire addresses a poem to the reader, appropriately titled “To the Reader.” Here he lays out a phantasmagoria of sins and vices and monstrous creatures that beset modern man, then proclaims that the worst of them all is " Ennui" (boredom), who more than anything else quells man’s desires for virtue. However, we can trace a few pertinent developments and themes throughout the first portion of the work, “Spleen and Ideal,” in order to attain a general understanding of what Baudelaire is doing. It is difficult to briefly summarize Flowers of Evil due to the sheer number of poems and their themes, symbols, and images.
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