Baudelaire’s Accursed Aura in the Spanish Rewriting of «Les Fleurs du Mal»

Abstract

The interest in Baudelaire's work could not be explained only by the literary quality of his verses or by the founding role he assumed in aesthetic modernity: the aura of accursed poet which surrounded him since the publication of Les Fleurs du Mal also explains the great attention he aroused in all type of readers. Both his tormented biography and his most provocative poems have contributed to make Baudelaire a character who has come to overshadow other equally interesting aspects of his literary production. In this work we study how Baudelaire’s accursed aura (encouraged by himself while alive) has influenced the Spanish rewriting of his best known work: Les Fleurs du Mal. We will analyse specifically how the most disturbing aspects of his poetry (mostly with regard to female eroticism) has been privileged in reviews, translation anthologies, and the paratexts that accompany these collections, or in the translation procedures.