In the preface to his Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire criticizes the literature of his time, which confuses writing with virtue. He, on the other hand, separates the beauty of language from morality and refuses “à confondre l’ encre avec la vertu ”. His search for beauty in the evil and ugly of the “mal” sets the imagination of the terrible as the art-beautiful and as an autonomous poetry in motion. The French “poet of modern life” criticizes society of modern progress ...