Everything in it which is not hideous is incomprehensible, everything one understands is putrid
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"Everything in it which is not hideous is incomprehensible, everything one understands is putrid" '"Tout ce qui n'est pas hideux y est incompréhensible, tout ce que l'on comprend est putride") is a phrase from by Jean Habans's review in Le Figaro of Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire.
Baudelaire responded to the outcry, in a prophetic letter to his mother:
"You know that I have always considered that literature and the arts pursue an aim independent of morality. Beauty of conception and style is enough for me. But this book, whose title (Fleurs du mal) says everything, is clad, as you will see, in a cold and sinister beauty. It was created with rage and patience. Besides, the proof of its positive worth is in all the ill that they speak of it. The book enrages people. Moreover, since I was terrified myself of the horror that I should inspire, I cut out a third from the proofs. They deny me everything, the spirit of invention and even the knowledge of the French language. I don't care a rap about all these imbeciles, and I know that this book, with its virtues and its faults, will make its way in the memory of the lettered public, beside the best poems of V. Hugo, Th. Gautier and even Byron."
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