February 26, 2013  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Google Wikipedia Wiktionary Wiki Commons Wikisource Wordpress YouTube Shop Featured: Reverse Side Of a Painting (1670) by Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts, the start of Proto-Surrealism.

Title page[1] from the Carlos Schwabe illustrations for Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal.

I have no clue what plant this is (a flesh-eating plant perhaps), nor if it is real or imaginary, but I'm pretty sure it fits in the horticultural horror category. Additionally, as far as I know, this illustration is the only literal interpretation of the flowers of evil.

One thing leading to another I must add that opening my copy of The Romantic Agony for the nth time brought up this passage:

"That poetry is like the arts of painting, cooking, and cosmetics in its ability to express every sensation of sweetness or bitterness, of beatitude or horror, by coupling a certain noun with a certain adjective, in analogy or contrast" unpublished preface to a 2nd preface of The Flowers of Evil--translation by Marthiel and Jackson Mathews.

Beautiful isn't it, this trying to connect poetry to cuisine and cosmetics via adjectives and nouns in logical combinations, evoking diverse sentiments?

See also: literature and olfaction, synesthesia and literature, paragone, ekphrasis, Baudelaire on synesthesia in Artificial Paradises .