The Flowers of Evil - Charles Baudelaire

«Blessing» is the opening poem of Charles Baudelaire's «The Flowers of Evil», published in 1857. In it, a mother curses her poet son, and he responds by blessing suffering as the only true nobility.

The collection «The Flowers of Evil», by **Charles Baudelaire**, opens with «Blessing», a text that serves as the gateway to the entire book. The scene is harsh: a mother, as she gives birth, curses the child she has just brought into the world. It is not a gentle image, but it is consistent with Baudelaire's idea of the poet as a marked being, different, condemned from the start.

## A mother who curses her newborn child

The poem begins with the poet appearing in a world wearied by divine decree. The mother, horrified, blasphemes and clenches her fist toward God. Her wish is explicit: she would rather have given birth to a nest of snakes than nurse that creature she considers a mockery. She curses the night in which she conceived what she calls her expiation.

The woman feels punished among all women: repulsed by her own husband, unable to throw that shrunken monster into the flames. And she decides to unleash her hatred upon the child. She wants to twist that wretched tree so that its branches cannot blossom. It is the image of the artist rejected from the very origin, before even having a voice.

## The poet responds with a blessing to God

Faced with that maternal hatred, the condemned child is enraptured by the sun. In everything he eats and drinks he finds nectar and ambrosia. He plays with the wind, chats with the clouds, grows drunk singing on his way to the cross. The Spirit trinc him on his pilgrimage and weeps to see him joyful.

His surroundings do not improve. All those who love him watch him with suspicion or are unsettled by his serenity. They seek ways to cause him grief and to test their ferocity on him. Into the bread and wine destined for his mouth they mix ash and spit. They knock down everything he touches and accuse him of having crossed their path.

The poet's vvife also takes part in the mockery. In public she testifies that, since she finds him handsome, she will be to him like an ancient goddess and he will have to gild her in gold. She speaks of intoxicating herself with spikenard, myrrh and incense, of genuflections and delicacies, to know whether she can still expect divine homage from an immense heart. When she tires of those farces, she will lay her hand on the poet's chest and with her nails, like those of the harpies, will carve a path to his heart. Like a trembling bird, she will tear it out and hurl it to the ground with disdain to satisfy her favorite beast.

## Suffering as the only nobility no one can bite

The poet then raises his pious hands to heaven, where he sees a translucent and serene throne. The lightning bolts of his lucid spirit hide from him the gaze of the furious crowds. And he blesses God, who gives suffering as a divine remedy to impurities and as the purest nourishment that prepares the strong for holy delights.

He knows that God reserves a place for the poet in the beautiful ranks of the angelic legions and in the glorious antiestéticast that eternity performs, among thrones, virtues and dominions. He also knows that suffering is the only nobility that neither earth nor hell can bite. For that reason, the ages will weave him a crown of mystical beauty throughout the entire universe.

That diadem would not be matched by the lost jewels of ancient **Palmyra**, nor by precious metals, nor by the pearls of the sea, however skillfully strung. It will be formed only of pure light, a sacred blaze of miraculous reflections, before which mortals are but tarnished, faded mirrors.

## A gateway to all of «The Flowers of Evil»

«Blessing» is not an isolated poem. It is the first piece of «The Flowers of Evil», published in **1857**, and it sets the tone for the whole work: the tension between the world's rejection and the awareness of a higher calling. The poet does not defend himself against contempt. He embraces it and turns it into the substance of his own glory.

The figure of the misunderstood artist, cursed by those who should protect him, runs through much of Baudelaire's work. Here it appears in its most radical form: the mother as the first enemy, the home as the first exile. The poem holds that this hostility does not destroy the poet, but rather confirms him on his path.