[Les Fleurs du Mal] “Revue de Paris, Revue des deux Mondes…”

Name: [Les Fleurs du Mal] "Revue de Paris, Revue des deux Mondes..."
SKU: 24367
Author: Charles Baudelaire

[Paris, 1857].

1 leaf (132 x 78 mm) written in black ink, framed.

A precious autograph note connected with the trial of Les Fleurs du mal. It is addressed to the jurist Nicolas Rapetti and gives him the list of the journals in which the poems later condemned had been published without incident, between 1855 and 1857.

In this note, addressed to Nicolas Rapetti, Baudelaire draws up in his own defense a list of the periodicals that had published pre-original editions of poems from Les Fleurs du mal:

“- Revue de Paris
– Revue des deux Mondes – Revue Française
– Artiste
– Messager de l’Assemblée – Poëtes de l’amour
– Magasin des Familles”

All the periodical titles noted here by Baudelaire had published poems from the collection without incurring the wrath of the censors. As Jacques Crépet observed in his study (Mercure de France, 1 May 1938, pp. 716–719), the omission of certain journals — exposed to censorship, hostile to the Empire, etc. — suggests that this carefully edited list was intended to assist Baudelaire in the context of a judicial inquiry.

Nicolas Rapetti, a jurist by profession, intervened as early as spring 1857 to obtain a reduction of the fine imposed on the poet (see Crépet, Propos sur Baudelaire, pp. 81–84). He thus recommended a certain Lançon to Poulet-Malassis to defend Baudelaire, before the latter finally turned to Maître Chaix-d’Est-Ange fils.

Poulet-Malassis would go on to publish three books by Rapetti: Antoine Lemaistre, that same year, 1857, then La Défection de Marmont and Quelques mots sur les origines des Bonaparte, in 1858. Rapetti later sat on the Commission appointed to collect, classify and publish the correspondence of Napoleon I, chaired by Marshal Vaillant and numbering among its members Prosper Mérimée and Baudelaire’s father-in-law, General Aupick.

#24367

Back