SOURCE: "Baudelairean Themes: Death, Evil, and Love," in Baudelaire: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Henri Peyre, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962, pp. 170-77.

In this essay, Prévost discusses a number of the themes that dominate Les Fleurs du mal, including death, evil, and the transforming power of erotic passion.

Baudelaire certainly does not have the extreme variety of subjects, of themes, and of tones found in Victor Hugo. But his poetical themes are broader and more numerous than those of Lamartine, for example. The Fleurs du mal offers horizons of an amplitude seldom equalled in any other single volume. There would have been scant, if any, gain in the book's being two or three times larger; if Baudelaire, for sheer mass, equalled Hugo, he would be hardly tolerable. Under the variety of topics, an extreme suppleness of form, a distinctive unity of tone and of feeling is perceptible...