Charles Baudelaire
April 09, 1821 – August 31, 1867
To call Charles Baudelaire a “Romantic” poet would be a significant undersell. For sure, he was one of the preeminent French poets of the 19th century and drew heavily on his Romantic forebears, but one does not take the beauty, imagination and natural ideals of the Romantic movement and forge a new movement based on exoticism and excess by resting on the laurels of the past. Largely credited with helping found the Decadent literary movement, Baudelaire was as widely regarded for his poems as he was for his lavish lifestyle.
Baudelaire’s most famous work was his collection of poems The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal) that, in part, criticized the modernization of Paris under Napoleon III and bemoaned the loss of the more “colorful” characters that made the chaotic and medieval Paris so beloved to himself and other poets. Published in several editions over the course of a decade, Les Fleurs du mal was immediately deemed indecent and Baudelaire was fined and six of the poems were censored. Baudelaire was friends with and supported a number of his contemporaries including painter Eugène Delacroix, writer Théophile Gautier and American writer, Edgar Allen Poe.
As exciting and provocative and Decadence was, a life lived in excess, debt and opium led to health issues toward the end of Baudelaire’s life. He suffered a stroke in 1866 and declined rapidly until his death the following year. Many of his works were published posthumously and his mother used the money to pay of his extensive debts.
Burial
Montparnasse Cemetery – Paris, FRANCE
Specific Location
Division 6; Along Avenue de l’Ouest at the western edge of Division 6. There is also a large cenotaph dedicated to Baudelaire in the cemetery.
Celebrity Graveland 
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