Charles Baudelaire

About Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) was a seminal French poet, essayist, and art critic, whose legacy is most deeply tied to his groundbreaking collection *Les Fleurs du mal* (The Flowers of Evil). His work, which explored themes of modernity, decadence, and urban life with a starkly innovative style, was highly controversial in its time, leading to obscenity trials. His experimentation with free verse and profound influence on subsequent Symbolist and Modernist movements secured his high ranking (#479) in historical importance on MIT's Pantheon project.

In the context of 2025 internet attention, Baudelaire's cultural footprint is relatively modest. He garners approximately 339K annualized Wikipedia views, which corresponds to an Attention Gap of about $1\times$, suggesting his online presence is roughly proportional to his historical significance as measured by the HPI. Interestingly, this level of attention is significantly lower than his contemporary writer, Marcel Proust (#481 importance), who receives 607K views, though their HPI scores are nearly identical.

Baudelaire's recent digital momentum shows a slight decline, with his 2025 Momentum (Q1 vs Q3) dropping by 9% and his year-over-year change registering a small decrease of -0.6%, indicating that while he remains culturally relevant, contemporary online interest is neither surging nor collapsing.