Charles Baudelaire

About Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) was a highly influential French poet, essayist, and art critic, best known for his seminal collection of poetry, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil). His work fundamentally shaped modern literature by exploring themes of urban modernity, decadence, and intense psychological states, earning him the #479 rank in historical importance according to MIT's Pantheon project. He is widely credited with pioneering Symbolism and modern French poetry, bridging Romanticism with the later avant-garde movements.

Despite this profound cultural importance, Baudelaire's modern internet attention is relatively modest. His 334K Wikipedia views in 2025 place his attention squarely at approximately 1x his expected visibility given his historical ranking, indicating a fairly balanced, though low, level of engagement. For context, this is significantly less than his contemporary writer Mark Twain, who garnered 2.3M views despite a similar historical importance ranking (#543).

Looking ahead, the slight year-over-year decline of -1.9% and the sharper -10% drop in momentum between Q1 and Q3 of 2025 suggest a minor cooling of active online interest in the poet for the immediate future.