Baudelaire's Poem

Evil is not usually defined as something so minimalistic as boredom, but in french poet Baudelaire’s poem “ to the reader” this is exactly that he is saying. The poem starts of with the chilling phrase “ Folly error, sin and parsimony preoccupy our spirits and work on our bodies” and then continues in an a full poem of shocking statements. He ends this poem with a statement, which in the surface seems anti-climatic, but in reality is very eye opening: that even more “ ugly evil, fuller than the rest” is the simple act of boredom. Baudelaire is stating that not accomplishing something with your life is the most horrific thing you can do Every person has the ability for evil; for the most part though they are content and see no need for it.

In the single stanza “If rape and poison, arson and the knife have not yet woven their pleasant designs on the dull canvas of our lowly destinies” the seven sins are alluded to. Lust in rape, Envy and Greed in poison, Wrath in arson, knife in Pride, sloth in dull and glutton in pleasant designs. One of the stigmas behind the killing with poison is that it is done if the person wants something of someone, but can not retrieve it if the person still walks, and so poison is used to fulfill their Greedy and envious passions. Those who kill with swords and knives kill with their own prideful hand, so their victims rarely miss who ended them. Rape is the violent indulgence in Lust. Those who tend to fall to these sins, gain a gluttonous craving for more. Lastly these events are all horribly easy to give into, as previously stated we have only make our souls“brave enough” and it is already “ serried, seething, like a million ants” and so the simple act of giving in is as lazy as a sloth. He even alludes the the monsters of hell in the line “ among the jackals, panthers and chimerae” and the monsters of Earth “The monkeys, scorpions, vultures and other snakes” who walk among us and easily give into their sin and drag others down to their level. The very first line of this poem starts this idea off “Folly, error, sin and parsimony, Preoccupy our spirits and work on our bodies”, as to say that each of us is a sinful creature. We are all full of these undesirable traits and live each day with the insecurity of not being perfect, but we keep walking anyway and just continuously apologize for the wrongs that we have done, without ever learning from them. We continuously go forth in mistakes for we are human, as such the line “” we make ourselves pay handsomely for each confession, and happily rejoin the muddy path” But Even worse than our continuous path or repentance and never learning