41 - Charles BAUDELAIRE (1821–1867). Letter to POULET-MALASSIS, late August 1860, 7 pp., in-8.

Charles BAUDELAIRE (1821–1867). Letter to POULET-MALASSIS, late August 1860, 7 pp., in-8. A valuable letter concerning BRACQUEMOND’s frontispiece for the second edition of *Les Fleurs du Mal*. It is known that Baudelaire rejected this frontispiece and replaced it with a portrait. “There’s that frontispiece looming on the horizon again—I’m lost. How can you still have any confidence in an artist’s interpretation of any idea whatsoever? ... If you absolutely insist on a frontispiece, carefully cut out LANGLOIS’s image with scissors, and ask Bracquemond for a facsimile—strictly that, nothing less, nothing more: the skeleton, the branches, the serpent, Adam, Eve—everything. Only in this way will you achieve anything. Do not let him add anything at all. This frontispiece is no longer ours, but it fits the book just as it is; it has the privilege of being able to adapt to any book, since all literature stems from sin.”