No Flowers, Please. Week 42: Charles Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil and Gustave Flaubert's Trois Contes

This week’s readings on Ted Gioia’s Immersive Humanities List felt unexpectedly thin and disjointed. We stepped backward in time to Gustave Flaubert and Charles Baudelaire, which made me keenly aware of how much I’ve come to rely on the list’s chronological momentum. I also continue to struggle with “selections,” especially in poetry, where I suspect I shortchange the material when time and energy are limited.

Flaubert’s short story “A Simple Life,” from Trois Contes, follows the entire life of Félicité, a housemaid whose quiet existence unfolds in a series of small, often bleak episodes. It’s beautifully written but profoundly sad—an example of realism so stripped of meaning that the character almost disappears.

Baudelaire proved even harder for me. Despite repeated attempts (in both English and French), I found Les Fleurs du Mal abrasive rather than illuminating. This week reminded me that this project isn’t about comfort or personal taste—and sometimes, that’s the point.

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