Les Fleurs du Mal
Baudelaire’s Femme Fatale
<p>Literary historians have long wondered why Charles Baudelaire, the greatest of the French poets, couldn’t write a word without his mistress, Jeanne Duval, a barely literate Creole beauty who wasted his fortunes and introduced him to opium. James MacManus, the managing director of <i>The Times Literary Supplement</i> and author of the novel <i><a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Venus-Novel-James-MacManus/dp/1250014239/">Black Venus</a></i>, comes to the defense of the obsessive love affair.</p>
James MacManus