Baudelaire's Graves

Abstract

Despite my avowed rationalism, nothing could induce me to spend a night in a cemetery, but during the daylight hours, I am the one haunting the dead. I am, I have come to understand, a taphophile. To my mind, graves are a great way to get to know people, and when I teach Baudelaire, I often introduce students to his work through his graves. I say ‘graves’ in the plural because he has two, though one is strictly speaking only a cenotaph in the sense that it is an empty memorial with no body present.