French
Les Fleurs du mal
The Flowers of Evil
Charles Baudelaire
The book modern poetry begins with: the sublime, reached straight through the sordid.
Editions
Forthcoming
The app
Learn French by reading Baudelaire. The original beside a clear translation, read aloud, with every word glossed.
The opening
Tap a line to unfold its translation. In the app, every word unfolds too.
The book
With Les Fleurs du mal the modern poem is born. Baudelaire takes the wreckage of the great city (its boredom, its vice, its sudden and terrible beauty) and makes from it a music no one had heard before. Spleen and the Ideal war in every line, and the sublime is reached not in spite of the sordid but straight through it. Rimbaud, Eliot, and nearly the whole of modern verse descend from this single book.
In the app
The original and the translation, side by side.
The author’s words align line by line with a clear English translation: two columns on iPad, a paired reading flow on iPhone.
Every line, read aloud.
Hear how the language actually sounds: its weight, its rhythm, not just how it looks on the page.
Notes for the line you’re on.
Tap any line for the grammar, the words, and the context behind it, written by us, for this text. An editor at your elbow.
Read aloud, and hear how you did.
Read a line yourself and the edition scores it on your phone: the whole line first, then sound by sound. Your voice never leaves the device.
The particulars
- The text
- Les Fleurs du mal, Charles Baudelaire
- Translation
- Public-domain French (Baudelaire, d. 1867). English translation © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC.
- Method
- The translations are our own, drafted with machine assistance and verified line by line. How the editions are made.
- The app
- The first chapter is free: the complete app, every feature. One unlock covers the rest, yours forever, $4.99. No subscription, no ads.
- Privacy
- Speech analysis runs on device. Your reading and your voice never leave your phone.