At Saint-Germain-des-Prés...

In 1872, close friends of Baudelaire chose Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where the poet had lived off and on, to form the Baudelaire Society under the presidency of Catulle Mendès.

The Baudelaire Society

In more than a century of existence, it became a forum for discussion and creation with an international ambit, attracting within its orbit a constellation of literary historians, dandies, libertarians and “conscience awakeners”.

In the light of history

From Isadora Duncan, Rodin, Bernard Lazare, Yvette Guilbert and Apollinaire to D'Annunzio, Diaghilev, James Joyce, Stefan Zweig and Malraux, they shared Baudelaire’s nostalgias; their keen insight distinguished quality from quantity, aesthetic worth from mere pecuniary value; and they felt acute repugnance for the oppression of thought.