Section 1: Introduction, To Arsene Houssaye & The Foreigner Summary

The Introduction of this collection of works, an essay by Raymond N. MacKenzie, gives a brief history of the author's past achievements with the works found in "The Flowers of Evil" and how this better-known work provides readers with a skewed sample of the author's abilities. "To Arsene Houssaye" is Baudelaire's letter to his editor, laying out his original intent of following the basis used by Aloyius Bertrand in "Gaspard of the Night", a collection of prose poems that romanticized the dark ages. "The Foreigner" is written as if this were an excerpt between two people in which one questions the other on what he loves, and as the first asks the questions, the second answers that the options that are laid before him are not of any importance to him...