Charles Baudelaire, inspirational beacon to younger poets Verlaine and Mallarmé, is widely regarded as the father of Symbolist poetry. Breaking rules of academic form and imagery, countering the Romantics of the former generation and their Art for Art’s sake rhetoric, he helped shape the artistic landscape subsequently tilled by Manet, the Impressionists, and Debussy and Ravel. He was a catalyst and a seminal figure in the evolution of the Arts. His writing changed the way people thought about life, death, beauty, ugliness, sin, and God.