Books: Anatomy of Addiction

BAUDELAIRE: PRINCE OF CLOUDS by ALEX DE JONGE 240 pages. Paddington Press. $10.95.

Young Charles Baudelaire set out to shock the middle class and, alas, succeeded. One hundred and ten years after his death the author of the first body of modern poetry, Les Fleurs du Mai, is customarily remembered as the original Bad Boy Artist.

Thanks to Manet's etchings and a few haunting daguerreotypes, the poet's face is more familiar than his work. Eyes: piercing and "as brilliant as drops of coffee," to borrow Baudelaire's own phrase. Face: as angled with cutting edges...