Baudelaire recommended in his Intimate Diaries: “Be a poet, even in prose.” There may be serious contradictions between what Baudelaire did and said, but he fully adhered to this opinion. His prose is that of a poet, or, if you like, to put it in his own words, he is a great prose poet. “For Baudelaire every word counts,” Eliot notes when partially disapproving of Arthur Symons’ translation of The Flowers of Evil. For Baudelaire every word counts, to the point of a desperate obsession in poetry and prose.