They deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism, particularly focusing on suffering and its relationship to original sin, disgust toward evil and oneself, obsession with death, and aspiration toward an ideal world.

[1] Les Fleurs du mal had a powerful influence on several notable French poets, including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé.

If rape, poison, dagger and fire, Have still not embroidered their pleasant designs On the banal canvas of our pitiable destinies, It's because our soul, alas, is not bold enough!

The preface concludes with the following malediction: C'est l'Ennui!—l'œil chargé d'un pleur involontaire, Il rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.

On the other hand, upon reading "The Swan" (or "Le Cygne") from Les Fleurs du mal, Victor Hugo announced that Baudelaire had created "un nouveau frisson" (a new shudder, a new thrill) in literature.

Rock band Buck-Tick named their 1990 album Aku no Hana, as well as its title track, after Les Fleurs du mal.

Avant-Garde music group Naked City named a track on their 1993 album Absinthe, which is inspired by 19th Century France in general, after Les Fleurs du Mal Baudelaire's Flowers Of Evil (Les Fleurs Du Mal) is a 1968 recording by Yvette Mimieux and Ali Akbar Khan originally issued on LP by Connoisseur Society.

Henri Dutilleux's Tout un monde lointain... for cello and orchestra (1970) is strongly influenced by Les Fleurs du Mal.

Industrial metal band Marilyn Manson released a song titled "The Flowers of Evil" on their 2012 album Born Villain.

The Swedish folk singer Sofia Karlsson (alongside Alex Landart, Negro Malick, Hugo Voy, Benjamin Coquille and Logan Pischedda) sang versions of "Le vin des amants" and "Moesta et errabunda", translated by the poet Dan Andersson, on her 2007 album Visor från vinden (Songs from the wind).

The 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray opens with Lord Henry Wotton reading the book during a hansom cab ride to Basil Hallward's home.

A voice-over describing Lord Henry's amoral approach to life concludes: “…He diverted himself by exercising a subtle influence over the lives of others.” Telling the cabbie to wait, he tosses the book up to him.

In Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 film Pierrot le Fou, central character Ferdinand attends a dinner party, where he ends up having a conversation with the American filmmaker Samuel Fuller (played by himself).

Don't Deliver Us from Evil (1971) is a French horror film in which two adolescent girls chant various poems from Les Fleurs Du Mal during a play before setting themselves on fire in a double suicide on stage.

The movie Immortal (2004, Dominique Brunner); In the scene on the Eiffel Tower, Jill (Linda Hardy) is reading from the book Les Fleurs Du Mal.

Chicago-based artistic collective Theater Oobleck produced a series of cantastoria using Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal as text.