Charles Baudelaire's grave lies in Montparnasse Cemetery, smack in the middle of Paris' sixth arrondissement. The winter months are a sheet of gray, with an endless roof of clouds hanging close overhead. Built high, the walls of the cemetery are speckled with moss; the rain splatters across the crack

Dark, Ecstatic, Intense, Lyrical, Manic, Overflowing, Symbolist poetry

T. S. Eliot looked out on the landscape of the modern world after World War I and saw a place of disillusionment, shattered community, and lost spirituality. His poems describe the greyness of this sterile terrain and summon the traditions of the past -- both literary and religious -- to transcend t

Bloomsbury, Death, Elegant, Existentialist literature, Melancholy, Modernist literature, Modernist poetry, The lost generation

Kahlo began painting at 18 while recovering from injuries she received in a trolley accident that left her scarred for life; her spine was broken in 17 places and her reproductive organs were damaged by a shaft of metal that impaled her pelvis. Her early paintings were academic portraits of frien

Confessional poetry, Death, Feminine, Grotesque, Religious, Surrealist art

"I salute Antonin Artaud," wrote Andre Breton, "for his passionate, heroic negation of everything that causes us to be dead while alive." The French actor, director, poet, and theorist was an enraged man of arguable genius; nevertheless, his writings are seminal influences on experimental theater. Ar

Absurd, Experimental, Literature of transgression, Severe, Surreal, Surrealist theater, Theater of cruelty, Theater of the absurd