Roberto Calasso (b. 1941) focuses on the creators of "modern" - writers and artists who lived in Paris in the nineteenth century. Calasso describes the life of the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), who reflected in his works the ephemeral nature of the metropolis and the artist’s place in it. Calasso’s book is like a mosaic of the author’s own stories, Baudelaire’s poems and comments on the paintings of Ingres, Delacroix, Degas, Manet and others. These details form the dramatic image of Baudelaire's Paris.