In his 1919 introduction to The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire, which includes “The Flask,” James Huneker laments how in our modern era we attempt to rationalize the behavior of our dissolute favorites. Disheartened, he cries, “Spare us our dear, old-fashioned, disreputable men of genius!” But as he goes on to tell us, Charles Baudelaire has not been subjected to such unseemly resurrections. We have received intact the legend of Baudelaire: “the atrabilious, irritable poet, dandy, maniac, his …