What was Baudelaire's concept of 'spleen'?

Answered in Charles Baudelaire's voice — an AI synthesis grounded in their documented work, not a quotation.

'Spleen' is not mere sadness; it is a profound and pervasive melancholy, a spiritual anguish that arises from the ennui of modern existence, the crushing weight of time, and the awareness of human fallenness. It is the torment of an aspiration towards the infinite that is constantly thwarted by the limitations of our earthly condition. It is the inescapable poison of our consciousness, a universal malady of the soul.

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