A whole series of concepts and images of the outstanding German critic of the 20th century W. Benjamin (1892–1940), reflecting on literature and history, politics and aesthetics, capitalism and fascism, prostitution and melancholy, Parisian dandies and rag pickers, socialists and flâneurs, go back to to the poetic and critical heritage of the greatest French poet of the 19th century, Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), to that “critical heroism” of the poet, which the critic attributed to him and which in many respects distinguished his own critical position. In a collective monograph prepared on the basis of the materials of the international symposium “Charles Baudelaire & Walter Benjamin: Politics & Aesthetics”, held in 2008 at the Pushkin House, scientists from Russia, France, Serbia, South Africa trace the various connections that unite the author of “The Flowers of Evil” with the author of “Passagen-Werk” "". In accordance with the research objectives, the monograph contains four parts, which present various aspects of the interaction between the political and the aesthetic in the works and days of the French poet and thinker and the German critic and cultural theorist: “The Politics of Poetry”, “The Politics of Criticism”, “The Aesthetics of the Present”, "Translation Policy."