Aku No Hana Signet

Aku no Hana / Flowers of Evil is a strange and visceral reading experience. It is always about how an individual constructs themselves in their own mind. To explain his social isolation, Kasuga chooses to perceive himself as more elevated, using his purported enjoyment of the Eponymous French poem book by Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, as evidence of this. He is eventually seen by Nakamura performing an act that will define him to her. He finds himself experiencing a chaotic flurry of emotions. He rejects her perception of him, then tries to embody it, because it is also the first instance of an "elevated" acceptance he has received. He finds himself despising her, but also finding comfort in sharing their social isolation. Most importantly, he then rejects acceptance from others, for he is hiding his newly constructed self from them, rendering their acceptance meaningless for they are not accepting his purported "true" self. Ultimately, it was always a reminder to me to think carefully about who I am. Who is around. How I frame my social situation. Because a haphazardly made self-assertion has the potential to warp your future in large ways. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate - Carl Jung From Les Fleurs du mal: Alas—my poor Muse—what aileth thee now? Thine eyes are bedimmed with the visions of Night, And silent and cold—I perceive on thy brow In their turns—Despair and Madness alight. A succubus green, or a hobgoblin red, Has it poured o'er thee Horror and Love from its urn? Or the Nightmare with masterful bearing hath led Thee to drown in the depths of some magic Minturne? I wish, as the health-giving fragrance I cull, That thy breast with strong thoughts could for ever be full, And that rhymthmic'ly flowing—thy Christian blood Could resemble the olden-time metrical-flood, Where each in his turn reigned the father of Rhymes Phoebus—and Pan, lord of Harvest-times.