What prevails in the reception of Baudelaire’s works during the XXth and XXIst centuries is the diffuse impression of a collective debt, in reply to what is construed as Baudelaire’s sacrifice to his art. This debt can be explained by the importance of the aesthetic heritage but also by the memory of the trial and the sickness of the poet. Thus, the literary echoes which have been aroused by the works must be read in the light of a dynamics of gift and counter-gift between the poet and those who see themselves as his heirs.