Spleen is an expression describing melancholy and loathing for life within the romantic literature of the 1800. Baudelaire (1821-1867) embellished death and evil in his writing. In the poem ‘The corps’ Baudelaire describes a decaying body as if he was portraying a beautiful woman – absurd, abstract and ambivalent. The poem ‘The corps’ and romantic literature in general reflects the melancholic mood of it’s time. I think that our time has the same kind of spleen about it. Black Beauty can be interpreted as a visual Baudelaire poem, flirting with the horror- and ghost genre. An unexplainable massacre takes place in beautiful and decadent surroundings. The spine-chilling but simultaneously seductive narrative leaves us no testimony of what has really happened.