Is Baudelaire the translator of “tales” by Poe or the author of “extraordinary stories” ? In composing his tales, Poe created, in a medium devoted to referentiality (prose), texts bound within their own space. With his translations, Baudelaire instinctively reintroduced a measure of transitivity, making the texts more immediately accessible. Of this, I give commented illustrations. It seems to me the time has come to give the French translations of Poe’s tales the turn of the screw from which Baudelaire has freed the original.