Baal explores the cult of the genius, an anti-heroic figure who chooses to be a social outcast and live on the fringe of bourgeois morality.

Is an episodic telling of the life of Baal, a German civil servant, following he being discovered as an insightful poet. Initially embraced by the bourgeoisie who wanted to lavish him not only with their praise but their assistance in progressing his work to the masses, they ended up turning their back on him in his dismissal of them as hypocrites. What follows is his self-imposed life on the margins of society, both attracting a number of followers in their love for and of him, often in a cult-like zeal, while at the same time repelling many of those same people in his mistreatment of them in his disdain for societal norms in favor of his own desires.—Huggo