Books by Charles Baudelaire
Flowers of Evil, The
The Flowers of Evil, which T.S. Eliot called the greatest example of modern poetry in any language, shocked the literary world of nineteenth century France with its outspoken portrayal of lesbian love, its linking of sexuality and death, its unremitting irony, and its unflinching celebration of the seamy side of urban life. Including the French texts and comprehensive explanatory notes to the poems, this extraordinary body of love poems restores the six poems originally banned in 1857, revealing the richness and variety of the collection.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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Les Fleurs Du Mal
The bilingual, illustrated, and National Book Award-winning edition of Charles Baudelaire’s masterpiece. The complete French text is accompanied with an English translation by Richard Howard.
Charles Baudelaire’s 1857 masterwork was scandalous in its day for its portrayals of sex, same-sex love, death, the corrupting and oppressive power of the modern city and lost innocence, Les Fleurs Du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) remains powerful and relevant for our time.
In “Spleen et idéal,” Baudelaire dramatizes the erotic cycle of ecstacy and anguish―of sexual and romantic love. “Tableaux Parisiens” condemns the crushing effects of urban planning on a city’s soul and praises the city’s anti-heroes including the deranged and derelict. “Le Vin” centers on the search for oblivion in drink and drugs. The many kinds of love that lie outside traditional morality is the focus of “Fleurs du Mal” while rebellion is at the heart of “Révolte.”
The voice of Baudelaire lives in this award-winning edition that includes monotypes by artist, Michael Mazur. “Howard’s achievement is such that we can be confident that this Fleurs du Mal will long stand as definitive, a superb guide to France’s greatest poet.”―The Nation
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Les Fleurs Du Mal
" Dans ce livre atroce, j'ai mis tout mon c ur, toute ma tendresse, toute ma religion, toute ma haine. " Étranger dans un monde qui le refuse, maudit et damné, Baudelaire n'a pas d'autre choix que d'explorer l'enfer et le mal. Puisque la vie n'est qu'extase et horreur, partage inégal entre Dieu et Satan, le poète la transfigure dans une contrée imaginaire où le désespoir et la beauté se confondent. Il s'évade dans les paradis artificiels du haschisch, de l'opium et du vin, ceux de la luxure et du vice. L'ennui, la mort et la pourriture le hantent, jusqu'à la folie. D'autres évasions s'offrent à lui, des navires, des ports, des océans, vers des pays lointains où tout est luxe et beauté. Les Fleurs du mal sont le journal intime, le cri de terreur et de jouissance du poète. Fleurs maladives qui annoncent toute la littérature moderne et dont le parfum et les poisons ne cessent de troubler les générations.
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The Flowers of Evil: (Les Fleurs du Mal)
On the 200th anniversary of Baudelaire’s birth comes this stunning landmark translation of the book that launched modern poetry.
Known to his contemporaries primarily as an art critic, but ambitious to secure a more lasting literary legacy, Charles Baudelaire, a Parisian bohemian, spent much of the 1840s composing gritty, often perverse, poems that expressed his disgust with the banality of modern city life.
First published in 1857, the book that collected these poems together, Les Fleurs du mal, was an instant sensation―earning Baudelaire plaudits and, simultaneously, disrepute. Only a year after Gustave Flaubert had endured his own public trial for published indecency (for Madame Bovary), a French court declared Les Fleurs du mal an offense against public morals and six poems within it were immediately suppressed (a ruling that would not be reversed until 1949, nearly a century after Baudelaire’s untimely death). Subsequent editions expanded on the original, including new poems that have since been recognized as Baudelaire’s masterpieces, producing a body of work that stands as the most consequential, controversial, and influential book of poetry from the nineteenth century.
Acclaimed translator and poet Aaron Poochigian tackles this revolutionary text with an ear attuned to Baudelaire’s lyrical innovations―rendering them in “an assertive blend of full and slant rhymes and fluent iambs” (A. E. Stallings)―and an intuitive feel for the work’s dark and brooding mood. Poochigian’s version captures the incantatory, almost magical, effect of the original―reanimating for today’s reader Baudelaire’s “unfailing vision” that “trumpeted the space and light of the future” (Patti Smith).
An introduction by Dana Gioia offers a probing reassessment of the supreme artistry of Baudelaire’s masterpiece, and an afterword by Daniel Handler explores its continued relevance and appeal. Featuring the poems in English and French, this deluxe dual-language edition allows readers to commune both with the original poems and with these electric, revelatory translations. 3 illustrations
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$17.99
The Flowers of Evil: The Award-Winning Translation
The celebrated, National Book Award-winning, translation of Baudelaire’s masterpiece. “It is the English edition to acquire.”—Washington Post
Pulitzer Prize winning poet and translator, Richard Howard, gives readers the true voice of Baudelaire in this masterful translation. Charles Baudelaire’s 1857 masterwork was scandalous in its day for its portrayals of sex, same-sex love, death, the corrupting and oppressive power of the modern city and lost innocence, Les Fleurs Du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) remains powerful and relevant for our time.
In “Spleen et idéal,” Baudelaire dramatizes the erotic cycle of ecstasy and anguish—of sexual and romantic love. “Tableaux Parisiens” condemns the crushing effects of urban planning on a city’s soul and praises the city’s anti-heroes including the deranged and derelict. “Le Vin” centers on the search for oblivion in drink and drugs. The many kinds of love that lie outside traditional morality is the focus of “Fleurs du Mal” while rebellion is at the heart of “Révolte.”
“Howard’s achievement is such that we can be confident that his Flowers of Evil will long stand as definitive, a superb guide to France’s greatest poet.”—The Nation
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$14.95
The Flowers of Evil: The Award-Winning Translation
The celebrated, National Book Award-winning, translation of Baudelaire’s masterpiece. “It is the English edition to acquire.”—Washington Post
Pulitzer Prize winning poet and translator, Richard Howard, gives readers the true voice of Baudelaire in this masterful translation. Charles Baudelaire’s 1857 masterwork was scandalous in its day for its portrayals of sex, same-sex love, death, the corrupting and oppressive power of the modern city and lost innocence, Les Fleurs Du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) remains powerful and relevant for our time.
In “Spleen et idéal,” Baudelaire dramatizes the erotic cycle of ecstasy and anguish—of sexual and romantic love. “Tableaux Parisiens” condemns the crushing effects of urban planning on a city’s soul and praises the city’s anti-heroes including the deranged and derelict. “Le Vin” centers on the search for oblivion in drink and drugs. The many kinds of love that lie outside traditional morality is the focus of “Fleurs du Mal” while rebellion is at the heart of “Révolte.”
“Howard’s achievement is such that we can be confident that his Flowers of Evil will long stand as definitive, a superb guide to France’s greatest poet.”—The Nation
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-
$16.95
The Flowers of Evil: (Les Fleurs du mal)
On the 200th anniversary of Baudelaire’s birth comes this stunning landmark translation of the book that launched modern poetry.
Known to his contemporaries primarily as an art critic, but ambitious to secure a more lasting literary legacy, Charles Baudelaire, a Parisian bohemian, spent much of the 1840s composing gritty, often perverse, poems that expressed his disgust with the banality of modern city life.
First published in 1857, the book that collected these poems together, Les Fleurs du mal, was an instant sensation―earning Baudelaire plaudits and, simultaneously, disrepute. Only a year after Gustave Flaubert had endured his own public trial for published indecency (for Madame Bovary), a French court declared Les Fleurs du mal an offense against public morals and six poems within it were immediately suppressed (a ruling that would not be reversed until 1949, nearly a century after Baudelaire’s untimely death). Subsequent editions expanded on the original, including new poems that have since been recognized as Baudelaire’s masterpieces, producing a body of work that stands as the most consequential, controversial, and influential book of poetry from the nineteenth century.
Acclaimed translator and poet Aaron Poochigian tackles this revolutionary text with an ear attuned to Baudelaire’s lyrical innovations―rendering them in “an assertive blend of full and slant rhymes and fluent iambs” (A. E. Stallings)―and an intuitive feel for the work’s dark and brooding mood. Poochigian’s version captures the incantatory, almost magical, effect of the original―reanimating for today’s reader Baudelaire’s “unfailing vision” that “trumpeted the space and light of the future” (Patti Smith).
An introduction by Dana Gioia offers a probing reassessment of the supreme artistry of Baudelaire’s masterpiece, and an afterword by Daniel Handler explores its continued relevance and appeal. Featuring the poems in English and French, this deluxe dual-language edition allows readers to commune both with the original poems and with these electric, revelatory translations. 3 illustrations
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Flowers of Evil
Inspired, seminal translations of one of the greatest poets of all time by Edna St. Vincent Millay and George Dillon, now available in a sleek new edition.
Charles Baudelaire invented modern poetry, and Flowers of Evil has been a bible for poets from Arthur Rimbaud to T. S. Eliot to Edna St. Vincent Millay, who, with George Dillon, composed an inspired rhymed version of the book published in 1936 and reprinted here, with the French originals, for the first time in many years.
Millay and Dillon, while respectful of the spirit of the originals, lay claim to them as to a rightful inheritance, setting Baudelaire’s flowing lines to the music of English. The result is one of the most persuasive renditions of the French poet’s opulence, his tortured consciousness, and his troubling sensuality, as well as an impressive reimagining of his rhymes and rhythms on a par with Marianne Moore’s La Fontaine or Richard Wilbur’s Molière.
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White Teeth, Red Blood: Selected Vampiric Verses
by Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ishmael Reed, Charles Baudelaire, Lord Byron
SEDUCTIVE, SINISTER, GLAMOROUS, HORRIFIC: this collection brings together the best poems inspired by the undead, from Goethe and Byron to Emily Dickinson and Ishmael Reed
A nest of vampires literal and metaphorical, this poetry collection ranges across centuries and languages to bring readers a bevy of dark delights.
The undead have long provided the perfect vessel for humanity's fears and desires—from spine-tingling chills to sinister sexiness, vampires are the ultimate representation of the most frightening and alluring parts of ourselves. They've inspired poems that tell stories, proffer warnings, and imagine life from inside the eternal night, by authors like J.W. Goethe, Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, Charles Baudelaire, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Delmira Agustini, and Ishmael Reed, brought together with many more in this one-of-a-kind collection.
With an introduction by Claire Kohda, author of Woman, Eating.
Contents include:
CHILLING TALES: poems by Gottfried August Burger, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Robert Southey, Anne Bannerman ("The Dark Ladie"), John Stagg ("The Vampyre"), Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Rafael Campo DIRE WARNINGS: poems by Heinrich August Ossenfelder ("The Vampire"), John Keats, Henry Thomas Liddell ("The Vampire Bride"), James Clerk Maxwell, Charles Baudelaire, Christina Rossetti, Madison Julius Cawein, Rudyard Kipling, Conrad Aiken, Edna St Vincent Millay ("The Witch-Wife"), James Weldon Johnson THE VAMPIRE WITHIN: poems by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Emily Brontë ("Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun"), Emily Dickinson ("A Death blow is a Life blow to Some [816]"), Walter Pater, Delmira Agustini, William Butler Yeats ("Oil and Blood"), Ishmael Reed ("I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"), Dorothy Barresi ("Pocket Vampire"), John Yau
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Les Fleurs Du Mal (French Edition)
by Charles Baudelaire, Gallimard Folio edition
Collection : Folio Classique Maîtriser les connaissances et les outils nécessaires à l'étude d'une uvre intégrale, voilà l'objectif de cette collection. L'élève doit avoir une vision synthétique de l' uvre : connaître sa genèse et sa structure, appréhender les personnages à travers leur portrait, leur rôle et leur dimension symbolique, retenir les différents thèmes évoqués. Par ailleurs, l'ouvrage procure des informations d'ordre paratextuel qui enrichissent la culture du lecteur : détails sur la vie de l'auteur et le. contexte dans lequel il s'inscrit, remarques sur son style, sur ses écrits théoriques, jugements de critiques contemporains. Enfin, le souci des auteurs est de montrer à l'élève comment ces informations peuvent être utilisées efficacement dans les exercices du bac : des études d'extraits et des sujets d'entretien sont proposés à titre d'exemples. L'intérêt de cette collection est donc de baliser chaque uvre de sorte que l'élève dispose des éléments indispensables pour réussir l'écrit comme l'oral. L'étude n'est pas exhaustive mais elle a le mérite d'être claire et structurée. --Claire Mazurel --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Broché .
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Le Spleen de Paris (French Edition)
Product Description Publié à titre posthume en 1869, Le Spleen de Paris, également connu sous le titre Petits poèmes en prose, fut conçu comme un "pendant" aux Fleurs du Mal. Baudelaire y fait l'expérience d'une "prose poétique, musicale sans rythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtée pour s'adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l'âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience". Explorateur des méandres de la ville et de la noirceur de l'âme humaine, le poète saisit sur le vif des scènes de la vie urbaine, croquant les saltimbanques, les bourgeois élégants et les ouvriers, les femmes du monde et les prostituées. Au-delà du fait divers ou de l'anecdote, tour à tour lyriques et cyniques, résignés et révoltés, les poèmes du Spleen de Paris célèbrent les paradoxes de la métropole moderne, illuminée par le fantasme de rivages lointains et de paradis perdus. Dossier 1. Genèse et contexte 2. Accueil critique et première réception 3. Baudelaire moraliste 4. L'esprit lycanthropique. From the Back Cover Publié à titre posthume en 1869, Le Spleen de Paris, également connu sous le titre Petits poèmes en prose, fut conçu comme un «pendant» aux Fleurs du Mal. Baudelaire y fait l'expérience d'une «prose poétique, musicale sans rythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtée pour s'adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l'âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience». Explorateur des méandres de la ville et de la noirceur de l'âme humaine, le poète saisit sur le vif des scènes de la vie urbaine, croquant les saltimbanques, les bourgeois élégants et les ouvriers, les femmes du monde et les prostituées. Au-delà du fait divers ou de l'anecdote, tour à tour lyriques et cyniques, résignés et révoltés, les poèmes du Spleen de Paris célèbrent les paradoxes de la métropole moderne, illuminée par le fantasme de rivages lointains et de paradis perdus. Dossier 1. Genèse et contexte 2. Accueil critique et première réception 3. Baudelaire moraliste 4. L'esprit lycanthropique. About the Author Né à Paris en 1821, Charles Baudelaire publie ses premiers poèmes intitulés Les Fleurs du Mal en 1855 dans la Revue des Deux Mondes. C'est en 1857 que paraît le volume. La même année l'auteur et son éditeur sont condamnés à des amendes et à la suppression de six poèmes. La deuxième édition ne paraîtra qu'en 1861, six ans avant la mort du poète.
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The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (Arts & Letters)
Charles Baudelaire, the nineteenth-century French poet and writer, has also been called 'the father of modern criticism'. This stimulating volume gathers together some of his most celebrated critical writings.
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Oeuvres complètes Baudelaire - NE
by Charles Baudelaire, Michel Jamet
Le flamboiement noir des Fleurs du mal, le " frisson nouveau " ressenti par Victor Hugo au passage de cette comète dans son ciel poétique semblent avoir occulté le reste de l'oeuvre pour la plupart des amoureux de Baudelaire, et avec les Petits Poèmes en prose, qui ont ouvert la voie à la poésie de la modernité, s'achève en général le cycle des curiosités et des admirations.
Pourtant, il existe nombre de baudelairiens qui seraient disposés à tout abandonner des poèmes pour quelques dizaines des pages des Écrits intimes (Fusées et Mon Coeur mis à nu), tant la pointe en est aiguë et le dépouillement ascétiquement cruel. De tout notre patrimoine, ces pages-là sont les seules qui fassent pendant, et peut-être contrepoids, aux Pensées de Pascal.
Pourtant, qui pourrait aujourd'hui contester, de Rimbaud à Antonin Artaud, d'Alfred Jarry à Henri Michaux, l'étonnante lignée issue des Paradis artificiels, maître-livre qui suggère au poète tout autant qu'il le lui interdit d'être le grand malade, le grand criminel, le grand maudit et le suprême savant.
Pourtant, qui oserait aujourd'hui subordonner en Baudelaire le critique au poète méconnaîtrait un des éléments essentiels de sa grandeur. Telle qu'il la conçoit, telle qu'il la pratique, la critique est elle-même création – une création qui domine de la manière la plus altière tous les problèmes, toutes les recherches, toutes les propositions de l'esthétique actuelle.
Exemplaire jusque dans la prose dont il use alors, patiente, souple, détendue, aussi éloignée de la virtuosité que de l'obscurité, et merveilleusement proche de nous, Baudelaire demeure totalement moderne.
Robert Carlier.
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Paris Spleen (New Directions Paperbook)
One of the founding texts of literary modernism. Set in a modern, urban Paris, the prose pieces in this volume constitute a further exploration of the terrain Baudelaire had covered in his verse masterpiece, The Flowers of Evil: the city and its squalor and inequalities, the pressures of time and mortality, and the liberation provided by the sensual delights of intoxication, art, and women. Published posthumously in 1869, Paris Spleen was a landmark publication in the development of the genre of prose poetry―a format which Baudelaire saw as particularly suited for expressing the feelings of uncertainty, flux, and freedom of his age―and one of the founding texts of literary modernism.
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Intimate Journals (Dover Books on Literature & Drama)
One of the most influential French poets of the nineteenth century, Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) was also an important art critic and translator. In fact, his translations of Edgar Allan Poe's works are considered classics of French prose. Throughout much of his life, however, Baudelaire was dismissed as a vulgar drug addict preoccupied with sex and death. Prosecuted for obscenity and reeling from one financial disaster to another, he produced a number of literary works that went unrecognized during his lifetime. Perhaps the most significant collection of poetry published in Europe during the nineteenth century, his Flowers of Evil was critically condemned, and the remaining years of his life were marked by a sense of failure, disillusionment, and despair.
This volume of the poet's essays and drawings — collected and published after his death — includes cryptic memoranda, literary notes, quotations, rough drafts of prose poems, and personal tirades. More than anything else, they reveal the spiritual underpinnings of his work, transcending the squalor of financial ruin and the torture of physical decline to offer compelling thoughts on his world, society, and philosophy.
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42 flores del mal /42 Flowers of Evil
42 flores de mal es un volumen de la colección «Poesía portátil» que reúne algunos de los versos más distintivos de los célebres poemarios de Baudelaire Las flores del mal, El spleen de París y Los paraísos artificiales.
42 poemas que abren las puertas al universo descarnado del poeta maldito por excelencia.
Con una influencia incontestable sobre escritores modernos y contemporáneos, el impacto de la obra de Baudelaire es evidente en autores como Proust, Houellebecq y tantos otros que respiraron el desarraigo y la sordidez que emanan sus versos.
Baudelaire había despertado del sueño romántico y se sumergió en la metrópoli, fue un poeta solitario entre multitudes que se confesaba un «yo sediento del no-yo», un navegante en un universo vacío y a la vez rebosante de las más bajas pasiones. Su lenguaje, valiente y descarado, es un ensayo constante de todas las posibilidades expresivas del verso y la prosa.
«Es desde entonces que, como un profeta,
amo tan dulcemente los mares y el desierto;
que río en los funerales y lloro en las fiestas
y encuentro un sabor suave en el vino más amargo;
que a menudo doy por hecho las mentiras
y que, mirando al cielo, caigo en los hoyos.
Pero la Voz me consuela y dice: ""Cuida tus sueños,
los sabios no los tienen tan bellos como los locos"".»
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
Flowers of Evil is a volume in the "Portable Poetry" collection, which compiles some of the most distinctive verses from Baudelaire’s famous books of poetry, The Flowers of Evil, Paris Spleen, and Artificial Paradises.
42 poems that open the doors to the stark universe of the poet damned by excellence.
With an indisputable influence on modern and contemporary writers, the impact of Baudelaire’s work is evident in authors such as Proust, Houellebecq, and so many others who breathed the alienation and sordidness that emanate from his verse. His language, brave and insolent, is a constant test of all of the expressive possibilities of verse and of prose.
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Complete Poems: Charles Baudelaire
Including all poems published in the previous three editions, this comprehensive new translation of Baudelaire's poetry is both vivid and authoritative. This dual-language volume presents both the original French poems as well as their translations.
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Le Spleen de Paris - La Fanfarlo
From the Back Cover
Vers la fin de sa vie, Baudelaire a «rêvé le miracle d'une prose poétique, musicale sans rythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtée pour s'adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l'âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience», ainsi qu'il l'écrit à Arsène Houssaye. C'est cet idéal qu'il poursuit dans Le Spleen de Paris (1869), recueil posthume de cinquante «petits poèmes en prose», qui marque l'avènement d'un nouveau genre. Étroitement liée à la grande ville, l'oeuvre révèle les paradoxes d'un poète tour à tour lyrique et cynique, résigné et révolté, et constitue un hommage moderne au pouvoir des images qui fascinera, entre autres, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Laforgue ou encore Reverdy. En 1847, alors qu'il n'en était qu'au début de sa carrière d'écrivain, Baudelaire publia La Fanfarlo, court récit mettant en scène Samuel Cramer, autoportrait ironique de l'auteur. De cette unique nouvelle au Spleen de Paris, le poète ne put se défaire de la tentation de la prose.
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Selected Poems from Les Fleurs du mal: A Bilingual Edition
In a masterly translation by Norman Shapiro, this selection of poems from Les Fleurs du mal demonstrates the magnificent range of Baudelaire's gift, from the exquisite quatrains to the formal challenges of his famous sonnets. The poems are presented in both French and English, complemented by the work of illustrator David Schorr. As much a pleasure to look at as it is to read, this volume invites newcomers and devotees alike to experience Baudelaire's genius anew.
"A fine, formal translation of the best poems of France's founder of the symbolist movement."—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"It's rare to find a rewarding translation of a masterwork, particularly a collection of groundbreaking poetry. . . . Through Shapiro's skillful wordsmithing, the reader can fully appreciate Baudelaire's control of the soul and the word which is the ancient and indefatigable ambition of all great poets. . . . Shapiro's interpretations set the standard for future English translations."—Virginia Quarterly Review
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Paris Spleen: little poems in prose (Wesleyan Poetry Series)
A modernist classic translated for the twenty-first century
Between 1855 and his death in 1867, Charles Baudelaire inaugurated a new―and in his own words "dangerous"―hybrid form in a series of prose poems known as Paris Spleen. Important and provocative, these fifty poems take the reader on a tour of 1850s Paris, through gleaming cafes and filthy side streets, revealing a metropolis on the eve of great change. In its deliberate fragmentation and merging of the lyrical with the sardonic, Le Spleen de Paris may be regarded as one of the earliest and most successful examples of a specifically urban writing, the textual equivalent of the city scenes of the Impressionists. In this compelling new translation, Keith Waldrop delivers the companion to his innovative translation of The Flowers of Evil. Here, Waldrop's perfectly modulated mix releases the music, intensity, and dissonance in Baudelaire's prose. The result is a powerful new re-imagining that is closer to Baudelaire's own poetry than any previous English translation.
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The Flowers of Evil
A modernist classic translated for the twenty-first century.
It is not given to everyone to blend into the multitude: enjoying the crowd is an art, and only he can gain a stroke of vitality from it, at humanity's expense, whose good fairy at his cradle bequeathed a taste for travesty and masque, along with hatred of home and passion for travel.
—from "XII, The Crowd"
The poetic masterpiece of the great nineteenth-century writer Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil is one of the most frequently read and studied works in the French language. In this compelling new translation of Baudelaire's most famous collection, Keith Waldrop recasts the poet's original French alexandrines and other poetic arrangements into versets, a form that hovers between poetry and prose. Maintaining Baudelaire's complex view of sound and structure, Waldrop's translation mirrors the intricacy of the original without attempting to replicate its inimitable verse. The result is a powerful new re-imagining, one that is, almost paradoxically, closer to Baudelaire's own poetry than any previous English translation. Including the six poems banned from the first edition, this Flowers of Evil preserves the complexity, eloquence, and dark humor of its author. Brought here to new life, it is hypnotic, frank, and forceful.
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The Flowers of Evil (New Directions Paperbook)
In the annals of literature, few single volumes of poetry have achieved the influence and notoriety of The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) by Charles Baudelaire. Banned and slighted in his lifetime, the book that contains all of Baudelaire's verses has opened up vistas to the imagination and quickened sensibilities of poets everywhere. Yet it is questionable whether a single translator can give adequate voice to Baudelaire's full poetic range. In compiling their classic, bilingual edition of The Flowers of Evil, the late Marthiel and Jackson Mathews chose from the work of forty-one translators to create a collection that is "a commentary on the present state of the art of translation." The Mathews' volume is a poets' homage to Baudelaire as well. Among the contributors are: Robert Fitzgerald, Anthony Hecht, Aldous Huxley, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Karl Shapiro, Allen Tate, Richard Wilbur, Yvon Winters.
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Fanfarlo (The Art of the Novella)
A stunning new translation of a neglected masterpiece by one of history’s most celebrated writers.
Ten years before Baudelaire published his masterpiece, The Flowers of Evil, the great poet penned the only prose fiction of his career: La Fanfarlo. The novella describes the torrid real-life affair the poet had with Jean Duval, a dancer whose beauty and sexuality Baudelaire came to obsess over. The outcome is a work of raw emotional power and a clear distillation of the Parisian’s poetic genius. As Baudelaire himself said, “Always be a poet, even in prose.”
***
This is a Hybrid Book.
Melville House HybridBooks combine print and digital media into an enhanced reading experience by including with each title additional curated material called Illuminations — maps, photographs, illustrations, and further writing about the author and the book.
The Melville House Illuminations are free with the purchase of any title in the HybridBook series, no matter the format.
Purchasers of the print version can obtain the Illuminations for a given title simply by scanning the QR code found in the back of each book, or by following the url also given in the back of the print book, then downloading the Illumination in whatever format works best for you.
Purchasers of the digital version receive the appropriate Illuminations automatically as part of the ebook edition.
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Invitation to the Voyage: Selected Poems and Prose (The French List)
“Baudelaire is indeed the greatest exemplar in modern poetry in any language,” said T. S. Eliot. We experience Baudelaire in myriad ways through his multifaceted writing. His sensuous poems—dreams of escape to an impossible, preferably tropical, elsewhere—draw us in with their descriptive and perceptual richness. There is also the bitter, compassionate, and desolate Baudelaire. Ultimately, Baudelaire’s true genius might reside in his expressive force and in the tension between his passions and intellect. The latter is most evident in his control of rhetoric and poetic form, and—given the poems’ density of language, thought, and feeling—his astonishing clarity.
This new English rendition of Baudelaire by award-winning translator Beverley Bie Brahic includes poems from his celebrated volumes: Les Fleurs du mal, Les Épaves, Le Spleen de Paris, and Paradis artificiels. It also includes several of his prose poems, as well as an excerpt from his famous essay on wine and hashish. The poems in verse have Baudelaire’s French originals on facing pages; the prose poems, unaccompanied by their originals, are printed near the poems in verse with which they resonate. Complete with the translator’s illuminating introduction and notes, this beautifully crafted volume is an important addition to Baudelaire’s work in English translation.
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The Flowers of Evil The Definitive English Language Edition
A DUAL-LANGUAGE EDITION OF THE WORK THAT SCANDALIZED PARIS AND REINVENTED BEAUTY
Probing the depths of the modern psyche in a voice at once caustic and vulnerable, melancholic and humorous, Baudelaire’s infamous book brings to the surface a new understanding of evil, of eroticism, and of social life through an astonishing variety of poetic forms and styles. This edition adds the poems banned from the original 1857 publication to the expanded collection of 1861 and includes an introduction from the translator, acclaimed poetry scholar Nathan Brown.
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The Flowers of Evil Gilded Pocket Edition
"A new shudder. A new thrill" - Victor Hugo
This striking pocket hardback edition presents Charles Baudelaire's classic poetry collection, The Flowers of Evil, featuring silver cover embossing and gilded page-edges.
Charles Baudelaire was one of the most influential French writers of the 19th century, whose darkly beautiful poetry never failed to leave a lasting mark on his readers. Controversial and challenging, the outspoken nature of his poems marks him out as a pivotal figure in European literature - a bridge between the Romantics of the past and 20th-century modernism.
Flowers of Evil, or 'Les Fleurs du mal', is perhaps his most celebrated collection, which addresses themes of love, decadence, and death. Though many of these poems were banned in his lifetime, their lyrical beauty and penetrating themes have ensured their enduring success.
This edition includes curated selection of the poems from the 1861 publication, with translations from Cyril Scott, Lewis Piaget Shanks, Frank Pearce Sturm, Jack Collings Squire and James Elroy Flecker. This is elegantly presented with a silver embossed cover design, ivory pages, beautifully designed endpapers and silver gilded page edges, making a wonderful gift or collectible for any lover of classic poetry.
ABOUT THE SERIES: Arcturus Ornate Classics are beautifully bound editions of iconic literary works across history. These compact, foil-embossed hardbacks are printed using deluxe ivory paper and make the perfect gift.
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Paris Spleen little poems in prose
A modernist classic translated for the twenty-first century
Between 1855 and his death in 1867, Charles Baudelaire inaugurated a new—and in his own words "dangerous"—hybrid form in a series of prose poems known as Paris Spleen. Important and provocative, these fifty poems take the reader on a tour of 1850s Paris, through gleaming cafes and filthy side streets, revealing a metropolis on the eve of great change. In its deliberate fragmentation and merging of the lyrical with the sardonic, Le Spleen de Paris may be regarded as one of the earliest and most successful examples of a specifically urban writing, the textual equivalent of the city scenes of the Impressionists. In this compelling new translation, Keith Waldrop delivers the companion to his innovative translation of The Flowers of Evil. Here, Waldrop's perfectly modulated mix releases the music, intensity, and dissonance in Baudelaire's prose. The result is a powerful new re-imagining that is closer to Baudelaire's own poetry than any previous English translation.
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