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...
In a masterly translation by Norman Shapiro, this selection of poems from Les Fleurs du mal demonstrates the magnificent range of Baudelaire's ...
Rimbaud called Charles Baudelaire 'le premier voyant, roi des poetes, un vrai dieu'. The history of modern poetry begins with him. This is a comprehensive translation of all Baudelaire's poetry, excluding only juvenilia, occasional verse and work of doubtful attribution. Baudelaire contemplated a volume of poems that would 'launch him into the future like a cannon-ball'. Here it is in vivid and formally authoritative translation.
Rimbaud called Charles Baudelaire 'le premier voyant, roi des poetes, un vrai dieu'. The history of modern poetry begins with him. This is a comprehen...
When Flowers of Evil was first published in 1857, the book almost immediately became the subject of an obscenity trial, and for several generations afterward its themes of eroticism, lesbianism, revolt and decay earned the author a reputation for depravity and morbidity. It was not until 1949 that the French courts removed the ban originally imposed on Baudelaire's masterpiece. Today, Flowers of Evil is regarded as the poet's greatest work and perhaps the most influential book of French poetry ever written. In assessing Baudelaire's importance in literature, Wallace Fowlie,...
When Flowers of Evil was first published in 1857, the book almost immediately became the subject of an obscenity trial, and for several generat...
From Edouard Manet to T. S. Eliot to Jim Morrison, the reach of Charles Baudelaire's influence is beyond estimation. In this prize-winning translation of his no-longer-neglected masterpiece, Baudelaire offers a singular view of 1850s Paris. Evoking a melange of reactions, these fifty "fables of modern life" take us on various tours led by a flaneur, an incognito stroller.
Through day and night, in gleaming cafes and filthy side streets, this alienated yet compassionate esthete muses on the bizarre in the commonplace, the sublime in the mundane. As the work reveals a teeming metropolis on...
From Edouard Manet to T. S. Eliot to Jim Morrison, the reach of Charles Baudelaire's influence is beyond estimation. In this prize-winning translat...
-Baudelaire's prose poems were written at long intervals during the last twelve or thirteen years of his life. The prose poem was a medium much suited to his habits and character. Being pre-eminently a moralist, he needed a medium that enabled him to illustrate a moral insight as briefly and vividly as possible. Being an artist and sensualist, he needed a medium that was epigrammatic or aphoristic, but allowed him scope for fantasy and for that element of suggestiveness which he considered essential to beauty. His thinking about...
From the introduction by Michael Hamburger:
-Baudelaire's prose poems were written at long intervals during the last twelve or thirte...
Presents the first American translation of the complete text of Baudelaire's 1857 masterwork and includes the complete original French texts for easy comparison.
Presents the first American translation of the complete text of Baudelaire's 1857 masterwork and includes the complete original French texts for easy ...
Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" marks the intrusion of modernity into the French poetic tradition. The carefully ordered collection (here presented in its 1861 edition) betrays a frighteningly honest poet grappling witha sense of his own deep spiritual imperfection, a recognition too of his creative difficulty and an ambivalent teetering on the boundary between the radical and the conservative. As no other poet had done before (and only a few have managed since), Baudelaire sustains in a single collection an exploration of sin, suffering, love, sexual desire, memory, beauty, the city, and...
Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" marks the intrusion of modernity into the French poetic tradition. The carefully ordered collection (here presente...
Before publishing Les Fleurs du Mal in 1857, Baudelaire was probably better known to his contemporaries as a critic than as a poet, and the articles translated here by P. E. Charvet illustrate the development of Baudelaire's critical ideas. The essays cover the visual, literary, and musical arts. From the early 'Salon' of 1846 Baudelaire's commitment to the cause of Delcroix was passionate and unswerving and it remains a theme of a number of these pieces. Baudelaire's literary criticism is represented by, amongst others, the two important articles on Poe, the spirited defence of Madame Bovary...
Before publishing Les Fleurs du Mal in 1857, Baudelaire was probably better known to his contemporaries as a critic than as a poet, and the articles t...
The poems deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism. Charles Baudelaire opens The Flowers of Evil with a poem entitled "Benediction," and it's special stuff -- but of course it is, we're talking about a poem by Charles Baudelaire, for god's sake. When by the changeless Power of a Supreme Decree The poet issues forth upon this sorry sphere, His mother, horrified, and full of blasphemy, Uplifts her voice to God, who takes compassion on her. "Ah, why did I not bear a serpent's nest entire, Instead of bringing forth this hideous Child of Doom Oh cursEd be that transient night of...
The poems deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism. Charles Baudelaire opens The Flowers of Evil with a poem entitled "Benediction," an...
Charles Baudelaire opens The Flowers of Evil with a poem entitled "Benediction," and it's special stuff -- but of course it is, we're talking about a poem by Charles Baudelaire, for god's sake. When by the changeless Power of a Supreme Decree The poet issues forth upon this sorry sphere, His mother, horrified, and full of blasphemy, Uplifts her voice to God, who takes compassion on her. "Ah, why did I not bear a serpent's nest entire, Instead of bringing forth this hideous Child of Doom Oh cursEd be that transient night of vain desire When I conceived my expiation in my womb "
Charles Baudelaire opens The Flowers of Evil with a poem entitled "Benediction," and it's special stuff -- but of course it is, we're talking about...
