Product Description
Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) was a leading poet and novelist in nineteenth who also devoted a considerable amount of his time to criticism. Indeed it was with a Salon review that he made his literary debut: and it is significant that even at this early stage - in 1845 - he was already articulating the need for a painter who could depict the heroism of modern life. This he was to find in Constantin Guys, whom he later celebrated in the famous essay which provides the title-piece for this collection. Other material in this volume includes important and extended studies of three of Baudelaire's contemporary heroes - Delacroix, Poe and Wagner - and some more general articles, such as those on the theory and practice of caricature, and on what Baudelaire, with intentional scorn, called philosophic art. This last article develops views only touched on in Baudelaire's other writings. This volume is extensively illustrated with reproductions of works referred to in the text and otherwise relevant to it. It provides a survey of some of the most important ideas and individuals in the critical world of the great poet who has been called the father of modern art criticism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Recommend
Have been reading this dreamlike book for years. My recent purchase was as a Christmas present.

Baudelaire orchestrates the debut of an anonymous (but real) cartoonist in this series of reviews. So, he introduces the sensibility of the artist, rather than the man. He argues that art is on the street beside you, in the room with you, in the mirror. Then why isn't every person an artist? What thing do people connect to the reporting senses? Why are so many who call themselves artists not artists; what makes some others, who have not chosen to make art, artists? If you want to understand the meaning of words like "dilettante," "artificial," "professional," "curiosity," "inspiration," and the tired vocabulary of the plastic sphere re-invigored at its origin, read this book. Usable handbook. Knowing Baudelaire will reveal further the horrible and ragged side of the aesthetic here espoused.

Enthused essays and aphorisms--insight into a vocation which remains mysterious. Not from ivory tower; Baudelaire a "gentleman" explorer. Look out for volatile friendship with book.

Much-needed content in ill-suited printing
It's convenient to have several key texts of Baudelaire's aesthetic criticism collated in one place rather than as scattered translations printed here and there over the last 40 years. It is especially nice to have so many attractive monochrome plates of Guys's work -- perhaps more than strictly necessary. It's unfortunate that the remarkably thin pages make it distracting at best and challenging at worst to read what Baudelaire was actually writing.

Before I come off as a ranting, blind curmudgeon, let me say that this is -- I believe -- the first time in 12 years of dedicated Amazon purchasing that I have returned a book. My eyes are not what they were when I began buying books from Amazon, of course, but I read for a living and it's not as though my eyes are accustomed to 16-point type. I teach out of Norton anthologies at least once a year and have no problem with Norton's thin pages and small type, but what's happening in this edition is just too intense for me: the dark type bleeds through the onionskin pages; the margins can be measured in millimeters (no marginal notetaking is possible unless you write with a needle dipped in ink); the trim size is pleasantly small, but the font is so reduced that I have to hold the text about a foot from my eyes in order to read it. This would make the experience uncomfortable enough if Baudelaire were writing casual, easy stuff; if you would like the opportunity to concentrate on what he's writing and, ideally, to take some notes here and there, then the formatting of this edition makes that unnecessarily difficult to do.

Modern versus Contemporary critical reflections/debates on the Arts
This book was a historical landmark in the beginnings of modern criticism, and is seen as a pioneering benchmark for artistic reference. Its relevance today is that its poetic language or vernacular manages to engage the reader in a strange relationship with contemporary art criticism, opening up all kinds of possiblities for the artist(s)/curator who wishes to broaden their historical frames of reference. It is then a specialists book that equally throws light onto our times, it is up to the reader of course on how far their imagination can accomodate this. I recommend this book to anyone with an open mind who is curious about how past and present times are constructed, viewed and discussed. ... Read more

Product Description

Walter Benjamin's essays on the great French lyric poet Charles Baudelaire revolutionized not just the way we think about Baudelaire, but our understanding of modernity and modernism as well. In these essays, Benjamin challenges the image of Baudelaire as late-Romantic dreamer, and evokes instead the modern poet caught in a life-or-death struggle with the forces of the urban commodity capitalism that had emerged in Paris around 1850. The Baudelaire who steps forth from these pages is the flâneur who affixes images as he strolls through mercantile Paris, the ragpicker who collects urban detritus only to turn it into poetry, the modern hero willing to be marked by modern life in its contradictions and paradoxes. He is in every instance the modern artist forced to commodify his literary production: "Baudelaire knew how it stood with the poet: as a flâneur he went to the market; to look it over, as he thought, but in reality to find a buyer." Benjamin reveals Baudelaire as a social poet of the very first rank.

The introduction to this volume presents each of Benjamin's essays on Baudelaire in chronological order. The introduction, intended for an undergraduate audience, aims to articulate and analyze the major motifs and problems in these essays, and to reveal the relationship between the essays and Benjamin's other central statements on literature, its criticism, and its relation to the society that produces it.

Product Description
This bold new translation with facing French text restores once banned poems to their original places and reveals the full richness and variety of the collection. This book is intended for general readers interested in Baudelaire, French poetry and 19th-century French culture. Students of Baudelaire, French literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (30)

Great Confusion about editions
Amazonm has really messed up these reviews of The Floweers of Evil, which refer to many different translations and editions.The Kindle edition (horrible, incomplete, badly, formatted) has nothing to do with any of the published translations. The Oxford World Classics edition, which is supposedly under review, does not have a hardback edition. That is a prose translation by Keith Waldrop. The translation by McIntyre is another edition altogether.The Oxford edition, translated by James McGowan, has french and english on facing pages and does not have formatting problems.

I can't read French
I'm an American trying to read foreign poetry. This, of course, is impossible. I can not in the slightest evaluate how well this translation conveys the French. Nonetheless, this translation touched me emotionally. I think I caught the idea of what Baudelaire was trying to do. For me, the intention is more important than the execution. A lot of reviews will tell you to read Baudelaire in the French. That is excellent advice. But if you can't, this translation conveys something about what is important about the emotions that are conveyed in Baudelaire's poetry.

A bad joke from Las Vegas
Don't buy this one if you want to read Baudelaire. There are many other editions out there. Personally, I would recommend an edition that has both the French original and English translation side by side. Even if you don't speak French, the rhythm becomes apparent.

New Directions Accomplishes Its Intentions:Representing The State of Translation
Advantages/features of the New Directions edition:

--Diverse translator-palate represented from various repertoires (complete&original ordering).
--Inclusion of material censored in the first edition.
--Inclusion of preface drafts.
--Appearances by high-profile names from the translation world in its era of first publication for this edition (1955).
--None of Richard Howard's prose travesties grace this volume.

Disadvantages&faults:

--Quality, method, ear-for-Baudelaire-magnitude, and command of English varies greatly.Most of the efforts fall on their face (Particularly Kunitz&Lowell: who start off the volume. Not good.)Among the stronger attempts: F.P. Sturm, C.F. Macintyre, Aldous Huxely (for one poem: Lesbians)
--Dated edition, first published in'55.


Lowell has a volume of a complete LFDM which attempts to retain the rhyme-scheme and conform to a 10 syllable-per-line basis, as compared to C.B.'s twelve.The result is mostly obtuse, un-lyrical and ponderously banal.His brief appearance in the book (some 10 poems --or not much more) is fortunate.


* * *


Summary:

The New Directions edition recommends itself, given the proliferation of less-than-scholarly efforts whom are transmogrifying permutations on a theme:anything but THE Baudelaire we know in French, in GOOD English!It's the only of its kind that presents LFDM in complete form with the original, together with something approaching intelligent editorship.What is clear from this publisher's effort:the state of translation presented is a very sorry one, though, not the fault of the compilers.



Alternatives:

Jacques Leclercq's 1955 effort demonstrates consistency and few-to-none surprises in the way of philological red-herrings (this one is available on amazon), is equally affordable on the used marketplace here, and is very attractively illustrated.

The recent Oxford edition is surprisingly good (though not great: 4/5 *stars*), and presents the original French text facing the translation, if this is what you prefer. (Avail. on Amazon as well.)

Richard Howard.--Avoid.Avoid at all costs.Avoid like a psychotic ex.Buy used if you really must, --at least then neither the publisher nor the 'translator' receive income for their identity-fraud edition of C.B.'s work.

Great translation, horrible edition
As a French reader of the original book, I appreciated the efforts of the translator to keep the rhymes of the original. This is spoilt by one of the poorest edition I have ever seen. The fonts are too fancy to read, the layout is not nice, I spotted 3 errors in the typography at the first read... I have the feeling that the editor spent 10 minutes overall to make this book. Avoid this buy. ... Read more

Product Description
Publisher: Brentano'sPublication date: 1919Subjects: Poetry / GeneralPoetry / American / GeneralPoetry / Continental EuropeanNotes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Product Description
This translation of Baudelaire's magnum opus perhaps the most powerful and influential book of verse from the 19th century - won the American Book Award for Translation. And the honor was well-deserved, for this is one of Richard Howard's greatest efforts. It's all here: a timeless translation, the complete French text, and Mazur's striking black and white monotypes in one elegant edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

i dont enjoy criticising, but...
notwithstanding the number of reviews offering glowing praise (and this book has some merits worthy of praise: its lovely artwork, its cronological history of CPB, an extensive cannon in french), i find myself sadly compelled to agree with the less generous critics: the translations are terrible! i realize that translation is a difficult and demanding art (i write haiku in both japanese & english, with rigid adherence to the classically accepted structure of the form in both languages), but a translator also has a special obligation simultaneously to interpret and to communicate faithfully the thoughts and words of his/her subject. i am surprisd at the complete absence of certain themes from these poems in the english version: when CPB writes about "the lakes before which he trembles," and neither the lakes NOR the trembling are resent in the english text, i must wag my accusing finger at the inadequacy of the translator (who astonishingly offers some excuses for his poor work in a rather self-serving forward).

on the up side: having the english close at hand is useful for refreshing the gaps in my french, and the leaves of the french section of the book are already littered with my own translations, which it pleases me to make.

i'm not sorry i bought this book, but this poetry is so magnificent i do wish the translation had been its equal.

Pornographically Facile 'Free Renderings'
Richard Howard succeeds in fashioning a translation for mass consumption in the 'Baudelaire market' that reads fast:so fast in fact, that you can wolf-down the entire thing in 15 minutes flat.Howard is to LFDM what Fagles' is to Homer.The result is unreadable for anyone concerned with rhythm, music, word selection and Meaning in verse translations.The impression one receives from is that Howard has a 5th grader's understanding (philistine, that is) of French (with an ear for poetry smaller than a flea's) and avoids dictionaries whenever possible.Sadly we know the opposite to be the case given his reputation for translating the prose works of the likes of Camus and Sartre.To the question: what went wrong?We can only answer:the number of zeros on the check.


The Richard Howard Translation Is A Hack Job, A Work of Adultery, The Hired Gun's Aftermath.

If you want Baudelaire, the only contemporary edition worth its salt is that by Oxford, with the nude woman in profile on the front, or the New Directions compendium of many translators' efforts. The former has the original printed on the facing pages, the latter reproduces the French at the end of the translated LFDM.

A nice help
This is exactly what I said in the title: a nice help, if you know something about the romance languages and are a beginner at French. For, as far as I can see the translation doesn't preserve rhyme or the rhythm of the original, yet it's not literal. It does provide semantic help if you're interested in reading the original, but by itself, no...
Also, I would like to add, I am used to bilingual editions with the original put on one page, and the translation parallel with it on the other. Here you have to look for it, and mark both pages where reading. It's a bit tiresome and certainly unnecessary.

overdone
I'd get this book for the quality of the paper and type (at least that of the version I bought back in the early 90s) and the great presentation of the French originals. People with even a high-school knowledge of French can appreciate Baudelaire's ideas and musicality. It's impossible to translate the latter into English, so why even try?

The best thing about the ideas in the poems is that they are expressed in very simple language. I would have prefered a similarly simple, immediate English translation without resorting to stuffy "poetic" language (as well as over-interpretation--many images sneak into the English that are just not there, or only suggested, in the French). The only way to really appreciate the intricately constructed meter and rhyme is to read the originals.

I know this is probably a matter of taste in translation, but reading the English translations in this volume really brings me down sometimes!

Definitve translation
The definitive translation of the definitive book of romantic symbolist poetry. This edition includes the originals as well, which bumps it up to 5 stars for me. ... Read more

Product Description
The poems of Charles Baudelaire are filled with explicit and unsettling imagery, depicting with intensity every day subjects ignored by French literary conventions of his time. "Tableaux parisiens" portrays the brutal life of Paris' thieves, drunkards and prostitutes amid the debris of factories and poorhouses. In love poems such as "Le Beau Navire", flights of lyricism entwine with languorous eroticism, while prose poems such as "La Chambre Double" deal with the agonies of artistic creation and mortality. With their startling combination of harsh reality and sublime beauty, formal ingenuity and revolutionary poetic language, these poems, including a generous selection from "Les Fleurs du Mal", show Baudelaire as one of the most influential poets of the nineteenth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A beautiful translation
Unlike other translators, Carol Clark has really captured Baudelaire's intent in both the imagery and meaning because she didn't mix her own notion of poetry with his rhyming craft, and correctly settled on a prose translation; and therefore, as closely as possible, retained the true essence of Baudelaire in English format. For example:

Evening Harmony

"...The violin trembles like a wounded heart, a tender heart which hates the vast, black nothingness! The sky is sad and beautiful like a great alter of repose; the sun has drowned in his curdling blood.
A loving heart, which hates the vast, black nothingness, gathers up every trace of the shining past! The sun has drowned in his curdling blood...
Your memory within me shines like a monstrance."

This translation reveals Baudelaire's true heart. In many aspects his visions are like Poe's but his ideals focus on hard-bitten romantic love. In many translations, he comes off like a whiny bad boy because the constraints the translator placed on himself to hold poetic form higher than meaning. In this one, Baudelaire's true genius is allowed to shine.

Excellent English Translation!
This version of selected works is one of the best French to English translations of Baudelaire I've come across. The text is not manipulated to rhyme in English as it does in French, and therefore is much more representative (in meaning) of the work in it's native language. I'm not much of a poetry reader, but next to Leaves of Grass by Whitman, this (the selections from "The Flowers of Evil" in particular) is my favorite.

Very few other french works matter compared to this,
The flowers of evil is simply the single greatest book in all of french literature.Read it & agree. ... Read more

Product Description
Modern poetry begins with Charles Baudelaire (1821-67), who employed his unequalled technical mastery to create the shadowy, desperately dramatic urban landscape -- populated by the addicted and the damned -- which so compellingly mirrors our modern condition. Deeply though darkly spiritual, titanic in the changes he wrought, Baudelaire looms over all the work, great and small, created in his wake. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Best Book By The Creator of Modern Poetry!
Baudelaire is credited, along with Whitman and Dickinson, with being the inventor of modern poetry.I wish someone would actually explain why modern poetry begins with him. (email anyone?)

But this book really is great.Get the Everyman's Pocket Poet's version.It's got all (or almost all, I haven't counted) of Baudelaire's masterpiece "Les Fleur Du Mal," in a good translation by Richard Howard (though also check out Norman Shapiro's). And it has selections from Michael Hamburger's wonderful translation of Baudelaire's prose poems, "Le Spleen Du Paris."The best of these is "GET DRUNK," or "Enivrez-vous!"It begins:

One should always be drunk.That's all that matters; that's our one imperative need.So as not to feel Time's horrible burden that breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without ceasing. ....

Baudelaire was full of dark energy like that.It disgusts and attracts.When it gets tiresome--and, like too much honey and too much Delacroix, reading about maggots eating lovers' flesh, will get tiresome--just put it down.When you pick it up you'll get some fresh insights.How fresh?As fresh as the in simile B. uses in "the Vampire": "bind[ing] me . . . as gambler to his winning streak."Nicely done.Plus the book is small so you can sneak it into work and easily goof off.

don't forget translators' names
this translation was produced by a contemporory American poet Richard Howard, whose poems were included in the Norton Anthology of English Poetry. - English is my third language. - I agree with the review ofHoward's version in'Baudelaire in English'.

Buy this now.
the "Everyman's" series is the best stocking stuffers ever created.I am a bit of a Baudelaire buff, and I must say, this small version is perhaps my favorite.There is not much else to say.I havespent the time sorting through the poorly translated, badly misquotedversions of Flowers of Evil.Learn from my mistake.Pass by the frilly,big, seventeen color dustjacket editions and buy this little guy.It willnot dissapoint you. Good day.

a journey 4 those mentally & spirtually willing and able
The images containd in this book are frighteningly familiar and distanlty arranged. With every page the reader will be forced to go wherever the lines may travel. To and fro the words swagger and stumble. Gifted andpitiful, sad scenes flood out onto the page. Sexual-sciFi, erotica at it'sfinest before it ever had a name. Psycho-manipulative and potent. At timesit will make you laugh, both in humor and in disgust. A definite add-on toany literate collector of art. Intense and a very fine book of scatteredwisdom. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

Best translation of Baudelaire
This is by far the best translation of Baudelaire's Complete Poems.Not only is the translation achieved in rhymed, metered verse, but Martin captures the essence of this colossus of French poetry.Please ignore "Rosie" the naysayer below who seems to have a limited background in translation, poetry, and Baudelaire.Better yet - here's a challenge for her: Translate Baudelaire's Complete Poems and offer it to the public.After all, you claim to "know French."When you're published we can review your efforts. Ploughshares called Martin's work a "vivid and formally authoritative translation."

This translation is awful-NO STARS!
i LOVE baudelaire but this translation is simply awful! Very bad! I feel like i wasted my money on this book! Its better to stick to translation by Louise Varese or at least stay away from this translation. the language made akward and because i know french and the french version on the opposite page-i can see his translated badly in some parts- sometimes at random-he translates word for word which makes the poem's reading too hard to bear! then other times he takes artistic license! This translator should be locked up for crime against poetry for destroying Baudelaire's work. All I can say to the translator is Shame on YOU!Please do not buy this book- i beg you- or you will not be able to enjoy Baudelaire because he is one of the greatest poets.

Evil Rhymes
What I like best about this admittedly eccentric translation is the way Walter Martin renders the poems in rhyme.Baudelaire's extreme content--his embrace of putrefaction, filth, sadism and ennui as fit stuff for poetry--owes much of its impact to the tight, disciplined meter he chose for his medium.Most Baudelaire translations don't capture this classical edge in English, turning the poems into free verse or prose.While Martin has to bend the exact meaning a little (often a lot) to get the English to fit, on the whole he does an impressive job of making the verse sound exact and controlled but not too sing-songy.There's no ponderous introduction to bug you either, just a short & highly personal 'Afterthoughts' section with some intriguing insights.This isn't the only translation you'll want to read, but it recovers a side of modernity's bad boy that's hard to find anywhere else.

Good effort at translation
This is the first complete translation of Les Fleurs du Mal that I've seen which captures both Baudelaire's symbolic rhyming and his strict syllable count (10 per line in this edition vs. Baudelaire's usual 12).

Martin's translation could be improved by following Baudelaire's order of ideas and literal diction more closely, but he captures the spirit of each poem in a way that makes this volume stand out from most of the previous efforts I've seen.

If you're looking for a Baudelaire translation by a single author, this is a good one to buy. ... Read more

Product Description
Controversial book of verse, first published in 1857, presented in a handsome dual-language edition, together with superb selection of great French poet’s other works: prose poems from "Spleen of Paris," critical essays on art, music and literature, as well as personal letters. Line-by-line English translation, with original French text on facing page.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

a masterpiece
The only way to read great poetry is in the original language. For those whose French is a little shaky this book will allow you to appreciate the music of the original while not losing track of the meaning. And you will also appreciate the limitations and loss of nuance entailed in any translation.

These poems were revolutionary in their day. They have been enormously influentialand still have the power to shock and move. T.S. Eliot called them the first modern poems. They deal with subject matter considered bizarre and perverse in his time, such as a rotting corpse and a giant prostitute. The persona of the poet is tormented by guilt, remorse, unrequited love, and helpless addiction to vice. There had been nothing quite like this before. A major influence was Edgar Allen Poe, whose works he translated into French.

Baudelaire was the archetype of the poet maudit, defying his family and squandering his inheritance until he was cut off, then living in poverty until an early death from strokes, possibly caused by neurosyphilis. He was obsessed by a beautiful mistress who merely tolerated his advances. In addition to being a great poet, he was a highly regarded literary and artistic critic. He is universally recognized as one of the greats of French literature and culture. If you're interested in world literature, this is a must read.

A French Masterpiece in English
I've taught French for years and worked as a technical translator for computer hardware and software providers. I love poetry. I love the English language. I love the French language. For a student or poetry lover, this book is an invaluable guide with original and translation presented side by side. Serious students may quibble a bit over specific phrases in translation, but any English-speaking person can enjoy the art of Beaudelaire without the drudgery of leafing through translating dictionaries and grammars. Lazy students of French could use the book to cheat on assignments, but no one can escape the revelation of the artistry of the verses.

sui generis
If you think you would be interested in exploring Baudelaire, I would recommend first checking out a website called "Hermenaut". Google-search Hermenaut: Charles Baudelaire. There may be other good websites, but this is the best one I found. After reading the book cover-to-cover, I wanted to do a little further research to get critical perspectives.

The most common websites concentrate mostly on Baudelaire's reputation as an immoral drug-user and make references to "Satanism", which is never substantiated or supported by any evidence. This is all very generic and shallow, and certainly doesn't do justice to the Baudelaire I encountered in these poems and essays. The Hermenaut article is a very intelligent piece which has substantial and analytical things to say about Baudelaire the man, and his work, and says it much better than I can. It summed up for me in an articulate way the same impressions of his work that I had more vaguely formed in my reading of him.

The thing that most impacted me when reading the book was a feeling that Baudelaire fits into no category such as idealist, realist, symbolist,etc. His quest for spiritual freedom was far too individualistic to be contained by any such categorization. He was a metaphysician-poet. I think the term metaphysician fits him better than philosopher, since it has a connotation of mysticism and the visionary.

He refused to concede any authority over himself of what he considered to be utilitarian, vulgar, and banal; in other words - bourgeois. These were the things Baudelaire considered to be evil. Mediocrity is the consequence and product of the natural world; therefore he considered the natural world to be "Satanic". Baudelaire pursued this attitude to great detriment and suffering to himself in his personal life. His way of facing the world had about the same result as if he had placed a sign on his back with large letters "KICK ME!".

My feeling is that without going to his extremes , we might examine his vision to enlarge our perception of humanity and existence. These poems, prose poems and essays on art and literature lead me to believe Baudelaire was a man of genius whose vision gave him unique insights. But it must be said that he also made some sociopathic statements which no reasonable person would condone. My suspicion is that those were mostly for shock value and to set himself apart from the crowd.His intensity and commitment, unfortunately led him into lonely and alienated outposts of the mind. The last lines of his poem "The Voyage" expresses this aspect of Baudelaire:
"The fire searing our brain is such that we want
To plunge to the bottom of the abyss, whether it be
Heaven or Hell,
To the bottom of the Unknown in order to find some-
thing new!

Not The Complete Les Fleurs
I purchased this book, misled (or perhaps just too hopeful) by its title and description, expecting that it would contain facing English translations of *all* the poems in Les Fleurs Du Mal. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up and found only 50 of the 160 or so poems! I hope this brief notice prevents other readers from making a similar error. If you want all the poems, or better still, the complete works, in translation, then you will have to look elsewhere (I don't have a current recommendation, but will post one when I do).

That said, Wallace Fowlie's translations of the 50 selected poems are very accurate, and worth having for that reason alone. These are literal translations (what we used to call "ponies," although I am not sure why, in school.) He renders every line, pretty much word-for-word, into good understandable English, making no attempt to create a "literary" or "poetic" version. I would use these translations simply to check my understanding of the original French, and can recommend them very highly to students for that purpose.

Great Choice of French Poetry
Charles Baudelaire is a one of the finest French poets. Critics refer to his works as "les poemes obscures. If you like Edgar Alan Poe's style, you'll love Baudelaire. I recommend reading 2 poems in particular " La Beaute", and "L'ennemi".

If you are a bilingual reader, I'd recommend buying "Contes Francais". This is, again, a dual-language book with chosen stories from Voltaire, Balzac, Gide, et Camus... ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Baudelaire's sensitivity and despair revealed
I am almost finished reading this.I found the picture on the cover of "Paris Spleen" scintillating, with Baudelaire's debased-looking image peering out of the cover (my husband said it looked "honest").I always thought of Baudelaire as a decadent and sardonic man of sorts, but after reading some of his writings here, I can say he was very sensitive and profound in many ways, and, like myself and others, he wished to "escape" the daily world and the daily rut of the city he belonged to.At best, his despair is something akin to the world-weariness of Poe.

The classic translation.
An elegant, accurate, and readable translation of this wonderful little book that can revolutionize your way of seeing and thinking.Some newer, and in some ways, better translations have appeared since this one became the "standard," but it's still a good buy and a sure bet for reading pleasure.

"In Autumn All Things Think Through Us Or We Through Them"
Charles Baudelaire's Paris Spleen is a wonderfully original work, one happily outside the framework of American literature and its broad range of sensibilities. Most notably, these 51 short prose poems illustrate how truth, and the most accurate perceptions of life possible, can be reached purely by honing the senses and then melding them with the more passive facilities of the mind; logic and rational thinking, as demonstrated here, are for the vulgar, those in denial, those simply unable to accept the very rich, very broad, self-evident smorgasbord of life. Baudelaire, both a tragic and a comedic clown, also effortlessly illustrates how melancholy and joy are by no means mutually exclusive categories of human feeling and experience.

Set largely against autumnal landscapes, the wandering poet indulges in "the mysterious and aristocratic pleasure of watching" whenever he is not a direct participant in the events these visionary pieces describe. Solitary, "fluent in outrage," cranky, self-tormented, lovelorn, misanthropic, and pedagogical by turns, these pieces find the poet stalking bereaved widows, peering unseen through the candle-lit windows of neighbor's homes, asking philosophical questions of "enigmatical" strangers, shunning crowds, luxuriating in midnight solitude, greeting the twilight with a bow, reading the time of day in a cat's eyes, "beating the poor," and listening, eavesdropping, and relentlessly observing wherever he goes.

Not surprisingly, the poet's vision of urban Paris lies somewhere between the canvases of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec; garishly colored, slightly grotesque, heavily populated with heavy, heaving women and friable grande dames, Baudelaire's city is a fluid stage for life's pantomime, open to and allowing for all combinations and possibilities. By contrast, his autumnal countryside is a place of relative purity, where the poet wanders alone under piercing blue skies and roaming, shadow-casting clouds.

In one of the more hallucinatory episodes, the poet, "under a vast gray sky, on a vast and dusty plain" comes upon a procession of men with "worn and serious faces," each of whom carries a very large, monstrous "chimera" on his back, the muscles, tendons and limbs of the beasts wrapped tightly around them. None the wiser after asking these men his litany of inevitable questions, the poet observes that "under the depressing dome of the sky" the men moved past and beyond him, each "with the resigned look of men who are condemned to hope forever."

Paris Spleen is a wise, serious, and often dour work. But if its only occasionally tragicunderpinnings and conclusions can be embraced by its audience, then its vibrant, bawdy, colorful, and transcendent aspect reveals itself shamelessly in turn. Baudelaire is so confident, unselfconscious, and plain-spoken that his perceptions are remarkably easy to visualize, his emotions as expressed surprisingly easy to relate to. Few books are as multi-prismedas this.

The poet implies that if man could accept mortality, reasonably subdue his ego, and curb his more flagrant dreams, life would begin to resemble the far from perfect, but certainly tolerable and potentially enjoyable, miracle that it actually is. The poet seems to have reached the same conclusion that Isak Dinsen did at the end of her memoir, `Out Of Africa' (1937): man must accept, without exclusion, every facet, aspect, element, and component of existence before existence--before life--will give anything back to him.

In no way despairing, Paris Spleen is a pleasure to contemplate, discuss, laugh over, and digest. Readers may carry their copy in their back pocket until it falls into tatters, and force copies on friends [that's you, Iris], family, and strangers. Beautifully translated by Louise Varese. Highly recommended, especially to the non-creative who would like to see, however briefly, as a poet sees.

poems in prose
Yes, Baudelaire, himself told to his friend Troubat:"These are The flowers of evil again, but with more freedom,much more detailes, and much more mockery". Noone before Baudelaire has ever concepted the poem in prose which would express so many special, original and protesting sensations. This urban, very personal poetry is a product of the metropolitan noisy atmosphere, and as it is surrounded with fog of overpopulated, but yet unexplored areas.This poetry expresses more than the actual meaning of the words is telling.Spleen is created of prose and pure poetry, of the reflection of the analytical spirit and intuitive introspection.The apostle of pain and depression,Baudelaire is the one who analyzes his own and other people's sins, expresses himself as a moralist in this book as well.

Baudelaire Vents His Spleen at the Outside World
The book that helped me overcome my prejudice against poetry--I carried "Paris Spleen" around with me for a couple of weeks after I first read it, and kept turning back to certain poems as I went about my dailyerrands.Even though it's nearly 150 years old it seems as timely andcontemporary as it must have seemed when it was first published--absolutelytop-notch. ... Read more

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Walter Benjamin, one of the foremost cultural ommentators and theorists of the 20th century, is perhaps best known for his analyses of art in the modern age and the philosophy of history. Yet, it was through his study of the social and cultural history of late-19th-century Paris, examined particularly in relation to the figure of the great Parisian lyric poet Charles Baudelaire, that Benjamin tested and enriched some of his core concepts and themes. Contained within these pages are, among other insights, his notion of the "flaneur", his theory of memory and remembrance, his assessment of the utopian Fourier and his reading of the modernist movement. First translated in English in 1973, this is a study of the French lyric poet Charles Baudelaire. It should be useful as a text for readers of both Benjamin and Baudelaire, and for students of French literature. Walter Benjamin is the author of "One-Way Street", "The Origins of German Tagic Drama" and "Understanding Brecht". ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

"Man is an animal which adores"
Living from 1821 to 1867, primarily in Paris.Charles Baudelaire was his centuries poet of discontent.Religious, blasphemous, elitist and anti-snob, all at once, he seemed from the start to be a life driven to self-destruction.Absinthe, opium, and a mistress were his only relief.And in the end, the were what killed him.The epitome of the tortured soul.

Most of us know of him now only by reputation, or from exposure to Fleurs du Mal.That thin volume of poetry has had an influence far beyond it's size.In many ways, Baudelaire was one of the beat generation's greatest precursors.

The Intimate Journals is actually a collection of three sets of papers that frame the final years of Baudelaire's excruciating journey.They are the notes of a man who faced financial and physical ruin and yet still kept up his piercing intellect.In it you will find short notes essays about his world, society, and philosophy.

This isn't poetry, but a direct look into the inner thinking of a poet who is often written off as the perfect degenerate.Intimate Journals offers an opportunity to re-evaluate Baudelaire as both a man and a writer, whose thinking is equally compelling a century and a half later.

The preface written by translator Christopher Isherwood, and W. H. Auden's introduction are brilliant on their own as well (T. S. Eliot wrote the original introduction for the first edition).

A crystalline fragment of aesthetic sensibility.
This is the document of a poet consecrating himself to memory.His attempt to maintain perspective; his aesthetic self objectification that is repeatedly shattered when he looks into society; his Catholocism, hisennui, his mistress, his mother...all these cast a definitely"intimate" hue to the pages that are essential for any readerwishing to come to terms with Baudelaire's psyche: to see why hisself-destruction was inseparable from his creations.For they were bothnecessary symptoms of his sensibility -an immaculately modernsensibility.The fragmented nature of the writings prevents the work fromactually being a "work" - it is more like an authentic gesture,an unpremeditated act of self revelation.A fascinating and ultimatelyharrowing document from a poet - nothing more. ... Read more

Product Description
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. ... Read more

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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 published shortly after Flaubert had been acquitted on a charge of offending public morality and the long article on Gautier, to whom Baudelaire dedicated Les Fleurs du Mal. The musician whom Baudelaire admired above all others was Wagner, and the article on Tannhäuser published at the time of the Paris production in 1861 shows his percipience as a critic: with no technical knowledge of music, Baudelaire nevertheless demonstrates an instinctive awareness of the magical power of suggestion in Wagner's music. ... Read more

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tr Michael Hamburger, bilingual ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

One of the first modern poets
Modernity is what defines the work of Baudelaire. No elegant poems of love; no countryside-dreaming; no evocation of the Classics nor references to the past. On the contrary: urban life; the alienation brought aboout by capitalism; the angst of poor urban dwellers; alcohol and drugs. Poetry is no more just the search for beauty through words. Now, it is a vehicle for the expression of the individual. Content is more important than form, and therefore Baudelaire gets rid of the constraints imposed by verse, even free verse, and lets his soul spill out in a not lyrical, but dark manner.

Evocative
These prose poems were my first experience with Baudelaire.I didn't know what to expect, but they're pretty good.They are often vague, but even then manage to be evocative.I'll admit I also bought the book to help myFrench along (as it is bilingual), but it's Baudelaire and it's good andsometimes thought-provoking reading.Enivrez-vous!De vin, de poesie, devertu, a votre guise.Enjoy. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Trauma, indeed!
Adorned with a title that sounds like it was borrowed from Enya's last album, Ulrich Baer's derivative pastiche "Remnants of Song" is appallingly preachy and reductive, politically dubious in the extreme, mind-numbingly repetitive, and written in a style that lowers English critical prose to new levels of lumbering inelegance. For something worthwhile on Baudelaire, look at work by Susan Blood, Ross Chambers, Sartre . . . or anyone else, for that matter! "Remnants of Song" raises (lowers?) the bar in the writing-the-disaster department -- my nominee for the 2003 Residual Culture Award.

baudelaire is brought out of darkness into the light
when i say baudelaire is brought into the light, i mean that his work is described lucidly and criticized empathetically. the author took special pains to understand the conditions in which baudelaire wrote, and sought to bring fresh perspectives to his analyses of the works sited. i agree with another reviewer of this work who commented that his favorite section concerns the sky -- the treatment of the horizon, frames, and clouds is wonderfully clever. as a dancer and choreographer who enjoys using the imagery of poetry i found this to be one of the most helpful discussions of baudelaire's work available to me. i believe this text would be useful not only to students and lovers of poetry, but also to other artists who would like a multi-faceted reading of some very complicated and layered poems. i must confess that i did not read the sections pertaining to celan, because i am specifically focusing my personal research on baudelaire. i cannot speak for the quality of the discussions in the latter half of the book, but i can highly recommend this text to those interested in baudelaire.

Almost Traumatically Beautiful
In short, this is the best book ever written on Baudelaire and Celan. Baer articulates very complex and subtle ideas, but his prose is clear and inviting. This is for those who are interested in not only these particular poets, but also issues of "memory" and just "poetry" at large. I particulary love the third chapter "Blindness and the Sky" and the fifth chapter "Landscape and Memory." Considering that poetry is on the verge of extinction in our contemporary, it may be urgent to read this book right now. ... Read more

Product Description
Charles Baudelaire is often regarded as the founder of modernist poetry. Written with clarity and verve, Baudelaire's World provides English-language readers with the biographical, historical, and cultural contexts that will lead to a fuller understanding and enjoyment of the great French poet's work.

Rosemary Lloyd considers all of Baudelaire's writing, including his criticism, theory, and letters, as well as poetry. In doing so, she sets the poems themselves in a richer context, in a landscape of real places populated with actual people. She shows how Baudelaire's poetry was marked by the influence of the writers and artists who preceded him or were his contemporaries. Lloyd builds an image of Baudelaire's world around major themes of his writing-childhood, women, reading, the city, dream, art, nature, death. Throughout, she finds that his words and themes echo the historical and physical realities of life in mid-nineteenth-century Paris.

Lloyd also explores the possibilities and limitations of translation. As an integral part of her treatment of the life, poetry, and letters of her subject, she also reflects on published translations of Baudelaire's work and offers some of her own translations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Topical Study
"Baudelaire's World" is a book-length collection of topical essays on various aspects of Baudelaire's life and work, including: Childhood, Women, Friendship, Nature, and others. The focus throughout is on their relationship to his poetry, with extensive quotations and translations from Les Fleurs du Mal. Overall, though, this book falls between the stools of biography and criticism; the author's scattershot format and approach does not seem to provide enough of either, and I think that most readers would get more out of a conventional biography (and if you've already read one, then Lloyd doesn't really seem to have that much to add.) For once, the publisher's review actually says it best: this is mostly a book for libraries that just want to collect a large amount of Baudelaire-related material.

A Sardonic Smile
Lloyd's book has been criminally underappreciated, and you don't find people recommending it the way they should.After five years, you'd think such an important volume would be crawling with commentators, instead Cornell University Press has failed to support it with proper publicity and backup.The designers did Lloyd no favors by carrying through the skeezy looking cover, replete with "Rosemary Lloyd" written in letters imitating Baudelaire's handwriting, but perhaps subconsciously this makes a mental link between readers who intuit that she was maybe a friend of the French symbolist poet, if there are scraps of his handwriting containing her John Hancock.Oh, photoshop, what miracles of deception are committed in your name!And that cryptic portrait of CB: when I was an American boy growing up in France, we had a secret club in which we would practice imitating the famous "Baudelaire smile," said to be the inspiration for French joviality a la Maurice Chevalier.With one hand on a mirror and the other on a rotogravure of the famous portrait by Deroy, we would try to adopt his serene nonchalance by contorting our teen mouths into traditional rosebud grins; like the smile of the Mona Lisa, however, Baudelaire's trademark expression has often been imitated, never successfully.In the French equivalent of the 8th grade, many duels were fought with rattan canes sharpened to points like punji sticks.It's refreshing to read Lloyd's book in conjunction with Andrew Epstein's marvelous new book of Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, and Amiri Baraka (BEAUTIFUL ENEMIES) in terms of the shifting ground of friendship between 19th and 20th centuries.As Lloyd sees it, Baudelaire's generation made large claims for friendship.In her chapter, "Talking with Friends," she tests the limits of a conventional biographical approach by analyzing Baudelaire's different sorts of community, contrasting him always with Victor Hugo, whose poetry is frequently evoking his friends by name and rank.Some mysteries remain in Baudelairology: for example, if Banville was his greatest friend, why is there so little direct track of his spoor among Baudelaire's effects?Lloyd is dissatisfied with the state of English translation of Baudelaire's work, both in poetry and prose, and often provides her own translations every time she needs to trot one out.They are charming indeed, and serve her master well.

A monumental book worthy of its own title, BAUDELAIRE'S WORLD should become the standard book of its kind.It should not be relegated to Cornell's remainder table.Fie on that foolishness!The great poet of perceptions deserves a critical literature worthy of that enigmatic stare, or do you think, Da Vinci Code style, he knew way in advance that Rosemary Lloyd's book would be heaped in obscurity a mere 5 years after publication?No wonder he's sardonic.It's a French thing after all. ... Read more

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This volume contains all of Baudelaire's `Petits Poèmes en prose', which were written over many years and published in magazines between 1855 and his death in 1867. The French is given on the left-hand page with Francis Scarfe's translations, which reflect a lifetime's passion for and intimate understanding of Baudelaire's work, on the facing page. The appeal of `this beautiful book', says Francis Scarfe in his introduction, 'lies in its wide range of subjects, its variations of tone and mood, its great variety of presentation and above all in its psychological subtleties. It shows the poet at the height of his powers, totally uninhibited in his expression of wonder, tenderness and compassion'. To these prose poems Francis Scarfe has appended an early prose extravaganza, the short novel `La Fanfarlo' (1847).

The companion volume, `The Complete Verse', contains `Les Fleurs du mal' (1861), `Nouvelles Fleurs du mal' (1868), `Les Épaves' (1866) and all of Baudelaire's other poetry in verse. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Forgotten Revolution
Let me get one thing clear - this is a masterpiece. Better or worse than les fleurs du mal? God knows... and it's not the point. Reading the other reviews i felt a potential reader may underestimate one fundamental point: this book, together with others in the production of 'Il Maestro', clears the way for the most significant aesthetical revolution ever happened in poetry: fire to 'la rima', it's time for the Poem in prose!
The (apparently)purely formal beauty must be tried, as it paves the road for the Verlaine - Rimbaud - Huysmans - Nietzsche - Gaugain diapason

A dark, true wit
Most poetry is vain and pointless, merely an abundance of rich language and an obscure purpose.Baudelaire's prose poems, by contrast, have an obvious depth to them.Baudelaire's ideas are bold enough to be placed before the reader in plain language and meaning.His view is ruthless, forcing life from its pathetic ordinariness into a celebration of the struggle of life.Trinck! is one of the most simple and greatest poems I have read.The Generous Gambler is Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray without even a hint of a moral - and all the more realistic for the lack of sentiment.Baudelaire occupies a position between Wilde and Poe, without the former's moral ideals and the latter's pointlessness.

Baudelaire's vision is a rare one - dark, humourous, vigorous and remorseless.A dark, true view of life.

The translation is excellent, with the French available on the opposing page. May it stay in print, always.

Invitation to the voyage
Any reccomendation is personal, but I've read this little book many timesand over the years it's remained a favourite. I personally prefer it to"flowers" mainly because of the dark humour. This is a goodtranslation, others that I've bought as presents for friends don't seem sopure for some reason. My favourites in this collection are: the dog and theScent Bottle,Temptations,The Generous Gambler,Which One is Real? Trink!TheLooking Glass... those are the ones that are permenantly marked in the copyI have before me...I love some of the phrasing : "having acrowd-bath," or "melodious cascades"... but why not read ityourself and email me your favourites? The last words belong the manhimself: "We should always be drunk. That is the be-all and end-all,the only choice there is. To no longer feel the horrible burden of Time,which racks your shoulders and blows you downwards to the earth, you mustmake yourself ceaselessly drunk. But drunk on what? Wine, poetry, virtue -whichever you prefer;only, get drunk." ... Read more