Product Description

Customer Reviews (5)

a surprising glimpse
I was surprised at Baudelaire's more conservative views in this book .
I had prior considered him to be all for intoxication and inebriation , thus his famous line "Envirez-vous" that he was known for shouting at the top of his lungs when he'd be having absinthe in the Paris cafes ...
He especially writes against hashish which he felt warped and distorted peoples' minds .
His attitude was certainly influenced by the times he lived in as are some folks' attitudes about similar subjects in current times ...
A must for the Baudelaire devotee such as myself .

Worth reading from excellent publisher
A great writer known primarily for his poetry reflect upon addictive substances, their effects, and their dangers. Insightful, timely, and an interesting take, Hesperus continues to publish excellent short unknown translations. Archipelago books does even better with their longer, wider ranging translations, beautifully produced.

Essential Background
Essential background reading for anyone at all interested in Baudelaire - after all, one of his fondest sayings was 'Enivrez-vous!' - 'Get drunk!', and he often celebrated intoxicated states in remarkable style. Although he is not to be side-lined as a writer whose whole scope consists of these intoxicated states - there was a recent biography which put forward the case that his whole significance as a writer was that of a drug-addict - these states do form an integral part of, as it were 'Baudelaire-land', and it is essential to understand them in order to understand Baudelaire as a poet and thinker. Here, in an attractive hesperus volume, we have him writing directly about intoxicated states, in a fascinating insight into the workings of his mind, his time in Paris, and his attitudes towards alcohol and drugs. Well worth buying.

Gastric Memoir
Think of this short piece more as a culinary review than a work of philosophy or fiction or even memoir.Baudelaire speaks to the pros and cons of both Wine and Hashish as well as the impact of both on the body.In addition, he dabbles in satire and social insight, giving the reader a wonderful view of his life, opinions and experiences.

Classic
This is Baud writing about his experiences with Hashish and Wine. It is very poetic and very enjoyable with lots of memorable quotes.

Oh Great Hashish! ... Read more

Product Description
This edition contains new translations by Rosemary Lloyd of an early novella by Baudelaire and all his prose poetry. The novella, "La Fanfarlo" is a mocking study of love and passion and an evocation of the art of dance. There are 50 prose poems. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Baudelaire at fine consistency.
What makes "La Fanfarlo"interesting is not so much for its depth but rather at the way it captures the bourgeoise flavor & appeal magnificently.Though it probes very well into human characteristics & nature vividly,it's realistic portrayal of that air of condescence & mannerisms which separate this class of society from the rest is nothing short of marvelous as it takes you to it's very world & initiates you if you are not aware.

The prose poems are the younger siblings of "The Flowers Of Evil".Though lacking in range & depth compared to the incomparable masterpiece,it nontheless elevates the reader into the emotional & intellectual mindscapes that the poet so accurately & efficiently defines.Truth & beauty go hand in hand inseparably well together,just as art & practicality give a slight glimpse into the life of a city from the point of a bitingly penetrating observer. ... Read more

Product Description
Before publishing the sensuous and scandalous poems of "Les Fleurs du Mal", Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) had already earned respect as a forthright and witty critic of art and literature. This stimulating selection of criticism reveals him as a worshipper at the altar of beauty, illuminating his belief that the pursuit of this ideal must be paramount in artistic expression. Reviews of exhibitions discuss works by great painters such as Delacroix and Ingres in fascinating detail, and "Of Virtuous Plays and Novels" sees Baudelaire as an avenging angel in defence of true art. Writings on Poe, Flaubert and Gautier evoke a profound understanding of fellow artists, while his single excursion into musical criticism, "Richard Wagner and Tannhauser in Paris", displays an incisive awareness of the magical power of suggestion in music. ... Read more

Product Description
Rimbaud called him "le premier voyant, roi des poetes, un vrai dieu," and the history of modern poetry, which begins with him, has bourn out that opinion. This is a comprehensive new translation of all of Baudelaire's poetry, excluding only the juvenilia, occasional verse and work of doubtful attribution. Baudelaire contemplated a volume of poems that would "launch him into the future like a cannonball," and here it is in vivid and formally authoritative translation. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

GREAT TRANSLATION!!!
THIS IS A FANTASTIC TRANSLATION! AND MY FAVORITE EDITION OF BAUDELAIRE BESIDES THE COMPLETE FLOWERS OF EVIL ALSO FROM NEW DIRECTIONS PUBLISHING.

O, where have you gone, Baudelaire?
Flowers of Evil is teeming with imagery that is, at times, lofty, and others, bitter. My favorite edition is the 1955 New Directions Paperbook edition. He was truly a poet who lived and thought rather than the masses who merely muse on living. Read his poetry and step lightly through the flowers.

I know a better translation.
Rather than this edition, I suggest Crosby's translation (Boa Publication).In it he has captured not only the meaning of B's poems, but maintained the music (rhythm and rhyme) of the poetry as well ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

highly unique
gorgeously dark words of magic and vision. Unlike anything else.

Onward Motion
Charles Baudelaire, in his Little Poems in Prose--at least in this translation, I may say--, speaks as if he were thrown into a wind of excitement and enthusiasm in one whirl of experience, and then, no sooner does he do so, that he is ready to move on, and experience something else.

I find thst this book is published no where else at this present time, than through the Teitan Press; Crowley has some poems in translation of Baudelaire in his Collected Works, but this present edition (Little Poems in Prose) is all in prose.Thus, it is contained no where else, as yet.

Exquisite Miniatures
Baudelaire's Petite Poèmes en prose was published posthumously in 1869 and was later, as intended by the author, entitled Le Spleen de Paris.Baudelaire did not live long enough to bring these poems together in a single volume, but it is clear from his correspondence that the work he envisaged was both a continuation of, and a radical departure from, Les Fleurs du mal.

Some of the texts may be regarded as authentic poems in prose, while others are closer to exquisite miniature prose narratives.The setting is primarily urban, with the focus on crowds and the suffering lives they contain:a broken-down street acrobat (Le Vieux Satimbanque), a hapless street trader (Le Mauvais Vitrier), the poor staring at the wealthy in their opulent cafés (Le Vieux des pauvres), the deranged (Mademoisele Bistouri) and the derelict (Assommons les pauvres!), and, in the final text (Les Bon Chiens), the pariah dogs that scurry and scavenge through the streets of Brussels.

Not only is the subject matter of the prose poems essentially urban, but the form itself, "musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato," is said to derive from "frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections."

In its deliberate fragmentation and its 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, embodying in its poetics of sudden and disorienting encounter that ambiguous "heroism of modern life" that Baudelaire celebrated in his art criticism. ... Read more

Product Description

The Violence of Modernity turns to Charles Baudelaire, one of the most canonical figures of literary modernism, in order to reclaim an aesthetic legacy for ethical inquiry and historical critique. Works of modern literature are commonly theorized as symptomatic responses to the trauma of history. In a climate that tends to privilege crisis over critique, Debarati Sanyal argues that it is urgent to rethink literary experience in terms that recall its contestatory potential. Examining Baudelaire's poems afresh, she shifts the focus of critical attention toward an account of modernism as an active engagement with violence, specifically the violence of history in nineteenth-century France.

Sanyal analyzes a literary current that uses the traditional hallmarks of modernism -- irony, intertextuality, self-reflexivity, and formalism -- to challenge the historical violence of modernity. Baudelaire and the committed ironists writing in his wake teach us how to read and resist the violence of history, and thereby to challenge the melancholy tenor of our contemporary "wound culture." In a series of provocative readings, Sanyal presents Baudelaire's poetry as an aesthetic form that contests historical violence through rhetorical strategies of complicity, counterviolence, and critique. The book develops a new account of Baudelaire's significance as a modernist by dislodging him both from his traditional status as a practitioner of "art for art's sake" and from his more recent incarnation as the poet of trauma.

Following her extended analysis of Baudelaire's poetry, Sanyal in later chapters considers a number of authors influenced by his strategies -- including Rachilde, Virginie Despentes, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre -- to examine the relevance of their interventions for our current climate of trauma and terror. The result is a study that underscores how Baudelaire's legacy continues to energize literary engagements with the violence of modernity.

Customer Reviews (1)

Impressive
This is some of the best work on Baudelaire and the political force of irony that I've read in a long time.A must for any serious reader of nineteenth-century French letters.The chapters on 20th-century writers working within similar frameworks make great connections. This book made me rethink Baudelaire and irony more generally; it also offered an inspired critique of theoretical discourses that would position us all equally as "victims" of historical trauma. I especially liked the chapters on women writers. Nuanced close readings and sophisticated thinking. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Paris Spleen, a diverse collection of fifty prose poems, is provided here in a clear, engaging, and accurate translation that conveys the lyricism and nuance of the original French text. Also included is a translation of Baudelaire's early novella, La Fanfarlo, which, alongside Paris Spleen, sheds light on the development of Baudelaire's work over time.

Raymond N. MacKenzie's introductory essay discusses Baudelaire's life and the literary climate in which he lived and worked. Focusing on the theory of the prose poem, MacKenzie suggests that Baudelaire turned to this form for both aesthetic and ethical reasons, and because the form allowed him to explore more fully the complexities of the modern, urban, human condition. By turns comic, somber, satiric, and self-questioning, Paris Spleen is one of the nineteenth century's richest masterpieces. ... Read more

Product Description
In his controversial 1857 work, Les Fleurs du mal, the 19th-century decadent poet addresses the conflict of good and evil by rejecting conventional distinctions to pursue beauty in perversity. This volume features selections from Baudelaire’s masterpiece, perhaps the most influential French poetry ever written, in an inexpensive edition that invitesreaders to explore the remarkable sensuality, depths of thought, and feeling in one of the most original and influential books of the age.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Selected Poems from "Flowers of Evil"
As a lover of poetry I found these poems to be a bit morbid for my taste.

So-so translation
I'm not a big fan of Baudelaire's verse poetry to begin with (his prose poetry is a different matter), and having read Flowers of Evil in French, I was not impressed with this translation.It contains most of the importantpoems from the original (The Albatross, Her Hair, An Invitation to Voyage,To a Malabar Girl, etc.), so this volume is a good introduction for peopleunfamiliar with Baudelaire.But someone who genuinely wants to studyBaudelaire's poetry would be better off reading James McGowan's translationfor Oxford World's Classics. ... Read more

Product Description
This anthology of translations of Charles Baudelaire's poems, brings together work which reveals the different facets of Baudelaire's personality. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Baudelaire in English (Poets in Translation, Penguin)
Baudelaire in English, still romantic and a dream of inspirations for all whose hearts are fain to the virtues of Meaning chiefly when it can be felt in real words which flowed out a romantic heart and into posterity. In life the poor fellow was always plagued by just ordinary but rather too often "bad luck" however he could write his heart out like no other... And that is why I have always loved Baudelaire... I recommend his works in any language, in any age or time! A bit of Baudelaire can always balance our ways of seeing our own world and allow us the wings of his inspiration.

The best way to meet Baudelaire
This is the book that introduced me to Penguin's wonderful Poets in Translation series.I've been hooked ever since.With brief introductions placing the translator in proper context, the anthology moves through all Baudelaire's major poems, dwelling with multiple translations and comparisons to the original on a few key favorites.

If you can't read French (and believe me I can't), this is the next best thing.By seeing Baudie from multiple perspectives, translated over several generations, you really get a better sense of his poems than any one translator could give you.On top of that, the editors do a great job of giving minimal-but-effective background material.

Should you choose to explore further, you are armed with knowledge of how each translator approached his or her task.This is invaluable.It lead me, for example, to F.P. Sturm's translations, which I never otherwise would have known about.Excellent! 5/5 stars.

translation in cultural perspective
Prof Carol Clark and Prof Robert Sykes in their 40-page introduction put the English translation of Baudelaire in a cultural perspective.Excellent example of translation studies. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Here, for the first time, the work of three of Frances greatest poets has been published in a single volume: the sensual and passionate glow of Charles Baudelaire, the desperate intensity and challenge of Arthur Rimbaud, and the absinthe-tinted symbolist songs of Paul Verlaine.

To bring the essence of these three giants of modern poetry to the American public, Joseph M. Bernstein, a noted interpreter and translator of French literature, has selected the most representative of their writings and presented them along with a biographical and critical introduction.

"Not to know these three poets", he points out, "is to deprive oneself of a pleasure as rare as it is indispensable to any real understanding of the aims and direction of modern literature.

The volume includes Arthur Symons' unabridged translation of Flowers of Evil and the Prose Poems of Baudelaire; Louise Varese's translation of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell and Prose Poems from "Illuminations"; J. Norman Cameron's translation of the verse from the Illuminations; and a representative selection from Verlaine's verse translated by Gertrude Hall and Arthur Symons. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Rather spotty
I am disappointed to find that the selections in this book are rather spotty.A number of major poems are left out, while some less good ones are included.Also,I dislike the concept of trying to duplicate the French meter in English.The translator has to twist and torture the author's text to the point that the English "equivalent" is often far removed from the original French.In my view it is best to avoid trying to convey rhyme and rhythm and sounds in English and stick to the the words, the concepts and connotations of the French text. I am very familiar with a number of the poems listed, but on first reading these English versions I just couldn't recognize the original at all.

Symbolist Poets Highlighted in Tight Volume
"Baudelaire Rimbaud Verlaine: Selected Verse and Prose Poems" carries with it a strong selection of each poet's better known poems. Collecting these three, specifically, is in tune with their own sense of language and image.

The translations work splendidly for all three poets, as executed by several different translators. As such, the pieces chosen are encumbered or glorified by their own merit, and not of the hurdles and interpretative biases of language.

I first learned of Arthur Rimbaud, ironically, from my religion teacher at a Catholic high school. As the first French poet I was introduced I felt, then, obligated to like his work. However, now, in seeing him compared to the much greater Baudelaire, Rimbaud comes across self-indulgent and meaningless. I gain no pleasure from reading his work, and consider, of these three, him to be far overrated.

Paul Verlaine, for me, is somewhere in-between. His romance with Rimbaud (scandalous then, as he dumped his infant daughter and young wife for Rimbaud) luckily did not reduce his poetry to wandering colors and images. Occasionally, he is even cliche:

Oh, heavy, heavy my despair
Because, because of One so fair.
(from Verlaine's "Oh, Heavy, Heavy")

And occasionally brilliant:

Hills and fences hurry by
Blent in greenish-rosy flight,
And the yellow carriage-light
Blurs all to the half-shut eye
(from Verlaine's "Brussels")

Baudelaire's prose poem selections are too many here. They do not meet up in quality with his more tightly articulated poetry. The section, "Flowers of Evil," though, is a masterful, though bitter, book within a book.

Throughout "Flowers," Baudelaire defies God, but never denies his existence or power, as seen here in"St Peter's Denial,"

What has God done with all this flood of sacrifices?
Which rises to his Seraphim divine?
As a tyrant intoxicated with his wine
His fearful sleep is haunted by his vices.

I fully recommend "Baudelaire Rimbaud Verlaine: Selected Verse and Prose Poems." While I cannot so I am an exuberant fan of any of them, their influence on poets I completely embrace I acknowledge, and am pleased to have become better aware of them.

Anthony Trendl
HungarianBookstore.com

poets of evil
I think I have a better instinctual understand of these "decadents" who were the clear marking of the break between the old aesthetic rationality and the surrealism, symbolism, etc. thatfollowed--those who actually blend the periods, smudge and blur the twoworldviews, like Poe and Blake and, here, Baudelaire do. I likeBaudelaire's phantasmagoria, his exoticism put in service of delivering aconcrete insight. And I especially like it when the poetic histrionics of"Flowers of Evil" give way to the fascinating prose poems--like"The Confiteor of the Artist" or the marvellouswar-against-poetry volley "The Courteous Marksman." Other fineones (reminding me also of Lovecraft)--"The Evil Glazier,""At One O'Clock in the Morning," "Solitude." There'smisanthropy, insight and occult broodishness here of the most useful sort.

Rimbaud and Verlaine didn't grip me as strongly--I appreciate that theystretched artistic boundaries, but what they have done intrinsically Idon't find as rich. Rimbaud's religious ravings and visions I findintelligent but obscurant (like Wallace Stevens)--he's doing someconstructive deconstruction, but it's hardly readable (though I do like themore coherent symbolism of the famed "Drunken Boat"). AndVerlaine, while he has the occasional dead-on whimsical insight, is a bittoo florid in verbiage, classical in form, and even conventional for me.With these latter two poets, I think my concern with translated poetry alsomust come in at full force--this sort of wordplay and deliberatesuggestiveness must be highly dependent on the nuance of the originalwords, and must therefore lose something considerable in English.--J.Ruch ... Read more