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Les Fleurs du Mal
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.
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.
365 pages, Paperback
First published August 23, 1857
About the author
Charles Baudelaire
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Les fleurs du mal
(1857), obscene only volume of French writer, translator, and critic Charles Pierre Baudelaire; expanded in 1861, it exerted an enormous influence over later symbolist and modernist poets.
Reputation of Charles Pierre Baudelaire rests primarily on perhaps the most important literary art collection, published in Europe in the 19th century. Similarly, his early experiment Petits poèmes en prose (1868) ( Little Prose Poems ) most succeeded and innovated of the time.
From financial disaster to prosecution for blasphemy, drama and strife filled life of known Baudelaire with highly controversial and often dark tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Long after his death, his name represents depravity and vice. He seemingly speaks directly to the 20th century civilization.
Reputation of Charles Pierre Baudelaire rests primarily on perhaps the most important literary art collection, published in Europe in the 19th century. Similarly, his early experiment Petits poèmes en prose (1868) ( Little Prose Poems ) most succeeded and innovated of the time.
From financial disaster to prosecution for blasphemy, drama and strife filled life of known Baudelaire with highly controversial and often dark tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Long after his death, his name represents depravity and vice. He seemingly speaks directly to the 20th century civilization.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,843 reviews
March 5, 2024
It is the only book of poetry that has had such a lasting effect on me. It is a monument unlike any other.
When I immerse myself in it, I feel the sensations of a descent into catacombs and those of a mystical elevation. Then, weeks later, still, echo in my ears in deep echoes the dizzying verses of "Harmonie du Soir":
«Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige !
[…]
Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.»
This poem will always make me shiver with indescribable and exhilarating ecstasy.
Painter of passions with underground vibrations and sublime disenchantment, Baudelaire is parred excellence the alchemist of despair. In the crucible of his soul, gravity and lightness intermingle in a subtle and skillful dosage. A secret solemnity swirls like curls of smoke throughout these pages simultaneously as the restrained animality scolds, shaking its chains. The deep cries of revolt and the despair that rise from these refined stanzas give them a blackness of a particular brilliance so fascinating and frightening.
He was a humiliated being who did not have a life, it is said, to the extent of his genius. But would he have given birth to this work if he had lived another life? He would not have had the pain, the "mud", essential for any artist worthy of the name to produce a noble work and to want to embrace the universal in transcendence:
«Soyez béni, mon Dieu, qui donnez la souffrance
Comme un divin remède à nos impuretés […]
Je sais que vous gardez une place au Poète
Dans les rangs bienheureux des saintes Légions, […]
Je sais que la douleur est la noblesse unique […]
Imposer tous les temps et tous les univers.»
Bénédiction
The height, depth, and expansive views are impossible to sum up here. They are horrible and beautiful, dark and bright, contradictory and valid. They are all the tendencies and aspirations that pull and tear the human being on the high altar of life. This book is like the dissection table of the poet's soul on which we lean to recognize ourselves with concern and excitement, both happy and repulsed.
Baudelaire is the great poet of the 19th century and much more: he is the poet who best knew how to express this perception of "[…]longs échos qui de loin se confondent/ Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité" where "Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent". He eclipses all the others for me. He imposed himself in all the power of his quest for sublimation. He achieved what so many before and after have only glimpsed: he "descended" deep into himself and observed and enjoyed his complete and entire nature. He cultivated the contrasts and reconciled the extremes. He synthesized it.
When I immerse myself in it, I feel the sensations of a descent into catacombs and those of a mystical elevation. Then, weeks later, still, echo in my ears in deep echoes the dizzying verses of "Harmonie du Soir":
«Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige !
[…]
Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.»
This poem will always make me shiver with indescribable and exhilarating ecstasy.
Painter of passions with underground vibrations and sublime disenchantment, Baudelaire is parred excellence the alchemist of despair. In the crucible of his soul, gravity and lightness intermingle in a subtle and skillful dosage. A secret solemnity swirls like curls of smoke throughout these pages simultaneously as the restrained animality scolds, shaking its chains. The deep cries of revolt and the despair that rise from these refined stanzas give them a blackness of a particular brilliance so fascinating and frightening.
He was a humiliated being who did not have a life, it is said, to the extent of his genius. But would he have given birth to this work if he had lived another life? He would not have had the pain, the "mud", essential for any artist worthy of the name to produce a noble work and to want to embrace the universal in transcendence:
«Soyez béni, mon Dieu, qui donnez la souffrance
Comme un divin remède à nos impuretés […]
Je sais que vous gardez une place au Poète
Dans les rangs bienheureux des saintes Légions, […]
Je sais que la douleur est la noblesse unique […]
Imposer tous les temps et tous les univers.»
Bénédiction
The height, depth, and expansive views are impossible to sum up here. They are horrible and beautiful, dark and bright, contradictory and valid. They are all the tendencies and aspirations that pull and tear the human being on the high altar of life. This book is like the dissection table of the poet's soul on which we lean to recognize ourselves with concern and excitement, both happy and repulsed.
Baudelaire is the great poet of the 19th century and much more: he is the poet who best knew how to express this perception of "[…]longs échos qui de loin se confondent/ Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité" where "Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent". He eclipses all the others for me. He imposed himself in all the power of his quest for sublimation. He achieved what so many before and after have only glimpsed: he "descended" deep into himself and observed and enjoyed his complete and entire nature. He cultivated the contrasts and reconciled the extremes. He synthesized it.
January 18, 2008
After reading Baudelaire, I suddenly find myself wanting to smoke cigarettes and say very cynical things while donning a trendy haircut. Plus, if I didn't read Baudelaire, how could I possibly carry on conversations with pretentious art students?
In all seriousness, though, I wish my French was better, so that I could read it in its intended language. I'm sure it looses something in the translation... but it's still great stuff nonetheless.
And with a title like "Flowers of Evil," how can you go wrong?
In all seriousness, though, I wish my French was better, so that I could read it in its intended language. I'm sure it looses something in the translation... but it's still great stuff nonetheless.
And with a title like "Flowers of Evil," how can you go wrong?
March 16, 2024
“And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:4-5
Ever since the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge had been eaten any cognizance became an attribute of evil. So to read books in order to widen one’s horizons means to sign a pact with the devil…
And of course the poets, who manage to pack their words in the most seductive opuses, are the worst of tempters…
So when the poet unsheathes his stylus and applies it to vellum the flowers of evil effloresce…
Such are the poet’s morose ideals:
But when poets die their poems continue to live…
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin…” Matthew 6:28
Ever since the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge had been eaten any cognizance became an attribute of evil. So to read books in order to widen one’s horizons means to sign a pact with the devil…
Pillowed on evil, Satan Trismegist
Ceaselessly cradles our enchanted mind,
The flawless metal of our will we find
Volatilized by this rare alchemist.
The Devil holds the puppet threads; and swayed
By noisome things and their repugnant spell,
Daily we take one further step toward Hell,
Suffering no horror in the olid shade.
And of course the poets, who manage to pack their words in the most seductive opuses, are the worst of tempters…
When by an edict of the powers supreme
A poet’s born into this world’s drab space,
His mother starts, in horror, to blaspheme
Clenching her fists at God, who grants her grace.
So when the poet unsheathes his stylus and applies it to vellum the flowers of evil effloresce…
Such are the poet’s morose ideals:
What my heart, deep as an abyss, demands,
Lady Macbeth, is your brave bloody hands,
And, Aeschylus, your dreams of rage and fright,
Or you, vast Night, daughter of Angelo’s,
Who peacefully twist into a strange pose
Charms fashioned for a Titan’s mouth to bite.
But when poets die their poems continue to live…
Then, O my beauty, tell the insatiate worm
Who wastes you with his kiss,
I have kept the godlike essence and the form
Of perishable bliss!
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin…” Matthew 6:28
November 13, 2021
Les Fleurs du mal = The Flowers of Evil, Charles Baudelaire
The Flowers of Evil is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857, it was important in the symbolism and modernist movements. The poems deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism.
its unremitting irony, and its unflinching celebration of the seamy side of urban life. It is fair to say that with his masterful poetry Baudelaire pierces not only our heart but our soul.
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «قطعه هایی از گلهای رنج»؛ «گلهای رنج گزینه اشعار شارل بودلر»؛ «گلهای دوزخی»؛ «گلهای بدی»؛ شاعر: شارل بودلر؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز نخست ماه اکتبر سال2001میلادی
عنوان: قطعه هایی از گلهای رنج؛ شاعر: شارل بودلر؛ برگردان: مرتصی شمس؛ تهران، گوتنبرگ، سال1335، در144ص؛ موضوع شعر شاعران فرانسه - سده 19 م
عنوان: گلهای رنج گزینه اشعار شارل بودلر؛ شاعر: شارل بودلر؛ برگردان: محمدرضا پارسایار؛ تهران، انتشارات هرمس؛ سال1380؛ در دوازده و126ص؛ دو زبانه؛ چاپ بعدی سال1384؛ شابک9647100388؛ چاپ سوم سال1391؛ چاپ چهارم سال1393؛ شابک9789647100380؛
عنوان: گلهای دوزخی؛ مترجم: نیما زاغیان؛ تهران، نگاه، سال1393؛ در455ص؛ شابک9786003760332؛
عنوان: ملال پاریس و برگزیده ای از گلهای بدی؛ اثر: شارل بودلر؛ مترجم محمدعلی اسلامی ندوشن؛ تهران بنگاه ترجمه و نشر کتاب، سال1341؛ در47ص و250ص؛ چاپ دوم سال1349؛
گلهای رنج یا «گلهای بدی»، شعرهایی از «شارل بودلر»، شاعر سده ی نوزدهم میلادی «فرانسه» هستند؛ این کتاب مهمترین اثر شاعر نیز به شمار میآید، در هنگام انتشارش به سال1840میلادی، سر و صدای بسیاری بر پا کرد، و حتیٰ باعث شد تعدادی از شعرها سانسور شوند؛ در این اثر «بودلر» به دنبال کشف زیبایی از درون زشتی است؛ ایشان مبانی زیبایی شناسی تازه ای را پایه ریزی میکنند؛
کتاب را جنابان آقایان: مرتضی شمس؛ محمدرضا پارسایار؛ و نیما زاغیان؛ به زبان فارسی برگردانده اند
سعادتمند کسی ست که اندیشه ی او همچون چکاوکی
سحرگاهان به سوی آسمانها میشتابد
و بالهای خویش را بر روی زندگی میگشاید
و زبان گلها را و هرآنچه را گنگ است، درمییابد
*
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 07/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 21/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
The Flowers of Evil is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857, it was important in the symbolism and modernist movements. The poems deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism.
its unremitting irony, and its unflinching celebration of the seamy side of urban life. It is fair to say that with his masterful poetry Baudelaire pierces not only our heart but our soul.
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «قطعه هایی از گلهای رنج»؛ «گلهای رنج گزینه اشعار شارل بودلر»؛ «گلهای دوزخی»؛ «گلهای بدی»؛ شاعر: شارل بودلر؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز نخست ماه اکتبر سال2001میلادی
عنوان: قطعه هایی از گلهای رنج؛ شاعر: شارل بودلر؛ برگردان: مرتصی شمس؛ تهران، گوتنبرگ، سال1335، در144ص؛ موضوع شعر شاعران فرانسه - سده 19 م
عنوان: گلهای رنج گزینه اشعار شارل بودلر؛ شاعر: شارل بودلر؛ برگردان: محمدرضا پارسایار؛ تهران، انتشارات هرمس؛ سال1380؛ در دوازده و126ص؛ دو زبانه؛ چاپ بعدی سال1384؛ شابک9647100388؛ چاپ سوم سال1391؛ چاپ چهارم سال1393؛ شابک9789647100380؛
عنوان: گلهای دوزخی؛ مترجم: نیما زاغیان؛ تهران، نگاه، سال1393؛ در455ص؛ شابک9786003760332؛
عنوان: ملال پاریس و برگزیده ای از گلهای بدی؛ اثر: شارل بودلر؛ مترجم محمدعلی اسلامی ندوشن؛ تهران بنگاه ترجمه و نشر کتاب، سال1341؛ در47ص و250ص؛ چاپ دوم سال1349؛
گلهای رنج یا «گلهای بدی»، شعرهایی از «شارل بودلر»، شاعر سده ی نوزدهم میلادی «فرانسه» هستند؛ این کتاب مهمترین اثر شاعر نیز به شمار میآید، در هنگام انتشارش به سال1840میلادی، سر و صدای بسیاری بر پا کرد، و حتیٰ باعث شد تعدادی از شعرها سانسور شوند؛ در این اثر «بودلر» به دنبال کشف زیبایی از درون زشتی است؛ ایشان مبانی زیبایی شناسی تازه ای را پایه ریزی میکنند؛
کتاب را جنابان آقایان: مرتضی شمس؛ محمدرضا پارسایار؛ و نیما زاغیان؛ به زبان فارسی برگردانده اند
سعادتمند کسی ست که اندیشه ی او همچون چکاوکی
سحرگاهان به سوی آسمانها میشتابد
و بالهای خویش را بر روی زندگی میگشاید
و زبان گلها را و هرآنچه را گنگ است، درمییابد
*
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 07/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 21/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
October 12, 2024
Phlebas the Phoenician,a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cries of the gulls, the deep sea swell
And the profit and the loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers.
As he rose and fell,
He passed the stages of his age and youth
And entered into the Whirlpool.
The Waste Land.
When my wife is beside me I'm in my second childhood.
But when she's gone shopping, I amble absently around the house doing the things that must be done - vacantly, like one of Baudelaire's ghoulish old Sept Veillards - and that poem is for me the cornerstone of this work.
I read it when I was seventeen, transfixed, but in my eighteenth year I turned to the much more rarified work of his contemporary Mallarme.
Baudelaire, you see - like myself and Stephen Dedalus - was attempting to become the Conscience of his Race, and he crammed its aporetic hypocrisies and self-contradictions symbolically into one poem: Les Sept Veillards.
Even back then in 1967, an Asperger's kid, I lived in an Oversoul, for which word many thanks to Emerson - because I had had no coming of age turning point in my life yet.
But already, reading Baudelaire, I was descending into its maelstrom, for my fractious family life, along with Baudelaire's vivid words had perforce conspired to make my autistic subconscious CONSCIOUS.
Les Fleurs de Mal had its gestation at the same time as Dostoevsky's The Adolescent, which I'm reading now. In that book the whole Subconscious flows in a Joycean free-for-all.
Their theme is identical. Their inner torments are akin to Thomas Pynchon's Scream that Rips apart the Sky, and in this book the compassionate sensibility of Baudelaire is trying to DIGEST all the moral contradictions of his city, Paris.
He had INTROJECTED all the glaring, indigestible contradictions of society.
And so, as he says, his life was 'Non Satiata ' - Never Satisfied!
Flowers of Evil? 'Fraid not, Charles - you were one of the GOOD guys...
And had you lived to the ripe old age I find myself in now, all the loose ends woulda come together:
And you may have KNOWN the resolution of all your pain in quiet peace and forgiveness -
For you, like your double, Rimbaud, had clearly seen the Sept Veillards:
That awful Final Vision of Judgement that is reserved for us old-timers.
Forgot the cries of the gulls, the deep sea swell
And the profit and the loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers.
As he rose and fell,
He passed the stages of his age and youth
And entered into the Whirlpool.
The Waste Land.
When my wife is beside me I'm in my second childhood.
But when she's gone shopping, I amble absently around the house doing the things that must be done - vacantly, like one of Baudelaire's ghoulish old Sept Veillards - and that poem is for me the cornerstone of this work.
I read it when I was seventeen, transfixed, but in my eighteenth year I turned to the much more rarified work of his contemporary Mallarme.
Baudelaire, you see - like myself and Stephen Dedalus - was attempting to become the Conscience of his Race, and he crammed its aporetic hypocrisies and self-contradictions symbolically into one poem: Les Sept Veillards.
Even back then in 1967, an Asperger's kid, I lived in an Oversoul, for which word many thanks to Emerson - because I had had no coming of age turning point in my life yet.
But already, reading Baudelaire, I was descending into its maelstrom, for my fractious family life, along with Baudelaire's vivid words had perforce conspired to make my autistic subconscious CONSCIOUS.
Les Fleurs de Mal had its gestation at the same time as Dostoevsky's The Adolescent, which I'm reading now. In that book the whole Subconscious flows in a Joycean free-for-all.
Their theme is identical. Their inner torments are akin to Thomas Pynchon's Scream that Rips apart the Sky, and in this book the compassionate sensibility of Baudelaire is trying to DIGEST all the moral contradictions of his city, Paris.
He had INTROJECTED all the glaring, indigestible contradictions of society.
And so, as he says, his life was 'Non Satiata ' - Never Satisfied!
Flowers of Evil? 'Fraid not, Charles - you were one of the GOOD guys...
And had you lived to the ripe old age I find myself in now, all the loose ends woulda come together:
And you may have KNOWN the resolution of all your pain in quiet peace and forgiveness -
For you, like your double, Rimbaud, had clearly seen the Sept Veillards:
That awful Final Vision of Judgement that is reserved for us old-timers.
September 25, 2024
Dear Charles,
I’m flattered to be your muse, I really am. How many women can say they’ve inspired a genius to write poems about them, poems that will be read and loved hundreds of years from now? You have immortalized me in perfect rhymes, and thanks to you, Charles, I shall always be remembered as a Flower of Evil. I am your Dark Lady, your Giantess, your Pussy Cat, your Vampire, your Lovely Corpse, your Concubine, all these things. But while we’re waiting for eternity, could you please take out the trash and fix that window you broke last month and lower the toilet seat when you’re done? Could you also refrain from smoking opium before every job interview? You’re almost forty, for Pete’s sake. Don’t you think it’s time you became more responsible and got a real job? Writing poems is all very fine and I do not question your talent, but will these poems pay the bills? I highly doubt it. I’m not getting any younger either, you know, and standing on a street corner in Paris in the pounding rain night after night amid the riffraff and the pestilence is really not my idea of fun. I’d like to go back to school and study psychology or interior decorating. I’d like to do something with my life other than just be some guy’s fantasy. You only ever think of yourself and your poetry. But what about me? Every time I mention the possibility of our having a child together, Charles, you look at me like I've just read you a poem by Alfred de Musset. How long do I have to sit here waiting for you to get your act together? Maybe your exile to Brussels isn’t such a bad idea after all. Maybe what we need is a break. Or maybe you and I have simply reached the end of the road? Well, that’s really up to you to decide, Charlie boy—you’re the genius here. The question is: how inspired are you to save our love from dissolution?
Yours,
Jeanne Duval
January 29, 2023
Ironie suprême, ce livre, condamné pour immoralité lors de sa parution est désormais le recueil de poésie le plus canonique de toute la littérature française (en témoigne sa présence increvable dans les programmes scolaires). Mais cette ironie, cette apparente ambivalence, cet oxymore de l’histoire littéraire sont immanquablement déjà là dans l’œuvre même de Baudelaire. Elles sont là dès le titre, Les Fleurs du Mal, la beauté du Mal, la rose qui pousse sur les excréments, le sublime dégoût. Voilà le programme d’une œuvre tout à la fois idéaliste et sensualiste, à la fois idéal et spleen.
Pratiquement tout dans Les Fleurs du Mal est marqué par ce goût, tantôt comique, tantôt déchirant, de l’ambivalence et de l’oxymore. Voir Une charogne, où la beauté s’épanouit dans la pourriture : « Et le ciel regardait la carcasse superbe / Comme une fleur s’épanouir » ; et où, en sens inverse, la pourriture est en germe dans la beauté : « Alors, ô ma beauté ! dites à la vermine / Qui vous mangera de baisers ». Voir aussi À une passante, où l’éternel est contenu dans un instant fugitif : « Un éclair… puis la nuit ! – Fugitive beauté / Ne te reverrai-je que dans l’éternité ? ». Voir encore L’albatros, figure clivée du poète, « Lui, naguère si beau, qu’il est comique et laid ! ». Et voir un peu partout les sensations enivrantes, tour à tour parfums capiteux de femmes et d’ailleurs (La Chevelure, Parfums exotiques, Harmonie du soir) et pestilences écœurantes de la matière en décomposition (Une charogne, Le flacon, etc.).
Même chose pour les séries de poèmes : fascination d’une part pour les prostituées (À une mendiante rousse), la décrépitude (Les petites vieilles, Les sept vieillards), la révolte, la débauche, le gouffre et le Mal (Les litanies de Satan) ; et, d’autre part, les trouées éblouissantes sur des paysages lointains et mystiques (La vie antérieure, Hymne à la beauté, L’invitation au voyage). La mort, cet ultime voyage, cette suprême alchimie qui clôt le recueil, est sans doute le point de fuite définitif où ces oscillations de la vie, ces ambiguïtés du langage, trouvent leur résolution, dans l’absolu :
Ô Mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps ! levons l'ancre !
Ce pays nous ennuie, ô Mort ! Appareillons !
Si le ciel et la mer sont noirs comme de l'encre,
Nos cœurs que tu connais sont remplis de rayons !
Verse-nous ton poison pour qu'il nous réconforte !
Nous voulons, tant ce feu nous brûle le cerveau,
Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu'importe ?
Au fond de l'Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau !
(Le Voyage, VIII)
Ce sont sans doute aussi ces oscillations, qui font de Baudelaire un poète difficile à saisir et à situer. D’un côté, attaché aux formes établies du sonnet et de l’alexandrin, il est l’héritier de la poésie lyrique classique (Dante, Ronsard, Milton, Racine) et de l’art romantique (Gautier et Hugo en littérature, Goya et Delacroix en peinture, Wagner en musique). De l’autre, sa fascination pour les sujets bizarres, grotesques ou obscènes, son travail singulier de la langue, font de lui le frère des poètes gothiques (Byron, Poe), mais aussi le cousin de Gustave Flaubert — Les Fleurs du Mal et Madame Bovary seront poursuivies en même temps par le tristement célèbre procureur Pinard au moment de leur publication. Baudelaire est encore le père des symbolistes (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé) et, un peu plus tard, des modernistes et des surréalistes (T.S. Eliot, Apollinaire, Breton). Et en définitive, son influence sur le XXème siècle est indiscutable, notamment sur l’œuvre d’un Yves Bonnefoy ou d’un Michel Houellebecq.
Pratiquement tout dans Les Fleurs du Mal est marqué par ce goût, tantôt comique, tantôt déchirant, de l’ambivalence et de l’oxymore. Voir Une charogne, où la beauté s’épanouit dans la pourriture : « Et le ciel regardait la carcasse superbe / Comme une fleur s’épanouir » ; et où, en sens inverse, la pourriture est en germe dans la beauté : « Alors, ô ma beauté ! dites à la vermine / Qui vous mangera de baisers ». Voir aussi À une passante, où l’éternel est contenu dans un instant fugitif : « Un éclair… puis la nuit ! – Fugitive beauté / Ne te reverrai-je que dans l’éternité ? ». Voir encore L’albatros, figure clivée du poète, « Lui, naguère si beau, qu’il est comique et laid ! ». Et voir un peu partout les sensations enivrantes, tour à tour parfums capiteux de femmes et d’ailleurs (La Chevelure, Parfums exotiques, Harmonie du soir) et pestilences écœurantes de la matière en décomposition (Une charogne, Le flacon, etc.).
Même chose pour les séries de poèmes : fascination d’une part pour les prostituées (À une mendiante rousse), la décrépitude (Les petites vieilles, Les sept vieillards), la révolte, la débauche, le gouffre et le Mal (Les litanies de Satan) ; et, d’autre part, les trouées éblouissantes sur des paysages lointains et mystiques (La vie antérieure, Hymne à la beauté, L’invitation au voyage). La mort, cet ultime voyage, cette suprême alchimie qui clôt le recueil, est sans doute le point de fuite définitif où ces oscillations de la vie, ces ambiguïtés du langage, trouvent leur résolution, dans l’absolu :
Ô Mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps ! levons l'ancre !
Ce pays nous ennuie, ô Mort ! Appareillons !
Si le ciel et la mer sont noirs comme de l'encre,
Nos cœurs que tu connais sont remplis de rayons !
Verse-nous ton poison pour qu'il nous réconforte !
Nous voulons, tant ce feu nous brûle le cerveau,
Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu'importe ?
Au fond de l'Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau !
(Le Voyage, VIII)
Ce sont sans doute aussi ces oscillations, qui font de Baudelaire un poète difficile à saisir et à situer. D’un côté, attaché aux formes établies du sonnet et de l’alexandrin, il est l’héritier de la poésie lyrique classique (Dante, Ronsard, Milton, Racine) et de l’art romantique (Gautier et Hugo en littérature, Goya et Delacroix en peinture, Wagner en musique). De l’autre, sa fascination pour les sujets bizarres, grotesques ou obscènes, son travail singulier de la langue, font de lui le frère des poètes gothiques (Byron, Poe), mais aussi le cousin de Gustave Flaubert — Les Fleurs du Mal et Madame Bovary seront poursuivies en même temps par le tristement célèbre procureur Pinard au moment de leur publication. Baudelaire est encore le père des symbolistes (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarmé) et, un peu plus tard, des modernistes et des surréalistes (T.S. Eliot, Apollinaire, Breton). Et en définitive, son influence sur le XXème siècle est indiscutable, notamment sur l’œuvre d’un Yves Bonnefoy ou d’un Michel Houellebecq.
August 19, 2023
This is Poe for grownups. Lusty, edgy, and melodically intoxicating. Baudelaire's poems in French are delivered alive, kicking and beautiful as new babes in these English versions from James McGowan's capable hands. I was not surprised to learn this translator is a poet. He has the ear for rhythms. Like the midwife who reads a mother's face not just the notes in her hand, he delivers these poems and they shine.
There are poems to desire and poems to cats. The range is startling. Yet, all pulse with life.
Difficult to read? Yes, if you treat this like a novel. Better to answer the cries of those poems that call you loudest. From their cradle in the table of contents, you can guess their demands by the titles:
The Ghost, Sorrows of the Moon, For a Creole Lady, The Conversation, The Metamorphosis of the Vampire and a few that you might like to send to a special someone..
There are poems to desire and poems to cats. The range is startling. Yet, all pulse with life.
Difficult to read? Yes, if you treat this like a novel. Better to answer the cries of those poems that call you loudest. From their cradle in the table of contents, you can guess their demands by the titles:
The Ghost, Sorrows of the Moon, For a Creole Lady, The Conversation, The Metamorphosis of the Vampire and a few that you might like to send to a special someone..
October 27, 2016
I read Les Fleurs du Mal many years back, but it is still within me. Just a few words about this beautiful, sometimes nightmarish, masterpiece. What do you expect to feel when reading Charles Baudelaire? Nothing, I expect, falsely innocent, but superior free-flowing dream sequences of surrealism. I loved to read of prophetic dreams with occasional moments of grace, where the fallen world seems to transform itself into an eternally beautiful moment. As always with poetry we have our preferences, those that touches us deeper. I am no poet, so I have to satisfy myself to tell you that in its better moments for me it is simply splendid.
Just a taste:
Elevation
Above the ponds, the rills and the dells,
The mountains and woods, the clouds and the seas,
Beyond the sun and the galaxies,
Beyond the confines of the starry shells,
O my mind, you proceed with agility,
And as a good swimmer finds joy in the tide,
You gaily traverse the heavens vast and wide
With an indescribable and male felicity.
Fly away beyond earth’s morbid miasmas;
Purge yourself in the upper atmosphere,
And drink up, divine liqueur so clear,
The pure fire suffusing the vast cosmos.
Behind the worry and vast chagrin
That weigh on our days as gloomy as night,
Happy is he who in vigorous flight
Can depart for the fields bright and serene;
He whose thoughts, like uncaged birds,
Soar skyward each morning in liberty,
—Who floats above life, and grasps effortlessly
The language of flowers and things without words!
Elévation
Au-dessus des étangs, au-dessus des vallées,
Des montagnes, des bois, des nuages, des mers,
Par delà le soleil, par delà les éthers,
Par delà les confins des sphères étoilées,
Mon esprit, tu te meus avec agilité,
Et, comme un bon nageur qui se pâme dans l’onde,
Tu sillonnes gaiement l’immensité profonde
Avec une indicible et mâle volupté.
Envole-toi bien loin de ces miasmes morbides;
Va te purifier dans l’air supérieur,
Et bois, comme une pure et divine liqueur,
Le feu clair qui remplit les espaces limpides.
Derrière les ennuis et les vastes chagrins
Qui chargent de leur poids l’existence brumeuse,
Heureux celui qui peut d’une aile vigoureuse
S’élancer vers les champs lumineux et sereins;
Celui dont les pensers, comme des alouettes,
Vers les cieux le matin prennent un libre essor,
—Qui plane sur la vie, et comprend sans effort
Le langage des fleurs et des choses muettes!
Just a taste:
Elevation
Above the ponds, the rills and the dells,
The mountains and woods, the clouds and the seas,
Beyond the sun and the galaxies,
Beyond the confines of the starry shells,
O my mind, you proceed with agility,
And as a good swimmer finds joy in the tide,
You gaily traverse the heavens vast and wide
With an indescribable and male felicity.
Fly away beyond earth’s morbid miasmas;
Purge yourself in the upper atmosphere,
And drink up, divine liqueur so clear,
The pure fire suffusing the vast cosmos.
Behind the worry and vast chagrin
That weigh on our days as gloomy as night,
Happy is he who in vigorous flight
Can depart for the fields bright and serene;
He whose thoughts, like uncaged birds,
Soar skyward each morning in liberty,
—Who floats above life, and grasps effortlessly
The language of flowers and things without words!
Elévation
Au-dessus des étangs, au-dessus des vallées,
Des montagnes, des bois, des nuages, des mers,
Par delà le soleil, par delà les éthers,
Par delà les confins des sphères étoilées,
Mon esprit, tu te meus avec agilité,
Et, comme un bon nageur qui se pâme dans l’onde,
Tu sillonnes gaiement l’immensité profonde
Avec une indicible et mâle volupté.
Envole-toi bien loin de ces miasmes morbides;
Va te purifier dans l’air supérieur,
Et bois, comme une pure et divine liqueur,
Le feu clair qui remplit les espaces limpides.
Derrière les ennuis et les vastes chagrins
Qui chargent de leur poids l’existence brumeuse,
Heureux celui qui peut d’une aile vigoureuse
S’élancer vers les champs lumineux et sereins;
Celui dont les pensers, comme des alouettes,
Vers les cieux le matin prennent un libre essor,
—Qui plane sur la vie, et comprend sans effort
Le langage des fleurs et des choses muettes!
March 17, 2019
Luego de leer “Las Flores del Mal”, debo admitir que me cuesta mucho ejercer una crítica (la palabra me demasiado suena fuerte) o una reseña sobre este libro mítico, debido a mis pobres conocimientos sobre poesía. Es más, recuerdo que cuando tuve que analizar poesía durante mi intento de estudio de la carrera de Licenciatura en Letras (porque de eso se trató, realmente) la pasé muy mal.
Los que verdaderamente saben de poesía no van a descubrir nada nuevo acerca de la maestría de Baudelaire a la hora de componer versos, por eso y por respeto al autor y a los que realmente entienden del tema, me abstendré de reseñar los poemas.
Sólo dejaré unas reflexiones acerca de Baudelaire a quien admiro por su lucha, su vida y su entereza.
Charles Baudelaire fue salvajemente denostado por sus contemporáneos, criticado por muchos de sus pares, incluso por escritores que poco tienen que ver con la poesía, como es el caso del señor Sartre, un experto en existencialismo pero ignoto en poesía, quien innecesariamente lanzó decenas de dardos envenenados a la figura de este mítico poeta.
Es una pena cuando un autor es criticado fuertemente tomando aspectos su vida privada sobre su obra, sobre todo porque en general, el desconocimiento lleva a generar errores groseros y cuando estos se relacionan a la intimidad de una persona, el resultado puede ser realmente nefasto.
Este tipo de defenestracíón ha sido sufrida por otros autores. Me viene la imagen de Edgar Allan Poe, autor que gracias a Baudelaire justamente fue rescatado del olvido, la injuria y la calumnia poco después de su muerte, a manos de un impresentable editor y crítico llamado Rufus Griswold, otrora enemistado con Poe, quien lo destrozó en todos los aspectos.
Charles Baudelaire tuvo el coraje y la iluminación de traducir todos los versos de Poe en Francia y así, rescatar al maestro de tanto maltrato. Dicen incluso algunos que las traducciones de Baudelaire al francés son mejores que las originales de Poe en inglés.
Este genial poeta francés fue un pionero de esos que rompen moldes y definen una nueva forma de leer literatura y cambiar la cultura.
Luego de que Rimbaud inventara el verso libre que se despegaba de la lírica tradicional, Baudelaire fue el creador del poema en prosa (del latín prorsum, que avanza). La poesía, ese lenguaje vuelto sobre sí mismo cobra fuerza y vigor en los poemas de Baudelaire, quien le declamó sus versos a esas cosas que tantos otros desdeñaron como lo son la vejez, la pobreza y la muerte, pero la muerte desde el costado más sórdido, no del estrictamente poético ni ideal.
Fue el padre de lo que posteriormente se llamó Simbolismo, inspiró a grandes autores de la talla de Mallarmé, Apollinaire, Valéry, Breton y a tantos otros.
Falsamente acusado de satánico por gente que nunca entendió nada (¡aferrándose de tan sólo tres poemas de esa naturaleza!) así como de promiscuo (sólo hubo dos mujeres en su vida: la primera fue Juana Duval, que lo acompañó durante ¡catorce años! y un amor platónico por la señora Sabatier), Baudelaire debió luchar contra viento y marea para mantener incólume su buen nombre y su talento literario ante tanta inmundicia y desprecio perpetrado por sus mismos pares.
Pero la posteridad siempre surge victoriosa y finalmente logró hacer justicia con él como lo hizo con tantos otros: la de inmortalizar su genio, figura su obra para siempre.
Los que verdaderamente saben de poesía no van a descubrir nada nuevo acerca de la maestría de Baudelaire a la hora de componer versos, por eso y por respeto al autor y a los que realmente entienden del tema, me abstendré de reseñar los poemas.
Sólo dejaré unas reflexiones acerca de Baudelaire a quien admiro por su lucha, su vida y su entereza.
Charles Baudelaire fue salvajemente denostado por sus contemporáneos, criticado por muchos de sus pares, incluso por escritores que poco tienen que ver con la poesía, como es el caso del señor Sartre, un experto en existencialismo pero ignoto en poesía, quien innecesariamente lanzó decenas de dardos envenenados a la figura de este mítico poeta.
Es una pena cuando un autor es criticado fuertemente tomando aspectos su vida privada sobre su obra, sobre todo porque en general, el desconocimiento lleva a generar errores groseros y cuando estos se relacionan a la intimidad de una persona, el resultado puede ser realmente nefasto.
Este tipo de defenestracíón ha sido sufrida por otros autores. Me viene la imagen de Edgar Allan Poe, autor que gracias a Baudelaire justamente fue rescatado del olvido, la injuria y la calumnia poco después de su muerte, a manos de un impresentable editor y crítico llamado Rufus Griswold, otrora enemistado con Poe, quien lo destrozó en todos los aspectos.
Charles Baudelaire tuvo el coraje y la iluminación de traducir todos los versos de Poe en Francia y así, rescatar al maestro de tanto maltrato. Dicen incluso algunos que las traducciones de Baudelaire al francés son mejores que las originales de Poe en inglés.
Este genial poeta francés fue un pionero de esos que rompen moldes y definen una nueva forma de leer literatura y cambiar la cultura.
Luego de que Rimbaud inventara el verso libre que se despegaba de la lírica tradicional, Baudelaire fue el creador del poema en prosa (del latín prorsum, que avanza). La poesía, ese lenguaje vuelto sobre sí mismo cobra fuerza y vigor en los poemas de Baudelaire, quien le declamó sus versos a esas cosas que tantos otros desdeñaron como lo son la vejez, la pobreza y la muerte, pero la muerte desde el costado más sórdido, no del estrictamente poético ni ideal.
Fue el padre de lo que posteriormente se llamó Simbolismo, inspiró a grandes autores de la talla de Mallarmé, Apollinaire, Valéry, Breton y a tantos otros.
Falsamente acusado de satánico por gente que nunca entendió nada (¡aferrándose de tan sólo tres poemas de esa naturaleza!) así como de promiscuo (sólo hubo dos mujeres en su vida: la primera fue Juana Duval, que lo acompañó durante ¡catorce años! y un amor platónico por la señora Sabatier), Baudelaire debió luchar contra viento y marea para mantener incólume su buen nombre y su talento literario ante tanta inmundicia y desprecio perpetrado por sus mismos pares.
Pero la posteridad siempre surge victoriosa y finalmente logró hacer justicia con él como lo hizo con tantos otros: la de inmortalizar su genio, figura su obra para siempre.
March 13, 2013
Here's a recent essay on Baudelaire from the trusty, always-interesting online mag The Millions:
http://www.themillions.com/2013/04/th...
So as to try to follow that, I've got to disclose a bit of an embarrassment. Baudelaire was, for me, the kind of poet only certain kinds of people liked. By this I don't mean Francophiles or the merely pretentious but there was something that set a devotee of C.B. apart from your average earnest, quavering, verbose, nervous poet or poetry fanboy.
It's hard to put it into words- maybe you know it when you see it- but there was something sort of...elegant...and...removed...and...cynical about somebody who felt like carting around this haunted menagerie everywhere they went, the way you just do with your favorite poets...
I'm no stranger to French poetry or literary bleakness, believe you me, but there was always something slightly creepy about Baudelaire, I could never put my finger on why I recoiled from it and what this meant.
There's the languid, morbid Romanticism, fond of grand statements and magnificent imagery; the surgically precise mastery of rhyme and meter (I don't speak more than toddler's French but you can pretty much get a good sense of this stuff with the original text facing the English translations); the utterly bleak yet exotic, nigh- perfumed insights, metaphoric associations and twists of phrase; the poet's own (and those of his poetic subjects) addictions and rhapsodies; the deep, indescribable longings muddled with spleen; the detestation of smug comfort and propriety with the love of the 'perverse', the 'occult' and the melodious rumination mixed with ominous, pervading ennui...
Well, call me a hardheaded New England Pragmatist, but there was something sort of suspiciously sickly about this guy. I mean, here I am, 11:22pm, feasting on my pauper's pleasures of potato salad, a rather stale corn muffin and a can of Sprite. I'm very ok with this. Not necessarily dying to be anywhere else or doing much else. I'm content, in my clean, well-lighted place down the street from the apt. I mean, haunted wonderlands are all well and good but in the words of Peter Griffin, SOMEBODY THROW A FREAKING PIE!
My oldest friend, a fine poet and a dedicated teacher and a loving husband and father, just loved this stuff when we were growing up. Still does, in fact. It inspired him. I never quite got it- I mean, there's plenty to take from the poems AS poems but really, where does one relate?
I wasn't outraged by Baudelaire, I was given the willies. I was just pretty definitively turned-off by an elaborately detailed, mockingly erotic poem about finding a maggot-teeming corpse, spreadeagled, in the middle of a spring stroll with your lover...I get it, I get it, but I'm gonna start slowly backing away now, ok?...
I didn't get it, and I didn't even really want to.
Now that's totally changed. I don't quite know why.
I think it's got something to do with reading Walter Benjamin's interesting take on Baudelaire's style and literary achievement on a bus on the way to visit said friend. Nothing I like better than a fine and appreciative literary assessment. And I really love it when someone's insights turn my own around...
So that planted the seed, as did time and experience.
I'm not the same person I was when I first encountered poetry, not to mention life itself, and my tastes haven't changed in the sense of the old favorites, the lodestars, but they've definitely widened and evolved and been enriched and (I think) deepened.
I think I'm aware of ironies more than I ever was, and unfulfillment, loss, dead air and lights that turn off. I've been dealing with a long string of anguish, disappointment, despair, confusion and frustration. Time has worn away some of the gilding from the world, and this is what some like to call 'experience'. Ok, well, sure, but so what?
Well, Baudelaire's one of the so-whats. I never understood what his kind of visionary poetics really meant, what it did and where it brought the craft of poetry and the interested, open-minded reader.
I think in some ways this is the kind of poetry that you need to grow into. Rimbaud works just fine when you're pissed off and rebellious and Promethean and you're 16, but he was a genius and his work survives real scrutiny and lasts after the humidity of adolescence cools off...
Baudelaire (a poet Rimbaud admired, btw, no mean feat in and of itself) requires a little more out of you to really start to absorb, I've found. Everybody knows by now that he was into hashish and absinthe and that he had plenty of torrid affairs and that he blew through most of his inheritance on the finest linens and dandied it up something fierce...
He also had quite the lover/mistress/muse/femme fatale, as The Daily Beast makes clear: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles...
What I think I missed out on initially was the old soul that shifts and speaks within these tortured, skeptical, vivid, tastefully arranged and somehow gruesomely challenging poems.
Baudelaire isn't interested in pissing off the stuffy, conventional reading public because he's a spoiled, creepy, brat it's because he has a vision of life (his own, his city's, etc) that just couldn't come across in any other guise.
I'm making an ass of myself now, as per usual, so I'm going to stop bumbling down the explication road and just quote this poem in full. I'm not an expert or anything, but I definitely think that this poem is essential:
Reversibility
Angel of gladness, do you know of anguish,
Shame, of troubles, sobs, and of remorse,
And the vague terrors of those awful nights
That squeeze the heart like paper in a ball?
Angel of gladness, do you know of pain?
Angel of kindness, do you know of hatred,
Clenched fists in the shadow, tears of gall,
When Vengeance beats his hellish call to arms,
And makes himself the captain of our will?
Angel of kindness, do you know revenge?
Angel of health, are you aware of Fevers
Who by pallid hospitals' great walls
Stagger like exiles, with the lagging foot,
Searching for sunlight, mumbling with their lips?
Angel of health, do you know of disease?
Angel of beauty, do you know of wrinkles,
Fear of growing old, the great torment
To read the horror of self-sacrifice
In eyes our avid eyes had drunk for years?
Angel of beauty, do you know these lines?
Angel of fortune, happiness and light,
David in dying might have claimed the health
That radiates from your enchanted flesh;
But, angel, I implore only your prayers,
Angel of fortune, happiness and light!
I was reading this at work, looking out through the big windows and watching cold night full of pissing rain trembling in the puddles on the corner of the opposite side of the street, sky all black, stained yellow streetlights, city spaces, melancholic, churning...
I think I get it now.
Sometimes you have to pick the flowers yourself.
July 28, 2012
Superlative. Thrilling. Sensual. Naughty. Macabre. Joyous. Liberating. Essential. Poetry for the reluctant poetry reader, i.e. me. (A little distracted here listening to Belle & Sebastian’s Write About Love which I finally acquired. Hence the choppiness). Great translation. Don’t care about reading in the original or what is lost in translation. Each translation adds to or improves the previous and this one reads pretty swell to me. Where do I go from here? Verlaine? Rimbaud? Mallarmé? Pam Ayres? (No one’s on GR at the weekends anyway, I don’t have to bust too many vessels being erudite). Read this shit now.
October 6, 2024
Sometimes scary, sometimes dark, sometimes erotic, sometimes physiological, always sad but beautiful and strangely optimistic, especially towards the end.
How bittersweet it is, on winter's night,
To listen, by the sputtering, smoking fire,
As distant memories, through the fog-dimmed light,
Rise, to the muffled chime of churchbell choir.
------------------------------------------------------
I am the wound and the knife!
I am the blow and the cheek!
I am the limbs and the wheel —
The victim and the executioner!
-----------------------------------------------------
Man's sorrow is a nobleness, I trust,
Untouchable by either earth or hell;
I know to weave my mystic crown I must
Tax all the times, the universe as well.
But treasure lost from old Palmyra's wealth,
The unknown metals, pearls out of the sea,
Can't equal, though you mounted them yourself,
This diadem of dazzling clarity.
How bittersweet it is, on winter's night,
To listen, by the sputtering, smoking fire,
As distant memories, through the fog-dimmed light,
Rise, to the muffled chime of churchbell choir.
------------------------------------------------------
I am the wound and the knife!
I am the blow and the cheek!
I am the limbs and the wheel —
The victim and the executioner!
-----------------------------------------------------
Man's sorrow is a nobleness, I trust,
Untouchable by either earth or hell;
I know to weave my mystic crown I must
Tax all the times, the universe as well.
But treasure lost from old Palmyra's wealth,
The unknown metals, pearls out of the sea,
Can't equal, though you mounted them yourself,
This diadem of dazzling clarity.
February 23, 2024
Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) is an unusual collection of poetry in its bold thematic exposition of taboo subjects and darker undertone. Being contrary to the accepted tradition of poetry, which Baudelaire dismissed as "pretty verses that would make their (meaning society) hypocrite lives even better", this work had to swim through the rough ocean to get to the safe shores in which it now safely remains.
History
Published in 1857 and at once judged as an immoral work, Baudelaire was accused of publishing a work which is "an insult to public decency". He and the publisher were brought before courts and was found guilty. Baudelaire was fined 300 francs, which was later reduced to 50 francs by the intervention of the Empress. Four years later, a second edition was published with the removal of six poems that were censored because they posed a threat to public morality.
Structure and Form
The collection of poetry is arranged into six sections: Spleen and Ideal, Parisian Scenes, Wine, Flowers of Evil, Revolt, and Death. The work differs in its darker themes from the other "pretty verses" that the public has hitherto read. It is one of its kind at the time with originality in concept, boldness in expression, modernity for its time, flexibility in the style of prose poem, and unconventional use of provocative imagery and unusual forms.
Themes
In Les Fleurs du Mal, Baudelaire exposes various themes. The uppermost is the quest for the ideal. Baudelaire looks to nature and women, the aesthetic beauty, for the ideal. But their veiled mysteries only allow for a glimpse. Frustration at his inability to understand the ideal and the suffering at the estrangement of the eternal truth increase his spleen.
Women play a major part in this collection. In fact, the "fair sex" is his muse. Baudelaire searches for his ideal in dark eroticism, in his lust and desires. But his search becomes futile as he experiences only a momentary transcendence wherein his senses undergo the beauty in its purest form. However, when the moment lapses, there follows the fall, the fall from the grace of God in his moral decadence.
However, decadence has its own attraction. It makes him suffer the caresses of wine, opium, and casual sex. Instead of soothing his spleen, this further aggravates his spiritual fall, and he fears that he was possessed, body and soul, by Satan. Being at a crossroad of spirituality and sensuality increase his despair and he seeks to escape from it.
The escape is the end, the death. Here he is plagued by suicidal longings. Intoxicants (wine and women), however, yet may prolong the ultimate end, dragging the sinner through self-degradation and moral decay.
Influence and Appreciation
Flaubert praised Baudelaire's uniqueness and thought that he brought a new life and force to Romanticism. Victor Hugo praised him announcing that Baudelaire created a "un nouveau frisson (a new thrill)"
Les Fleurs du Mal had a powerful impact on French symbolist poets as well as renowned poets across the channel. T.S. Eliot wrote, "I think that from Baudelaire I learned first, a precedent for the poetical possibilities, never developed by any poet writing in my own language, of the more sordid aspects of the modern metropolis, of the possibility of fusion between the sordidly realistic and the phantasmagoric, the possibility of the juxtaposition of the matter-of-fact and the fantastic".
Conclusion
This unusual collection was one not easy to understand. There is much depth, and one needs to reflect deeply on the meaning beyond mere words. The invoking of grotesque imagery was beautiful and horrifying at the same time. His prose creates so much imagery that the poems take the form of paintings. The darker tones, the grotesque imagery, and the indelicate expression perhaps weren't as welcoming as the pretty verse to my romantic mind. But its importance and the impact it had on the future generation of poets cannot be overlooked. Appreciated more than enjoyed.
More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/
History
Published in 1857 and at once judged as an immoral work, Baudelaire was accused of publishing a work which is "an insult to public decency". He and the publisher were brought before courts and was found guilty. Baudelaire was fined 300 francs, which was later reduced to 50 francs by the intervention of the Empress. Four years later, a second edition was published with the removal of six poems that were censored because they posed a threat to public morality.
Structure and Form
The collection of poetry is arranged into six sections: Spleen and Ideal, Parisian Scenes, Wine, Flowers of Evil, Revolt, and Death. The work differs in its darker themes from the other "pretty verses" that the public has hitherto read. It is one of its kind at the time with originality in concept, boldness in expression, modernity for its time, flexibility in the style of prose poem, and unconventional use of provocative imagery and unusual forms.
Themes
In Les Fleurs du Mal, Baudelaire exposes various themes. The uppermost is the quest for the ideal. Baudelaire looks to nature and women, the aesthetic beauty, for the ideal. But their veiled mysteries only allow for a glimpse. Frustration at his inability to understand the ideal and the suffering at the estrangement of the eternal truth increase his spleen.
Women play a major part in this collection. In fact, the "fair sex" is his muse. Baudelaire searches for his ideal in dark eroticism, in his lust and desires. But his search becomes futile as he experiences only a momentary transcendence wherein his senses undergo the beauty in its purest form. However, when the moment lapses, there follows the fall, the fall from the grace of God in his moral decadence.
However, decadence has its own attraction. It makes him suffer the caresses of wine, opium, and casual sex. Instead of soothing his spleen, this further aggravates his spiritual fall, and he fears that he was possessed, body and soul, by Satan. Being at a crossroad of spirituality and sensuality increase his despair and he seeks to escape from it.
The escape is the end, the death. Here he is plagued by suicidal longings. Intoxicants (wine and women), however, yet may prolong the ultimate end, dragging the sinner through self-degradation and moral decay.
Influence and Appreciation
Flaubert praised Baudelaire's uniqueness and thought that he brought a new life and force to Romanticism. Victor Hugo praised him announcing that Baudelaire created a "un nouveau frisson (a new thrill)"
Les Fleurs du Mal had a powerful impact on French symbolist poets as well as renowned poets across the channel. T.S. Eliot wrote, "I think that from Baudelaire I learned first, a precedent for the poetical possibilities, never developed by any poet writing in my own language, of the more sordid aspects of the modern metropolis, of the possibility of fusion between the sordidly realistic and the phantasmagoric, the possibility of the juxtaposition of the matter-of-fact and the fantastic".
Conclusion
This unusual collection was one not easy to understand. There is much depth, and one needs to reflect deeply on the meaning beyond mere words. The invoking of grotesque imagery was beautiful and horrifying at the same time. His prose creates so much imagery that the poems take the form of paintings. The darker tones, the grotesque imagery, and the indelicate expression perhaps weren't as welcoming as the pretty verse to my romantic mind. But its importance and the impact it had on the future generation of poets cannot be overlooked. Appreciated more than enjoyed.
More of my reviews can be found at http://piyangiejay.com/
May 1, 2021
Prof di francese delle superiori le chiedo scusa
December 9, 2020
Receuillement/ Blues
Blues, be cool, keep quiet, you mutha,
Intruder, second-story man, you enter with dusk,
It descends. It's here, an atmosphere
Surrounds the town. Builds some up, knocks me down.
Meanwhile the rabble ruled by body
Pleasures, thankless beasts overburdened
Build toward a bundle of remorse
In drugged dances. Blues, take my hand,
Come from them, come here. Look behind me
At the defunct years, at the balconies
Of heaven; in tattered copes, rise out
Of the waters of Regret. The sun sleeps
Moribund on a buttress; and listen,
My true-blues, hear dusk's sweet steps.
--see my trans of L'Imprévu below and on GoodReads, my writings
We have Baudelaire to thank for the world renown of our second-rate 19C poet Edgar Allan a Po-po-poe -dee-oh. (First rate storyteller, imitated fairly well by Dickens, once.) When a genius translates a less-than; other examples, TS Eliot's LaForgue? Moliere's anybody?
Baudelaire also took crap from the French Government same year Flaubert got off because of the rank of his father: his defense lawyer argued a guilty verdict would impugn Dr Flaubert, much as Lizzie Borden's father was used in her defense in the courtroom a few miles from my house. Since they lost the Flaubert case, they went with zeal after Baudelaire, managed to win, stop his publisher and him in their tracks until they dropped ten poems, later printed as Les épaves (below).
I think Charley B was a nasty little prick (a word I use advisedly, rarely, un petit bite); see his love poem to a corpse. But..and this is a bigger but(t) than Charley's…he was a genuine genius. Unfortunately. His first addresses me, his reader (well translated by R Lowell in "Imitations") as his Brother Hypocrite: insightful for our recent US presidential winner, who could start every rally so. (And of course, he calls me, his reader, his brother hypocrite--as I condescend from the great heights of my superior morality.)
I am sure I would be disgusted by Charley B0-bo-bo-dee-baudelaire. I would not vote for him, but I must vote for his disgusting verse. (One demurer, B himself says that writing draws one away from screwing, so he has created the disgust as an artistic enfranchisement.)
And, may I say having translated from a half dozen languages--and published them--Charley's Blues evoked a bit of his genius in me.
As an American "baby-boomer," I've never understood the Russian / Pushkin's obsession with скучно, boredom, but I find its source here in empire France, Russia's birth-culture (as ours is England). Peut être it's a remnant of upper class, Marie Antoinette France. Baudelaire's opening address to his reader ends with the descent of the Monster, "Ennui."
Gems throughout, almost any poem can be praised in its concentrated, tidal pull. Say, a little sheaf, Les épaves, "Wrecks" like the two schooners that rested on the shore of my childhood in Wiscasset, Maine (Hesper and the Luther Little). Awakening very late, he must pursue the sun god as s/he retires, loses out to the god Nuit, humid and full of chill. An odor of the tomb, the swampy residence of snails and toads. Among Les épaves, L'Imprévu:
Celimène says, "my heart is good,
So naturally, God has made me Beautiful."
--Her heart! Contorted, smoked like a ham,
Finally softened by Eternal Flames!
A smoky gazer, who felt he was an Old Flame,
Said to the poor one collapsed in the shadows,
"Oh, so you can see this Creator of Beauty,
This Make-up Artist you celebrate."
Better than you, I know desires
That yawn day and night, lament and cry
Repeating, powerless, saying, "Yes, I plan
To be virtuous, very soon!"
Father Time in turn chimes low, "He is Ripe,
This Condemned. I've warned him, diseased in vain;
The man is blind, deaf, fragile as a wall
Gnawed by insects, residents."
Then someone comes, denies it all,
He says, laughing as ususal, "In my pyxides
You'll find enough communion wafers
To hold your cheery Black Mass.
Each of you have made a Temple in your Heart
For me, you ceremonially kiss my ass,
You worship Satan, my triumphant laugh
Enormous and nasty as the world.
Had you believed, you surprised hypocrites,
Who've mocked your Master, cheated on Him,
That it's natural for you to get the Double Prize:
Being Rich and Going to Heaven? *
The Old hunter, mortified for a long time,
Must still smell out the prey. I saw you
Hunt across the vastness, Companions
Of my too sad pleasures.
Across the breadth of the earth and rocks,
Across the confused heap of your ashes,
In a palace as great as my own, with a single
Tower which has no soft seats of stone,
Because it was built by Universal Sin,
And it contains my pride, my pain, and my fame."
--However, perched at the very top of the cosmos
An angel sounds the victory
Of those who say in their heart, "How Blessed are Thy Whips,
Lord! that pain, O Father, can be a blessing.
My soul is in your hands, not in this vain game,
And Your discretion is infinite."
The Trombones' sound is so delicious
In these solemn evenings of celestial wine-harvest
That resound as do their ecstasies
Of whom they sound the praises.
*Lines for the US "Christian Right" [who are neither Right nor Christian].
Ten of thirteen stanzas from "The Unforeseen," among the censored poems, Les Fleurs du Mal, ed Adam (Garnier: Paris, 1961)pp 194-196.
Or the art-painting in Prison, by Delacroix, Tasso on his bed, turning pages with his feet, inflamed with a terror of the dizzying (circular) stairs into the depths of his soul. Laughter fills the prison, with Doubt and Fear (again not unlike US politics 2016) circling with grimaces and wails, awakening from horrid dreams to find himself surrounded by four walls. The Real.
His wonderful praise of Daumier defends the comedic historian's mockery, not the harsh laugh of Satan, but the gentle satire of the benevolent. (Europeans often suspect laughter; only the English writer embraces it always...though not in the 2017 Nobel winner.)
Two short poems are among Les épaves, which he ends by addressing his harsh critic Monselet; but first, Part II of his Monster, the Macabre Nymph:
Fool, you should go straight to the Devil!
I'm even happy to go with you,
If not for this frightful haste
Which leaves me agitated. Then,
Well, better You--go straight to Hell! (Garnier, 199)
Then, finally, "A Frisky Cabaret" (un cabaret folâtre):
You who dote on skeletons
And detestable cliches
To spice your voluptuous taste,
(Stick to simple omelettes!)
Oh great Pharaoh, King Monselet!
In front of your unforeseen
Instruction, I dream of you: In a bar
At the cemetery, six feet deep.
Blues, be cool, keep quiet, you mutha,
Intruder, second-story man, you enter with dusk,
It descends. It's here, an atmosphere
Surrounds the town. Builds some up, knocks me down.
Meanwhile the rabble ruled by body
Pleasures, thankless beasts overburdened
Build toward a bundle of remorse
In drugged dances. Blues, take my hand,
Come from them, come here. Look behind me
At the defunct years, at the balconies
Of heaven; in tattered copes, rise out
Of the waters of Regret. The sun sleeps
Moribund on a buttress; and listen,
My true-blues, hear dusk's sweet steps.
--see my trans of L'Imprévu below and on GoodReads, my writings
We have Baudelaire to thank for the world renown of our second-rate 19C poet Edgar Allan a Po-po-poe -dee-oh. (First rate storyteller, imitated fairly well by Dickens, once.) When a genius translates a less-than; other examples, TS Eliot's LaForgue? Moliere's anybody?
Baudelaire also took crap from the French Government same year Flaubert got off because of the rank of his father: his defense lawyer argued a guilty verdict would impugn Dr Flaubert, much as Lizzie Borden's father was used in her defense in the courtroom a few miles from my house. Since they lost the Flaubert case, they went with zeal after Baudelaire, managed to win, stop his publisher and him in their tracks until they dropped ten poems, later printed as Les épaves (below).
I think Charley B was a nasty little prick (a word I use advisedly, rarely, un petit bite); see his love poem to a corpse. But..and this is a bigger but(t) than Charley's…he was a genuine genius. Unfortunately. His first addresses me, his reader (well translated by R Lowell in "Imitations") as his Brother Hypocrite: insightful for our recent US presidential winner, who could start every rally so. (And of course, he calls me, his reader, his brother hypocrite--as I condescend from the great heights of my superior morality.)
I am sure I would be disgusted by Charley B0-bo-bo-dee-baudelaire. I would not vote for him, but I must vote for his disgusting verse. (One demurer, B himself says that writing draws one away from screwing, so he has created the disgust as an artistic enfranchisement.)
And, may I say having translated from a half dozen languages--and published them--Charley's Blues evoked a bit of his genius in me.
As an American "baby-boomer," I've never understood the Russian / Pushkin's obsession with скучно, boredom, but I find its source here in empire France, Russia's birth-culture (as ours is England). Peut être it's a remnant of upper class, Marie Antoinette France. Baudelaire's opening address to his reader ends with the descent of the Monster, "Ennui."
Gems throughout, almost any poem can be praised in its concentrated, tidal pull. Say, a little sheaf, Les épaves, "Wrecks" like the two schooners that rested on the shore of my childhood in Wiscasset, Maine (Hesper and the Luther Little). Awakening very late, he must pursue the sun god as s/he retires, loses out to the god Nuit, humid and full of chill. An odor of the tomb, the swampy residence of snails and toads. Among Les épaves, L'Imprévu:
Celimène says, "my heart is good,
So naturally, God has made me Beautiful."
--Her heart! Contorted, smoked like a ham,
Finally softened by Eternal Flames!
A smoky gazer, who felt he was an Old Flame,
Said to the poor one collapsed in the shadows,
"Oh, so you can see this Creator of Beauty,
This Make-up Artist you celebrate."
Better than you, I know desires
That yawn day and night, lament and cry
Repeating, powerless, saying, "Yes, I plan
To be virtuous, very soon!"
Father Time in turn chimes low, "He is Ripe,
This Condemned. I've warned him, diseased in vain;
The man is blind, deaf, fragile as a wall
Gnawed by insects, residents."
Then someone comes, denies it all,
He says, laughing as ususal, "In my pyxides
You'll find enough communion wafers
To hold your cheery Black Mass.
Each of you have made a Temple in your Heart
For me, you ceremonially kiss my ass,
You worship Satan, my triumphant laugh
Enormous and nasty as the world.
Had you believed, you surprised hypocrites,
Who've mocked your Master, cheated on Him,
That it's natural for you to get the Double Prize:
Being Rich and Going to Heaven? *
The Old hunter, mortified for a long time,
Must still smell out the prey. I saw you
Hunt across the vastness, Companions
Of my too sad pleasures.
Across the breadth of the earth and rocks,
Across the confused heap of your ashes,
In a palace as great as my own, with a single
Tower which has no soft seats of stone,
Because it was built by Universal Sin,
And it contains my pride, my pain, and my fame."
--However, perched at the very top of the cosmos
An angel sounds the victory
Of those who say in their heart, "How Blessed are Thy Whips,
Lord! that pain, O Father, can be a blessing.
My soul is in your hands, not in this vain game,
And Your discretion is infinite."
The Trombones' sound is so delicious
In these solemn evenings of celestial wine-harvest
That resound as do their ecstasies
Of whom they sound the praises.
*Lines for the US "Christian Right" [who are neither Right nor Christian].
Ten of thirteen stanzas from "The Unforeseen," among the censored poems, Les Fleurs du Mal, ed Adam (Garnier: Paris, 1961)pp 194-196.
Or the art-painting in Prison, by Delacroix, Tasso on his bed, turning pages with his feet, inflamed with a terror of the dizzying (circular) stairs into the depths of his soul. Laughter fills the prison, with Doubt and Fear (again not unlike US politics 2016) circling with grimaces and wails, awakening from horrid dreams to find himself surrounded by four walls. The Real.
His wonderful praise of Daumier defends the comedic historian's mockery, not the harsh laugh of Satan, but the gentle satire of the benevolent. (Europeans often suspect laughter; only the English writer embraces it always...though not in the 2017 Nobel winner.)
Two short poems are among Les épaves, which he ends by addressing his harsh critic Monselet; but first, Part II of his Monster, the Macabre Nymph:
Fool, you should go straight to the Devil!
I'm even happy to go with you,
If not for this frightful haste
Which leaves me agitated. Then,
Well, better You--go straight to Hell! (Garnier, 199)
Then, finally, "A Frisky Cabaret" (un cabaret folâtre):
You who dote on skeletons
And detestable cliches
To spice your voluptuous taste,
(Stick to simple omelettes!)
Oh great Pharaoh, King Monselet!
In front of your unforeseen
Instruction, I dream of you: In a bar
At the cemetery, six feet deep.
December 14, 2021
Les Fleurs du Mal or The Flowers of Evil or, let’s extrapolate here, The Beauty of Evil is a masterpiece of French literature which should have pride of place in any bookcase worth its name, right between Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Divine Comedy. For indeed the beauty of evil, what with its mephitic yet oh so alluring aroma, is exactly what this book is about—a collection of poems and elegies reflecting Baudelaire’s views on our poor human condition stemming mainly from our doomed lives upon which hovers like the sword of Damocles the inevitability of death, while all the while we keep on fooling ourselves by pursuing the ever so elusive quest for a perfect world, a perfect existence, and, dare I say it, immortality. Baudelaire’s answer to this plight of ours, tentative though it may be, is escapism—pure but mainly impure escapism—which, under his pen, takes various forms, ranging from travels to drugs, sex to faith, sleep to contemplation—like so many petals of the flowers of evil the author plucks off one after another in a fateful game of Loves me, Loves me not.
Needless to say that Les Fleurs du Mal isn’t a book for everyone, and that if you’re looking for a read to put a smile on your face, you’d do well to turn around and look somewhere else. It is fair to say that with his masterful poetry Baudelaire pierces not only our heart but our soul. His words undress us completely and let us see us for what we really are—just human beings living our lives. Which, when we think about it, isn’t so bad. That is, as long as we keep remembering to put into practice this little quote from yet another master of his genre, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” And indeed, it matters not how long we live, but how well we live. If anything, Les Fleurs du Mal taught me that much. Oh, and The Lord of the Rings, too, of course!
OLIVIER DELAYE
Author of the SEBASTEN OF ATLANTIS series
Needless to say that Les Fleurs du Mal isn’t a book for everyone, and that if you’re looking for a read to put a smile on your face, you’d do well to turn around and look somewhere else. It is fair to say that with his masterful poetry Baudelaire pierces not only our heart but our soul. His words undress us completely and let us see us for what we really are—just human beings living our lives. Which, when we think about it, isn’t so bad. That is, as long as we keep remembering to put into practice this little quote from yet another master of his genre, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” And indeed, it matters not how long we live, but how well we live. If anything, Les Fleurs du Mal taught me that much. Oh, and The Lord of the Rings, too, of course!
OLIVIER DELAYE
Author of the SEBASTEN OF ATLANTIS series
September 6, 2024
Truly a unique an haunting voice - a visionary poet who forces you to question all that you find comforting - immersion of the self into the torrent of humanity. Some of the poems in this book are very graphic; I would warn potential readers that this is not the type of book you want to read if you are feeling depressed. Would have loved to have heard Vincent Price read these poems as an audiobook.
Read
October 22, 2020لا شيء يُعادل في الطول الأيام المتعثرة
عندما يرزح تحت ركام ثقيل من ثلوج السنين
الضجر تلك الثمرة المُرة للامبالاة الكئيبة
*****
وافكر بكل من فقد شيئاً لا يمكنه تعويضه
بالذين يشربون دموعهم ويمتصون آلامهم
كيتامى الذئبة الطيبة الناحلين الذابلين كالأزهار
*****
أفلن اراكِ ابداً إلا في الأبدية..
أفلن اراكِ في مكان بعيد من هنا..
بعد فترة طويلة أو قد لا اراكِ مطلقاً
لأني لا اعرف إلى اين تهربين
وأنتِ لا تعرفين إلى أين أذهب
يا أنتِ التى كان من الممكن أن احبها
يا أنتِ التى تعرفين ذلك...
*****
وأخيراً يا سيد "بودلير"...هل حقاً للشر أزهار ؟!!!....
February 21, 2022
Tutti abbiamo letto e studiato i simbolisti al liceo, ma non tutti li abbiamo apprezzati. Come al caso mio, la sua poesia essendo così ricca di metafore a primo impatto mi è sembrata davvero particolare e incomprensibile. Oggi, dopo aver riletto l’intera raccolta poetica posso dire di aver letto dei versi così belli, che non era mai successo. Versi potenti, passionali e ricchi di significato. I suoi versi sono ricchi di metafora e contorcimenti letterali, ma è pura magica. Il simbolismo con la sua poesia pura e ricca di simboli, ha creato una poesia così elevata, così sublime, così perfetta che è davvero difficile spiegare a parole.
July 30, 2008
One of my favorite poets of all time.
Baudelaire emphasized above all the disassociated character of modern experience: the sense that alienation is an inevitable part of our modern world. In his prose, this complexity is expressed via harshness and shifts of mood.
The constant emphasis on beauty and innocence, even alongside the seamier aspects of humanity, reinforce an existentialist ideal that rejects morality and embraces transgression. Objects, sensations, and experiences often clash, implicitly rejecting personal experiences and memories; only operations of consciousness (e.g., revulsion and self-criticism) are valued and even exalted. Indeed, for Baudelaire, the shock of experiencing is the act of living.
Baudelaire's talent for poetry aside, his genius was to jolt the reader into this mindset, to feel what he wanted to feel and experience what he wanted to experience.
Baudelaire emphasized above all the disassociated character of modern experience: the sense that alienation is an inevitable part of our modern world. In his prose, this complexity is expressed via harshness and shifts of mood.
The constant emphasis on beauty and innocence, even alongside the seamier aspects of humanity, reinforce an existentialist ideal that rejects morality and embraces transgression. Objects, sensations, and experiences often clash, implicitly rejecting personal experiences and memories; only operations of consciousness (e.g., revulsion and self-criticism) are valued and even exalted. Indeed, for Baudelaire, the shock of experiencing is the act of living.
Baudelaire's talent for poetry aside, his genius was to jolt the reader into this mindset, to feel what he wanted to feel and experience what he wanted to experience.
January 21, 2019
La poesía no es mi fuerte, pero me gusta leerla de vez en cuando.
El contenido de este libro es muy diverso y eso es algo que se agradece.
No todo habla sobre el amor y el desamor, sino que habla de múltiples temas que hacen que el libro sea más atractivo.
Los poemas como tal me gustaron mucho, el como están escritos, y los sentimientos que destilan es algo impresionante, que te deja los sentimientos a flor de piel.
Incluso habla del amor por los libros y a la literatura, critica a los estilos que en aquellos tiempos eran los que debías adoptar para escribir, por lo que también fue una herramienta de rebeldía en el que Charles no temió expresar lo que sentía, bravo por ello.
El contenido de este libro es muy diverso y eso es algo que se agradece.
No todo habla sobre el amor y el desamor, sino que habla de múltiples temas que hacen que el libro sea más atractivo.
Los poemas como tal me gustaron mucho, el como están escritos, y los sentimientos que destilan es algo impresionante, que te deja los sentimientos a flor de piel.
Incluso habla del amor por los libros y a la literatura, critica a los estilos que en aquellos tiempos eran los que debías adoptar para escribir, por lo que también fue una herramienta de rebeldía en el que Charles no temió expresar lo que sentía, bravo por ello.
November 2, 2023
دوباره میخونمش، از همین امشب
February 9, 2021
I hate movement for it displaces lines, And never do I weep and never do I laugh.
1.28.2021 Update:
It was a cosmic day and I found myself mute. I can say that despite emerging from some peril, verse translation remains crucial. I can't speak for other editions, or other translations, but I was urgently shaken by this. It was welcomed despite my tacit brush with the Terminal.
When my eyes, to this cat I love
Drawn as by a magnet's force,
Turn tamely back upon that appeal,
And when I look within myself,
I notice with astonishment
The fire of his opal eyes,
Clear beacons glowing, living jewels,
Taking my measure, steadily.
My (initial) amateur assessment is that the translation is to blame for my absence of astonishment. There's no way this could be the same genius who gave us Paris Spleen. Maybe I am but confused. Maybe the threads which shriek decay and ennui were of inadequate weight. Maybe my own disposition suffers from dread and I was left with a meh?
Perhaps I am inadequate. Perhaps I should pursue other editions and translators. I loved the allusion of street sweeps herding their storms. I love the self-deprecation. I just wanted more. Not the Absolute but more--on which to chew.
1.28.2021 Update:
It was a cosmic day and I found myself mute. I can say that despite emerging from some peril, verse translation remains crucial. I can't speak for other editions, or other translations, but I was urgently shaken by this. It was welcomed despite my tacit brush with the Terminal.
When my eyes, to this cat I love
Drawn as by a magnet's force,
Turn tamely back upon that appeal,
And when I look within myself,
I notice with astonishment
The fire of his opal eyes,
Clear beacons glowing, living jewels,
Taking my measure, steadily.
My (initial) amateur assessment is that the translation is to blame for my absence of astonishment. There's no way this could be the same genius who gave us Paris Spleen. Maybe I am but confused. Maybe the threads which shriek decay and ennui were of inadequate weight. Maybe my own disposition suffers from dread and I was left with a meh?
Perhaps I am inadequate. Perhaps I should pursue other editions and translators. I loved the allusion of street sweeps herding their storms. I love the self-deprecation. I just wanted more. Not the Absolute but more--on which to chew.
December 19, 2012
This is a step towards possession.
Certainly the possession does not last the entire way through, but even in the less interesting or repetitive poems there are some jarring lines, amplified by a soul in Heat.
Like any elevated piece of literature, Flowers of Evil consumed me to such an extent that at times I forgot I was reading words on a page, its intensity moving my mind into some unknown zone where images, thoughts, and recollections screamed by, colliding with each other. So, too, did I feel at times that even the writer himself was "not all there," taken away by a demon, merely the vehicle for some phantasm. Yes, Baudelaire sold me on his deal, not merely because of content or form, but because of the legitimacy and authenticity of his spirit that comes through them. At its best I lost the idea that Baudelaire was “writing,” or “constructing thoughts and ideas.” More often I felt like I was seeing a living reality and the spirit behind it, the dreams he “knows.”
We can look at a whore and see nothing poetic just as we can look at the sun and see nothing poetic. But the poetic is everywhere and, for me, the more I can tap into, the better life is. Is it more and more rare to find a person who sees anything poetic in the sun? Is the modern mind still trying to convince itself that myth doesn’t work? Whatever one's answer to those questions, most will agree that it’s even rarer to find someone who sees anything POETIC in the heist, the hell, the holey handbag. And then even rarer yet again to find someone who can see the poetic in such things and communicate it to others on a convincing level. And then perhaps it’s only a very singular visionary who can not only see the poetic in such things, but communicate it in such a way that it creates its own inspiring beauty while remaining true to the original inspiration. Sure we have heists, whores, and holey handbags a dime a dozen, but do they even recognize their own beauty much? Are they as tuned in to their own spirit as Baudelaire was?
I hate cars, but I love to watch the rare person who is passionate and soulful about them. I don't read books on toe-picking, but show me someone passionate about their toe-picking and I'll gladly sit down beside them to observe and ask engaging questions, join in a little. Baudelaire. Hate his whoring if you will, but there is a passion, a depth, a profound nature to it that would have me in rapid pursuit to follow him anywhere. And the guy never seems disappointed! That is what twists the knife in me time and time again!
But he’s not just writing of whore houses and opium dens, telling us of their ugly and vile colors. No! He’s not just heading out on a heartless, gutless, mindless hedonistic romp. No! This is the debased as Ideal, wrapping the demon up in lovely meter, rhyme, and high metaphor, carrying the gutter into the heavens! The Saint of Whores! The Divinity of Syphilis! The God of Pooping your Pants! I love it. He loves! Not foul for a moment! There is goodness in it all!!!! I can’t even crystalize Baudelaire without sounding silly! To find Beauty in the Gutter! This is the Man! Far too much of it to originate from mere constructs and ideas. No, there are demons and gods at work.
Baudelaire wouldn��t even spit on a Renoir painting. He’d just undress it and fly. The Corpse on the lip, a taste from God. Possessed. I can not get so close to It, except through Baudelaire. Beautiful Ugliness. Goodness. When literature helps you live a new life, or at least revitalize it.
Certainly the possession does not last the entire way through, but even in the less interesting or repetitive poems there are some jarring lines, amplified by a soul in Heat.
Like any elevated piece of literature, Flowers of Evil consumed me to such an extent that at times I forgot I was reading words on a page, its intensity moving my mind into some unknown zone where images, thoughts, and recollections screamed by, colliding with each other. So, too, did I feel at times that even the writer himself was "not all there," taken away by a demon, merely the vehicle for some phantasm. Yes, Baudelaire sold me on his deal, not merely because of content or form, but because of the legitimacy and authenticity of his spirit that comes through them. At its best I lost the idea that Baudelaire was “writing,” or “constructing thoughts and ideas.” More often I felt like I was seeing a living reality and the spirit behind it, the dreams he “knows.”
We can look at a whore and see nothing poetic just as we can look at the sun and see nothing poetic. But the poetic is everywhere and, for me, the more I can tap into, the better life is. Is it more and more rare to find a person who sees anything poetic in the sun? Is the modern mind still trying to convince itself that myth doesn’t work? Whatever one's answer to those questions, most will agree that it’s even rarer to find someone who sees anything POETIC in the heist, the hell, the holey handbag. And then even rarer yet again to find someone who can see the poetic in such things and communicate it to others on a convincing level. And then perhaps it’s only a very singular visionary who can not only see the poetic in such things, but communicate it in such a way that it creates its own inspiring beauty while remaining true to the original inspiration. Sure we have heists, whores, and holey handbags a dime a dozen, but do they even recognize their own beauty much? Are they as tuned in to their own spirit as Baudelaire was?
I hate cars, but I love to watch the rare person who is passionate and soulful about them. I don't read books on toe-picking, but show me someone passionate about their toe-picking and I'll gladly sit down beside them to observe and ask engaging questions, join in a little. Baudelaire. Hate his whoring if you will, but there is a passion, a depth, a profound nature to it that would have me in rapid pursuit to follow him anywhere. And the guy never seems disappointed! That is what twists the knife in me time and time again!
But he’s not just writing of whore houses and opium dens, telling us of their ugly and vile colors. No! He’s not just heading out on a heartless, gutless, mindless hedonistic romp. No! This is the debased as Ideal, wrapping the demon up in lovely meter, rhyme, and high metaphor, carrying the gutter into the heavens! The Saint of Whores! The Divinity of Syphilis! The God of Pooping your Pants! I love it. He loves! Not foul for a moment! There is goodness in it all!!!! I can’t even crystalize Baudelaire without sounding silly! To find Beauty in the Gutter! This is the Man! Far too much of it to originate from mere constructs and ideas. No, there are demons and gods at work.
Baudelaire wouldn��t even spit on a Renoir painting. He’d just undress it and fly. The Corpse on the lip, a taste from God. Possessed. I can not get so close to It, except through Baudelaire. Beautiful Ugliness. Goodness. When literature helps you live a new life, or at least revitalize it.
June 3, 2013
translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay & George Dillon
It's outrageous that this wonderful translation is out of print.
After looking at many versions (including Richard Howard, James McGowan, and Cyril Scott who was my second favourite) this was the only one with truly good poems which replicated the original structures and had the glittering night-magic of Baudelaire's sensual, sinister, romantic, gothic wonderland. Which would of course have something to do with one of the translators herself being a distinguished poet.
These are poetic translations rather than ones designed to reproduce the exact meanings line-by-line, but for the non-academic reader I think they are by far the most satisfying as poetry.
Female characters seem stronger than in other translations, undoubtedly Millay's work. One commentator in a source I now can't find says that in her translation of Baudelaire's women - often passive in the original - she finds a powerful active voice she only rarely displayed in her own poems.
I've taken a long time to finish Les Fleurs du Mal but this was largely because I despaired of how to describe Baudelaire's verse, something quite beyond my powers, and kept being distracted from reading by trying to find (im)possible phrases.
Some of the translations from this edition can be found here, with a bit of patience, clicking and scrolling.
It's outrageous that this wonderful translation is out of print.
After looking at many versions (including Richard Howard, James McGowan, and Cyril Scott who was my second favourite) this was the only one with truly good poems which replicated the original structures and had the glittering night-magic of Baudelaire's sensual, sinister, romantic, gothic wonderland. Which would of course have something to do with one of the translators herself being a distinguished poet.
These are poetic translations rather than ones designed to reproduce the exact meanings line-by-line, but for the non-academic reader I think they are by far the most satisfying as poetry.
Female characters seem stronger than in other translations, undoubtedly Millay's work. One commentator in a source I now can't find says that in her translation of Baudelaire's women - often passive in the original - she finds a powerful active voice she only rarely displayed in her own poems.
I've taken a long time to finish Les Fleurs du Mal but this was largely because I despaired of how to describe Baudelaire's verse, something quite beyond my powers, and kept being distracted from reading by trying to find (im)possible phrases.
Some of the translations from this edition can be found here, with a bit of patience, clicking and scrolling.
September 27, 2016
How to describe this volume of poetry? Avant-garde, modernistic, innovative, original? Yes, all of those, and to use a modern slang word, edgy. So edgy in fact, for mid 19th century France, that Napoleon III's government prosecuted him for "an insult to public decency". Six of the poems were banned until 1949. Don't worry; by today's standards they are not so alarming.
October 21, 2020
Un increíble poemario.
No hay mayor infierno que el que se vive sin saberlo.
No hay mayor infierno que el que se vive sin saberlo.
January 24, 2023
The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire seriously makes me regret not knowing a single word of French. Well...at least with this 400+ pages of Chinese translation, we seem to be able to get most if not all of Baudelaire's works in one go:
[我愛你一如夜色穹蒼]……寫得出這種句子真不愧是詩人呐｡
So I end up only able to read both the Chinese and English translation of these jewel-like pieces of artwork.
Link to the English translation: https://archive.org/stream/flowersofe...
Link to translation: https://fleursdumal.org/poem/151
and............how Baudelaire could write! Especially when he referred his mistress as 'the moon of his life', 'strange goddess' among other sickeningly lovely, romantic things...and how he said he 'liked her to be either the red dawn or the dark night'...or how he 'adored her like the nocturnal sky'...or when Baudelaire talked about music and the ocean and the huge mirror of despair which is the sky...
I'm drowned in this poisoned beauty, sweetness and despairs.
Last but not least, do allow me to pimp my poem-based fanart here:
(Link: https://www.deviantart.com/vampirekik...)
[我愛你一如夜色穹蒼]……寫得出這種句子真不愧是詩人呐｡
So I end up only able to read both the Chinese and English translation of these jewel-like pieces of artwork.
太陽蒙上一重黑紗，像它一般
哦，我生命的月亮，裹上陰影吧
睡覺抽煙，隨便，別快活，別說話
整個地沉入無聊造成的深淵
我喜歡你這樣！可今天你若要
如一顆走出黑暗的被遮的星
在擠擁著瘋狂的地方擺威風
那好！迷人的匕首，就讓你出鞘！"
The Possessed One
The sun is enveloped in crape! like it,
Moon of my Life! wrap thyself up in shade ;
At will, smoke or slumber, be silent, be staid,
And dive deep down in Dispassion's dark pit.
I cherish thee thus! But if 'tis thy mood,
Like a star that from out its penumbra appears,
To float in the regions where madness careers,
Fair dagger ! burst forth from thy sheath! 'tis good.
Yea, light up thine eyes at the Fire of Renown!
Or kindle desire by the looks of some clow!
Thine All is my joy, whether dull or aflame!
Just be what thou wilt, black night, dawn divine,
There is not a nerve in my trembling frame
But cries, " I adore thee, Beelzebub mine! "
Link to the English translation: https://archive.org/stream/flowersofe...
我全部的血，黑的毒
我是鏡子，陰森可怖
我是尖刀，我是傷口
我是我心的吸血鬼
偉大的被棄者之一
Link to translation: https://fleursdumal.org/poem/151
and............how Baudelaire could write! Especially when he referred his mistress as 'the moon of his life', 'strange goddess' among other sickeningly lovely, romantic things...and how he said he 'liked her to be either the red dawn or the dark night'...or how he 'adored her like the nocturnal sky'...or when Baudelaire talked about music and the ocean and the huge mirror of despair which is the sky...
I'm drowned in this poisoned beauty, sweetness and despairs.
Last but not least, do allow me to pimp my poem-based fanart here:
(Link: https://www.deviantart.com/vampirekik...)
April 10, 2020
بقول چارلز بوکوفسکی «پیرمرد تخمی»:
استعداد فوقالعاده،معمولا پنجاه یا صد سال از زمان خود جلوتر است.
در سال 1857 ‘ این اثرمنتشر شد،موفقیتی کسب نکرد و حتی شاعر و ناشر را با اتهام،نشر آثار منافی عفت به دادگاه جلب نمودند...
این شکست در روح شاعر، اثری فنا ناپذیر بجای نهاد و از آن پس برای تسکین اعصاب پریشان خود دست به دامن افیون زد...
بودلر شعرهای خود را « یک کتاب هنری ناب» میخواند- و نوشت: بیشتر نظریات نادرست دربارهی زیبایی،از ایده اخلاق ک در سدهی هجدهم رایج بود برخاسته است.
برای بودلر شکل هنری اهمیت داشت.
بودلر حتی در کار های نقاش محبوبش « دلاکروآ » نشان داد ،تضاد رنگ های سبز و سرخ ،سازندهی موقعیتی نمادین است ک ما را از جهان تقلید شدنی دور میکند و به دنیای درونی میکشاند که حتی برای خود هنرمند نیز ناشناخته است،دنیایی که فقط به گونهای تصنعی و فراواقعی قابل بیان است«1»
اما عنوان کتاب:
حتی عنوان مهمترین مجموعهی شعر بودلر یعنی گلهای شر،نمایانگر استقلال هنر و زیبایی از جهان ارزشهاست،و چنانکه ژرز باتای گفته:
نشان میدهد که زیبایی
علیرغم شر،باز پرستیدنی ست.«2»
______________________________________________
___
|__|
به سوی تو یورش میبرم و چنگ زنان بر روی زمین،میخزم
ای زیبای وحشی
تو را دوست دارم
تن سرد و مُرده تو را که در دیده من زیباتر است؛:
دوست دارم.
_______________________________________________
استعداد فوقالعاده،معمولا پنجاه یا صد سال از زمان خود جلوتر است.
در سال 1857 ‘ این اثرمنتشر شد،موفقیتی کسب نکرد و حتی شاعر و ناشر را با اتهام،نشر آثار منافی عفت به دادگاه جلب نمودند...
این شکست در روح شاعر، اثری فنا ناپذیر بجای نهاد و از آن پس برای تسکین اعصاب پریشان خود دست به دامن افیون زد...
بودلر شعرهای خود را « یک کتاب هنری ناب» میخواند- و نوشت: بیشتر نظریات نادرست دربارهی زیبایی،از ایده اخلاق ک در سدهی هجدهم رایج بود برخاسته است.
برای بودلر شکل هنری اهمیت داشت.
بودلر حتی در کار های نقاش محبوبش « دلاکروآ » نشان داد ،تضاد رنگ های سبز و سرخ ،سازندهی موقعیتی نمادین است ک ما را از جهان تقلید شدنی دور میکند و به دنیای درونی میکشاند که حتی برای خود هنرمند نیز ناشناخته است،دنیایی که فقط به گونهای تصنعی و فراواقعی قابل بیان است«1»
اما عنوان کتاب:
حتی عنوان مهمترین مجموعهی شعر بودلر یعنی گلهای شر،نمایانگر استقلال هنر و زیبایی از جهان ارزشهاست،و چنانکه ژرز باتای گفته:
نشان میدهد که زیبایی
علیرغم شر،باز پرستیدنی ست.«2»
______________________________________________
___
|__|
به سوی تو یورش میبرم و چنگ زنان بر روی زمین،میخزم
ای زیبای وحشی
تو را دوست دارم
تن سرد و مُرده تو را که در دیده من زیباتر است؛:
دوست دارم.
_______________________________________________
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