Flowers of Evil

by Charles Baudelaire Narrated by Douglas Harvey

Overview

The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) is a collection of poems by Charles Baudelaire influential on several levels. Fellow artists were impressed and unsettled when it was published in 1857; one described the effect as “immense, prodigious, unexpected, mingled with admiration and some indefinable anxious fear”. Admirers included Victor Hugo and Gustave Flaubert, who wrote “you are as unyielding as marble and as penetrating as English mist”. The general public, however, was scandalized by the themes of sex and death and frank treatment of subjects such as lesbianism, which led to a prosecution of Baudelaire, his publisher and printer for offenses against publish morals. The conviction resulted in a fine and the removal of six poems. A second edition was released in 1861 that deleted the offending poems and added 35 poems, including a new section, Parisian Scenes, which described the effects of modernization symbolized by the identical streets and buildings taking shape during the renovation of Paris and a resulting alienation and estrangement as well as a sense of loss. On a stylistic level, the collection introduced a kind of highly ordered prose poetry and the use of a cynical and ironic voice that broke with Romantic traditions by acknowledging moral complexity, urban corruption, loss of innocence, and indulging in sensual and aesthetic pleasures. The work captures the fleeting sense of life and beauty in the emerging urban industrial world for which Baudelaire coined the term modernity and has had a lasting influence that continues to be an inspiration to this day.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

In [Millay and Dillon’s] Flowers of Evil a path has been opened for the blending of French and English poetry. Here are translations not smelling at all of the dictionary. ‘The Litanies of Satan’ in particular seems to come from a dim chapel draped with black banners....Let us hope that this book will stand as an English Baudelaire for some time, without the guidebook counterparts.”  —Agnes Lee Freer, Poetry

“The perfume of Baudelaire’s infernal flowers still wafts off the page, as powerful a deliriant as ever, 167 years on.” —Mark Dery, 4Columns

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177807485
Publisher:	MP3 Audiobook Classics
Publication date:	06/02/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

The modern literary spirit was born out of the measured angles so carefully calculated by Laclos. He was the first element discovered by Baudelaire, who was a refined and reasonable explorer from a privileged background, but whose views on modern life contained a particular madness.
Laclos delighted in inspiring the corrupt bubbles that rose from the strange and rich literary mud of the Revolution. Like Diderot, Laclos was the intellectual son of Richardson and Rousseau, and his work was continued by Sade, Restif, Nerciat - some of the most notable philosophical storytellers of the late 18th century. Most of them, in fact, contained the seeds of the modern spirit, and they were poised to create a triumphant new era for arts and letters.
During this nauseating and often brilliant era of Revolution, Baudelaire mingled his spiritualistic poison with the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, a strange American, who had composed, in the poetic field, work which was as disturbing and as marvellous as the work of Laclos.
Baudelaire then is the son of Laclos and Poe. One can easily untangle the influence that each exerted on Baudelaire's prophetic mind and on his work, both so full of originality. As of this year, 1917, when his work enters the public domain, we can not only place him in the front rank of the great French poets, but also award him a place alongside the greatest of universal poets.
The evidence for the influence of the cynical writers of the Revolution on Les Fleurs du Mal can be seen everywhere in Baudelaire's correspondence and in his notes. When he decided to translate and adapt Poe's works, strangely, he found a higher lyricism and moral feeling than he had thought was present in the writings of the marvellous Baltimore drunkard and his prohibited readings.
In the novelists of the Revolution, he had discovered the importance of the question of sex.
From the Anglo-Saxons of the same era, such as de Quincey and Poe, Baudelaire had learned that there were artificial paradises. Their methodical exploration - supported by Reason, the revolutionary goddess - enabled him to reach the lyrical heights towards which the mad American predicants had directed Poe, their contemporary. But Reason blinded him, and he abandoned it as soon as he had reached the heights.
Baudelaire then is the son of Laclos and Edgar Allan Poe, but a son who is blind and insane...

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