The Flowers of Evil
Loneliness, temptation, the fragility of man in a soulless new age . . . The controversial, banned masterpiece from the nineteenth-century French poet.
 
Sparking scandal in France, declared “an outrage to public morals” and “an offense to religious morals” by the Ministry of the Interior, The Flowers of Evil plunged Charles Baudelaire into a controversy that his public image never quite overcame. Nevertheless, the collection has since been lauded as a landmark in literary history and its writer extolled as the first modern poet.
 
With themes of love, world-weariness, beauty, and death, The Flowers of Evil juxtaposes the sublime with the commonplace. In the section titled “Parisian Scenes” are some of Baudelaire’s greatest poems—“The Swan,” “The Little Old Women,” and “The Seven Old Men”—which give readers an unsentimental view of the City of Light and of a bleak urban existence. As the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “There is a sense in these angry, eructating late fragments of a man fully releasing himself to what he called ‘the joy of downward descent.’ And where Baudelaire went, modernity tended to follow.”
 
“The essence of a genius.” —The Guardian
 
“The profound originality of Charles Baudelaire is to represent powerfully and essentially modern man.” —Paul Verlaine
1100059562
The Flowers of Evil
Loneliness, temptation, the fragility of man in a soulless new age . . . The controversial, banned masterpiece from the nineteenth-century French poet.
 
Sparking scandal in France, declared “an outrage to public morals” and “an offense to religious morals” by the Ministry of the Interior, The Flowers of Evil plunged Charles Baudelaire into a controversy that his public image never quite overcame. Nevertheless, the collection has since been lauded as a landmark in literary history and its writer extolled as the first modern poet.
 
With themes of love, world-weariness, beauty, and death, The Flowers of Evil juxtaposes the sublime with the commonplace. In the section titled “Parisian Scenes” are some of Baudelaire’s greatest poems—“The Swan,” “The Little Old Women,” and “The Seven Old Men”—which give readers an unsentimental view of the City of Light and of a bleak urban existence. As the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “There is a sense in these angry, eructating late fragments of a man fully releasing himself to what he called ‘the joy of downward descent.’ And where Baudelaire went, modernity tended to follow.”
 
“The essence of a genius.” —The Guardian
 
“The profound originality of Charles Baudelaire is to represent powerfully and essentially modern man.” —Paul Verlaine
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The Flowers of Evil

The Flowers of Evil

by Charles Baudelaire
The Flowers of Evil
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The Flowers of Evil

The Flowers of Evil

by Charles Baudelaire

Overview

Loneliness, temptation, the fragility of man in a soulless new age . . . The controversial, banned masterpiece from the nineteenth-century French poet.
 
Sparking scandal in France, declared “an outrage to public morals” and “an offense to religious morals” by the Ministry of the Interior, The Flowers of Evil plunged Charles Baudelaire into a controversy that his public image never quite overcame. Nevertheless, the collection has since been lauded as a landmark in literary history and its writer extolled as the first modern poet.
 
With themes of love, world-weariness, beauty, and death, The Flowers of Evil juxtaposes the sublime with the commonplace. In the section titled “Parisian Scenes” are some of Baudelaire’s greatest poems—“The Swan,” “The Little Old Women,” and “The Seven Old Men”—which give readers an unsentimental view of the City of Light and of a bleak urban existence. As the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “There is a sense in these angry, eructating late fragments of a man fully releasing himself to what he called ‘the joy of downward descent.’ And where Baudelaire went, modernity tended to follow.”
 
“The essence of a genius.” —The Guardian
 
“The profound originality of Charles Baudelaire is to represent powerfully and essentially modern man.” —Paul Verlaine

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781504081092
Publisher: Open Road Media
Publication date: 11/29/2022
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 73
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited from Romantics, but are based on observations of real life. His most famous work, a book of lyric poetry titled Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrializing Paris during the mid-nineteenth century. Baudelaire’s highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé, among many others. He is credited as the first Modernist and believed to have coined the term modernity (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience.

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...

Table of Contents

Introduction; Note on the Text; Select Bibliography; A Chronology of Charles Baudelaire; Translator's Preface; Flowers of Evil; Explanatory Notes; Index of Titles; Index of First Lines.

What People are Saying About This

Norma Cole

"This is the Baudelaire translation for our time--and for all time. Relentlessly straightforward, surprisingly succinct, hilarious and horrifying as they are, these poems have never been as readable in English."
— Norma Cole, author of Spinoza in Her Youth

Cole Swensen

“There are numerous translations of Les Fleurs du Mal in print, but none even approach Waldrop’s-he alone captures the speed and verve of the real Baudelaire.”

From the Publisher

"This is the Baudelaire translation for our time—and for all time. Relentlessly straightforward, surprisingly succinct, hilarious and horrifying as they are, these poems have never been as readable in English."—Norma Cole, author of Spinoza in Her Youth

"There are numerous translations of Les Fleurs du Mal in print, but none even approach Waldrop's-he alone captures the speed and verve of the real Baudelaire.""—Cole Swensen, Iowa Writers' Workshop

"This is the Baudelaire translation for our time—and for all time. Relentlessly straightforward, surprisingly succinct, hilarious and horrifying as they are, these poems have never been as readable in English."—Norma Cole, author of Spinoza in Her Youth

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Related Subjects

Poetry
European Poetry
French Poetry
Poetry
European Poetry
French Poetry

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