Charles Baudelaire

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

"Der berühmteste und über Frankreichs Grenzen hinaus fruchtbarste französische Gedichtband des 19. Jahrhundert: Verlaine und Mallarm?, Swinburne, d'Annunzio und George und viele andere haben entscheidende Wirkung von ihm erfahren."

Bogen fra 1863 er Baudelaires bedste kunstkritiske arbejde. Med udgangspunkt i den gådefulde Constantin Guys, der som tegnende reporter var vidne til en række af århundredets vigtigste begivenheder, indkredser Baudelaire den flygtige skønhed i de nye storbyer med deres dandyer, flanører, ludere, caféer, vogne. I en intens og dynamisk tekst beskrives pompen i det militære, det galante og elegante liv, men også den moderne krigs gru. I centrum står analysen af det kunstige, af moden, af kvinden som guddom og slave. Og af kunstneren, der i menneskemængden jager det nye i en verden, hvor intet skal bestå.

In a masterly translation by Norman Shapiro, this selection of poems from Les Fleurs du mal demonstrates the magnificent range of Baudelaire's gift, from the exquisite quatrains to the formal challenges of his famous sonnets. The poems are presented in both French and English, complemented by the work of illustrator David Schorr. As much a pleasure to look at as it is to read, this volume invites newcomers and devotees alike to experience Baudelaire's genius anew." A fine, formal translation of the best poems of France's founder of the symbolist movement."—St. Louis Post-Dispatch"It's rare to find a rewarding translation of a masterwork, particularly a collection of groundbreaking poetry. . . . Through Shapiro's skillful wordsmithing, the reader can fully appreciate Baudelaire's control of the soul and the word which is the ancient and indefatigable ambition of all great poets. . . . Shapiro's interpretations set the standard for future English translations."—Virginia Quarterly Review

Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" marks the intrusion of modernity into the French poetic tradition. The carefully ordered collection (here presented in its 1861 edition) betrays a frighteningly honest poet grappling witha sense of his own deep spiritual imperfection, a recognition too of his creative difficulty and an ambivalent teetering on the boundary between the radical and the conservative. As no other poet had done before (and only a few have managed since), Baudelaire sustains in a single collection an exploration of sin, suffering, love, sexual desire, memory, beauty, the city, and the fundamental human impulse towards the new and the unknown - and all this in verse that resonates with a fresh timbre and persuades through its mysterious 'rhetorique profonde'. This critical edition urges the reader to join the poet in his journey from benediction to death, to become a fellow traveller along the route towards 'le nouveau'.

From Edouard Manet to T. S. Eliot to Jim Morrison, the reach of Charles Baudelaire's influence is beyond estimation. In this prize-winning translation of his no-longer-neglected masterpiece, Baudelaire offers a singular view of 1850s Paris. Evoking a mélange of reactions, these fifty "fables of modern life" take us on various tours led by a flâneur, an incognito stroller. Through day and night, in gleaming cafés and filthy side streets, this alienated yet compassionate esthete muses on the bizarre in the commonplace, the sublime in the mundane. As the work reveals a teeming metropolis on the eve of great change, we see a Paris as contradictory, surprising, and ultimately unknowable as our guide himself. Superbly complemented by twenty-one period illustrations by Delacroix, Callot, Manet, Whistler, Baudelaire himself, and others, The Parisian Prowler is an essential companion to Les Fleurs du Mal and other works by the father of modern poetry. In the preface to this edition, translator Edward K. Kaplan explains how the volume's illustrations act as a graphic subtext to the narrator's observations.

Modern poetry begins with Charles Baudelaire (1821-67), who employed his unequalled technical mastery to create the shadowy, desperately dramatic urban landscape -- populated by the addicted and the damned -- which so compellingly mirrors our modern condition. Deeply though darkly spiritual, titanic in the changes he wrought, Baudelaire looms over all the work, great and small, created in his wake. Also available in everyman's library pocket poetsW. H. AudenWilliam BlakeLord ByronEmily DickinsonJohn DonneThomas HardyGerard Manley HopkinsJohn KeatsEdgar Allan PoeArthur RimbaudChristina RossettiWilliam ShakespearePercy Bysshe ShelleyWallace StevensWalt WhitmanWilliam WordsworthAnimal PoemsErotic PoemsFriendship PoemsLove PoemsPrayers

An exciting addition to Everyman's Library: a new series of small, handsome hardcover volumes devoted to the world's classic poets. Our books will have twice as many pages as Bloomsbury Classic' 128 pp and will cost 7. 99 against Bloomsbury's 9. 99. The binding, paper and production will be visibly superior in every way to that of Bloomsbury

"I am moved...by the mastery of both languages, plus the total absorption of the spirit of Baudelaire.... I recognize Baudelaire's voice in these translations."--Anna Balakian. Includes an incisive introduction to Baudelaire's life, work and influence on modern poetry.

Banned and slighted in his lifetime, the book that contains all of Baudelaire's verses has opened up vistas to the imagination and quickened sensibilities of poets everywhere. Yet it is questionable whether a single translator can give adequate voice to Baudelaire's full poetic range. In compiling their classic, bilingual edition of The Flowers of Evil, the late Marthiel and Jackson Mathews chose from the work of forty-one translators to create a collection that is "a commentary on the present state of the art of translation." The Mathews' volume is a poets' homage to Baudelaire as well. Among the contributors are: Robert Fitzgerald, Anthony Hecht, Aldous Huxley, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Karl Shapiro, Allen Tate, Richard Wilbur, Yvon Winters.

From the introduction by Michael Hamburger:“Baudelaire's prose poems were written at long intervals during the last twelve or thirteen years of his life. The prose poem was a medium much suited to his habits and character. Being pre-eminently a moralist, he needed a medium that enabled him to illustrate a moral insight as briefly and vividly as possible. Being an artist and sensualist, he needed a medium that was epigrammatic or aphoristic, but allowed him scope for fantasy and for that element of suggestiveness which he considered essential to beauty. His thinking about society and politics, as about everything else, was experimental; like the thinking of most poets it drew on experience and imagination, rather than on facts and general arguments. That is another reason why the prose poem proved a medium so congenial to Baudelaire.” Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a French poet, essayist, art critic and translator for Edgar Allan Poe. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" to describe the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.

Before publishing Les Fleurs du Mal in 1857, Baudelaire was probably better known to his contemporaries as a critic than as a poet, and the articles translated here by P. E. Charvet illustrate the development of Baudelaire's critical ideas. The essays cover the visual, literary, and musical arts. From the early 'Salon' of 1846 Baudelaire's commitment to the cause of Delcroix was passionate and unswerving and it remains a theme of a number of these pieces. Baudelaire's literary criticism is represented by, amongst others, the two important articles on Poe, the spirited defence of Madame Bovary published shortly after Flaubert had been acquitted on a charge of offending public morality and the long article on Gautier, to whom Baudelaire dedicated Les Fleurs du Mal. The musician whom Baudelaire admired above all others was Wagner, and the article on Tannhäuser published at the time of the Paris production in 1861 shows his percipience as a critic: with no technical knowledge of music, Baudelaire nevertheless demonstrates an instinctive awareness of the magical power of suggestion in Wagner's music.

The earliest foreign study of the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe, the text presented in this volume is something of a landmark in the history of comparative literature. Baudelaire’s first and longest essay on Poe was published in the Revue de Paris is 1852; it was revised and abridged for use as the preface of the first volume of his translation of Poe’s tales, Histoires extraordinaires. This study was significant especially in the area of Franco-American literary relations because it was the basis of not only the French attitude toward Poe, but of his reputation throughout Europe-one might almost say, throughout the world. The essay on Poe has never been the subject of a separate publication. This edition reveals for the first time the sources of information used by Baudelaire. It shows that a considerable part of the study was translated literally from articles by John M. Daniel and John R. Thompson in the Southern Literary Messenger (1849–50). Previous editions vary widely in excellence because almost all suffered from the mistaken belief that Baudelaire was acquainted with the American edition of Poe’s works when he wrote the 1852 essay and that it was largely based on Rufus Griswold’s Memoir contained in that edition. This led to the commentary and notes that were unconsciously misleading and in many cases false. The introduction to this edition presents a complete and accurate account of the genesis of Baudelaire’s essay, with supporting documents showing his indebtedness to American, French, and British sources. It enables the reader to distinguish clearly between what Baudelaire himself knew or thought about Poe and what he borrowed from other writers.