A stunning new translation of a neglected masterpiece by one of history’s most celebrated writers.
Ten years before Baudelaire published his masterpiece,
The Flowers of Evil, the great poet penned the only prose fiction of his career:
La Fanfarlo. The novella describes the torrid real-life affair the poet had with Jean Duval, a dancer whose beauty and sexuality Baudelaire came to obsess over. The outcome is a work of raw emotional power and a clear distillation of the Parisian’s poetic genius. As Baudelaire himself said, “Always be a poet, even in prose.”
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This is a
Hybrid Book.
Melville House HybridBooks combine print and digital media into an enhanced reading experience by including with each title additional curated material called
Illuminations — maps, photographs, illustrations, and further writing about the author and the book.
The Melville House Illuminations are free with the purchase of any title in the HybridBook series, no matter the format.
Purchasers of the print version can obtain the Illuminations for a given title simply by scanning the QR code found in the back of each book, or by following the url also given in the back of the print book, then downloading the Illumination in whatever format works best for you.
Purchasers of the digital version receive the appropriate Illuminations automatically as part of the ebook edition.
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Hi, I'm Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was born in Paris on April 9th, 1821. His father, born in 1759, died when Charles was six years old. His mother remarried in 1828. His relationship with his stepfather, Captain (and finally General) Aupick, was a difficult one, especially in later years. Baudelaire was sent to a boarding school in Lyons, then attended the Lycee Louis-le-Grande in Paris. He began to write poems while at school. In 1839 he was expelled from the Lycee, and became a boarder once more at a crammer's, passing his baccalauréat in 1839. He spent the next few years living as a bohemian in the Latin Quarter. In June 1841 he set out on a voyage to the East, an experience that left many traces in his later poems. After his return to France in 1842 he settled in Paris once more, living on his inheritance. He was notorious at this time as a dandy and drug addict. Soon he was in serious financial difficulties, which increased with the years, since Baudelaire would never accept employment of any kind, and his literary output was small. His early association with the actress Jeanne Duval continued throughout his life, at least sporadically. Baudelaire's notoriety after the publication and persecution of his Les Fleurs du Mal in 1857 did not relieve the poverty and loneliness of his later years. After an unsuccessful lecture tour in Belgium he became seriously ill in 1865 with general paralysis, and died in August 1867. His great international reputation, mainly as a poet but also as a literary and art critic, was mainly posthumous.
