Known to his contemporaries primarily as an art critic, but ambitious to secure a more lasting literary legacy, Charles Baudelaire, a Parisian bohemian, spent much of the 1840s composing gritty, often perverse, poems that expressed his disgust with the banality of modern city life.
First published in 1857, the book that collected these poems together, Les Fleurs du mal, was an instant sensation–earning Baudelaire plaudits and, simultaneously, disrepute. Only a year after Gustave Flaubert had endured his own public trial for published indecency (for Madame Bovary), a French court declared Les Fleurs du mal an offense against public morals and six poems within it were immediately suppressed (a ruling that would not be reversed until 1949, nearly a century after Baudelaire’s untimely death). Subsequent editions expanded on the original, including new poems that have since been recognized as Baudelaire’s masterpieces, producing a body of work that stands as the most consequential, controversial, and influential book of poetry from the nineteenth century.
Acclaimed translator and poet Aaron Poochigian tackles this revolutionary text with an ear attuned to Baudelaire’s lyrical innovations–rendering them in “an assertive blend of full and slant rhymes and fluent iambs” (A. E. Stallings)–and an intuitive feel for the work’s dark and brooding mood. Poochigian’s version captures the incantatory, almost magical, effect of the original–reanimating for today’s reader Baudelaire’s “unfailing vision” that “trumpeted the space and light of the future” (Patti Smith).
An introduction by Dana Gioia offers a probing reassessment of the supreme artistry of Baudelaire’s masterpiece, and an afterword by Daniel Handler explores its continued relevance and appeal. Featuring the poems in English and French, this deluxe dual-language edition allows readers to commune both with the original poems and with these electric, revelatory translations.
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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.
