About this title: Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867) est un pote franais. Il se vit reprocher son criture et le choix de ses sujets. Il ne fut compris que par quelques-uns de ses pairs. Aujourdhui reconnu comme un crivain majeur de lhistoire de la posie franaise, Baudelaire est devenu un classique. Barbey dAurevilly voyait en lui un Dante dune poque dchue. Au travers de son oeuvre, Baudelaire a tent de tisser et de dmontrer les liens entre le mal et la beaut, le bonheur et lidal inaccessible ( une Passante), la violence et la volupt (Une Martyre), entre le pote et son lecteur ( Hypocrite lecteur, mon ...
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Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Éditions Garnier frères
Date Published: 1961
Description: Former owner's signature on title page. Small rips and rubbing to jacket. No other Writing. No Highlighting. Text in French. 490 p. Selecta.. "Note bibliographique": p. [xxviii]-xxix. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Edition: Reprint.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: GF, Paris
Date Published: 1964
Description: Very good in fine dust jacket. FREE 1st Class upgrade! Order processed within minutes of your purchase! In business since 1975! No aging at all; bright high contrast text with light textmarking. Text in French. 253p texte integral; imprime au France. Et autres poemes! ! ! read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Le Livre De Poche, Paris, France
Date Published: 1972
ISBN-13:9782253007104ISBN:2253007102
Description: Very Good. No Jacket. 16mo-over 5¾"-6¾" tall. Xliii, 402 pp. Text in French. Light rubbing to the cover edges. The binding is tight and square, and the text is clean. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Éditions Garnier frères
Date Published: 1961
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Light cover wear. Otherwise clean. Text in French. 490 p. Selecta.. "Note bibliographique": p. [xxviii]-xxix. read more
Description: Very Good. Poemes choisis presentes par Marcel Galliot; softcover in VERY GOOD condition, no marks in text, square uncreased spine; 95 pages. read more
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Pencil writing & notes. Sticker on spine. Ships fast! Mildly worn cover. Text in French. Trade paperback (US). read more
What can you say about a person whose very surname has become a synonym for debauchery, for louche and antisocial behavior?
Many people try to live their lives to schock others, at one phase or another of their youth, especially. But for Baudelaire, all this came naturallly. No affectation, as far as I can tell.
I wonder a bit about poeple these days who have the Baudelaire name in France. Do they get tired of explaining all of it....
"My love of literature began at a young age, in part, with French literature. I loved translations of Alexander Dumas and when I grew past romantic adventures, I was entranced at the clinical realist precision of Balzac. I briefly dated a French woman in New York City who begged me to move with her to Marseilles where I would attend the University of Marseilles (she had magically already procured an application) at the expense of French taxpayers (what liberals call "universal education") so long as I learned to speak French in 9 months time. I never left the States and never learned French.
However, if I did learn French, it would be mainly to read Baudelaire in the original. I doubt many readers picking this book up will be aware of the atom bomb it dropped on Paris when it was published. Reading it now it may still sound fresh, irreverent, decadent, and Satanic, but you have to multiply that by a factor of 100 to get the 19th century reaction. To add some perspective, this decadent evil little book of poems dealing with lesbianism, artifice, death, a dog corpse festering and open like the legs of a prostitute...this was circa the Civil War! Baudelaire was lucky he was only fined for "indecency" but a few of the poems were outlawed in France until (are you setting down?) 1949!
I don't want to discuss the poems or do explications of them. Any serious poet should own this book. Baudelaire was a masterful poet, a brilliant critic, he was THE reason Edgar Allen Poe was introduced to the Continent via his translations, and he virtually threw his artistic back out writing these poems. He would never surpass them and would spend years editing the volume and perhaps basking in the rays of their infamy. Baudelaire is a prime example of quality over quantity. I will take Les Fleurs Du Mal over a dozen books of poetry from a lesser poet and he stands head and shoulders over his contemporaries. The French Symbolists were nebulous...rather like a Romantic poet who smoked too much opium. Baudelaire on the other hand, had a keen mind sharp as a knife and wrote verse that was outrageous in its subject matter as it is technically brilliant. You have the tenants of symbolism, the mysterious music of Nature, the sublime, the absinthe-fueled hallucinations, but they are there in Baudelaire with a wicked energy. There are a handful of books in modern times that have shocked. Ulysses, Tropic of Cancer, a few others. One has to read Les Fleurs Du Mal with the understanding that it is among their company."
"What can i say? One of the greats that hits you right in the stomach. something that everyone can go back to. Was one of the originals that made me REALLY try and read/learn french. At least poetry. Have to disagree with people who say hes too dark. I feel that hes just not afraid to addres anything. Within that addres theres the strength to touch: vulnerability, sexuality, the physical body, etc. Isnt true passion seen with the hands; felt with the mouth?"
"I was so taken by this book that I memorized whole passages to repeat if only to myself at various times of the day. As I recall, my friends began to think I was mentally ill. Nevertheless, the power of this book was immense on my life as a college junior, I think, and it caused me to fall in love with everything that was French, cynical and wearing a beret, much like a Parisian waiter on his day off. I actually picked this book up because I loved the name, but it also began a long term love affair not only with Baudelaire, but Rimbaud and especially Verlaine. These poets literally opened up a new level of excitement in me for the depth at which the human spirit could both soar and sink, if one were truly willing to be led. I can still smell the acrid Gauloises cigarettes I smoked, but maybe that was just my imagination walking by the Seine so late at night and thinking these wonderful thoughts!"
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