Flowers of Evil

by Charles Baudelaire, George Dillon (Translator), Edna St. Vincent Millay (Translator)

Overview

The Flowers of Evil (1857) is a collection of poems by Charles Baudelaire. Translated into English by Cyril Scott in 1909, Baudelaire’s poems remain lively and idiosyncratic nearly two centuries after they came into existence. Comprised mostly of sonnets and short lyrics, The Flowers of Evil captures Baudelaire’s sense of the changing role of the poet in modern life. Rather than focus on beauty and other ideals, Baudelaire explores the totality of human experience—the good, bad, and ugly of life on earth. “When by the changeless Power of a Supreme Decree / The poet issues forth upon this sorry sphere, / His mother, horrified, and full of blasphemy, / Uplifts her voice to God, who takes compassion on her.” In his opening benediction, Baudelaire reverses the typical trope of invoking the muses or celebrating poetry as a divine gift. Instead, he depicts the poet as a being cursed, a “hideous Child of Doom.” Childhood for Baudelaire is a subject of particular interest, a time described, in his poem “The Enemy,” as “a ravaging storm, / Enlivened at times by a brilliant sun…” The youthful experience of melancholy clearly informs the poet’s outlook as an adult: “Time devours our lives, / And the enemy black, which consumeth our hearts / On the blood of our bodies, increases and thrives!” While much of Baudelaire’s work deals with darkness and despair, his poems can rise to the heights of celebration and ecstasy, his voice soft and sweet as he invites his sister on a journey to an imagined land of “order and loveliness, / Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.” Ultimately, Baudelaire’s vision—however irreverent—is guided by truth and morality, which drive him on a torturous path from good to evil, beauty to death, and back. This edition of The Flowers of Evil is a classic of French literature reimagined for modern readers.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681378282
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	05/21/2024
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	643,536
Product dimensions:	4.50(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a French poet. Born in Paris, Baudelaire lost his father at a young age. Raised by his mother, he was sent to boarding school in Lyon and completed his education at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he gained a reputation for frivolous spending and likely contracted several sexually transmitted diseases through his frequent contact with prostitutes. After journeying by sea to Calcutta, India at the behest of his stepfather, Baudelaire returned to Paris and began working on the lyric poems that would eventually become The Flowers of Evil (1857), his most famous work. Around this time, his family placed a hold on his inheritance, hoping to protect Baudelaire from his worst impulses. His mistress Jeanne Duval, a woman of mixed French and African ancestry, was rejected by the poet’s mother, likely leading to Baudelaire’s first known suicide attempt. During the Revolutions of 1848, Baudelaire worked as a journalist for a revolutionary newspaper, but soon abandoned his political interests to focus on his poetry and translations of the works of Thomas De Quincey and Edgar Allan Poe. As an arts critic, he promoted the works of Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix, composer Richard Wagner, poet Théophile Gautier, and painter Édouard Manet. Recognized for his pioneering philosophical and aesthetic views, Baudelaire has earned praise from such artists as Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Marcel Proust, and T. S. Eliot. An embittered recorder of modern decay, Baudelaire was an essential force in revolutionizing poetry, shaping the outlook that would drive the next generation of artists away from Romanticism towards Symbolism, and beyond. Paris Spleen (1869), a posthumous collection of prose poems, is considered one of the nineteenth century’s greatest works of literature.

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

Translator's Introduction
The Flowers of Evil
Dedication
To the Reader
Spleen and Ideal
Benediction
The Albatross
Elevation
Correspondences
"I like to bring to mind . . ."
Beacon Lights
Sick Muse
Mercenary Muse
The Bad Monk
The Enemy
Bad Luck
The Life Before
Gypsy Travelers
Man and Sea
Don Juan in Hell
Pride Punished
Beauty
The Ideal
Giantess
The Mask
Hymn to Beauty
Exotic Perfume
Hair
"I adore you . . ."
"You would take the whole universe . . ."
Sed Non Satiata
"In her flowing pearly garments . . ."
Dancing Serpent
Carrion
De Profundis Clamavi
Vampire
"One night while I lay . . ."
Posthumous Remorse
The Cat
Duel
The Balcony
The Possessed
A Phantom
"I give you these verses . . ."
Semper Eadem
Altogether
"What will you say this evening . . ."
Living Torch
Reversibility
Confession
Spiritual Dawn
Evening's Harmony
Flask
Poison
l Sky in Confusion
Cat
The Fine-looking Ship
Invitation to the Voyage
The Irreparable
Conversation
Autumn Song
To a Madonna
Afternoon Song
Sisina
Franciscæ Meæ Laudes
To a Creole Lady
Moesta et Errabunda
Revenant
Autumn Sonnet
The Sorrowing Moon
Cats
Owls
The Pipe
Music
Burial
A Fantasy Print
Dead Man Glad
The Vessel of Hate
The Cracked Bell
Spleen
Spleen
Spleen
Spleen
Obsession
The Taste for Nothing
Alchemy of Pain
Sympathetic Horror
Heautontimoroumenos
Beyond Remedy
The Clock
Parisian Scenes
Landscape
The Sun
To a Redheaded Beggar Girl
The Swan
The Seven Old Men
The Little Old Women
The Blind
To a Woman Passing By
The Skeleton Laborer
Evening Twilight
Gambling
Danse Macabre
Love of a Lie
"I have not forgotten . . ."
"The big-hearted servant . . ."
Fog, Rain
Paris Dream
Morning Twilight
Wine
The Soul of the Wine
The Ragpicker's Wine
The Assassin's Wine
The Wine of the Solitary
The Wine of Lovers
Flowers of Evil
Destruction
A Martyr
Women Damned
The Two Good Sisters
The Fountain of Blood
Allegory
His Beatrice
A Voyage to Cythera
Love and the Skull
Revolt
Saint Peter's Denial
Abel and Cain
Litanies of Satan
Death
The Death of Lovers
Death of the Poor
The Death of Artists
End of Day
Dream of a Curious Character
The Voyage
The Banned Poems
Lesbos
Women Damned
Lethe
To Her, Too Merry
The Jewels
Metamorphoses of the Vampire

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

Editorial Reviews

"Thus the delight and curiosity of Keith Waldrop's new translation. It's close to plain prose: 'versets,' he calls them, paragraphs divided where Baudelaire's stanza's break. It's by no means the first prose translation, but it's the most charming: I don't recall another version, verse or prose, that slips so easily into the comradely 'we.'"—The New York Times Book Review

"Waldrop's translations soar...perhaps getting closer to Baudelaire's rich tone than any other English translation."—Chicago Review

"Thus the delight and curiosity of Keith Waldrop's new translation. It's close to plain prose: 'versets,' he calls them, paragraphs divided where Baudelaire's stanza's break. It's by no means the first prose translation, but it's the most charming: I don't recall another version, verse or prose, that slips so easily into the comradely 'we.'"—The New York Times Book Review

"The task of the translator...is to reconcile the strengths of the poet with his new surroundings, setting him in flight with wings that do not impede his walk. In part from the landing on versets, but more particularly from his deftness in English and the depth of his understanding of Baudelaire, Keith Waldrop has created a Flowers of Evil that, one gesture, can come to terms with the new needs of poetry readers in English and the foreignness of the language of Les Fleurs du mal."—Rain Taxi

"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

From the Publisher

Mid-nineteenth-century poet and translator Baudelaire is one of the great progenitors of modern poetry. Jonathan Keeble's excellent narration reminds us just how radical this work was and why parts of it were banned in France as late as 1949. Keeble restrains some of the passionate excesses that are part of Baudelaire's radicalism, preserving the contrasts that let the heights of passion stand out. Passion can be low-key as well, and Keeble shows he understands that in the way he delivers a body of work ranging in subject from Satan to cats. A real oversight is the lack of credit on the cover to the translator, James McGowan, who did a fine job. D.M.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2018 - AudioFile