Paris Spleen

by Charles Baudelaire

Overview

First published posthumously in 1869, "Paris Spleen" is a collection of 51 short prose poems by Charles Baudelaire. Inspired by Aloysius Bertrand's "Gaspard de la Nuit - Fantaisies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot" or "Gaspard of the Night - Fantasies in the Manner of Rembrandt and Callot", Baudelaire remarked that he had read Bertrand's work at least twenty times for starting "Paris Spleen". A commentary on Parisian contemporary life, Baudelaire remarked on his work that "These are the flowers of evil again, but with more freedom, much more detail, and much more mockery." The themes present in "Paris Spleen" are wide-ranging. In a stream of consciousness style Baudelaire discusses pleasure, intoxication, artistry, women, poverty and social status, city life, religion, and morality. These little snapshots of daily life in the city of Paris capture the tumultuous time in which they were written, the middle of the 19th century, and establish "Paris Spleen" as a classic of the modernist literary movement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781420950199
Publisher:	Digireads.com
Publication date:	01/01/2015
Pages:	84
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) is most famous for his groundbreaking collection of verse The Flowers of Evil, but his essays, translations, and prose poems have been equally influential.

Louise Varèse was an American biographer and translator of French. She is known for her translations of Stendhal, Proust, Georges Simenon, Julien Gracq, St.-John Perse and Arthur Rimbaud.

Editorial Reviews

"He possessed, as it were, a profound intuition of the obstinate, amorphous contingency which is life..."

Jean-Paul Sartre

"The cadenced prose beats in perfect time with the pulse of the slumbering city, where only the strange is awake. The atmosphere is old, dirty, often sordid, and yet, somehow, glorious.... The translation is almost perfect."

Chicago Tribune - John Randolph

"The king of poets, a true God." - Arthur Rimbaud

"Sorrell has often dared to mirror more exactly than most previous translators Baudelaire's elaborate syntax. He has a point here, and his accurate versions give the reader a heady experience of the originals." - TLS

From the Publisher