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    The Flowers of Evil

    4.1 9

    by Charles Baudelaire, Marthiel Mathews (Editor), Jackson Mathews (Editor)

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    Customer Reviews

    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.

    Marthiel Mathews was an American poet, translator of French poetry, and academic.

    Jackson Mathews was an American scholar, poet, and translator of French poetry.

    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.”

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    Choose Expedited Delivery at checkout for delivery by. Tuesday, October 15

    In the annals of literature, few single volumes of poetry have achieved the influence and notoriety of The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) by Charles Baudelaire.
    Banned and slighted in his lifetime, the book that contains all of Baudelaire's verses has opened up vistas to the imagination and quickened sensibilities of poets everywhere. Yet it is questionable whether a single translator can give adequate voice to Baudelaire's full poetic range. In compiling their classic, bilingual edition of The Flowers of Evil, the late Marthiel and Jackson Mathews chose from the work of forty-one translators to create a collection that is "a commentary on the present state of the art of translation." The Mathews' volume is a poets' homage to Baudelaire as well. Among the contributors are: Robert Fitzgerald, Anthony Hecht, Aldous Huxley, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Karl Shapiro, Allen Tate, Richard Wilbur, Yvon Winters.

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    From the Publisher

    “Need I tell you that in this terrible book I have put all my heart, all my tenderness, all my religion (disguised), all my hatred? It is true that I shall write the opposite, that I shall swear by all the gods that it is a work of pure art, of mimicry, of mere dexterity – and I shall be lying through my teeth.” - Charles Baudelaire

    “Baudelaire is indeed the greatest exemplar in modern poetry in any language, for his verse and language is the nearest thing to a complete renovation that we have experienced.” - T.S. Eliot

    “The translations are very good indeed” - John Banville

    “The best way yet for us to enter the poet’s dream-like world, producing, as his title says, beauty from the sordid world around him” - Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian

    “This should be read by any poetry lover” - Bill Spence, Yorkshire Gazette & Herald

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