Most Popular Books by Charles Baudelaire

The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) may speak of the carnal, depraved, and decaying in human life and the city, but Charles Baudelaire''s poetry so infuses even the most grotesque with beauty and a kind of innocence that the reader is moved beyond the rubric of the sacred and profane, into sublimity. This new edition, which features the English translation by F.P. Sturm and W.J. Robertson, also includes artwork by Lester Banzuelo.

A parallel-text edition of the poems of Baudelaire with a new translation which restores once banned poems to their original places and reveals the full richness and variety of the collection.

Les Fleurs du Mal By Charles Baudelaire We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

On the 200th anniversary of Baudelaire’s birth comes this stunning landmark translation of the book that launched modern poetry. 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.

Charles Baudelaire, His Life is an autobiography by Charles Baudelaire. The author shares his life events, poetry, letters and essays in this extensive tome for lovers of lyricism.

Baudelaire is one of the major innovators in French literature. His poetry is influenced by the French romantic poets of the earlier 19th century, although its attention to the formal features of verse connect it more closely to the work of the contemporary ''Parnassians''. As for theme and tone, in his works we see the rejection of the belief in the supremacy of nature and the fundamental goodness of man as typically espoused by the romantics and expressed by them in rhetorical, effusive and public voice in favor of a new urban sensibility, an awareness of individual moral complexity, an interest in vice (linked with decadence) and refined sensual and aesthetical pleasures, and the use of urban subject matter, such as the city, the crowd, individual passers-by, all expressed in highly ordered verse, sometimes through a cynical and ironic voice. Formally, the use of sound to create atmosphere, and of ''symbols'', (images which take on an expanded function within the poem), betray a move towards considering the poem as a self-referential object, an idea further developed by the Symbolists Verlaine and Mallarmé, who acknowledge Baudelaire as a pioneer in this regard.

Baudelaire composed the series of prose poems known as Paris Spleen between 1855 and his death in 1867. He attached great importance to his work in this then unusual form, asking, "Which one of us, in his moments of ambition, has not dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of reverie, the jibes of conscience?"

Collection of the notorious poet''s essays transcends the squalor of his financial ruin and the torture of physical decline to offer compelling thoughts on his world, society, and philosophy.

In ''The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire with an Introductory Preface by James Huneker,'' readers engage with the rich tapestry of Baudelaire''s oeuvre. This compilation showcases Baudelaire''s adept transition between structured verse and the liberated forms of prose poetry. His works, nestled amidst the period of literary modernism, are infused with the complexities of urban life and the dualities found within splendor and decay. The literary style marries haunting imagery and lyrical precision, characteristic of Baudelaire''s symbolist influence, and the volume''s scholarship is enhanced by Huneker''s critical preface, grounding the reader in the historical and aesthetic context of the poet''s work.nCharles Baudelaire stands among the venerated figures of 19th-century French literature. Known for his incisive critiques of contemporary Parisian society and his exploration of the ''modern'' within the human condition, Baudelaire''s writing stems from both personal turbulence and a vehement desire to break traditional poetic molds. This publication, meticulously curated by DigiCat Publishing, serves not only as a testament to Baudelaire''s literary significance but also reveals the driving factors behind his poetics - the relentless pursuit of beauty amidst the somber realities of life.nHuneker''s addition to Baudelaire''s timeless works invites readers—whether scholars, enthusiasts, or new acquaintances of the poet—to a profound literary experience. This edition, offering both print and digital formats, is apt for those seeking to immerse themselves in the delicacies of French symbolism and the early stirrings of modernist thought. It beckons the reader to acknowledge Baudelaire''s influence and to relish in the delicate craftsmanship of a poet who could eternally captivate the literary world with his vivid articulation of the human psyche and emotion.

This new bilingual edition of Les Fleurs du Mal has been fully revised and edited to reflect recent scholarship. The poems that were added to the posthumous edition of 1868 have been allocated new positions within the collection, and the six censored pieces have been restored to the positions they occupied in the edition of 1857.The poems have been carefully assessed with regard to both rhyme and metre, and translated into English verse which preserves as closely as possible both the original versification and the intrinsic sense of each poem.

Les Fleurs du mal (English: The Flowers of Evil) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857, it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements. The poems deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism.This new Bilingual English - French edition provides the original text of Charles Baudelaire with a powerful translation by Cyril Scott.

The Classic French text translated by Eric Gans.

A stunning new translation of a neglected masterpiece by one of history’s most celebrated writers. Ten years before Baudelaire published his masterpiece, The Flowers of Evil, the great poet penned the only prose fiction of his career: La Fanfarlo. The novella describes the torrid real-life affair the poet had with Jean Duval, a dancer whose beauty and sexuality Baudelaire came to obsess over. The outcome is a work of raw emotional power and a clear distillation of the Parisian’s poetic genius. As Baudelaire himself said, “Always be a poet, even in prose.” *** This is a Hybrid Book. Melville House HybridBooks combine print and digital media into an enhanced reading experience by including with each title additional curated material called Illuminations — maps, photographs, illustrations, and further writing about the author and the book. The Melville House Illuminations are free with the purchase of any title in the HybridBook series, no matter the format. Purchasers of the print version can obtain the Illuminations for a given title simply by scanning the QR code found in the back of each book, or by following the url also given in the back of the print book, then downloading the Illumination in whatever format works best for you. Purchasers of the digital version receive the appropriate Illuminations automatically as part of the ebook edition.

The Poem of Hashish (1821) by Charles Pierre Baudelaire was first published in 1850. This is the Aleister Crowley translation of 1895. Charles Baudelaire was an early precursor to the French symbolist movement of the late nineteenth century. The literary movement was a reaction to realism and placed a lot of emphasis on the power of dreams and the imagination as tools for communicating ideals through symbols. Synaesthesia was one the great tools of the symbolists and Baudelaire wrote of hashish: "By graduations, external objects assume unique appearances in the endless combining and transfiguring of forms. Ideas are distorted; perceptions are confused. Sounds are clothed in colors and colors in music." Baudelaire utilised the dream as the symbolic ground of the drug experience. Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867) was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire''s highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé among many others. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.

Upon its original publication in 1857 Charles Baudelaire''s "Les Fleurs du Mal" or "The Flowers of Evil" was embroiled in controversy. Within a month of its publication the French authorities brought an action against the author and the book''s publisher claiming that the work was an insult to public decency. Eventually the French courts would acknowledge the literary merit of Baudelaire''s work but ordered that six poems in particular should be banned from subsequent publication. The notoriety caused by this scandal would ultimately work in the author''s favor causing the initial publication to sell out, thus prompting the publication of another edition. The second edition was published in 1861, it included an additional thirty-five poems, with the exclusion of the six poems censored by the French government. Finally in 1868 a third edition was published posthumously. This collection added an additional fourteen poems selected by two of Baudelaire''s friends yet again excluded the six censored poems. Literary scholars generally agree that, while well-meaning, the addition of these poems in the third edition disrupt the structure intended by Baudelaire and thus the 1861 edition should be considered as the definitive edition. In this volume we reproduce that 1861 edition along with the six censored poems in the original French and in an English translation by William Aggeler. Rich with symbolism, "The Flowers of Evil" is rightly considered a classic of the modernist literary movement. Its themes of decadence and eroticism seek to exhibit Baudelaire''s criticism of the Parisian society of his time.