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.