Paris Spleen

little poems in prose

Charles Baudelaire

Publication Year: 2009

Between 1855 and his death in 1867, Charles Baudelaire inaugurated a new--and in his own words "dangerous"--hybrid form in a series of prose poems known as Paris Spleen. Important and provocative, these fifty poems take the reader on a tour of 1850s Paris, through gleaming cafes and filthy side streets, revealing a metropolis on the eve of great change. In its deliberate fragmentation and merging of the lyrical with the sardonic, Le Spleen de Paris may be regarded as one of the earliest and most successful examples of a specifically urban writing, the textual equivalent of the city scenes of the Impressionists. In this compelling new translation, Keith Waldrop delivers the companion to his innovative translation of The Flowers of Evil. Here, Waldrop's perfectly modulated mix releases the music, intensity, and dissonance in Baudelaire's prose. The result is a powerful new re-imagining that is closer to Baudelaire's own poetry than any previous English translation.

Published by: Wesleyan University Press

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Translator’s Introduction

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pp. vii-viii

Baudelaire, in his last years, planned a new (“augmented”) edition of The Flowers of Evil and, as “pendant” to that work, a volume of “little poems in prose.” He did not live to see fulfilled either of these projects. The third edition of The Flowers of Evil came out the year after his death, as volume one ...

Dedication: For Ars�ne Houssaye

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pp. 3-4

Dear friend, I send you a work no one can claim not to make head or tail of, since, on the contrary, there is at once both tail and head, alternating and reciprocal. Consider, I beg you, how admirably convenient this combination makes it for each and all — you, me, the reader. We may stop whenever we like, I my daydream, you the manuscript, the reader his ...

E-ISBN-13: 9780819569981
Print-ISBN-13: 9780819569097

Page Count: 124
Publication Year: 2009

Edition: Trans. from the French
Series Title: Wesleyan Poetry Series

Paris Spleen

Cover

Contents

Translator’s Introduction

Dedication: For Ars�ne Houssaye

I: The Stranger

II: An Old Woman’s Despair

III: The Artist’s Confiteor

IV: A Joker

V: Double Bedroom

VI: To Each His Chim�ra

VII: The Fool and Venus

VIII: Dog and Flask

IX: The Bad Glazier

X: One A.M.

XI: Wild Woman and Little Darling

XII: The Crowd

XIII: Widows

XIV: The Old Showman

XV: Cake

XVI: The Clock

XVII: A Hemisphere in a Head of Hair

XVIII: Invitation to the Voyage

XIX: A Toy for the Poor

XX: Fairy Gifts

XXI: Temptations or Eros, Plutus and Glory

XXII: Evening Twilight

XXIII: Solitude

XXIV: Planning

XXV: Dorothea the Beautiful

XXVI: The Eyes of the Poor

XXVII: An Heroic Death

XXVIII: The False Coin

XXIX: Generous Gambler

XXX: The Rope

XXXI: Callings

XXXII: The Thyrsus

XXXIII: Be Drunk

XXXIV: Already!

XXXV: Windows

XXXVI: The Urge to Paint

XXXVII: Moon Favors

XXXVIII: Which Is the True?

XXXIX: A Thoroughbred

XL: The Mirror

XLI: The Port

XLII: Mistresses Portrayed

XLIII: The Gallant Marksman

XLIV: Soup and Clouds

XLV: Shooting-Gallery and Cemetery

XLVI: Lost Halo

XLVII: Mademoiselle Bistoury

XLVIII: Anywhere Out of the World

XLIX: Knock Down the Poor!

L: Good Dogs

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