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The Flowers of Evil
Translated by Keith Waldrop
Series: Wesleyan Poetry Series
Sales Date: 2008-02-28
224 Pages, 5.50 x 8.50 in
A modernist classic translated for the twenty-first century.
It is not given to everyone to blend into the multitude: enjoying the crowd is an art, and only he can gain a stroke of vitality from it, at humanity's expense, whose good fairy at his cradle bequeathed a taste for travesty and masque, along with hatred of home and passion for travel.
—from "XII, The Crowd"
The poetic masterpiece of the great nineteenth-century writer Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil is one of the most frequently read and studied works in the French language. In this compelling new translation of Baudelaire's most famous collection, Keith Waldrop recasts the poet's original French alexandrines and other poetic arrangements into versets, a form that hovers between poetry and prose. Maintaining Baudelaire's complex view of sound and structure, Waldrop's translation mirrors the intricacy of the original without attempting to replicate its inimitable verse. The result is a powerful new re-imagining, one that is, almost paradoxically, closer to Baudelaire's own poetry than any previous English translation. Including the six poems banned from the first edition, this Flowers of Evil preserves the complexity, eloquence, and dark humor of its author. Brought here to new life, it is hypnotic, frank, and forceful.
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
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (1821 – 1867) wrote some of the most innovative poetry of the nineteenth century, in books including Les Fleurs du Mal and Le spleen de Paris. KEITH WALDROP is author of numerous collections of poetry and is the translator of The Selected Poems of Edmond Jabès, as well as works by Claude Royet-Journoud, Anne-Marie Albiach, and Jean Grosjean.
"Thus the delight and curiosity of Keith Waldrop's new translation. It's close to plain prose: 'versets,' he calls them, paragraphs divided where Baudelaire's stanza's break. It's by no means the first prose translation, but it's the most charming: I don't recall another version, verse or prose, that slips so easily into the comradely 'we.'"
~The New York Times Book Review
""Waldrop's translations soar...perhaps getting closer to Baudelaire's rich tone than any other English translation.""
~Chicago Review
""Thus the delight and curiosity of Keith Waldrop's new translation. It's close to plain prose: 'versets,' he calls them, paragraphs divided where Baudelaire's stanza's break. It's by no means the first prose translation, but it's the most charming: I don't recall another version, verse or prose, that slips so easily into the comradely 'we.'""
~The New York Times Book Review
""The task of the translator...is to reconcile the strengths of the poet with his new surroundings, setting him in flight with wings that do not impede his walk. In part from the landing on versets, but more particularly from his deftness in English and the depth of his understanding of Baudelaire, Keith Waldrop has created a Flowers of Evil that, one gesture, can come to terms with the new needs of poetry readers in English and the foreignness of the language of Les Fleurs du mal.""
~Rain Taxi
"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
"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.""
~Cole Swensen, Iowa Writers' Workshop
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