Kurja Belgia! : muistiinpanoja ja kirjeitä 1864-1866

by Charles Baudelaire, Antti Nylén (Editor, translator)

Dekadenssin airut Charles Baudelaire rajuimmillaan, hyökkäävimmillään, purevimmillaan. Kurja Belgia! on teos jota Baudelaire rakenteli Brysselissä ennen halvaantumistaan. Baudelaire kehittää tässä epätavallisessa, runollisessa matkaoppaassa vihanpurkauksen kokonaista kansakuntaa kohtaan. Baudelairen mielestä belgialaiset ovat tyhmiä, valehtelijoita ja varkaita.

Suomentaja Antti Nylén on toimittanut nautittavan keitoksen, jossa Baudelairen hätkähdyttävät kirjeet ja suomentajan pätevät selitykset täydentävät oivasti kokonaisuutta. Nämä kirjoitukset ovat Ranskan kirjallisuushistorian kiistellyimpiä. Oliko mestari lopun aikoinaan hullu vai nero? Millaisia belgialaiset ovat, millaisia ihmiset ovat, millainen on Euroopan sydän?

Genres: Nonfiction, Poetry

173 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1864

About the author

Public condemned Les fleurs du mal (1857), obscene only volume of French writer, translator, and critic Charles Pierre Baudelaire; expanded in 1861, it exerted an enormous influence over later symbolist and modernist poets.

Reputation of Charles Pierre Baudelaire rests primarily on perhaps the most important literary art collection, published in Europe in the 19th century. Similarly, his early experiment Petits poèmes en prose (1868) ( Little Prose Poems ) most succeeded and innovated of the time.

From financial disaster to prosecution for blasphemy, drama and strife filled life of known Baudelaire with highly controversial and often dark tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Long after his death, his name represents depravity and vice. He seemingly speaks directly to the 20th century civilization.

Reviews

[niina]

This book was divided into two parts, to notes and letters, which kind of worked out for the best, making reading easier and keeping the insides well in order and all. However, after reading this I feel it would have been more fruitful to mix the two, if possible to link letters with the notes that considered the subjects discussed in the longer texts. This way they would have better supported each other. Or maybe I should have read the letters first, but I'm one of those that prefer to advance chronologically.

The notes made way better sense after reading the letters, they were more interesting and richer in content in the light of some background stories and the trouble better expressed in the letters. The notes themselves got flattened in the long run, and the repetition started to raise questions and hopes for explanations as they got more regular. The notes were highly critical, or should I say blunt and unfriendly remarks and helped at building up the idea of how and of what Baudelaire suffered most in the country, but only the letters told us why. It would certainly have been interesting to read similar writings by the author of other countries as well, to learn how a French, quite stuck-up dandy sees different cultures, their people and their ways of expressing themselves.

[Anu]

I read the Finnish translation/edition of this (by Antti Nylén).
(http://www.sammakko.com/kauppa/produc...)

[Marina]

Qué desconcertante.

[Rene Ijzermans]

Een ongekend venijnig schotschrift over België van de hand van Baudelaire wat ik skippend heb gelezen omdat het vooral bestaat uit onsamenhangende aantekeningen die vaak pijn deden aan de ogen. Oké, het is Baudelaire en hij liep tegen het eind van zijn leven, mogelijk ook aangevreten door een (gekmakende) stadium van syfilis, toen hij Parijs ontvluchtte en zich in Brussel vestigde. Daar kwam hij tot aantekeningen die later tot dit boek hebben geleid: een onbeschaamde tirade die bij mij op enig moment op de lachspieren begon in te werken.
Vooral de geur van groene zeep sprong eruit. En er zitten nog wat gedichten in, waar het me eigenlijk om ging.

[Bert Huisman]

13 t6

[T]

Tykitystä. Toistoa, kaunaa ja vihaa. Pidättekö jotain tiettyä Suomen kaupunkia kansoineen vähän hassuna? Lukekaa tämä kirja ja samastukaa!

[Victor]

Un livre qui peut me mettre dans la sauce au moment d’acquérir la nationalité

[Ignacio Cerón]

The poems and texts from the first half of the book are really good; the second part is rather boring and just a compilation of articles from Baudelaire's surroundings.