The Flowers of Evil (Oxford World's Classics) by Charles Baudelaire

by Charles Baudelaire

Unknown Binding

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

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful poetry .. overarching celestial imagery throughout the collections, the moon itself is a character and the speaker is often some Icarian figure or celestial body. Also rife with change. Baudelaire is obsessed with change between seasons, or changing times of the day ; a lot of natural imagery revolves around change and subsequent reflection. There is also a lot of necrophilia in his poetry; skeletons are a recurring sexual theme and there were at least two poems referencing being in love with a corpse, one about killing a lover. I struggled to think of a meaning for this. I think it represents an eventual submission to nature; of course, the most inevitable natural thing to do is die. It is about the literal embrace of nature in its most primitive form, decay being an irreversible process and the final ‘change’ we go through. Or maybe he was just into that?

[EJ Daniels · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the English translations are very accurate, they lack the sensual beauty of the original French; this edition would likely be most helpful to those interested in directly comparing the French to basic English for language learning or translation purposes.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the context provided in the introduction and explanatory notes to be quite helpful, and clearly well researched. It appears that this volume has been put together by people who know very well what they are doing, and for that I am grateful. The poems themselves are of an overall high quality, the key word being overall. Baudelaire is to me most exceptional as a poet thanks to his vivid descriptions and very effective conjuring of disgust, as most perfectly exemplified in "Une Charogne". That being said, I did find myself unimpressed at certain points in the volume. When it comes to my personal taste, the poems within the Venus Cycles, particularly the cycle of the black Venus, were the least enjoyable. Reading poem after poem of Baudelaire all but whining about how "cold" and "cruel" women are did little but make me exasperated with him. I am far from shocked that the poems are underscored with some misogyny, being written when they were, but that does little to change the fact that reading it was tiring and unpleasant.

[Pia Sutherland · Rating 3 out of 5]

mothers rouging the teat that nourished you; sucking another’s life through your nostril, battening on blood; tuning to health our excellent machine …..

i loved how debaucherous and turned-in and insufferable this was and im definitely gonna try convert 1 or 2 poems into design/illustration projects :-p

Baudelaire is sooo crazy and awesome but 3 stars because something from 1800 is just not as tasty as stuff from now