The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire: With an Introductory Preface by James Huneker
1919
The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire: With an Introductory Preface by James Huneker
1919
Charles Baudelaire mapped the secret geography of modern despair like no poet before or since. This collection gathers the poems and prose poems of the Frenchman who invented a new literary form while chronicling his own dissolution in the city that made him: Paris. Here are the famous verses about spleen and ideal, the dandy's weary elegance, the prostitute's sad beauty, the cadaver blooming in the garden. Here too are the prose poems, those hallucinatory fragments where Baudelaire pursued beauty into its darkest alleys, whether stimulated by hasheesh or simply by the toxic atmosphere of the modern metropolis. James Huneker's preface provides context for the poet's legendary suffering his lifetime, the obscenity trials, the poverty, the early decay but the writing needs no introduction. These are poems written in blood on the walls of the 19th century, yet they speak with perfect clarity to anyone who has felt the modern condition: that sickness of the soul, that longing for the infinite in a world that offers only commodities. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand where modern poetry began and why it so often sounds like a cry in a locked room.
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“The Desire To Paint"Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this desire.I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her.She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal and profound.Her eyes are two caverns where mystery vaguely stirs and gleams; her glance illuminates like a ray of light; it is an explosion in the darkness.I would compare her to a black sun if one could conceive of a dark star overthrowing light and happiness.But it is the moon that she makes one dream of most readily; the moon, who has without doubt touched her with her own influence; not the white moon of the idylls, who resembles a cold bride, but the sinister and intoxicating moon suspended in the depths of a stormy night, among the driven clouds; not the discreet peaceful moon who visits the dreams of pure men, but the moon torn from the sky, conquered and revolted, that the witches of Thessaly hardly constrain to dance upon the terrified grass.Her small brow is the habitation of a tenacious will and the love of prey. And below this inquiet face, whose mobile nostrils breathe in the unknown and the impossible, glitters, with an unspeakable grace, the smile of a large mouth ; white, red, and delicious; a mouth that makes one dream of the miracle of some superb flower unclosing in a volcanic land.There are women who inspire one with the desire to woo them and win them; but she makes one wish to die slowly beneath her steady gaze.””
— Charles Baudelaire
“Prisoned in glass beneath my seals of red.””
— Charles Baudelaire
“«¡La desgracia grande de no poder estar solo!...» -dice en algún lado La Bruyère, como para avergonzar a todos los que corren a olvidarse entre la muchedumbre, temerosos, sin duda, de no poder soportarse a sí mismos.””
— Charles Baudelaire
“J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal Qu'enflammait l'orchestre sonore, Une fée allumer dans un ciel infernal Une miraculeuse aurore; J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal Un être, qui n'était que lumière, or et gaze, Terrasser rénorme Satan; Mais mon cœur que jamais ne visite l'extase, Est un théâtre où l'on attend Toujours, toujours en vain l'Etre aux ailes de gaze.””
— Charles Baudelaire
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Baudelaire, Charles. The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire: With an Introductory Preface by James Huneker. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-poems-and-prose-poems-of-charles-baudelaire-with-an-introductory-preface-by--d77b1cfa-c736-4587-8232-56f5fa7abc0e.Baudelaire, C. (1919). The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire: With an Introductory Preface by James Huneker. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-poems-and-prose-poems-of-charles-baudelaire-with-an-introductory-preface-by--d77b1cfa-c736-4587-8232-56f5fa7abc0eBaudelaire, Charles. The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire: With an Introductory Preface by James Huneker. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-poems-and-prose-poems-of-charles-baudelaire-with-an-introductory-preface-by--d77b1cfa-c736-4587-8232-56f5fa7abc0e.
