Paris Spleen
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Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a French poet. Born in Paris, Baudelaire lost his father at a young age. Raised by his mother, he was sent to boarding school in Lyon and completed his education at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he gained a reputation for frivolous spending and likely contracted several sexually transmitted diseases through his frequent contact with prostitutes. After journeying by sea to Calcutta, India at the behest of his stepfather, Baudelaire returned to Paris and began working on the lyric poems that would eventually become The Flowers of Evil (1857), his most famous work. Around this time, his family placed a hold on his inheritance, hoping to protect Baudelaire from his worst impulses. His mistress Jeanne Duval, a woman of mixed French and African ancestry, was rejected by the poet’s mother, likely leading to Baudelaire’s first known suicide attempt. During the Revolutions of 1848, Baudelaire worked as a journalist for a revolutionary newspaper, but soon abandoned his political interests to focus on his poetry and translations of the works of Thomas De Quincey and Edgar Allan Poe. As an arts critic, he promoted the works of Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix, composer Richard Wagner, poet Théophile Gautier, and painter Édouard Manet. Recognized for his pioneering philosophical and aesthetic views, Baudelaire has earned praise from such artists as Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Marcel Proust, and T. S. Eliot. An embittered recorder of modern decay, Baudelaire was an essential force in revolutionizing poetry, shaping the outlook that would drive the next generation of artists away from Romanticism towards Symbolism, and beyond. Paris Spleen (1869), a posthumous collection of prose poems, is considered one of the nineteenth century’s greatest works of literature.
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Charles Baudelaire: Oeuvres Complètes (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Flowers of Evil / Les Fleurs du Mal (English and French Edition) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire with an Introductory Preface by James Huneker Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Works of Charles Baudelaire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWritings On Hashish And Alcohol: Charles Baudelaire Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Paris Spleen: little poems in prose Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prose Poetry - Volume 1: “Always be a poet, even in prose.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Flowers of Evil and Paris Spleen (with an Introduction by James Huneker) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Flowers of Evil & Paris Spleen: Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poems And Prose Of Charles Baudelaire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFlowers of Evil and Other Works: A Dual-Language Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poems And Prose Of Charles Baudelaire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelected Poems from 'Les Fleurs du Mal' Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Paris Spleen - Charles Baudelaire
PARIS SPLEEN
By CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Paris Spleen
By Charles Baudelaire
Translated by James Huneker, Joseph T. Shipley, and Arthur Symons
Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-7803-2
eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-7941-1
This edition copyright © 2021. Digireads.com Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Cover Image: a detail of a photographic portrait of Charles Baudelaire, by Étienne Carjat, c. 1862.
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CONTENTS
Paris Spleen
TO ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE
THE STRANGER
THE OLD WOMAN’S DESPAIR
THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST
A JESTER
THE DOUBLE CHAMBER
EVERY MAN HIS CHIMÆRA
VENUS AND THE FOOL
THE DOG AND THE VIAL
THE GLASS-VENDOR
AT ONE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
THE WILD WOMAN AND THE COQUETTE
CROWDS
THE WIDOWS
THE OLD MOUNTEBANK
THE CAKE
THE CLOCK
A HEMISPHERE IN A TRESS
THE INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE
THE PLAYTHING OF THE POOR
THE GIFTS OF THE FAIRIES
THE TEMPTATIONS; OR, EROS, PLUTUS, AND GLORY
EVENING TWILIGHT
SOLITUDE
PROJECTS
THE LOVELY DOROTHEA
THE EYES OF THE POOR
A HEROIC DEATH
THE COUNTERFEIT MONEY
THE GENEROUS PLAYER
THE ROPE
CALLINGS
THE THYRSUS
BE DRUNKEN
ALREADY!
WINDOWS
THE DESIRE TO PAINT
THE FAVOURS OF THE MOON
WHAT IS TRUTH?
A THOROUGHBRED
THE MIRROR
THE HARBOR
MISTRESSES’ PORTRAITS
THE MARKSMAN
SOUP AND THE CLOUDS
THE SHOOTING-RANGE AND THE CEMETERY
THE LOSS OF A HALO
MLLE. BISTOURY
ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD
LET US FLAY THE POOR
GOOD DOGS
EPILOGUE
Paris Spleen
TO ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE
MY DEAR FRIEND:
I send you a little work of which it cannot be said, without injustice, that it has neither head nor tail; since all of it, on the contrary, is at once head and tail, alternately and reciprocally. Consider, I pray you, what convenience this arrangement offers to all of us, to you, to me and to the reader. We can stop where we wish, I my musing, you your consideration, and the reader his perusal—for I do not hold the latter’s restive will by the interminable thread of a fine-spun intrigue. Remove a vertebra, and the two parts of this tortuous fantasy rejoin painlessly. Chop it into particles, and you will see that each part can exist by itself. In the hope that some of these segments will be lively enough to please and to amuse you, I venture to dedicate to you the entire serpent.
I have a little confession to make. It was while glancing, for at least the twentieth time, through the famous Gaspard de la Nuit, by Aloysius Bertrand (a book known to you, to me, and to a few of our friends, has it not the highest right to be called famous?), that the idea came to me to attempt an analogous plan, and to apply to the description of modern life, or rather of a life modern and more abstract, the process which he applied in the depicting of ancient life, so strangely picturesque.
Which of us has not, in his moments of ambition, dreamed the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm or rime, sufficiently supple, sufficiently abrupt, to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of the soul, to the windings and turnings of the fancy, to the sudden starts of the conscience?
It is particularly in frequenting great cities, it is from the flux of their innumerable streams of intercourse, that this importunate ideal is born. Have not you yourself, my dear friend, tried to convey in a chanson the strident cry of the glazier, and to express in a lyric prose all the grievous suggestions that cry bears even to the housetops, through the heaviest mists of the street?
But, to speak truth, I fear that my jealousy has not brought me good fortune. As soon as I had begun the work, I saw that not only was I laboring far, far, from my mysterious and brilliant model, but that I was reaching an accomplishment (if it can be called an accomplishment) peculiarly different—accident of which all others would doubtless be proud, but which can but profoundly humiliate a mind which considers it the highest honor of the poet to achieve exactly what he has planned.
Devotedly yours,
C. B.
THE STRANGER
Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your mother, your sister, or your brother?
I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.
Your friends, then?
You use a word that until now has had no meaning for me.
Your country?
I am ignorant of the latitude in which it is situated.
Then Beauty?
Her I would love willingly, goddess and immortal.
Gold?
I hate it as you hate your God.
What, then, extraordinary stranger, do you love?
I love the clouds—the clouds that pass—yonder—the marvellous clouds.
THE OLD WOMAN’S DESPAIR
The wizened old woman welcomed the sight of this beautiful child to which everyone was so delighted, and to whom everyone wanted to please; be this child pretty, as fragile as the old woman, and also, like her, without teeth or hair.
She approached him, wishing him smiles and pleasant mimes.
But the frightened child was struggling under the caresses of the decrepit woman, and filled the house with his yelping.
The old woman returned to her eternal solitude, as she was crying in a corner, saying, Ah for us, unfortunate old females, passed the age of pleasure, even to the innocent; we are a horror to the little children that we love!
THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST
How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the incomparable chastity of the azure—a little sail trembling upon the horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable existence—the melodious monotone of the surge—all these things thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions.
These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external objects, soon become always too intense. The energy working within pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering: My nerves are too tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations.
And now the profundity of the sky dismays me; its limpidity exasperates me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle, revolt me. Ah, must one eternally suffer, for ever be a fugitive from Beauty?
Nature, pitiless enchantress, ever-victorious rival, leave me! Tempt my desires and my pride no more. The contemplation of Beauty is a duel where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished.
A JESTER
It was the outburst of the New Year: chaos of mud and snow, crossed by a thousand coaches, sparkling with baubles and gewgaws, swarming with desires and with despairs, official folly of a great city made to weaken the fortitude of the firmest eremite.
In the midst of this hubbub and tumult, a donkey was trotting along, tormented by a lout with a horsewhip.
As the donkey was about to turn a corner, a fine fellow, gloved, polished, with a merciless cravat, and imprisoned in impeccable garments, bowed ceremoniously before the beast; said to it, removing his hat: I greet thee, good and happy one
; and turned towards some companions with a fatuous air, as though requesting them to add their approbation to his content.
The donkey did not see the clever jester, and continued steadily where its duty called.
As for me, I was overcome by an inordinate rage against the sublime idiot, who seemed to me to concentrate in himself the wit of France.
THE DOUBLE CHAMBER