Paris Spleen (New Directions Paperbook)
by Charles Baudelaire
published
June 1st 1970
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
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binding
Paperback, 118 pages
isbn
0811200078
(isbn13: 9780811200073)
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 409)
Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
dead people
For fifteen days I had shut myself up in my room and had surrounded myself with the most popular books of the day (that was sixteen or seventeen years ago); I am speaking of the books that treat of the art of making people happy, wise, and rich in twenty-four hours. I had digested-- or rather swallowed-- all the lucubrations of all the purveyors of public happiness-- of those who advise the poor to become slaves, and of those who encourage them to believe that they are all dethroned kings. It wi...more
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Read in September, 2001
The best of Baudelaire - something I revisit when I'm in the mood to sigh. Because it is popular both among modern day francophones and students taking introductory courses, literature connoisseurs sometimes dismiss the swooning praise it garners as evidence of generic, unrefined taste. ("Of course you like Baudelaire's LE SPLEEN DE PARIS. I suppose ROMEO AND JULIET is your favorite play, too?") But Baudelaire and Shakespeare deserve their secure places in the foundations of their ...more
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In many ways, Charles Baudelaire is an adolescent bombast -- he seems to enjoy opium and satanism just a little too much, and his prose-poetry is weighed down by Victorian abstraction (not to mention how much must be lost in translation; Baudelaire's is not the accommodating French of Le Petit Prince). That said, Baudelaire commits to a worthy experiment: to write about his daily life in pensive short prose, bombarding his readers with daring observations, anecdotes and fables. It reminds me a l...more
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Charles says it best himself: "Which ones of us, in his moments of ambition, has not dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical, without rhythm and without rhyme, supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of reverie, the jibes of conscience?" Probably my favorite of his works.
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3 comments
Read in September, 2007
The pieces seem to me like little meditative essays and remind me a little bit of Michel de Montaigne. Certain ones, like "The Soup and The Clouds" occur to me as having particular influence on Russell Edson.
Of note: "The Eyes of the Poor" seems to be the inspiration for The Cure's song "How Beautiful You Are" off the Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me album.
Also, Aesop's King Log fable is pretty fascinating. As is the mythical land of Cockaigne. Paris Spleen is rich w...more
Of note: "The Eyes of the Poor" seems to be the inspiration for The Cure's song "How Beautiful You Are" off the Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me album.
Also, Aesop's King Log fable is pretty fascinating. As is the mythical land of Cockaigne. Paris Spleen is rich w...more
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Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
the bust of baudelaire
you can read it from any point in the book, order does not matter. its easy one page or one paragraph ideas or stories. it was written over the last ten years or so of the poet's life. it the realizaton of a prose poety that he had been searching for, "musical and rhythmic without rhythm."
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Read in June, 2008
Wonderfully bleak and lovely prose poems that seem like they could have been written as short folktales of modern life. The bleakness comes, I think, from an actual love of the world and a disappointment borne of high expectations.
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I have this book by my bed. Before I drop my eyes into deep sleep I like to read a page or two of this book. It gives me a certain sense ..... of dreams. Wonderful dreams.
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2 comments
Written nearly two centuries ago, these vignettes are as fresh as daisies because Baudelaire sees his world not with the borrowed spectacles of the zeitgeist, but his own eyes.
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Read in September, 2008
I don't really understand this book. (it's poetry) But boy is it good.
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Much better than his poetry (which may be due to translation, but whatever, I can't speak French), and though often quoted by asshole honor students, it pretty much rules.
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1 comments
This is one of the best books of poetry from that century. I have a crush on this dead man. He made scruffy chic.
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Read in December, 1969
What a beautiful book. I barely know it because I have only read it in translation,So very beautiful
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A couple of really good poems in here despite the fact that I really can't stand poetry.
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Chucky B, gotta love im', and so much better than the better known les fluers du mal!
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Read in September, 2007
Contemptuous, rambunctious, romantic. Each poem is its own strange, wild world.
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I started reading this in someone's car, and now I have to find my own copy.
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Read in August, 2000
recommended to Wm Jas by:
Br3it
I should reread this sometime. I don't think I was paying attention.
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Read in April, 2008
Read "Get Drunk".
Fucking genius. I wanna marry Baudelaire.
Fucking genius. I wanna marry Baudelaire.
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 4.40 (316 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 4.32 (307 ratings) number of reviews: 24
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quote
"Be always drunken.
Nothing else matters:
that is the only question.
If you would not feel
the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders
and crushing you to the earth,
be drunken continually.
Drunken with what?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken.
And if sometimes,
on the stairs of a palace,
or on the green side of a ditch,
or in the dreary solitude of your own room,
you should awaken
and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you,
ask of the wind,
or of the wave,
or of the star,
or of the bird,
or of the clock,
of whatever flies,
or sighs,
or rocks,
or sings,
or speaks,
ask what hour it is;
and the wind,
wave,
star,
bird,
clock will answer you:
"It is the hour to be drunken!""
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