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El spleen de París
by
Solo mediante un profundo conocimiento bilingue y un trabajo regido por la autocritica y la honestidad, se puede tener una traduccion dificilmente superable. Los textos en prosa de Baudelaire han encontrado su justa dimension en castellano: lejos del estridentismo y del desgarro, Margarita Michelena nos descubre el exquisito arte del calosfrio y del lirico asombro baudeler
...more
Paperback, 181 pages
Published
July 1st 2000
by Fondo de Cultura Economica USA
(first published 1869)
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Start your review of El spleen de París
May 09, 2014
Florencia
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Those who appreciate beauty in all forms
For a man to become a poet... he must be in love, or miserable.
- Lord Byron, Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron
...the seconds are now strongly, solemnly accentuated, and each one, springing forth out of the clock, says: “I am Life, intolerable, implacable Life!” (45)
This book includes two different works by Baudelaire: Paris Spleen and La Fanfarlo. The latter is the only novella he ever wrote, published before his celebrated Les Fleurs du Mal and it is, in fact, a good work. It tells th ...more
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.
Tell me, enigmatical 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?
Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known.
Your country?
I do not know in what latitude it lies.
Beauty?
I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal.
Gold?
I hate it as you hate God.
Then what do you love, extraordinary stranger?
I love the clouds...the clouds that pass...up there...
up there...the wonderful clouds!
your mother, your sister, or your brother?
I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.
Your friends?
Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known.
Your country?
I do not know in what latitude it lies.
Beauty?
I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal.
Gold?
I hate it as you hate God.
Then what do you love, extraordinary stranger?
I love the clouds...the clouds that pass...up there...
up there...the wonderful clouds!
Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness.
Contrary to popular belief, I had never read Baudelaire until now. I've trusted Walter Benjamin and lately Calasso to provide me with a well informed ethos about this central figure. There are many concerns that this is the literature of the yo ...more
Contrary to popular belief, I had never read Baudelaire until now. I've trusted Walter Benjamin and lately Calasso to provide me with a well informed ethos about this central figure. There are many concerns that this is the literature of the yo ...more
I feel odd labeling a book of poetry as 'read'. That's not how a book of poetry is appreciated. It's not the simple act of opening to page one, reading each page in a linear fashion, then putting it back on the shelf (or in this case, closing the Kindle). Poetry is something that one must refer back to again and again. The images sit in the back of the mind waiting to be recalled again. Then, when the mood strikes, you jump to the bookcase and frantically flip the pages to find that image once a
...more
I never really understood the appeal of Les Fleurs du Mal, but so many people love it that I started to feel bad. What was I missing? Along comes this book, Paris Spleen, which is full of prose poems made of equal parts humor, cynicism, and insight (and often all three within a paragraph). I like these poems because reading it, I feel like I have a sense of who Baudelaire might have been as a person...
Plus, his humor is so odd:
Plus, his humor is so odd:
Soup and Clouds...more
My adorable little minx was serving me supper; throug
Charles Baudelaire's Little Poems in Prose (The Spleen of Paris) are inseparable from Paris and the architectural, social and economic transformations that the capital experienced in the second half of the 19th century.
The street plays a fundamental role in this because it represents the meeting place par excellence, a place of extraordinary mixing: the classes of the society crossed there, the beings, crowds or individuals, are offered in their diversity, their generality or their specificity, ...more
The street plays a fundamental role in this because it represents the meeting place par excellence, a place of extraordinary mixing: the classes of the society crossed there, the beings, crowds or individuals, are offered in their diversity, their generality or their specificity, ...more
Ah, Charles... if you had been born in our time, you'd be a blogger extraordinaire! Decadent, passionate, and misogynistic, this poet stole my heart from Edgar Allen Poe and broke it on the cobbled streets of that Eternal City. Don't come looking for a sympathetic heart...Baudelaire is bitter, despondent, and completely adorable. Read this and tell me he's not a man before his time.
...more
A Hemisphere in a Head of Hair
Long let me inhale, the odour of your hair,
into it plunge the whole of my face, like a thirsty man
into the waters of a spring and wave it in my fingers like a scented handkerchief,
to shake memories into the air.
If you could know all that I see! All that I hear
in your hair! My soul floats upon perfumes as the souls of other men
upon music.
Your hair contains an entire dream, full of sails and masts;
it contains vast seas whose soft monsoons bear me to delightful climat ...more
Long let me inhale, the odour of your hair,
into it plunge the whole of my face, like a thirsty man
into the waters of a spring and wave it in my fingers like a scented handkerchief,
to shake memories into the air.
If you could know all that I see! All that I hear
in your hair! My soul floats upon perfumes as the souls of other men
upon music.
Your hair contains an entire dream, full of sails and masts;
it contains vast seas whose soft monsoons bear me to delightful climat ...more
Baudelaire vents his spleen about a variety of issues. Traditionally the spleen was thought to be the seat of emotions. Much emotion is displayed here. These short pieces are keenly observed and beautifully written, but at times they are quite shocking and heart breaking.
Baudelaire is a lover of dichotomy: rich/poor, solitude/society, excrement/perfume. "She is very ugly. She is nevertheless delectable." ("A Thorough-Bred") The unstated purpose of each poem is to transform degradation and disunity into an unsettled and ironic harmony, or at least to shine a light on the beauty of decay. They are passionate poems; they move with force, but with time it becomes apparent that each of them moves in a familiar pattern, and by the end of the collection it is comfortin
...more
May 28, 2008
Tedb0t
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
recommended,
poetry
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.
...more
A beautiful set of short prose poems, with rich vocabulary, elegant sentence structure, haunting morals, and often somewhat pessimistic outlooks.
There is overlap between this and Twenty Prose Poems, but there are more stories here, and he has changed a few. I bet he and Edgar Allen Poe would get along, if only for their love of the grisly and grim. Beaudelaire's "prose" makes me fall in love with poetry all over again, and he has now earned a place as one of my favorite poets! ...more
There is overlap between this and Twenty Prose Poems, but there are more stories here, and he has changed a few. I bet he and Edgar Allen Poe would get along, if only for their love of the grisly and grim. Beaudelaire's "prose" makes me fall in love with poetry all over again, and he has now earned a place as one of my favorite poets! ...more
No matter where! As long as it's out of the world!
Baudelaire has a depth that draws me, fascinates me and excites me.
This is a part of my favourite one:
"Across the ocean of roofs I can see a middle-aged woman, her face already lined, who is forever bending over something and who never goes out. Out of her face, her dress, and her gestures, our of practically nothing at all, I have made up this woman's story, or rather legend, and sometimes I tell it to myself and weep.
If it had been an old man I ...more
Baudelaire has a depth that draws me, fascinates me and excites me.
This is a part of my favourite one:
"Across the ocean of roofs I can see a middle-aged woman, her face already lined, who is forever bending over something and who never goes out. Out of her face, her dress, and her gestures, our of practically nothing at all, I have made up this woman's story, or rather legend, and sometimes I tell it to myself and weep.
If it had been an old man I ...more
Jan 09, 2009
Andy
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
kool-imports,
poetry-corner
The liner notes in the back call them prose poems but they're more like weird little vignettes. I really like Baudelaire a great deal. Every piece is refreshing: A Hemisphere In Your Hair, The Shooting Gallery and The Cemetery, Loss Of A Halo, and Beat Up The Poor are a good place to start.
...more
Dec 19, 2015
Eadweard
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fin-de-siecle-decadent-belle-epoque
Paris Spleen 4.5/5
La Fanfarlo 3/5
"Oh, yes! Time has come back; Time reigns like a King now; and along with that hideous old man comes all his demonic entourage of Memories, Regrets, Spasms, Fears, Anxieties, Nightmares, Rages, and Neuroses. I assure you that the seconds are now strongly, solemnly accentuated, and each one, springing forth out of the clock, says: “I am Life, intolerable, implacable Life."
----
"Finally, alone! All you can hear now are the wheels of a few late, weary hackney cabs. F ...more
La Fanfarlo 3/5
"Oh, yes! Time has come back; Time reigns like a King now; and along with that hideous old man comes all his demonic entourage of Memories, Regrets, Spasms, Fears, Anxieties, Nightmares, Rages, and Neuroses. I assure you that the seconds are now strongly, solemnly accentuated, and each one, springing forth out of the clock, says: “I am Life, intolerable, implacable Life."
----
"Finally, alone! All you can hear now are the wheels of a few late, weary hackney cabs. F ...more
I first became aware of this work about a year and a half ago, when reading something about that great punk poet, Patti Smith (as Baudelaire and Rimbaud were two of her biggest influences). But instead of picking up a copy of this work at that time, I first familiarized myself with Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal, as that is his better known work. Time passed and I never got around to Le Spleen de Paris as I had intended. But this year, as I continue with my exploration of French writers, I decid
...more
I don't really understand this book. (it's poetry) But boy is it good.
...more
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
A fantastic collection of poetry by Baudelaire published posthumously. I read this in anticipation of a Coursera class I am taking in February called "The Modern and Postmodern." After having recently diving into modern poetry it was a tad bit easier for me to allow these poems which seem more like mini-essays of observation, to touch me like traditional poetry. This collection seems to inhabit a world both modern and archaic and the observations made are though personal and inwardly reflective
...more
Short sketches, about loneliness and getting older. Sometimes strongly similar to Poe, with his masterful power of observation, a kind of precursor of de Maupassant. Sometimes very elegant, sometimes coarse. Technique of the unexpected turn that puts the prior story in a very different perspective.
“Ah! Must we suffer eternally or else eternally flee the beautiful?
...
Studying the beautiful is a duel in which the artist shrieks with fright before being defeated.”
...
Studying the beautiful is a duel in which the artist shrieks with fright before being defeated.”
I thought I should dip my toe in here, rather than "Flowers of Evil" since I tend to enjoy prose more than poetry, but I'm certainly looking forward to reading that volume now.
Almost all of these little prose poems have a thorn in them somewhere. These are reflections and streams of consciousness on daily life that reveal deeper, typically dark truths. These are about human nature, society, existence, pleasure, love.
"The Double Room" is a bitter exploration of how pallid everyday life appears af ...more
Almost all of these little prose poems have a thorn in them somewhere. These are reflections and streams of consciousness on daily life that reveal deeper, typically dark truths. These are about human nature, society, existence, pleasure, love.
"The Double Room" is a bitter exploration of how pallid everyday life appears af ...more
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 respective lan
...more
Louise Varese is my favorite Baudelaire translator...
""Illusions", said my friend, "are as innumerable, perhaps, as the relations of men to each other and of men and things.""
"...like a wolf caught in a trap, I am held fast, perhaps forever, to the grave of the ideal."
...more
""Illusions", said my friend, "are as innumerable, perhaps, as the relations of men to each other and of men and things.""
"...like a wolf caught in a trap, I am held fast, perhaps forever, to the grave of the ideal."
...more
A book of classic prose poems. Be sure to read Louise Varese's translation if you are reading it in English.
...more
Paris Spleen, a wonderful collection of prose poetry by one of the pioneers in modernist literature, Charles Baudelaire. This is a new food for me, I haven’t read anything by Baudelaire, and aside for a course I took last fall on American Poetry I haven’t read that much!
The book, originally published in 1851, depicts modern Paris through vivid and refreshing pieces on morals, time, artistry, freedom etc… with each poem you are drawn into, and quickly brought out of, little scenes that occasional ...more
The book, originally published in 1851, depicts modern Paris through vivid and refreshing pieces on morals, time, artistry, freedom etc… with each poem you are drawn into, and quickly brought out of, little scenes that occasional ...more
These delicious slices of amoral chimeras touched me on an intellectual, emotional and spiritual level. Baudelaire considered these prose-poems, but I go further: they are fairy tales. They depict so accurately the narcissistic and materialistic tendencies of modern life, and yet they are blended with this timeless essence which comments on the hazy distinction between the sacred and profane. With the spark and style of Oscar Wilde and the dark but elegant voice of Edgar Allen Poe, each fairytal
...more
I'm sure lots of people who really love Baudelaire touched themselves when they first read this. I was not so enamored with the poetry of Baudelaire. Pretty language? Sure. Pretty language that made a lick of sense to a sober and/or sane person? Not so much? I get it. It's full of metaphor. But he's really grasping for straws here. You might as well get the journal of a schizophrenic and publish it. So obviously, Baudelaire isn't my cup of thé.
...more
"By my kiss I make you eternally mine. You shall be beautiful as I am beautiful. You shall love what I love and what loves me: water, clouds, silence and the night; the green unfathomable sea; water without form and multiform; the place where you are not; the lover you will never know; monstrous flowers; delirious perfume; languorous cats who lie on pianos and moan like women with sweet and husky voices!"
...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brain Pain: Discussion - Week Fifteen - Paris Spleen, by Baudelaire | 1 | 11 | May 26, 2014 12:10AM | |
| Goodreads Librari...: merging problem | 9 | 53 | Dec 17, 2013 03:39PM | |
| what Baudelaire was up to | 1 | 28 | Jun 05, 2012 08:36AM | |
| سأم باريز | 1 | 11 | Jun 16, 2009 10:46PM |
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Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a 19th century French poet, translator, and literary and art critic whose reputation rests primarily on Les Fleurs du Mal; (1857; The Flowers of Evil) which was perhaps the most important and influential poetry collection published in Europe in the 19th century. Similarly, his Petits poèmes en prose (1868; "Little Prose Poems") was the most successful and innovative e
...more
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