Paris Spleen

little poems in prose

Charles Baudelaire, Keith Waldrop

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780819569097
• eBook ISBN:
  9780819569981
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: French Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Between 1855 and his death in 1867, Charles Baudelaire inaugurated a new—and in his own words "dangerous"—hybrid form in a series of prose poems known as Paris Spleen. Important and provocative, these fifty poems take the reader on a tour of 1850s Paris, through gleaming cafes and filthy side streets, revealing a metropolis on the eve of great change. In its deliberate fragmentation and merging of the lyrical with the sardonic, Le Spleen de Paris may be regarded as one of the earliest and most successful examples of a specifically urban writing, the textual equivalent of the city scenes of the Impressionists. In this compelling new translation, Keith Waldrop delivers the companion to his innovative translation of The Flowers of Evil. Here, Waldrop's perfectly modulated mix releases the music, intensity, and dissonance in Baudelaire's prose. The result is a powerful new re-imagining that is closer to Baudelaire's own poetry than any previous English translation.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Translator’s Introduction
• For Arsène Houssaye
• I The Stranger
• II An Old Woman’s Despair
• III The Artist’s Confiteor
• IV A Joker
• V Double Bedroom
• VI To Each His Chimæra
• VII The Fool and Venus
• VIII Dog and Flask
• IX The Bad Glazier
• X One A.M.
• XI Wild Woman and Little Darling
• XII The Crowd
• XIII Widows
• XIV The Old Showman
• XV Cake
• XVI The Clock
• XVII A Hemisphere in a Head of Hair
• XVIII Invitation to the Voyage
• XIX A Toy for the Poor
• XX Fairy Gifts
• XXI Temptations
• XXII Evening Twilight
• XXIII Solitude
• XXIV Planning
• XXV Dorothea the Beautiful
• XXVI The Eyes of the Poor
• XXVII An Heroic Death
• XXVIII The False Coin
• XXIX Generous Gambler
• XXX The Rope
• XXXI Callings
• XXXII The Thyrsus
• XXXIII Be Drunk
• XXXIV Already!
• XXXV Windows
• XXXVI The Urge to Paint
• XXXVII Moon Favors
• XXXVIII Which Is the True?
• XXXIX A Thoroughbred
• XL The Mirror
• XLI The Port
• XLII Mistresses Portrayed
• XLIII The Gallant Marksman
• XLIV Soup and Clouds
• XLV Shooting-Gallery and Cemetery
• XLVI Lost Halo
• XLVII Mademoiselle Bistoury
• XLVIII Anywhere Out of the World
• XLIX Knock Down the Poor!
• L Good Dogs
• About the Author