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A review by lilrusski
Les Fleurs Du Mal by Charles Baudelaire
4.0
4,5/5*
mets-moi une kloech, chouke, et je te reconterai une histoire de la belle époque, baudelaire sighed, as he scribbled down a verse on time flowing like red wine. consumed at a feverish pace of two separate sittings on consecutive days in a canadian coffee roasters’ with a playlist blaring radiohead and elliott smith, i found myself almost inspired by baudelaire’s paradigmatic allegories and bittersweet bostalgia for the ainlessness of early morning hours — where drunkards and go-getters meet, the fading lamplight meets the rising sun, the prostitutes go home to sleep, the poets churn through the night’s debauchery.
it’s time i revived some semblance of a bookclub, and i begin with an anthology of poems by france’s first emerging modernist. the concept of modernism itself is ill-defined in the 19th century, but it begins to find its place amidst the rubble of the crumbling golden age. one begins to wonder what once made an epoch shine like gold on tapestries woven in the leather confines of sparse hardbacks.
the poems are short and exist in various translations. i wonder, perhaps, what they lose in reaching to a broader demographic? is the act of translation a gratuitous, if overlooked, form of censorship? baudelaire’s anthology was banned for several years due to the salacious topics it broaches, but you’ll find that this is not erotic poetry. there is a yearning, yes — a longing — for the carnage of reality as it was once known and accepted, what happens in the shadows and emerges in the shadow of the wandering eye. now it rests on the shelves of the forgotten classics section, awaiting the break of a new day at the hands of a keen reader.
featuring a playlist my sweet friend made for me to get me through my arduous piles of reading. you would think the reading element of a literature degree would come naturally.
mets-moi une kloech, chouke, et je te reconterai une histoire de la belle époque, baudelaire sighed, as he scribbled down a verse on time flowing like red wine. consumed at a feverish pace of two separate sittings on consecutive days in a canadian coffee roasters’ with a playlist blaring radiohead and elliott smith, i found myself almost inspired by baudelaire’s paradigmatic allegories and bittersweet bostalgia for the ainlessness of early morning hours — where drunkards and go-getters meet, the fading lamplight meets the rising sun, the prostitutes go home to sleep, the poets churn through the night’s debauchery.
it’s time i revived some semblance of a bookclub, and i begin with an anthology of poems by france’s first emerging modernist. the concept of modernism itself is ill-defined in the 19th century, but it begins to find its place amidst the rubble of the crumbling golden age. one begins to wonder what once made an epoch shine like gold on tapestries woven in the leather confines of sparse hardbacks.
the poems are short and exist in various translations. i wonder, perhaps, what they lose in reaching to a broader demographic? is the act of translation a gratuitous, if overlooked, form of censorship? baudelaire’s anthology was banned for several years due to the salacious topics it broaches, but you’ll find that this is not erotic poetry. there is a yearning, yes — a longing — for the carnage of reality as it was once known and accepted, what happens in the shadows and emerges in the shadow of the wandering eye. now it rests on the shelves of the forgotten classics section, awaiting the break of a new day at the hands of a keen reader.
featuring a playlist my sweet friend made for me to get me through my arduous piles of reading. you would think the reading element of a literature degree would come naturally.