Paris Spleen (New Directions Paperbook) (original 1869; edition 1970)

“L'étude du beau est un duel où l'artiste crie de frayeur avant d'être vaincu.”
“Il faut être toujours ivre. Tout est là: c’est l’unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l’horrible fardeau du Temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.
Mais de quoi? De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise. Mais enivrez-vous. Et si quelquefois, sur les marches d’un palais, sur l’herbe verte d’un fossé, dans la solitude morne de votre chambre, vous vous réveillez, l’ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue, demandez au vent, à la vague, à l’étoile, à l’oiseau, à l’horloge, à tout ce qui fuit, à tout ce qui gémit, à tout ce qui roule, à tout ce qui chante, à tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est et le vent, la vague, l’étoile, l’oiseau, l’horloge, vous répondront: “Il est l’heure de s’enivrer! Pour n’être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps, enivrez-vous; enivrez-vous sans cesse! De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise.”
“Malhereus peut-être l'homme, mais heureux l'artiste que le désir déchire.”
“Il n'est pas donné à chacun de prendre un bain de multitude.” ( )

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 and old man I could have made up his just as well.
And I go to bed proud to have lived and to have suffered in some one besides myself.
erhaps you will say "Are you sure that your story is the really one?" But what does it matter what reality is outside myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?" ( )

An attempt by Louise Varese (1947) to render into English Baudelaire's poetic prose. Not to put too fine a point on it, with this we have Varese's Baudelaire.
In his biography of B. Lewis Piaget Shanks, Tommy Shanks' brother one supposes, calls PS 'the final expression of the poet's vision of the world, of his melancholia, his idealism, his desperate desire to flee from the prison of his subjectivity, his furious longing to find some escape from the ugliness of modern life. We are inclined to think if Shanks is even half right about this, he may be on to something. ( )

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:

Soup and Clouds

My adorable little minx was serving me supper; through the dining room's open window I was contemplating the shifting architectures God creates from vapour, those marvellous constructions of the evanescent. As I watched, I thought: "Those apparitions are nearly as beautiful as my sweet lady's eyes, the mad little green-eyed monster."

Suddenly a violent fist landed in my back and I heard a charming, raw voice hysterical and brandy-damaged, the voice of my little darling, saying: "Get on with your bloody soup, cloud merchant." ( )

This is a good book for anyone new to Baudelaire or prose poems. Several great poems are included. ( )