Paris Spleen

I enjoy Baudelaire most when he is at his snarkiest and/or most morbid. Thankfully in this collection of prose poems he often hovers in one or both of these states. I could've skipped some of the "love" poems, but whatever...even the most disconnected poet writes those from time to time. I rarely think about what it would be like to spend a day with a certain poet, but Baudelaire provokes that thought in me. However, he'd probably rather skulk around by himself than hang around another "damned bastard of a cloud-monger" like me. And I think that's just fine.

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 young, to which I shout, absurd. This is the lettres of the Absolute, the eternally curious.

Below the bile, there is a hum of sensitivity. Behind the debris are the tears of the sensitive. Is it forgiving, likely not? There is a buzzing pulse at show more play, a hum and a forgiving glance. show less

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 show more 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." show less

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 show more myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?" show less

Set in a modern, urban Paris, the prose pieces in this volume constitute a further exploration of the terrain Baudelaire had covered in his verse masterpiece, The Flowers of Evil: the city and its squalor and inequalities, the pressures of time and mortality, and the liberation provided by the sensual delights of intoxication, art, and women. Published posthumously in 1869, Paris Spleen was a landmark publication in the development of the genre of prose poetry--a format which Baudelaire saw as particularly suited for expressing the feelings of uncertainty, flux, and freedom of his age--and one of the founding texts of literary modernism.

Inspired by Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit Baudelaire borrowed the idea of turning french poetry on its head by releasing this collection of prose poems. The real virtues of the poetry, the play with language, internal rhyme, and grammar, don't come through very strongly in translation.

Luckily for Baudelaire's english speaking audience, the subjects of his poems were so rich and his imagery was so vivid that even after all of those elements are lost, his poetry still stands up under scrutiny. The only downside of this collection is that it's not a dual language version-- even if you don't speak a foreign language you can still get a sense for its rythym by comparing the original and the translation side by side.

The prose poems in this show more collection (and the ones in Les Fleurs du Mal) focus on the internal life of the city. Ina time when Paris was being systematically destroyed and rebuilt, Baudelaire looks past the veneer of the city to the heart of its citizens. While British poets from the same time lose themselves in the architecture of the city and in the city's natural elements, Baudelaire and his contemporaries focused specifically on the people that make up the city.

Paris Spleen gives you an outsider's look into Parisian life. As the narrator of these pieces moves through the city, he shares his assumptions about life as seen through windows, as passed on corners, as watched but not necessarily participated in. When the narrator actually does take part in the world around him, he does so with gestures so grand that they exist only for the sake of metaphor. In one instance, the narrator berates a glass dealer for harassing the poor and tosses a flower pot at him. In another, men are described as carrying chimeras on their backs as they go through their daily routines.

Although at times the narrative leans towards the surreal, the images are accessable and each poem flows quickly. If you can't read the poems in their original language, this is a great translation to pick up. show less

Le Spleen de Paris (Paris Spleen/Petits Poèmes en prose) gồm tập hợp 50 bài thơ văn xuôi (prose poem) của Baudelaire.

50 “ngụ ngôn về cuộc sống hiện đại” này đưa chúng ta vào những chuyến tham quan khác nhau do một flâneur, một kẻ lang thang ẩn danh, dẫn dắt. Suốt ngày và đêm, trong những quán cà phê lấp lánh và những con phố nhỏ bẩn thỉu, Baudelaire trầm ngâm về cái kỳ quái trong cái tầm thường, cái cao cả trong cái trần tục. Kẻ ngoại cuộc giàu xúc cảm này đưa ra cái nhìn độc đáo về Paris những năm 1850, hé lộ đời sống đô thị đông đúc trước thềm thay đổi lớn, ta thấy một Paris show more đầy mâu thuẫn, đáng ngạc nhiên và khó lường như chính người hướng dẫn của chúng ta. show less