Baudelaire, Charles: Paris Spleen: Little Poems in Prose

Paris Spleen: Little Poems in Prose by Charles Baudelaire. Translated by Keith Waldrop (Wesleyan University Press, paperback) Publication Date: April 7, 2020 Publisher Marketing: 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