Customer Reviews

The Flowers of Evil (Bilingual Edition) (New Directions Paperbook)

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As you read these stark and beautiful poems you may see into the tortured psyche of the poet who wrote them. Baudelaire had a short and sad life. He contracted syphilis at a young age, and this disease plagued him for all his life until he died at the age of 46. His poetry was written in the mid nineteenth century, and when this book came out in 1857 it shocked the French-speaking world. In fact the book was banned for a time, and when it did come out again six or seven poems were removed from it. The edition that I had had all his poetry including the banned ones, and I recommend that if you're interested in great poetry that you get the complete edition. In his poetry Baudelaire examined evil under a magnifying glass and exposed it for the world to see. His language and imagery are absolutely beyond belief. Baudelaire was a very talented wordsmith and his poetry is lyrical an descriptive. In the cold light of our modern world, Baudelaire's stepping into the world of erotica seems tame compared to what we're used to, but it's easy to see why it shocked everyone at the time. This is beautiful poetry that will come out and grab your soul.

This edition of "Flowers of Evil" contains all of the poems, not in their original order. However, ample introductory material and two tables of contents allows the reader to see what the work was when it was first published.

The poems themselves cover many subjects in traditional symbolist style, from cats to gypsies to corpses to a whole section on wine. A must for any student of poetry.

However, if you're looking for a translation that is true word for word and does not attempt to preserve the meter and rhyme, this is not the book for you. Mcentyre does a fabulous job tweaking the enlish to preserve poetic structure, but for students of French, and those interested in doing their own translations, other editions are preferable.

Charles Baudelaire's poetry is some of the best poetry ever written. He explores a number of different themes, often focusing on his personal experiances and emotions. To those of us who have suffered in life, one can easily relate to a lot of the feelings he felt. There are many hidden messages in the poetry, and the language is very rich and educated. You can get a lot of different interpretations out of these poems, which make them all the more relevant to the reader.
The best thing about this book is the fact that it features both the original French and an English translation, side by side. For those who are fluent or well versed in French, this is a dream come true. The translations are expertly done, and great care has been done to preserve the rhyme schemes without losing the meaning of the poems.

This is a review for the Kindle Version. It is translated by Cyril Scott and has a mere 51 poems, as opposed to what it is advertised as having; the entire collection. It is translated in old English, but also a bad translation in general. It does not include The Voyage, which is ridiculous, and even titles Invitation to the Voyage with Journey instead. I love Baudelaire and study him intently. There are so many great translations and this is the one Kindle has? A bit embarrasing. While Baudelaire's words are undoubtedly here, they are poor in comparison to any number of translations. Kindle store, please invest in a better translation. This is a sleight to the master.

Every translation of poetry is a compromise - on the one hand, the translator wants to "carry over" (the literal meaning of "translation") the poet's words and meaning exactly, but on the other hand, the translator also wants to create a poem that is as beautiful as the original! It is not an easy task.

McGowan's 1993 translation, into rhyming and metrical English verse, leans to the "literal" end of this spectrum. He renders Baudelaire's words, images, and verse closely enough that the reader can get a pretty reliable idea of the original. Although this is a faithful translation that stays away from "poetic license" and flights of fancy, it still reads well in English.

As an example of its acceptance in the world of Baudelaire studies, McGowan's translation is the one that is used by "The Cambridge Companion to Baudelaire" (ed. Rosemary Lloyd, 2005) for all quotations from Les Fleurs du Mal. If I could only have one English-language translation of Baudelaire in my library, this would be a good first choice.

This dual language edition of Baudelaire's revolutionary work is an excellent addition to any poetry lover's bookshelf. The translations are well thought out and can be read as works on their own if you do not speak French. However, Baudelaire's poetry is best read in the original French if the reader really wishes to appreciate the gravity and depth of poems such as 'Le Cygne' (Andromac je pense a vous) or marvel at the streets of Paris in the middle of Haussmann's redevelopment plan.

Baudelaire allows us to explore our own emotions and leads us on a journey from this world, to the classical world and then on to the next. We see love in many guises, from Baudelaire's various 'amantes' to sex with common prostitutes. We cannot help be amazed by the poet's versatility of subject matter and even of style, particularly in 'Harmonie du Soir'. This collection can be read on many different levels and every time one rereads a poem, there is always something more.

I would recommend 'Les Fleurs du Mal' to anyone who has been entranced by French literature all through the ages. You will see love, hate and Paris as you've never seen them before.

A disappointing rendition. The French text and translation appear side by side, and yet, this is no literal transcription. The hypnotic, the alluring, the enchanting voice of Baudelaire has been cut, trimmed, and muddled, to suit the scansion and/or rhyme of the traslator. Which reads at times like a jingle. At other times the tongue trips and stumbles over the phraseology - like a boat on dry rocks. And the mind struggles as it strives to make sense of the diction - so un-Baudelaire. These are not Flowers to swoon for. These are not Flowers to die for.

More than a century after his death, Baudelaire's paradox is intact. He is probably the most widely known lyric poet of modern times, yet his reputation is only indirectly connected to his poetry. We see him as a man of outrageous morals who chose to write about morbid subjects. He is our archangel of alienation. ''Man was born free, yet everywhere he is in chains,'' Rousseau had written. Baudelaire gave us the spectacle of his chains: the ennui, the revulsive morals, the dance of death of city life with its loneliness, its abyss of degradation. Like the albatross dragging its oarlike wings over the deck in his famous poem, Baudelaire described himself as a fallen angel, no longer able to fly and therefore ludicrous, unadapted. This spectacle of horrible reversal - evil for good, cruelty for kindness - is Baudelaire's trademark. Baudelaire was also a profoundly classical poet. His poems represent a climax of strict French style, of which the other important master was Racine.

Like Balzac and Dickens, Baudelaire was a poet of the city. His ''Flowers of Evil'' grew in sunless alleys. The disjointed feelings, the ennui, the cruelty that characterize his poems express the shattered connections of life in the city, where everyone is a stranger, where the past is consumed by the present, especially in mid-19th-century Paris, where familiar neighborhoods were being demolished year by year to make way for monumental buildings and vast boulevards. This disjointed city world is Baudelaire's setting. He dreams of fleeing it in his exotic travel poems, which almost always disclose as their destination an inescapable horror of the heart. There was no exit from Baudelaire's Paris, except for the alchemical change proffered by his rituals of language, his ironically beautiful lyrics...

Amazon has really messed up these reviews of The Flowers of Evil, which refer to many different translations and editions. The Kindle edition (horrible, incomplete, badly, formatted) has nothing to do with any of the published translations. It should be avoided. The Oxford World Classics edition, which is supposedly under review, does not have a hardback edition; it exists in paperback only, and is translated by James McGowan in verse form, with French and English on facing pages and does not have formatting problems. There is an introduciton by Jonathan Culler. One review supposedly of this edition in fact describes a prose translation of the Flowers of Evil by Keith Waldrop (published by WEsleyan University Press), a very different book. The translation by McIntyre is another edition altogether. It would be helpful if reviewers would specify in their review which translation they are actually reviewing.

I have picked up two other translations and have never been able to get past the first 20-30 pages. I picked up the McGowan translation and it changed my life. Someone french once told me that this translation is the closest to the original than any of the others out there. Each poem has it's own air to it--vivid, gothic, and in search of the flowers of evil or the beauty in "evil." In the past, I've never been too much of a fan of the stereotypical rhyme scheme type poetry but Baudelaire takes it to another level with his strange symbolist scenery and the emotions he puts me, the reader, through.

A must read; my current favorite of all time.