Awards

• Winner of National Book Award for Translation 1983

Overview

The celebrated, National Book Award-winning, translation of Baudelaire's masterpiece. 'It is the English edition to acquire.' Washington Post Pulitzer Prize winning poet and translator, Richard Howard, gives readers the true voice of Baudelaire in this masterful translation. Charles Baudelaire's 1857 masterwork was scandalous in its day for its portrayals of sex, same-sex love, death, the corrupting and oppressive power of the modern city and lost innocence, Les Fleurs Du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) remains powerful and relevant for our time. In 'Spleen et ideal', Baudelaire dramatises the erotic cycle of ecstasy and anguish of sexual and romantic love. 'Tableaux Parisiens' condemns the crushing effects of urban planning on a city's soul and praises the city's anti-heroes including the deranged and derelict. 'Le Vin' centres on the search for oblivion in drink and drugs. The many kinds of love that lie outside traditional morality is the focus of 'Fleurs du Mal' while rebellion is at the heart of 'Revolte'. 'Howard's achievement is such that we can be confident that his Flowers of Evil will long stand as definitive, a superb guide to France's greatest poet.' The Nation

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9781567928273

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Reviews

Praise for Richard Howard’s translation of Les Fleurs Du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) “Baudelaire revoiced…Howard’s achievement is such that we can be confident that his Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) will long stand as definitive, a superb guide to France’s greatest poet.” —The Nation “Readers of English do not have to take Baudelaire on faith any longer. For the first time he is present among us, vivid and surprisingly intact, in these fine translations.” —New York Times Book Review “A deft and patient new translation of Les Fleurs Du Mal…Howard, it seems to me, has done what he has set out to, has given us, in English and in verse, a Baudelaire both immediately recognizable and impressively varied…It is a considerable achievement.” —New York Review of Books “A magnificent achievement…should be the English version for a long time to come.” —Booklist “Not until now has there been an edition of the entire work which successfully captures the distinctive voice of Baudelaire…The level of success among 151 lyrics is so high as to guarantee that Richard Howard’s will be the definitive translation in the foreseeable future.” —Boston Globe “Richard Howard, generally esteemed as the finest American translator from the French of the postwar era, offers a new version of this masterpiece…It is indubitably the English edition to acquire.” —Washington Post Book World “[An] intelligent responsiveness to the poem’s meaning informs almost every translation in this volume.” —New Republic

Author Information

Charles Baudelaire was a French poet whose work explored taboo areas of sensuality and sexuality. His highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stephane Mallarme, among many others. He is credited with coining the term 'modernity' (modernite) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis (such as mid-19th century Paris), and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience. Richard Howard was one of the most prolific and respected twentieth-century literary critics and translators. He won a Pulitzer Prize, a PEN Translation Prize, a National Book Award (for Les Fleurs Du Mal (The Flowers of Evil)), a Literary Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, a MacArthur Fellowship, the title of Chevalier from France's L'Ordre National du Merite, and the position of Poet Laureate of New York.

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