The Flowers of Evil: (Les Fleurs du Mal)

Known to his contemporaries primarily as an art critic, but ambitious to secure a more lasting literary legacy, Charles Baudelaire, a Parisian bohemian, spent much of the 1840s composing gritty, often perverse, poems that expressed his disgust with the banality of modern city life.

First published in 1857, the book that collected these poems together, Les Fleurs du mal, was an instant sensationearning Baudelaire plaudits and, simultaneously, disrepute. Only a year after Gustave Flaubert had endured his own public trial for published indecency (for Madame Bovary), a French court declared Les Fleurs du mal an offense against public morals and six poems within it were immediately suppressed (a ruling that would not be reversed until 1949, nearly a century after Baudelaires untimely death). Subsequent editions expanded on the original, including new poems that have since been recognized as Baudelaires masterpieces, producing a body of work that stands as the most consequential, controversial and influential book of poetry from the nineteenth century.

Acclaimed translator and poet Aaron Poochigian tackles this revolutionary text with an ear attuned to Baudelaires lyrical innovationsrendering them in an assertive blend of full and slant rhymes and fluent iambs (A. E. Stallings)and an intuitive feel for the works dark and brooding mood. Poochigians version captures the incantatory, almost magical, effect of the originalreanimating for todays reader Baudelaires unfailing vision that trumpeted the space and light of the future (Patti Smith).

An introduction by Dana Gioia offers a probing reassessment of the supreme artistry of Baudelaires masterpiece, and an afterword by Daniel Handler explores its continued relevance and appeal. Featuring the poems in English and French, this deluxe dual-language edition allows readers to commune both with the original poems and with these electric, revelatory translations.