Description
One of the founding texts of literary modernism.
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.
Reviews
"The cadenced prose beats in perfect time with the pulse of the slumbering city, where only the strange is awake. The atmosphere is old, dirty, often sordid, and yet, somehow, glorious.... The translation is almost perfect." — John Randolph, Chicago Tribune
"He possessed, as it were, a profound intuition of the obstinate, amorphous contingency which is life..." — Jean-Paul Sartre
Also By: Charles Baudelaire 
The Flowers of Evil: (Les Fleurs du Mal)
Paperback, 2023
On the 200th anniversary of Baudelaire’s birth comes this stunning landmark translation of the book that launched modern poetry
The Flowers of Evil: (Les Fleurs du mal)
Hardback, 2022
On the 200th anniversary of Baudelaire’s birth comes this stunning landmark translation of the book that launched modern poetry
The Flowers of Evil: (Les Fleurs du mal)
E Book, 2021
On the 200th anniversary of Baudelaire’s birth comes this stunning landmark translation of the book that launched modern poetryFlowers of Evil: A Selection
E Book, 2013
Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal, which in successive editions contained all of his published poems, has opened new vistas for man's imagination and quickened the sensibilities of poets everywhere.
The Flowers of Evil
Bilingual Edition, Paperback, 1990
In the annals of literature, few single volumes of poetry have achieved the influence and notoriety of The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) by Charles Baudelaire.
Also By: Louise Varèse
A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat
Second Edition, E Book, 2012
A reissue of Rimbaud’s highly influential work, with a new preface by Patti Smith and the original 1945 New Directions cover design by Alvin lustig.
A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat
Second Edition, Paperback, 2011
A reissue of Rimbaud’s highly influential work, with a new preface by Patti Smith and the original 1945 New Directions cover design by Alvin lustig.
Varèse: A Looking-Glass Diary
Paperback, 1972
