Flowers Of Evil Charles Baudelaine 1931 Lewis Piaget Shanks Signed First Edition

Description: Offered: FLOWERS OF EVIL Charles Baudelaire Translated and Signed by Lewis Piaget Shanks; Illustrator Major Felte; Publisher Ives Washburn, New York (1931). Quarto Lilac Boards with black and silver with age smudging, binding firm, corners bumped, head of spine some minor loss, pages age toned, 100 pp. Complete with a rare 1931 Publishers bookmark advertisement of this book and scarce translators singed and inscribed first edition copy. Unique opportunity.*****The Flowers of Evil Baudelaire came to attention with the publication of his literary reviews Salon de 1845, followed by Salon de 1846. But it was the publication of Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) in 1857 that sealed his reputation as an important poet. From 1852 to 1865 he worked on translating the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe into French and he later translated Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater. The Flowers of Evil brought within the territory of poetry much that had previously been excluded as profane, vulgar, unedifying or prosaic. Baudelaire wrote of death, of disease, of prostitution, of the ordinary street life of Paris, of everything that shed light or spoke to humanity however stunted or decadent it appeared. In his preface(s) to the book, he wrote: ‘“This book will be a stain on your whole life”, one of my friends, a great poet, predicted from the beginning. And indeed all my misadventures have so far justified him. But I have one of those happy natures that enjoy hatred and feel glorified by contempt’ (Reference Mathews and MathewsMathews 1955: p. xxix). Critical approval was not unanimous. By July 1857 there were rumours that copies of the book were to be seized by the authorities as it was regarded as an attack on public morality. On 20 August 1857, Baudelaire appeared before the Sixth Criminal Court. The Court concluded that: ‘with respect to the offence against religious morality an insufficient case had been made out; but with respect to public morality and accepted standards, […] there were grounds for conviction as the book contained “obscene and immoral passages or expressions” ’ (Reference Pichois and ZieglerPichois 1989: p. 232). Baudelaire was fined and the Court ordered that six poems be deleted from the book. Despite this inauspicious start, the reputation of The Flowers of Evil has continued to grow. Baudelaire's own estimation of its importance sums up the compelling qualities of the writing: ‘You know that I have never thought of literature and the arts as pursuing any moral end and that for me beauty of conception and style are sufficient. But this book, whose title Fleurs du Mal says everything, is clothed, as you will see, with a cold and sinister beauty; it was created with passion and deliberation. Moreover, all the unfavourable things said about it are proof of its positive value […] I know that the book with its faults and merits will take its place in the memory of the literary public beside the best poems of V. Hugo, of Th. Gautier and even of Byron’ (Reference Hyslop and HyslopHyslop 1957: p. 123). Baudelaire's poems from The Flowers of Evil only very briefly hint at the subtlety and richness of his art. Even today very few poets dare to confront the subject matter that Baudelaire made his own. He wrote: ‘Some have told me that these poems might do harm; I have not rejoiced at that. Other good souls, that they might do some good; and that has given me no regret. I was equally surprised at what the former feared and what the latter hoped, which only served to prove once again that this age has lost all sense of the classical notions of literature’ (Reference Mathews and MathewsMathews 1955: p. xxvi).

Price: 319 USD

Location: Jasper, Georgia

End Time: 2024-12-24T21:23:07.000Z

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