Three Poems by Charles Baudelaire IV – L’ALBATROS Souvent, pour s’amuser, les hommes d’equipage Prennent des albatross, vates oiseaux des mers, Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage, Le navire glissent sur les gouffres amers. A peien les ont-ils deposes sur les planches, Que ces rois de l’azur, maladroit et honteux, Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes … Read more
Whenever I think about Literature I think about Love. Both are written with big Ls. The Elles. Like an enjambment of run on legs, going on ad infinitum. And when I think of Love I think also, inevitably, of betrayal. One cannot be without the other; the two legs upon which humanity stands. Only in … Read more
Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) reshaped the trajectory of modern literature. In acknowledgement T.S. Eliot famously called him ‘the Father of Modernism.’ Many monolingual English speakers might be unaware that, along with Shakespeare and Dante, Baudelaire has been instrumental to how we in the West perceive the world. As an example, I think back to the early … Read more
Une Charogne (1859) is among the most important poems of the 19th century, containing all of its author’s ground-breaking aesthetic. Our own aesthetically challenged century could learn a lot from it, in terms of the aesthetic of rupture, spleen and discord. It is Baudelaire’s response, in a sense, to the early Romantics, such as John … Read more