Les Fleurs du Mal

Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.8

Word count: 149K words
Chapters: 15

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles BaudelaireAuthor: Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Jul 1, 2004

Editor's review

Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) is Baudelaire's (1821–1867) signature collection of poems, and the Project Gutenberg French electronic edition gives readers direct access to the original text. Centered on city life, love, melancholy, and the complex pursuit of beauty, the collection is concise in language and dense in imagery, confronting the ugliness of reality while longing for ideal beauty; it marks a turning point in the history of French poetry. Reading the original lets you feel its sound and rhythm, but it requires some French. As a public-domain eBook, it is suitable for close reading of poetry, as a French-learning aid, and as supplementary reading for literary-history courses. A reminder: some poems are somber in mood and deal with the darker side of city life; readers should approach them with an aesthetic and historical eye rather than treat them as a guide to living.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers with some French who want to read the original poems closely for their rhythm
Students of French literary history who need to engage with the roots of Symbolism
Lovers of modern poetry willing to savor images again and again
French majors using it as supplementary material for close reading of poetry

Not a good fit for

Beginners with no French who can only rely on translations
Readers expecting light, cheerful, positive content
Readers who prefer long narrative and are unused to the leaps of poetic expression

Reading tips

You need not read it straight through; start with short poems and read line by line, savoring image and sound.
Read alongside a Chinese translation to grasp the general sense first, then return to the French to feel the rhythm.
After each group of poems, note your impressions and watch the tension between melancholy and the ideal.
Reading the French poems aloud helps you feel Baudelaire's arrangements of rhythm and tone.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Can I read this edition without any French?

This Project Gutenberg edition is in the original French, and reading it without any French would be very difficult. Read a Chinese translation first to understand the content, then return to the original when you have some grounding to feel the rhythm; or use it as a French-learning aid rather than an introductory text.

Why is Les Fleurs du Mal important in literary history?

The collection takes up city experience, melancholy, and the complex pursuit of beauty, with concise language and dense imagery, and is regarded as one of the important turning points of modern French poetry. It influenced later Symbolist poets and is a key text for understanding the evolution of nineteenth-century French poetry.

The poems are heavy in theme; when is a good time to read them?

The collection does contain melancholy and dark urban themes, so it is suited to slow, careful reading in a quiet setting, approached with an aesthetic and historical eye rather than as a guide to living. If you are feeling low, start with the brighter poems or read with an introduction and translation for context.

Can it be used as French-learning material?

Yes, but it suits learners with some grounding. Poetic language is condensed and sentence structure flexible, so beginners readily stumble on grammar and vocabulary. Use an annotated edition or read alongside a translation, understand the content first, then read the original aloud, treating it as supplementary material for close reading and language sense.

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About the author

Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867 Author

Charles Baudelaire (Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867) was a nineteenth-century French poet best known for his collection Les Fleurs du Mal, also translated as The Flowers of Evil. He also wrote the prose poems collected in Poems in Prose, the diary-like Journaux intimes, and De l'amour, a work of reflections on love and feeling. The library holds eight of his works, including Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry and Les épaves de Charles Baudelaire. Because public information is limited, biographical details are omitted here; as for his writing, he often took city life, love, melancholy and death as his subjects, with concise language and intense imagery, and his influence on poetry's transition from tradition to modernity has been profound.