“The perfume of Baudelaire’s infernal flowers still wafts off the page, as powerful a deliriant as ever, 167 years on.”
—Mark Dery, 4Columns
FLOWERS OF EVIL
Charles Baudelaire
Translated from the French by
George Dillon and Edna St. Vincent Millay
Charles Baudelaire invented modern poetry, and Flowers of Evil has been a bible for poets from Arthur Rimbaud to T. S. Eliot to Edna St. Vincent Millay, who, with George Dillon, composed an inspired rhymed version of the book published in 1936 and reprinted here, with the French originals, for the first time in many years.
Millay and Dillon, while respectful of the spirit of the originals, lay claim to them as to a rightful inheritance, setting Baudelaire’s flowing lines to the music of English. The result is one of the most persuasive renditions of the French poet’s opulence, his tortured consciousness, and his troubling sensuality. This bilingual edition includes a translator’s preface by Millay.
For three days only, Flowers of Evil is available at 25% off along with three other collections by French poets:
THE DRUNKEN BOAT
Arthur Rimbaud
A CERTAIN PLUME
Henri Michaux
PIERRE REVERDY
Read two poems from Flowers of Evil
Ill-Starred
A man would needs be brave and strong
As Sisyphus, for such a task!
It is not greater zeal I ask—
But life is brief, and art is long.
To a forsaken mound of clay
Where no admirers ever come,
My heart, like an invisible drum,
Goes beating a dead march all day.
Many a jewel of untold worth
Lies slumbering at the core of earth,
In darkness and oblivion drowned;
Many a flower has bloomed and spent
The secret of its passionate scent
Upon the wilderness profound.
