Annabulle reviewed Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire
Beaux poèmes
4 stars
Très beaux poèmes quoique un peu mélancoliques
mass market paperback, 287 pages
French language
Published Aug. 21, 2002 by Hachette Scolaire.
Les Fleurs du mal (French pronunciation: [le flœʁ dy mal]; English: The Flowers of Evil) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. Les Fleurs du mal includes nearly all of Baudelaire's poetry, written starting in 1840 and ending with his death in August 1867. First published in 1857, it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements. It was considered extremely controversial upon publication, and six of the poems were censored due to their immorality; however, it is now considered to be a major work of French poetry. The poems in Les Fleurs du mal frequently break with tradition, using suggestive images and unusual forms. The poems deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism, particularly focusing on suffering and its relationship to the original sin, disgust toward evil and oneself, obsession with death, and aspiration toward an ideal world. Les Fleurs du mal was highly influential toward …
Les Fleurs du mal (French pronunciation: [le flœʁ dy mal]; English: The Flowers of Evil) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. Les Fleurs du mal includes nearly all of Baudelaire's poetry, written starting in 1840 and ending with his death in August 1867. First published in 1857, it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements. It was considered extremely controversial upon publication, and six of the poems were censored due to their immorality; however, it is now considered to be a major work of French poetry. The poems in Les Fleurs du mal frequently break with tradition, using suggestive images and unusual forms. The poems deal with themes relating to decadence and eroticism, particularly focusing on suffering and its relationship to the original sin, disgust toward evil and oneself, obsession with death, and aspiration toward an ideal world. Les Fleurs du mal was highly influential toward several notable French poets, including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé.
Très beaux poèmes quoique un peu mélancoliques
This is the sort of poetry that put me off the subject when I was at school, if you just read the book it is bloody awful, if you take your time and try and figure out what the words mean then you’ll grasp just why everybody says this is so good. It will also help to read this when stuck in a pandemic lockdown, the feeling of melancholia from the book will ring true with you.
I can’t say I particularly enjoyed this collection, I can see that it was ahead of it’s time and it is great that it inspired so many but it strictly sticks within the rules of poetry, each poem sticks with that fancy iambic meter thing used in poetry and the rhyming has to work at the expense of using a sensible word, this dumbass had to keep looking up words…what sort of crazy …
This is the sort of poetry that put me off the subject when I was at school, if you just read the book it is bloody awful, if you take your time and try and figure out what the words mean then you’ll grasp just why everybody says this is so good. It will also help to read this when stuck in a pandemic lockdown, the feeling of melancholia from the book will ring true with you.
I can’t say I particularly enjoyed this collection, I can see that it was ahead of it’s time and it is great that it inspired so many but it strictly sticks within the rules of poetry, each poem sticks with that fancy iambic meter thing used in poetry and the rhyming has to work at the expense of using a sensible word, this dumbass had to keep looking up words…what sort of crazy person would use “laves” instead of wash? Because of sticking within these rules the poems don’t seem to have any character to them, this really shows in the longer poems, I was nearly falling asleep near the end of a few of them. Every now and then though you come across a real gem, a poem that stands out and grabs your attention..one like “The Death Of The Poor”.
Not the easiest collection to read but a million times better than anything I could produce.
Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/04/01/flowers-of-evil-les-fleurs-du-mal-by-charles-baudelaire/