AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Paris Spleen (New Directions Paperbook, 294) by Charles Baudelaire ISBN: 0-8112-0007-8 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation Pub. Date: 01 June, 1970 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 4.8 (5 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: "In Autumn All Things Think Through Us Or We Through Them"
Comment: Charles Baudelaire's Paris Spleen is a wonderfully original work, one happily outside the framework of American literature and its broad range of sensibilities. Most notably, these 51 short prose poems illustrate how truth, and the most accurate perceptions of life possible, can be reached purely by honing the senses and then melding them with the more passive facilities of the mind; logic and rational thinking, as demonstrated here, are for the vulgar, those in denial, those simply unable to accept the very rich, very broad, self-evident smorgasbord of life. Baudelaire, both a tragic and a comedic clown, also effortlessly illustrates how melancholy and joy are by no means mutually exclusive categories of human feeling and experience.

Set largely against specifically autumnal landscapes, our wandering poet indulges in "the mysterious and aristocratic pleasure of watching" whenever he is not a direct participant in the events these visionary pieces describe. Solitary, 'fluent in outrage,' cranky, self-tormented, lovelorn, misanthropic, and pedagogical by turns, these pieces find the poet stalking bereaved widows, peering unseen through the candle-lit windows of neighbor's homes, asking philosophical questions of "enigmatical" strangers, shunning crowds, luxuriating in midnight solitude, greeting the twilight with a bow, reading the time of day in a cat's eyes, "suffering before Beauty" in all its forms, futilely but vocally castigating inflexible Dame Nature, advising the world on the varieties of glorious drunkenness, dreaming of tempting devils, beating the poor, pitying aged, poverty-stricken circus performers, rebelling against infinity, arguing with mistresses, and listening, eavesdropping, and relentlessly observing wherever he goes.

Not surprisingly, the poet's vision of urban Paris lies somewhere between the multiple canvases of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec; garishly colored, slightly grotesque, heavily populated with heavy, heaving women and friable grande dames, Baudelaire's city is a fluid and respiring stage for life's pantomime, open to and allowing for all combinations and possibilities. By contrast, his autumnal countryside is a place of relative purity, where the poet wanders alone under piercing blue skies and roaming, shadow-casting clouds.

In one of the more hallucinatory episodes, the poet, "under a vast gray sky, on a vast and dusty plain" comes upon a short procession of men with "worn and serious faces," each of whom carries a very large, monstrous chimera on his back, the muscles, tendons and limbs of the beasts wrapped tightly around them. None the wiser after his inevitable questions, the poet observes that "under the depressing dome of the sky" the men moved past and beyond him, each "with the resigned look of men who are condemned to hope forever."

Paris Spleen is a wise, serious, and occasionally dour work. But if its only sometimes-tragic underpinnings and conclusions are embraced by the reader, then its vibrant, bawdy, colorful, and transcendent aspect will reveal itself shamelessly in turn. Baudelaire is so confident, unselfconscious, and plain-spoken that his perceptions are remarkably easy to visualize, his emotions as expressed easy to share and make one's own. It's a rare book that is as multi-prismed as this.

Baudelaire implies that if man could accept mortality, reasonably subdue his ego, and curb his more flagrant dreams, life would fall into the glittering, far from perfect, but certainly tolerable and potentially enjoyable miracle it really is. The poet seems to reach the same conclusion about life that Isak Dinsen does at the end of Out Of Africa: man must accept, without exclusion, every facet, aspect, element, and component of existence before existence-before life--will give anything back to man.

In no way a despairing book, Paris Spleen is a sheer pleasure to read, contemplate, discuss, laugh over, and digest. Readers will carry their copy in their back pocket until it falls into tatters, and force copies on friends, family, and strangers. Beautifully translated by Louise Varese. Highly recommended, especially to the non-creative who would like to see, however briefly, as a poet sees.

Rating: 4
Summary: poems in prose
Comment: Yes, Baudelaire, himself told to his friend Troubat:"These are The flowers of evil again, but with more freedom,much more detailes, and much more mockery". Noone before Baudelaire has ever concepted the poem in prose which would express so many special, original and protesting sensations. This urban, very personal poetry is a product of the metropolitan noisy atmosphere, and as it is surrounded with fog of overpopulated, but yet unexplored areas.This poetry expresses more than the actual meaning of the words is telling.Spleen is created of prose and pure poetry, of the reflection of the analytical spirit and intuitive introspection.The apostle of pain and depression,Baudelaire is the one who analyzes his own and other people's sins, expresses himself as a moralist in this book as well.

Rating: 5
Summary: Baudelaire Vents His Spleen at the Outside World
Comment: The book that helped me overcome my prejudice against poetry--I carried "Paris Spleen" around with me for a couple of weeks after I first read it, and kept turning back to certain poems as I went about my daily errands. Even though it's nearly 150 years old it seems as timely and contemporary as it must have seemed when it was first published--absolutely top-notch.