Twenty Prose Poems"From the introduction by Michael Hamburger: " "Baudelaire's prose poems were written at long intervals during the last twelve or thirteen years of his life. The prose poem was a medium much suited to his habits and character. Being pre-eminently a moralist, he needed a medium that enabled him to illustrate a moral insight as briefly and vividly as possible. Being an artist and sensualist, he needed a medium that was epigrammatic or aphoristic, but allowed him scope for fantasy and for that element of suggestiveness which he considered essential to beauty. His thinking about society and politics, as about everything else, was experimental; like the thinking of most poets it drew on experience and imagination, rather than on facts and general arguments. That is another reason why the prose poem proved a medium so congenial to Baudelaire." |
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 7 |
The Old Womans Despair | 17 |
Confiteor of the Artist | 18 |
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amuse artist atmosphere awful antagonism Baillarger bath of darkness Baudelaire's modernity Baudelaire's prose poems beautiful Boredom café Calvinist caresses censer Charles Baudelaire colours crowd dear angel decrepit delicate delights Demon desire drunk eau de Cologne eternal evil exaggerated vocabulary feel filled Fleurs Fleurs du Mal flowers French furniture green eyes hair happiness is wedded Henry James horrifying aspect horror Houssaye immortal inebriate inspired kind L'ART ROMANTIQUE Land of Cockaigne Lélut LES PARADIS ARTIFICIELS literary live mirror moralist multiform streams mysterious ness never odour of tobacco PARADIS ARTIFICIELS Paris perfumes PETITS POÈMES pleasure poem Invitation POÈMES EN PROSE poet poetry poor port prosody prostitution puritan recognized René Laforgue replied rich Romanticism Sartre seemed shade and soften shudder Socrates soften the awful solitude soul sovereign of dreams speak strange subtle surge thoughts verse voice Voyage wedded to silence window wish