Volume 38, Number 4 · February 14, 1991
The Poet of Modern Life
By Denis Donoghue
Baudelaire
by Claude Pichois, translated by Graham Robb
Viking Penguin, 430 pp., $24.95
The Parisian Prowler: Le Spleen de Paris, Petits Poèmes en prose
by Charles Baudelaire, translated by Edward K. Kaplan
University of Georgia Press, 138 pp., $9.95 (paper)
Baudelaire: Collected Essays, 1953–1988
by F.W. Leakey, edited by Eva Jacobs
Cambridge University Press, 320 pp., $54.50
A brief account of Baudelaire's brief life would go somewhat like this. Charles Pierre Baudelaire was born in Paris on April 9, 1821. His father, a retired civil servant and amateur painter, died on February 10, 1827. The idyll the child enjoyed with his adored mother came to an end a year and a half later, when on November 8, 1828, she married an army officer, Jacques Aupick. Charles was sent to school in Lyons and later in Paris, but he was expelled for unruly conduct. At the age of eighteen he contracted gonorrhoea. In 1841, on the strength of a small inheritance from his father, he started upon a literary and bohemian life in Paris. The Aupicks, hoping to retrieve him from bad company, sent him on a long sea voyage, but he jumped ship at Saint-Denis de la Réunion and made his way back to Paris.
Review, 3295 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |