Volume 29, Number 19 · December 2, 1982
Beautiful and Damned
By Michael Wood
Baudelaire the Damned: A Biography
by F.W.J. Hemmings
Scribner's, 251 pp., $17.95
Baudelaire's Literary Criticism
by Rosemary Lloyd
Cambridge University Press, 338 pp., $59.95
Les Fleurs du Mal
by Charles Baudelaire, translated by Richard Howard
Godine, 365 pp., $22.50
T.S. Eliot spoke of seeing Baudelaire as 'something more than the author of the Fleurs du Mal.' 'He is in fact a greater man than was imagined, though perhaps not such a perfect poet.' This is an odd view, but Eliot was, by 1930, tired of what he called Baudelaire's machinery ('prostitutes, mulattoes, Jewesses, serpents, cats, corpses') and anxious to register signs of spiritual struggle wherever he could find them. Baudelaire 'attracted pain to himself,' was able to 'study his suffering.'
Review, 5292 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. |