Charles Baudelaire - His Life

Théophile Gautier, Guy Thorne

Description

First published in 1915, this volume contains Théophile Gautier's biography of the French poet, art critic, and essayist Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821–1867). Baudelaire's wonderful poems are known for their masterful use of rhyme and rhythm which, together with their Romantic exoticism, inspired a whole generation of poets including Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé. In “Charles Baudelaire - His Life”, Gautier provides a detailed sketch of Baudelaire's life and memoirs together with some of his best poetry and notable correspondence, offering a unique glimpse into the life and work of one of France's most influential writers. Contents include: “Charles Pierre Baudelaire”, “The Life and Intimate Memoirs of Charles Baudelaire, by Théophile Gautier”, “Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire”, “Little Poems in Prose”, and “Correspondence of Baudelaire”. Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) was a French dramatist, poet, journalist, novelist, and critic. A vocal proponent of Romanticism, he was held in high esteem by many great writers including Wilde, Flaubert, Balzac, Eliot, and many others. Notable works by this author include: “La Comédie de la Mort” (1838), “Une Larme du Diable” (1839), and “Le Pied de Momie” (1840). Ragged Hand is proudly republishing this classic work now complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

Sujets

• Decadent movement
• French poetry

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 26 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781528792424
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
HIS LIFE
By
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
Translated by
GUY THORNE

First published in 1915



Copyright © 2021 Ragged Hand
This edition is published by Ragged Hand, an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd. For more information visit www.readandcobooks.co.uk


Contents
Charles Pierr e Baudelaire
THE LIFE AND INTIMATE MEMOIRS OF CHARLE S BAUDELAIRE
By Théop hile Gautier
SELECTED POEMS OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
EX OTIC PERFUME
THE MUR DERER'S WINE
MUSIC
THE GAME
TH E FALSE MONK
AN I DEAL OF LOVE
THE SOUL OF WINE
TH E INVOCATION
THE CAT
THE GHOST
LES LITAN IES DE SATAN
ILL-STARRED!
LINES WRITTEN ON THE FLY-LEAF OF AN EX ECRATED BOOK
THE EN D OF THE DAY
LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE
VENUS AND THE FOOL
THE DES IRE TO PAINT
EACH MAN HIS OWN CHIMÆRA
INTOXICATION
THE MARKSMAN
CORRESPONDENCE OF BAUDELAIRE
LETTERS TO SAINTE-BEUVE (1856-1866)
LETTERS TO FLAUBERT (1857-1862)
SOME REMARKS ON BAUDELAIRE'S INFLUENCE UPON MODERN POETRY AND THOUGHT
B y Guy Thorne
APPENDIX
LETTER FROM M. SAINTE-BEUVE


Illustrations
Théop hile Gautier
L'auteur Des F leurs Du Mal
Mignon aspi rant au Ciel




Charles Pierre Baudelaire
A French poet. He was born in Paris on the 9th of April 1821. His father, who was a civil servant in good position and an amateur artist, died in 1827, and in the following year his mother married a lieutenant-colonel named Aupick, who was afterwards ambassador of France at var ious courts.
Baudelaire was educated at Lyons and at the Collège Louis-le Grand in Paris. On taking his degree in 1839 he determined to enter on a literary career, and during the next two years pursued a very irregular way of life, which led his guardians, in 1841, to send him on a voyage to India. When he returned to Paris, after less than a year’s absence, he was of age; but in a year or two his extravagance threatened to exhaust his small patrimony, and his family obtained a decree to place his proper ty in trust.
His salons of 1845 and 1846 attracted immediate attention by the boldness with which he propounded many views then novel, but since generally accepted. He took part with the revolutionaries in 1848, and for some years interested himself in republican politics but his permanent convictions were aristocratic a nd Catholic.
Baudelaire was a slow and fastidious worker, and it was not until 1857 that he produced his first and famous volume of poems, Fleurs du mal . Some of these had already appeared in the Revue des deux mondes when they were published by Baudelaire’s friend Auguste Poulet Malassis, who had inherited a printing business at Alençon. The consummate art displayed in these verses was appreciated by a limited public, but general attention was caught by the perverse selection of morbid subjects, and the book became a by-word for unwholesomeness among conventional critics. Victor Hugo, writing to the poet, said, “Vous dotez le ciel de l’art d’un rayon macabre, vous créez un frisson nouveau.” Baudelaire, the publisher, and the printer were successfully prosecuted for offending against public morals. The obnoxious pieces were suppressed, but printed later as Les Épaves (Brussels, 1866). Another edition of the Fleurs du mal , without these poems, but with considerable additions, appea red in 1861.
Baudelaire had learnt English in his childhood, and had found some of his favourite reading in the English “Satanic” romances, such as Lewis’s Monk . In 1846-1847 he became acquainted with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, in which he discovered romances and poems which had, he said, long existed in his own brain, but had never taken shape. From this time till 1865 he was largely occupied with his version of Poe’s works, producing masterpieces of the art of translation in Histoires extraordinaires (1852), Nouvelles Histoires extraordinaires (1857), Adventures d’Arthur Gordon Pym, Eureka , and Histoires grotesques et sérieuses (1865). Two essays on Poe are to be found in his Œuvres complètes (vols. v. and vi.).
Meanwhile his financial difficulties grew upon him. He was involved in the failure of Poulet Malassis in 1861, and in 1864 he left Paris for Belgium, partly in the vain hope of disposing of his copyrights. He had for many years a liaison with a Haitian-born actress and dancer, whom he helped to the end of his life in spite of her gross conduct. He had recourse to opium, and in Brussels he began to drink to excess. Paralysis followed, and the last two years of his life were spent in maisons de santé in Brussels and in Paris, where he died on the 31st of August 1867.
His other works include:— Petits Poèmes en prose ; a series of art criticisms published in the Pays, Exposition universelle ; studies on Gustave Flaubert (in L’artiste , 18th of October 1857); on Théophile Gautier ( Revue contemporaine , September 1858); valuable notices contributed to Eugène Crépet’s Poètes français; Les Paradis artificiels opium et haschisch (1860); Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris (1861); Un Dernier Chapitre de l’histoire des œuvres de Balzac (1880), originally an article entitled “Comment on paye ses dettes quand on a du génie,” in which his criticism is turned against his friends H. de Balzac, Théophile Gautier, and Gérar d de Nerval.
A bi ography from 1911 Encyclopædia Britanni ca, Volume 3


"Close to your hand lies a little volume, bound in some Nile-green skin that has been pounded with gilded nenuphars, and smoothed with hard ivory. It is the book that Gautier loved, it is Baudelaire's masterpiece. Open it at that sad madrigal that begins
Que m’importe que tu sois sage? Sois belle! et sois triste!
and you will find yourself worshipping sorrow as you have never worshipped joy. Pass on to the poem on the man who tortures himself, let its subtle music steal into your brain and colour your thoughts, and you will become for a moment what he was who wrote it; nay, not for a moment only, but for many barren moonlit nights and sunless sterile days will a despair that is not your own make its dwelling within you, and the misery of another gnaw your heart away. Read the whole book, suffer it to tell even one of its secrets to your soul, and your soul will grow eager to know more, and will feed upon poisonous honey, and seek to repent of strange crimes of which it is guiltless, and to make atonement for terrible pleasures that it has n ever known."
Oscar Wilde , Inte ntions , 1891


THE LIFE AND INTIMATE MEMOIRS OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
By Théophile Gautier
I
The first time that we met Baudelaire was towards the middle of the year 1849, at the Hôtel Pimodan, where we occupied, near Fernand Boissard, a strange apartment which communicated with his by a private staircase hidden in the thickness of the wall, and which was haunted by the spirits of beautiful women loved long since by Lauzun. The superb Maryx was to be found there who, in her youth, had posed for "La Mignon" of Scheffer, and later, for "La Gloire distribuant des couronnes" of Paul Delaroche; and that other beauty, then in all her splendour, from whom Clesinger modelled "La Femme au serpent," that statue where grief resembles a paroxysm of pleasure, and which throbs with an intensity of life that the chisel has never before attained and which can never b e surpassed.
Charles Baudelaire was then an almost unknown genius, preparing himself in the shadow for the light to come, with that tenacity of purpose which, in him, doubled inspiration; but his name was already becoming known amongst poets and artists, who heard it with a quivering of expectation, the younger generation almost venerating him. In the mysterious upper chamber where the reputations of the future are in the making he passed as the strongest. We had often heard him spoken of, but none of his works were known to us.
His appearance was striking: he had closely shaved hair of a rich black, which fell over a forehead of extraordinary whiteness, giving his head the appearance of a Saracen helmet. His eyes, coloured like tobacco of Spain, had great depth and spirituality about them, and a certain penetration which was, perhaps, a little too insistent. As to the mouth, in which the teeth were white and perfect, it was seen under a slight and silky moustache which screened its contours. The mobile curves, voluptuous and ironical as the lips in a face painted by Leonardo da Vinci, the nose, fine and delicate, somewhat curved, with quivering nostrils, seemed ever to be scenting vague perfumes. A large dimple accentuated the chin, like the finishing touch of a sculptor's chisel on a statue; the cheeks, carefully shaved, with vermilion tints on the cheek-bones; the neck, of almost feminine elegance and whiteness, showed plainly, as the collar of his shirt was turned down with a Ma dras cravat.
His clothing consisted of a paletot of shining black cloth, nut-coloured trousers, white stockings, and patent leather shoes; the whole fastidiously cor