Charles Baudelaire - The Beauty and Horror of Modern Life

Today we look at the writing of Charles Baudelaire, the incredibly influential French poet and critic. He lived through a time of massive industrialization and his poems chronicle the lives and struggles of the down and out residents of 19th century Paris. However, instead of writing about them with pity, he celebrates the beauty of their misfortunes and the magnificence of decay. Enjoy!
FIND ME:
Twitter - / outofthepage
Instagram - / outofthepage
Linktree - linktr.ee/Laurencelevyatkinson

[@jgestiot]

I never fully realised how lucky I was to have studied Beaudelaire in French and to have also been around all the places he frequented in Paris. Living near Pigalle, I spent most of my time in Quartier Sr Michel where I was a student. Notre Dame was my everyday decor. I used to take a book and read at the back of Notre Dame in a small garden which now no longer exists. I was too young to "get" Baudelaire but now I do.

[@pizzadog1619]

Thanks, nice overview. Turning decay into something beautiful is like a form of alchemy

[@grahamforster4070]

Your discussion is excellent, especially for Anglophones who don’t read French. You are clearly a lover of his work, as am I. I am lucky enough to have read French for my degree and have read the work in its original language. But I have also looked at translations, because translation has always interested me. When it comes to translating poetry, we enter a minefield! It is so difficult, perhaps even impossible, really. Thanks for your video. I found it very interesting.

[@TheIBOY11]

Just ordered fleurs du mal and was looking for some information about Baudelaire, this video has me incredibly hyped he looks like a very intriguing man and this video has peaked my interest! Very well done!

[@mauriciobernalquintero6126]

I’ve just been introduced to Baudelaire’s work, and your taste of it makes it pretty inviting. Thanks dude. Will be posted for more of your reco’s

[@noncounterproductive4596]

When I took a third-year French course that was a survey of literature, Baudelaire really stood out to me. Most of the French poets left me indifferent but Baudelaire was very worth reading. I could tell that he had influenced Nietzsche very much. That idea, of art glorifying what really is, was something that Nietzsche espoused.

[@colemakes]

So happy u are back to making these. 💓

[@antidepressant11]

Thanks so much for a rare quality intro to Baudelaire. I mean hard to find on KZbin.

[@ZJ3712]

Really good video man, appreciate it!

[@natalietsang5588]

thank you so much! Very inspiring and informative!

Your channel is such a hidden gem! Hope you keep making these! 🖤

[@outofthepage]

Thank you, I don't plan on stopping!

[@sanneholm2010]

Thank you so much for this channel :-)

[@gooseface2690]

Houellebecq frequently references Baudelaire in his novel 'Platform' in a sort of dark, musing way.

[@acatssoftnose3940]

I'm glad you were released early, for good behavior. Missed you

[@takeahike2993]

Beaudelaire sounds like he understood the Yin & Yang to life. In darkness, there is light. In light, a darkness. Balance is key. Good info. Thanks.

[@WillStephen1977]

I love Charles baudelaire one of my favorite things he says I think he says anyway is God does not need to exist in order to be important

[@shafayatzamil_]

Thank u so much. It was helpful

[@MindaugasKuzminskas966]

Great video , Baudelaire is awesome

[@babylonson5600]

excellent, thanks

[@matthewlawrenson7508]

Worthy of laudation🤗

[@trorisk]

I do not know if Gérard de Nerval's writings have been translated in English. But if you like psychedelic and esoteric writings I recommend "Aurélia ou le Rêve et la Vie" Nerval recounts the dreams he had in a psychiatric hospital. We are constantly between reality, dream and madness. Nerval is not as famous as he deserves.

[@MutantsInDisguise]

I bet the mass would destroy Baudelaire were he alive in this century. He redefined poetry forever, preferring athenticity to morality.

[@darkqwartzsytal834]

That'd be like the age of enlighthenment all over again, except his enemy isn't the church it's society

[@wonderwoman5528]

Why would they destroy?

[@mikepeters3187]

Very nice merci!

[@BecomeUseful]

This was great

[@johnkeoghan4773]

Accessible and insightful

[@villosophy7995]

Who's here after Call Me If You Get Lost??

[@cafeAmericano]

Never heard of it and don't give a crap

[@GentlemanLife-Beyotch]

​@@cafeAmericanoLikewise.

[@lesbos1]

I have the Complete Poems translated by Walter Martin, I purchased it nearly 20 years ago. I've not read any other translations (apart from the odd poem or two,) but I really enjoy Martin's translation, the front cover of the book also has a macabre picture of Mephistopheles hovering over a city.

[@outofthepage]

I'll have to check it out!

[@lillinablue]

(..) Vois sur ces canaux Dormir ces vaisseaux Don't l'humeur est vagabonde; C'est pour assouvir Ton moindre désir Qu'il viennent du bout du monde. -Les soleils couchants Revêtent les champs, Les canaux, la ville entière, D'hyacynthe et d'or; Le monde s'endort Dans une chaude lumière. (..) C. Baudelaire - L'invitation au Voyage.

[@banalarousal4310]

One very overlooked aspect of the ouvre of baudeliare was the profound influence which a certain american author by the name of E.A Poe had upon him. I suspect this fact is quite to the chagrin of many french people who, often as a side effect of the great pride they hold for the body of literature their country has produced, tend to downright look down upon all americans as uncultured swine. Poe was quintessentially american and through means of his self professed disciple baudelaire has had an incalculable influence on french art and culture post-baudelaire. Lovecraft has also had a very signifigant influence and a great credit is due to french readers for the massive early role they played in turning both authors into household names with the fame and adulation they deserved in their own right but never did get in their own country while still alive.

[@anasdebbagh9373]

A disturbing fact about decadent poets like Baudelaire and Rimbaud is that they all died so young

[@Dayvit78]

Why is it disturbing? It seems like most great artists burn out and die young. A brief flame extinguished...

[@MrAM4D3U5]

Great video, and you probably speak better French than I but I thought it was pronounced, "Pari-sean Dream" not "Paris-in Dream". I'm not trying to correct you merely ask if I am the one pronouncing it wrong

[@thepeacebuild]

what song is in the background?

[@riverIl0719]

*Ok, I think I found treasure here!*

[@zeezashah9966]

Sir can you please make video on Modernity by Charles baudelaire

[@cappy2282]

"The flowers of evil"

[@fortunatomartino8549]

Find me the beauty in Camden Nj?

[@homegyrl]

Tyler Baudelaire brought me here 🚤

[@grenvillephillips6998]

JCC sent me!

[@finnie]

John Cooper Clarke brought me here.

[@youtubecommentrater3379]

Tyler the creator

[@artnodulot1525]

l horloge ❤

[@glenncbjones]

To late comers and others: Don’t kid yourselves, it absolutely matters that the translation should rhyme if the poems being translated rhyme! Some non-rhyming translators have done workmanlike, mildly evocative, “OK” to “decent” translations of Baudelaire, but if you wish to truly experience his work as closely as is at all possible in English, only the Dillon-Millay translation will suffice! It should in truth be called the “Millay-Dillon” translation, as, while Edna Millay essentially hijacked the Idea from her friend (and soon to be lover and “boy toy”… all quite dearly scandalous!) George Dillon, she then absolutely owned the lion’s share of the project, and it’s also an exceedingly good thing that she did! Millay was not only a poetic genius in her own right, but she also, with “only” a BA from Vassar, had an effective PhD level awareness of every aspect of the art and science of poetry! Her exhaustive introduction and concise and excellent (but brief!) biography of Baudelaire is all most would ever require in this regard! Indeed I have read two book length Baudelaire bio’s and parts of a third, and other than for the photographs, none really had anything to show Millay’s, other than endless regurgitations of his endless, whiny appeals to his mother for financial support! My one mild criticism of the book would be that, while George Dillon was a capable poet and spoke French fluently, I think his translations could be a bit stronger! While it is most undoubtedly the case that Millay served as his editor and reviser, the fact of their frequent “congress” (in the sack!), perhaps took a greater toll on our poor Mr. Dillon! Still, Millay would have never allowed anything to reach print that was truly sub par, so nonetheless, IT’S ALL GOOD! To learn more of the juicy details of the Millay-Dillon tryst and the poetry translation project, I will have to refer you to Nancy Milford’s most excellent “Savage Beauty, the Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay” (Random House, 2001)… I am unsure whether the original 1936 Harper and Brothers edition of this translation of “Les Fleurs du Mail” has ever been reprinted (l’m not a “poetry expert,” but I play one on TV!), but original copies remain extant, and can surely be had for less than the cost of a boring, ceramic, mass produced plate that just happens to say “Picasso”… I most sincerely hope this helps you all in your discovery and enjoyment of Charles Baudelaire as non-French speaking Anglophones (like myself!)… “Au revoir!”… (“mes amis?”)… - Glenn Jones (aka: “Textoyevsky”) PS: The worst of the “non-rhyming” translations read like “grocery lists,” jus’ sayin’…

[@ResistanceQuest]

He was apparently politically conservative. Have you also heard this?

[@rtisom]

He distrusted the masses

[@pedroskywalker6793]

Baudelaire reactionary politics are kinda funny!

[@benzandpour]

Stark contrast to your hoodie and your kitchen, mate. lol

[@edwardrichardson8254]

Careful, you are treading mawkish here with a spectacularly Decadent (Capital "D") poet who savors images of squalor and filth not for their "beauty" (A Romantic assumption), rather to take you on a torch-lit descent into the underworld. As a decadent aesthete, he objectifies persons and personalizes objects (As in “Le Soleil” where the city becomes his artistic dueling drill w/ himself). Baudelaire hardly criticizes Haussmann's gentrification of medieval Paris (He remarks on the filth and squalor of the older Paris in “Le Cygne” (The Swan). They opened the city up, cleaned it, gave it new parks, sewage, waterworks, and cleaned the rivers. But for Baudelaire none of this matters, his vision is a Dante-esque fallen city, something T.S. Eliot borrows from him in his poems (Baudelaire is quoted in "The Waste Land.") Decadent degeneration is lassitude and closure. Romantic energy is gone, and mother Nature becomes metallic soul-sucking urban whores. It is a complex artistic tradition following Late Romanticism and the best advice I can give you is to get Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson." The section on Baudelaire itself is world-class, the overall explanation of Decadence as a historical cycle and Decadent artists is the best ever written. Decadent beauty is not in nature, but rather artifice - the Apolllonian - gems, steel, minerals, cold hard beauty. That is why the dream poem you mentioned is not a vision of Paris but a crystalline world of artifice... "of colonnades instead of trees" - it is a world of gemstone, gold, marble, and liquid glass, lifeless except for "titanic" water spirits marveling at themselves in pools. The poet pours "submissive seas" into "jeweled conduits." This poem is the urban Decadent version of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" with its dome over a panting, destructive chasm spewing boulders, the maw of Mother Nature, except nature is obliterated from it completely. It is pure art. Secondly, I would recommend Sartre's "Baudelaire" for psychological insights into his character. But above all, Paglia's "Sexual Personae." She covers all the great French Decadents, the writers and the artists, and shows the historical cycles leading up to these Western artistic trends.

[@adamp3595]

Have you been in jail?

[@outofthepage]

I can neither confirm nor deny

[@boredfive3001]

What the hell is going on with your finger nails?

[@Matthew-kb6lh]

include readings of poems you like by him man.. such a wasted vid

[@adrian-qr6zk]

LES Fleurs de Mal. Learn to say it correctly 😂