The Flowers of Evil and Paris Spleen

Publisher Marketing: Upon its original publication in 1857 Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" or "The Flowers of Evil" was embroiled in controversy. Within a month of its publication the French authorities brought an action against the author and the book's publisher claiming that the work was an insult to public decency. Eventually the French courts would acknowledge the literary merit of Baudelaire's work but ordered that six poems in particular should be banned from subsequent publication. In this edition we reproduce the 1861 edition along with the six censored poems. Also included in this volume is the collection of 51 short prose poems by Charles Baudelaire entitled "Paris Spleen" which was first published posthumously in 1869. Inspired by Aloysius Bertrand's "Gaspard de la Nuit - Fantaisies a la maniere de Rembrandt et de Callot" or "Gaspard of the Night - Fantasies in the Manner of Rembrandt and Callot," Baudelaire remarked that he had read Bertrand's work at least twenty times for starting "Paris Spleen." A commentary on Parisian contemporary life, Baudelaire remarked on his work that "These are the flowers of evil again, but with more freedom, much more detail, and much more mockery." Rich with symbolism, these works are rightly considered classics of the modernist literary movement. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper and includes an introduction by James Huneker." Contributor Bio:  Huneker, James James Gibbons Huneker (January 31, 1857 - February 9, 1921) was an American art, book, music, and theater critic. A colorful individual and an ambitious writer, he was "an American with a great mission," in the words of his friend, the critic Benjamin de Casseres, and that mission was to educate Americans about the best cultural achievements, native and European, of his time. Huneker was born in Philadelphia. Forced by his parents to study law, he knew that a legal career was not what he wanted; he was passionately interested in music and writing, hoping one day to be a concert pianist and a novelist. At twenty-one, he abandoned his office job and Philadelphia ties and (with his pregnant girlfriend, then wife) left for Paris, telling his parents that he was departing only the night before the ship sailed. On a tight budget supplemented with money his parents sent, he studied piano under Leopold Doutreleau in Paris and audited the piano class of Frederic Chopin's pupil Georges Mathias. He also began a lifelong immersion in European art and literature and was thrilled to catch sight on his wanderings through the city of Victor Hugo, Ivan Turgenev, Gustave Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, and Emile Zola as well as Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas. That year abroad changed Huneker's life. Huneker and his wife and child returned to Philadelphia the following year, but he was never happy again in his native city and longed for the wider stage of New York, where he hoped to try his luck as a journalist while he continued his study of music. He moved to New York City in 1886, having abandoned his wife and child. There he scraped by, giving piano lessons and living a downtown bohemian life, while he studied with Franz Liszt's student Rafael Joseffy, who became his friend and mentor. (Huneker's musical gods were Liszt, Chopin, and Brahms. He published a biography of Chopin in 1900 and wrote the commentary on Chopin's complete works for Schirmer's music publishing company. His analysis of the piano solo works of Johannes Brahms, written shortly after that composer's complete works were published posthumously, is still highly regarded.) By the 1890s, after finally giving up his dream of a music career for himself, he was working full-time as a freelance critic responsible for covering the music, art, and theater scene of New York. A voracious reader, he also became a prolific and entertaining book reviewer.