The Flowers Of Evil

Takao Kasuga is a bookworm. And his favorite book right now is Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil. While the young man may often be seen lost in thought as he rabidly consumes page after page, Takao is not much of a student. Actually when we are first introduced to the middle school teen, we find him sneaking some reading as he receives and F on a recent language exam. Nakagawa is known as the class bully. When she is not receiving zeros she is usually muttering profanities to those around her. While she doesn't care for books or their readers, she does have a thing for troublemakers. Takao may not be one, but having read over his shoulder a few times, she knows he is not very innocent. If anything he is bored and aware of it. Together, by chance, they shake up their entire rural community as Takao tries to break out of his shell in a random moment of passion and affection...not directed towards Nakamura. And contrary to Takao's predictions, the girl he was falling for, Nanako Saeki, responds by eventually accepting the bibliophile for who he is. Or at least, who she thinks he is.

Handsome edition includes great French poet's controversial work, Les Fleurs du Mal, plus prose poems from "Spleen of Paris," critical essays on art, music, and literature, and personal letters.

Bookworm Takao and class bully Sawa may not appear to be the best couple, but together, by chance, they shake up their entire rural community to its core. In love with the class idol, Takao is given a chance to become a real hero and finally break out of his shell after righting a wrong he committed in a random moment of passion and affection. With the help, or blackmailing by, Sawa Nakamura, Takao is on his way to change his future and enter a world of decadence. Contrary to Takao's predictions, the girl he was falling for, Nanako Saeki, responds by eventually accepting the bibliophile for who he is. Or at least, who she thinks he is. In the second volume of Flowers of Evil, Takao's lies have given him new life with his now new girlfriend Nanako. And as he becomes closer to Nanako, his relationship with Sawa only deepens as the "contract" they share weighs heavily on the teen.

A parallel-text edition of the poems of Baudelaire with a new translation which restores once banned poems to their original places and reveals the full richness and variety of the collection.

The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) may speak of the carnal, depraved, and decaying in human life and the city, but Charles Baudelaire's poetry so infuses even the most grotesque with beauty and a kind of innocence that the reader is moved beyond the rubric of the sacred and profane, into sublimity. This new edition, which features the English translation by F.P. Sturm and W.J. Robertson, also includes artwork by Lester Banzuelo.

On the 200th anniversary of Baudelaire’s birth comes this stunning landmark translation of the book that launched modern poetry. Known to his contemporaries primarily as an art critic, but ambitious to secure a more lasting literary legacy, Charles Baudelaire, a Parisian bohemian, spent much of the 1840s composing gritty, often perverse, poems that expressed his disgust with the banality of modern city life. First published in 1857, the book that collected these poems together, Les Fleurs du mal, was an instant sensation—earning Baudelaire plaudits and, simultaneously, disrepute. Only a year after Gustave Flaubert had endured his own public trial for published indecency (for Madame Bovary), a French court declared Les Fleurs du mal an offense against public morals and six poems within it were immediately suppressed (a ruling that would not be reversed until 1949, nearly a century after Baudelaire’s untimely death). Subsequent editions expanded on the original, including new poems that have since been recognized as Baudelaire’s masterpieces, producing a body of work that stands as the most consequential, controversial, and influential book of poetry from the nineteenth century. Acclaimed translator and poet Aaron Poochigian tackles this revolutionary text with an ear attuned to Baudelaire’s lyrical innovations—rendering them in “an assertive blend of full and slant rhymes and fluent iambs” (A. E. Stallings)—and an intuitive feel for the work’s dark and brooding mood. Poochigian’s version captures the incantatory, almost magical, effect of the original—reanimating for today’s reader Baudelaire’s “unfailing vision” that “trumpeted the space and light of the future” (Patti Smith). An introduction by Dana Gioia offers a probing reassessment of the supreme artistry of Baudelaire’s masterpiece, and an afterword by Daniel Handler explores its continued relevance and appeal. Featuring the poems in English and French, this deluxe dual-language edition allows readers to commune both with the original poems and with these electric, revelatory translations.

In the third volume of The Flowers of Evil, Takao must make a decision. He now has an opportunity to break free from the social shackles that Nakamura has placed on him, as he has a chance to be loved by someone he has affections for. This could also be an opportunity to be accepted by the masses in his small community. But with this choice comes fear and self-reflection. After having an chance trip to Nakamura's place, where he got to experience the world his only "friend" has grown up in, he realizes that for both teens, there is very little future to look forward to as they are raised in the boonies. Their lives are mapped out before them. For most adolescents these days, life will continue to be blase at best, miserable at worst. Can they change things together? Do they want to even bother?

Charles Pierre Baudelaire (April 9, 1821 - August 31, 1867) was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stephane Mallarme among many others. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernite) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.

Charles Baudelaire’s classic and controversial Les Fleurs du Mal explored a poetic landscape of urban decadence and dark beauty. This new translation captures the sound and the feeling of the original as none has done before.

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. The notoriety caused by this scandal would ultimately work in the author's favor causing the initial publication to sell out, thus prompting the publication of another edition. The second edition was published in 1861, it included an additional thirty-five poems, with the exclusion of the six poems censored by the French government. In this volume we reproduce that 1861 edition along with the six censored poems in an English translation by William Aggeler. Rich with symbolism, "The Flowers of Evil" is rightly considered a classic of the modernist literary movement. Its themes of decadence and eroticism seek to exhibit Baudelaire's criticism of the Parisian society of his time. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper and includes an introduction by Frank Pearce Sturm.