Reviews - Les Fleurs du mal

Les Fleurs du mal by Johan Faerber, Charles Baudelaire, Florence Bouchy

634 reviews for:

I like this new format of reading poetry while listening to short pieces (10 to 20 minutes) of classical music in between study sessions. Even though I generally listen to music while studying as well, and the academic readings I do are generally not light either, this proves to be a solid method of reinvigoration. The poetry is playful enough to still be relaxing, in contrast to the linearity of academic prose that can feel so tightening, at times. Similarly, these are short pieces of text, that provide the variegation I so desperately need in my life, allowing me to breathe; while academic prose can be constrictive in arguing for one point in (relatively) large amounts of text, to the point of feeling suffocationary. Additionally, a practical benefit is that I do not need to commit myself to at least 30 minutes of reading in those breaks, as is often the case with prose. I can just stop after finishing a poem, that generally takes 5-10 minutes at most (in the case of a long poem, in both original language and translation), and move on.

Now, as to the book and poetry itself, then. Honestly, I don't believe that - right now - I have much to say that is not already generally accepted about Baudelaire. He indeed makes the morbid, horrible, gruesome, reprehensible, macabre beautiful in his poetry. If that would be all, however, it would just be a sheer glorification, a veneer on a rotten piece of wood, an aestheticisation of the ugly - it would abuse aesthetics as pure theory. What he adds to that, however, is lay bare the truth, or, rather, a truth, about the ugly. He shows how it's part of daily life. Not just that, no, of life in general - of Life.

Baudelaire creates a balance. Not in this collection, but through this collection. There's plenty of poetry and literature superficially glorifying the beautiful side of beauty, maybe even some cynical representations of the ugly side of beauty (the arrogance and obliviousness that often goes paired with it in beautiful people that lack self-awareness and empathy, the authors mistreating that - however - as decisive), but there's barely any text to portray the beautiful side of ugly, the beauty in ugliness. Or at least not as well as Baudelaire has done.