The Flowers of Evil
Subtitle: A Selction
By: selected and edited by Marthiel and Jackson Mathews.
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1958
Place of publication: New York, USA
Language: eng; fre
Translated from: fre
Translation of: Les Fleurs du Mal
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 168
Copyright date: 1955
Description: Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, which in successive editions contained all of his published poems, has for over a hundred years now opened new vistas for man’s imagination and quickened the sensibilities of poets everywhere. The greatest French poet of the 19th century, Baudelaire was also the first truly modern poet, and his direct and indirect influence on the literature of our time has been immeasurable. 

Here in this volume are selections from Les Fleurs du Mal as chosen by Marthiel and Jackson Mathews from their complete bilingual edition  published by New Directions in 1955 — “undoubtedly the best single collection of Baudelaire’s verse in English” (St. Louis Post Dispatch).

Flowers of Evil: A Selection contains fifty-three poems which the Mathews feel best represent the total work and which have been most successfully rendered into English. The French texts as established by Yves Gerard Le Dantec for the Pleiade edition are printed en face. Included are Baudelaire’s “Three Drafts of a Preface” and brief notes on the nineteen translators whose works is represented.
--back cover
Notes: A New Directions Paperbook

English and French.
Errata slip inserted.
Table of contents: label: Foreword
title: viii; label: "Three Drafts of a Preface" by Charles Baudelaire
title: xi; label: To the Reader
title: 3; label: The Blessing
title: 5; label: Beacons
title: 11; label: A Former Life
title: 15; label: Don Juan in Hell
title: 17; label: The Punishment of Pride
title: 19; label: Giantess
title: 21; label: Jewels
title: 23; label: The Mask
title: 25; label: Hymn to Beauty
title: 29; label: The Dancing Serpent
title: 31; label: De Profundis Clamavi
title: 33; label: Lethe
title: 35; label: Remorse of the Dead
title: 37; label: Thc Balcony
title: 39; label: Reversibility
title: 41; label: Thc Confession
title: 43; label: The Flask
title: 47; label: The Cat
title: 49; label: Invitation to the Voyage
title: 53; label: Conversation
title: 57; label: The Sadness of the Moon
title: 57; label: The Owls
title: 59; label: The Gladly Dead
title: 61; label: Spleen: Old Pluvius, month of rains
title: 63; label: Spleen: When the low heavy sky. . .
title: 63; label: Obsession
title: 65; label: Heautontimoroumenos
title: 67; label: The Irremediable
title: 69; label: The Clock
title: 73; label: A Landscape
title: 75; label: Thc Sun
title: 77; label: The Swan
title: 79; label: Thc Seven Old Men
title: 83; label: The Little Old Women
title: 89; label: The Skeleton Laborer
title: 95; label: Comes the Charming Evening
title: 97; label: The Gaming Table
title: 101; label: Parisian Dream
title: 103; label: Morning Twilight
title: 107; label: The Martyr
title: 109; label: Lesbians
title: 115; label: An Allegory
title: 123; label: Abel and Cain
title: 125; label: Litany to Satan
title: 127; label: Thc Voyage
title: 133; label: The Rebel
title: 147; label: The Abyss
title: 147; label: The Moon Offended
title: 149; label: The Unforseen Meditation
title: 155; label: A Madrigal of Sorrow
title: 157; label: What a Pair of Eyes Can Promice
title: 161; label: Notes on the translators
title: 163; label: Index of translators
title: 167