French poetry is a category of French literature. It may include Francophone poetry composed outside France and poetry written in other languages of France.

French prosody and poetics[link]

The modern French language does not have a significant stress accent (like English) or long and short syllables (like Latin). This means that the French metric line is generally not determined by the number of beats, but by the number of syllables (see syllabic verse; in the Renaissance, there was a brief attempt to develop a French poetics based on long and short syllables [see "musique mesurée"]). The most common metric lengths are the ten-syllable line (decasyllable), the eight-syllable line (octosyllable) and the twelve-syllable line (the so-called "alexandrin").

In traditional French poetry, all permissible liaisons are made between words. Furthermore, unlike modern spoken French (at least in the north of France), a silent or mute 'e' counts as a syllable before a consonant and is pronounced, but is elided before a vowel (where "h aspiré" counts as a consonant). When it falls at the end of a line, the mute "e" is hypermetrical (outside the count of syllables). (For more on pronunciation of French, see Jesus).

The ten-syllable and 12-syllable lines are generally marked by a regular syntactical pause, called a "césure" (cesura):

• The ten-syllable line is often broken into syntactical groups as 5-5, 4-6, or 6-4.
• The alexandrine is broken into two six-syllable groups; each six-syllable group is called a "hémistiche".

In traditional poetry, the césure cannot occur between two words that are syntactically linked (such as a subject and its verb), nor can it occur after an unelided mute e. (For more on poetic meter, see Poetic meter.)

For example:

Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et pénétrant
d'une femme inconnue et que j'aime et qui m'aime...

(Paul Verlaine, "Mon rêve familier", from Poèmes saturniens)

The verses are alexandrines (12 syllables). The mute e in "d'une" is pronounced and is counted in the syllables (whereas the mute e's at the end of "rêve", "étrange", "femme" and "j'aime" -- which are followed by vowels—are elided and hypermetrical); the mute e at the end of "qui m'aime" is hypermetrical (this is a so-called "feminine rhyme"). No word occurs across the sixth to seventh syllable in both lines, thus creating the cesura.

The rules of classical French poetry (from the late 16th to the 18th century) also put forward the following:

• the encounter of two unelided and awkward vowel sounds ("hiatus") -- such as "il a à" -- was to be avoided;
• the alternance of masculine and feminine rhymes (a feminine rhyme ends in a mute e) was mandated;
• rhymes based on words that rhymed, but that—in their spellings—had dissimilar endings (such as a plural in s or x and a singular word) were prohibited (this was the "rhyme for the eye" rule);
• a word could not be made to rhyme with itself;
• in general, "enjambement" (in which the syntax of a sentence does not finish at the end of a line, but continues on into the next verse) was to be avoided.

For more on rhymes in French poetry, see Rhyme in French.

Poetic forms developed by medieval French poets include:

• Ballade
• Rondeau (poetry) (or Rondel)
• Ditié
• Dits moraux
• Blason
• Lai
• Virelai
• Pastourelle
• Complainte
• Chanson
  • Chanson de toile ("weaving song")
  • Chanson de croisade
  • Chanson courtoise
  • Rotrouenge
• Chant royal
• Aube ("dawn poem")
• Jeu parti

Other poetic forms found in French poetry:

• Villanelle
• Virelai nouveau
• Sonnet
• Ode

History of French poetry[link]

Medieval[link]

As is the case in other literary traditions, poetry is the earliest French literature; the development of prose as a literary form was a late phenomenon (in the late Middle Ages, many of the romances and epics initially written in verse were converted into prose versions). In the medieval period, the choice of verse form was generally dictated by the genre: the Old French epics ("chanson de geste", like the anonymous Song of Roland, regarded by some as the national epic of France) were usually written in ten-syllable assonanced "laisses" (blocks of varying length of assonanced lines), while the chivalric romances ("roman", such as the tales of King Arthur written by Chrétien de Troyes) were usually written in octosyllabic rhymed couplets.

Medieval French lyric poetry was indebted to the poetic and cultural traditions in Southern France and Provence -- including Toulouse, Poitiers, and the Aquitaine region—where "langue d'oc" was spoken (Occitan language); in their turn, the Provençal poets were greatly influenced by poetic traditions from the Hispano-Arab world. The Occitan or Provençal poets were called troubadours, from the word "trobar" (to find, to invent). Lyric poets in Old French are called "trouvères", using the Old French version of the word (for more information on the "trouvères", their poetic forms, extant works and their social status, see the article of that name). The occitan troubadours were amazingly creative in the development of verse forms and poetic genres, but their greatest impact on medieval literature was perhaps in their elaboration of complex code of love and service called "fin amors" or, more generally, courtly love. For more information on the troubadour tradition, see Provençal literature.

By the late 13th century, the poetic tradition in France had begun to develop in ways that differed significantly from the troubadour poets, both in content and in the use of certain fixed forms. The new poetic (as well as musical: some of the earliest medieval music has lyrics composed in Old French by the earliest composers known by name) tendencies are apparent in the Roman de Fauvel in 1310 and 1314, a satire on abuses in the medieval church filled with medieval motets, lais, rondeaux and other new secular forms of poetry and music (mostly anonymous, but with several pieces by Philippe de Vitry who would coin the expression Ars nova [new art, or new technique] to distinguish the new musical practice from the music of the immediately preceding age). The best-known poet and composer of ars nova secular music and chansons was Guillaume de Machaut. (For more on music, see medieval music ; for more on music in the period after Machaux, see Renaissance music).

French poetry continued to evolve in the 15th century. Charles, duc d'Orléans was a noble and head of one of the most powerful families in France during the Hundred Years' War. Captured in the Battle of Agincourt, he was a prisoner of the English from 1415–1441 and his ballades often speak of loss and isolation. Christine de Pisan was one of the most prolific writers of her age; her "Cité des Dames" is considered a kind of "feminist manifesto". François Villon was a student and vagabond whose two poetic "testaments" or "wills" are celebrated for their portrayal of the urban and university environment of Paris and their scabrous wit, satire and verbal puns. The image of Villon as vagabond poet seems to have gained almost mythic status in the 16th century, and this figure would be championed by poetic rebels of the 19th century and 20th centuries (see Poète maudit).

Renaissance[link]

Poetry in the first years of the 16th century is characterised by the elaborate sonorous and graphic experimentation and skillful word games of a number of Northern poets (such as Jean Lemaire de Belges and Jean Molinet), generally called "les Grands Rhétoriqueurs" who continued to develop poetic techniques from the previous century. Soon however, the impact of Petrarch (the sonnet cycle addressed to an idealised lover, the use of amorous pardoxes), Italian poets in the French court (like Luigi Alamanni), Italian Neo-platonism and humanism, and the rediscovery of certain Greek poets (such as Pindar and Anacreon) would profoundly modify the French tradition. In this respect, the French poets Clément Marot and Mellin de Saint-Gelais are transitional figures: they are credited with some of the first sonnets in French, but their poems continue to employ many of the traditional forms.

The new direction of poetry is fully apparent in the work of the humanist Jacques Peletier du Mans. In 1541, he published the first French translation of Horace's "Ars poetica" and in 1547 he published a collection poems "Œuvres poétiques", which included translations from the first two cantos of Homer's Odyssey and the first book of Virgil's Georgics, twelve Petrarchian sonnets, three Horacian odes and a Martial-like epigram; this poetry collection also included the first published poems of Joachim Du Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard.

Around Ronsard, Du Bellay and Jean Antoine de Baïf there formed a group of radical young noble poets of the court (generally known today as La Pléiade, although use of this term is debated). The character of their literary program was given in Du Bellay's manifesto, the "Defense and Illustration of the French Language" (1549) which maintained that French (like the Tuscan of Petrarch and Dante) was a worthy language for literary expression and which promulgated a program of linguistic and literary production (including the imitation of Latin and Greek genres) and purification. For some of the members of the Pléiade, the act of the poetry itself was seen as a form of divine inspiration (see Pontus de Tyard for example), a possession by the muses akin to romantic passion, prophetic fervor or alcoholic delirium.

The forms that dominate the poetic production of the period are the Petrarchian sonnet cycle (developed around an amorous encounter or an idealized woman) and the Horace/Anacreon ode (especially of the "carpe diem" - life is short, seize the day - variety). Ronsard also tried early on to adapt the Pindaric ode into French. Throughout the period, the use of mythology is frequent, but so too is a depiction of the natural world (woods, rivers). Other genres include the paradoxical encomium (such as Remy Belleau's poem prasing the oyster), the "blason" of the female body (a poetic description of a body part), and propagandistic verse.

Several poets of the period—Jean Antoine de Baïf (who founded an "Académie de Poésie et Musique" in 1570), Blaise de Vigenère and others—attempted to adapt into French the Latin, Greek or Hebrew poetic meters; these experiments were called "vers mesurés" and "prose mesuré" (for more, see the article "musique mesurée").

Although the royal court was the center of much of the century's poetry, Lyon – the second largest city in France in the Renaissance – also had its poets and humanists, most notably Maurice Scève, Louise Labé, Olivier de Magny and Pontus de Tyard. Scève's Délie, objet de plus haulte vertu - composed of 449 ten syllable ten line poems (dizains) and published with numerous engraved emblems - is exemplary in its use of amorous paradoxes and (often obscure) allegory to describe the suffering of a lover.

Poetry at the end of the century was profoundly marked by the civil wars: pessimism, dourness and a call for retreat from the world predominate (as in Jean de Sponde). However, the horrors of the war were also to inspire one Protestant poet, Agrippa d'Aubigné, to write a brilliant poem on the conflict:Les Tragiques.

Classical French poetry[link]

Because of the new conception of "l'honnête homme" or "the honest or upright man", poetry became one of the principal modes of literary production of noble gentlemen and of non-noble professional writers in their patronage in the 17th century.

Poetry was used for all purposes. A great deal of 17th- and 18th-century poetry was "occasional", written to celebrate a particular event (a marriage, birth, military victory) or to solemnize a tragic occurrence (a death, military defeat), and this kind of poetry was frequent with gentlemen in the service of a noble or the king. Poetry was the chief form of 17th century theater: the vast majority of scripted plays were written in verse (see "Theater" below). Poetry was used in satires (Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux is famous for his "Satires" (1666)) and in epics (inspired by the Renaissance epic tradition and by Tasso) like Jean Chapelain's La Pucelle.

Although French poetry during the reign of Henri IV and Louis XIII was still largely inspired by the poets of the late Valois court, some of their excesses and poetic liberties found censure, especially in the work of François de Malherbe who criticized La Pléiade's and Philippe Desportes's irregularities of meter or form (the suppression of the cesura by a hiatus, sentences clauses spilling over into the next line "enjambement", neologisms constructed from Greek words, etc.). The later 17th century would see Malherbe as the grandfather of poetic classicism.

Poetry came to be a part of the social games in noble salons (see "salons" above), where epigrams, satirical verse, and poetic descriptions were all common (the most famous example is "La Guirlande de Julie" (1641) at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, a collection of floral poems written by the salon members for the birthday of the host's daughter). The linguistic aspects of the phenomenon associated with the "précieuses" (similar to Euphuism in England, Gongorism in Spain and Marinism in Italy) -- the use of highly metaphorical (sometimes obscure) language, the purification of socially unacceptable vocabulary—was tied to this poetic salon spirit and would have an enormous impact on French poetic and courtly language. Although "préciosité" was often mocked (especially in the later 1660s when the phenomenon had spread to the provinces) for its linguistic and romantic excesses (often linked to a misogynistic disdain for intellectual women), the French language and social manners of the 17th century were permanently changed by it.

From the 1660s, three poets stand out. Jean de La Fontaine gained enormous celebrity through his Aesop inspired "Fables" (1668–1693) which were written in an irregular verse form (different meter lengths are used in a poem). Jean Racine was seen as the greatest tragedy writer of his age. Finally, Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux became the theorizer of poetic classicism: his "Art poétique" (1674) praised reason and logic (Boileau elevated Malherbe as the first of the rational poets), believability, moral usefulness and moral correctness; it elevated tragedy and the poetic epic as the great genres and recommended imitation of the poets of antiquity.

"Classicism" in poetry would dominate until the pre-romantics and the French Revolution.

From a technical point of view, the poetic production from the late 17th century on increasingly relied on stanza forms incorporating rhymed couplets, and by the 18th century fixed-form poems – and, in particular, the sonnet – were largely avoided. The resulting versification – less constrained by meter and rhyme patterns than Renaissance poetry – more closely mirrored prose.^[1]

Nineteenth-century[link]

French poetry from the first half of the century was dominated by Romanticism, associated with such authors as Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine, and Gérard de Nerval. The effect of the romantic movement would continue to be felt in the latter half of the century in wildly diverse literary developments, such as "realism", "symbolism", and the so-called fin de siècle "decadent" movement (see below). Victor Hugo was the outstanding genius of the Romantic School and its recognized leader. He was prolific alike in poetry, drama, and fiction. Other writers associated with the movement were the austere and pessimistic Alfred de Vigny, Théophile Gautier a devotee of beauty and creator of the "Art for art's sake" movement, and Alfred de Musset, who best exemplifies romantic melancholy.

By the middle of the century, an attempt to be objective was made in poetry by the group of writers known as the Parnassians -- which included Leconte de Lisle, Théodore de Banville, Catulle Mendès, Sully-Prudhomme, François Coppée, José María de Heredia and (early in his career) Paul Verlaine -- who (using Théophile Gautier's notion of art for art's sake and the pursuit of the beautiful) strove for exact and faultless workmanship, and selected exotic and classical subjects which they treated with a rigidity of form and an emotional detachment (elements of which echo the philosophical work of Arthur Schopenhauer whose aesthetic theories would also have an influence on the symbolists).

The naturalist tendency to see life without illusions and to dwell on its more depressing and sordid aspects appears in an intensified degree in the immensely influential poetry of Charles Baudelaire, but with profoundly romantic elements derived from the Byronic myth of the anti-hero and the romantic poet

The poetry of Baudelaire and much of the literature in the latter half of the century (or "fin de siècle") were often characterized as "decadent" for their lurid content or moral vision. In a similar vein, Paul Verlaine used the expression "poète maudit" ("accursed poet") in 1884 to refer to a number of poets like Tristan Corbière, Stéphane Mallarmé and Arthur Rimbaud who had fought against poetic conventions and suffered social rebuke or had been ignored by the critics. But with the publication of Jean Moréas "Symbolist Manifesto" in 1886, it was the term symbolism which was most often applied to the new literary environment.

The writers Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, Paul Valéry, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Arthur Rimbaud, Jules Laforgue, Jean Moréas, Gustave Kahn, Albert Samain, Jean Lorrain, Rémy de Gourmont, Pierre Louÿs, Tristan Corbière, Henri de Régnier, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Stuart Merrill, René Ghil, Saint-Pol Roux, Oscar-Vladislas de Milosz, the Belgians Albert Giraud, Emile Verhaeren, Georges Rodenbach and Maurice Maeterlinck and others have been called symbolists, although each author's personal literary project was unique.^[2]

From a technical point of view, the Romantics were responsible for a return to (and sometimes a modification of) many of the fixed-form poems used during the 15th and 16th centuries, as well as for the creation of new forms. The sonnet however was little used until the Parnassians brought it back into favor,^[3] and the sonnet would subsequently find its most significant practitioner in Charles Baudelaire. The traditional French sonnet form was however significantly modified by Baudelaire, who used 32 different forms of sonnet with non-traditional rhyme patterns to great effect in his Les Fleurs du mal.^[4]

Twentieth-century[link]

Guillaume Apollinaire radicalized the Baudelairian poetic exploration of modern life in evoking planes, the Eiffel Tower and urban wastelands, and he brought poetry into contact with cubism through his "Calligrammes", a form of visual poetry. Inspired by Rimbaud, Paul Claudel used a form of free verse to explore his mystical conversion to Catholicism. Other poets from this period include: Paul Valéry, Max Jacob (a key member of the group around Apollinaire), Pierre Jean Jouve (a follower of Romain Rolland's "Unanism"), Valery Larbaud (a translator of Whitman and friend to Joyce), Victor Segalen (friend to Huysmans and Claudel), Léon-Paul Fargue (who studied with Stéphane Mallarmé and was close to Valéry and Larbaud).

The First World War generated even more radical tendencies. The Dada movement—which began in a café in Switzerland in 1916—came to Paris in 1920, but by 1924 the writers around Paul Éluard, André Breton, Louis Aragon and Robert Desnos -- heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud's notion of the unconscious -- had modified dada provocation into Surrealism. In writing and in the visual arts, and by using automatic writing, creative games (like the cadavre exquis) and altered states (through alcohol and narcotics), the surrealists tried to reveal the workings of the unconscious mind. The group championed previous writers they saw as radical (Arthur Rimbaud, the Comte de Lautréamont, Baudelaire) and promoted an anti-bourgeois philosophy (particularly with regards to sex and politics) which would later lead most of them to join the communist party. Other writers associated with surrealism include: Jean Cocteau, René Crevel, Jacques Prévert, Jules Supervielle, Benjamin Péret, Philippe Soupault, Pierre Reverdy, Antonin Artaud (who revolutionized theater), Henri Michaux and René Char. The surrealist movement would continue to be a major force in experimental writing and the international art world until the Second World War.

The effects of surrealism would later also be felt among authors who were not strictly speaking part of the movement, such as the poet Alexis Saint-Léger Léger (who wrote under the name Saint-John Perse), the poet Edmond Jabès (who came to France in 1956 when the Jewish population was expelled from his native Egypt) and Georges Bataille. The Swiss writer Blaise Cendrars was close to Apollinaire, Pierre Reverdy, Max Jacob and the artists Chagall and Léger, and his work has similarities with both surrealism and cubism.

Poetry in the post-war period followed a number of interlinked paths, most notably deriving from surrealism (such as with the early work of René Char), or from philosophical and phenomenological concerns stemming from Heidegger, Friedrich Hölderlin, existentialism, the relationship between poetry and the visual arts, and Stéphane Mallarmé's notions of the limits of language. Another important influence was the German poet Paul Celan. Poets concerned with these philosophical/language concerns—especially concentrated around the review "L'Ephémère" -- include Yves Bonnefoy, André du Bouchet, Jacques Dupin, Roger Giroux and Philippe Jaccottet. Many of these ideas were also key to the works of Maurice Blanchot. The unique poetry of Francis Ponge exerted a strong influence on a variety of writers (both phenomenologists and those from the group "Tel Quel"). The later poets Claude Royet-Journoud, Anne-Marie Albiach, Emmanuel Hocquard, and to a degree Jean Daive, describe a shift from Heidegger to Ludwig Wittgenstein and a reevaluation of Mallarmé's notion of fiction and theatricality; these poets were also influenced by certain English-language modern poets (such as Ezra Pound, Louis Zukofsky, William Carlos Williams, and George Oppen) along with certain American postmodern and avant garde poets loosely grouped around the language poetry movement.

Important French and Francophone poets[link]

Middle Ages[link]

(includes both trouvères and troubadours)

• Arnaut Daniel
• Bernart de Ventadorn
• Bertran de Born
• Folquet de Marselha (Foulques de Toulouse)
• Gautier d'Espinal
• Gui d'Ussel
• William IX of Aquitaine
• Guillem de Cabestany
• Guiraut de Bornelh
• Guiraut Riquier
• Jaufré Rudel
• Macabru
• Peire Vidal
• Raimbaut de Vaqueiras
• Raimbaut of Orange
• Chrétien de Troyes (fl. 1160s-80s)
• Adenet Le Roi (c.1240–c.1300)
• Blondel de Nesle (fl c.1175–1210)
• Chastelain de Couci (fl c.1170–1203; †1203)
• Colin Muset (fl c.1230–60)
• Conon de Béthune (fl c.1180–c.1220; †1220)
• Gace Brulé (c.1159-after 1212)
• Gautier de Coincy (1177/8–1236)
• Guiot de Dijon (fl c.1200–30)
• Thibaut IV of Champagne (1201–53)
• Adam de la Halle (c.1240–88)
• Audefroi le Bastart (fl c1200–1230)
• Moniot d'Arras (fl c1250–75)
• Rutebeuf (d.1285)
• Guillaume de Machaut (1300–1377)
• Eustache Deschamps (1346-c.1406)
• Christine de Pisan (1364–1430)
• Charles, duc d'Orléans (1394–1465)
• François Villon (1431-1465?)

Sixteenth century[link]

• Jean Lemaire de Belges
• Jean Molinet
• Clément Marot
• Maurice Scève
• Pernette Du Guillet
• Jacques Peletier du Mans
• Mellin de Saint-Gelais
• Joachim du Bellay
• Pierre de Ronsard
• Pontus de Tyard
• Jean Antoine de Baïf
• Louise Labé
• Jean Antoine de Baïf
• Remy Belleau
• Etienne de La Boétie
• Philippe Desportes
• Étienne Jodelle
• Agrippa d'Aubigné
• Nicolas Rapin
• Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas
• Jean de Sponde
• Frédéric Lamperouge
• Jean-Baptiste Chassignet
• Marc de Papillon

Seventeenth century[link]

• François de Malherbe (1555–1628)
• Honoré d'Urfé (1567–1625)
• Jean Ogier de Gombaud (1570?-1666)
• Mathurin Régnier (1573–1613) - nephew of Philippe Desportes
• François de Maynard (1582–1646)
• Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan (1589–1670)
• Théophile de Viau (1590–1626)
• François le Métel de Boisrobert (1592–1662)
• Antoine Gérard de Saint-Amant (1594–1661)
• Jean Chapelain (1595–1674)
• Vincent Voiture (1597–1648)
• Tristan L'Hermite (1601?-1655)
• Pierre Corneille (1606–1684)
• Paul Scarron (1610–1660)
• Isaac de Benserade (1613–1691)
• Georges de Brébeuf (1618–1661)
• Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695)
• Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711)
• Jean Racine (1639–1699)
• Guillaume Amfrye de Chaulieu (1639–1720)
• Jean-François Regnard (1655–1709)

Eighteenth century[link]

• André Chénier (1762–1794)
• Marie-Joseph de Chénier (1764–1811)

Nineteenth century[link]

• Victor Hugo (1802–1885) is generally recognised as the greatest figure in French Romanticism in the 19th century.
• Alphonse de Lamartine
• Alfred de Vigny
• Alfred de Musset
• Gérard de Nerval (1808–1855)
• Théophile Gautier (1811–1872)
• Leconte de Lisle
• Théodore de Banville
• Catulle Mendès
• Sully-Prudhomme
• François Coppée
• José María de Heredia
• Antoinette Henriette Clémence Robert
• Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) With Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, the founder of the Decadents. He also founded the journal Le Salut Public, translated Edgar Allan Poe, and was prosecuted along with the publisher and printer for blasphemy associated with Les Fleurs du mal. He held salons to encourage such painters as Delacroix. Among other poetic forms, he used the pantoum.
• Theodore Aubanel (1829–1882) Born into a publishing family (the museum for the publishing house still exists), he is the author of three collections of poetry written in the troubadour tradition, as well as three plays.
• Frédéric Mistral (1830–1914) Provençal language poet and Nobel Prize in Literature laureate in 1904. He created the Félibrige movement on May 21, 1854, with Théodore Aubanel, Jean Brunet, Anselme Mathieu, Paul Piera, his teacher Joseph Roumanille, and Alphonse Tavan. He was noted for his promotion of Provençal literature and founded the annual journal Armana Prouvençau. Also founder of a museum of ethnography in Arles.
• Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) The originator of the Symbolist movement in France. His Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard was one of the first to use typography in poetry to create different trains of thought existing simultaneously.
• Paul Verlaine (1844–1896) Regarded in his day as the premier poet in France, he published, in addition to his poems, Les poètes maudits, biographies of poets. See Poète maudit.
• Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) was one of the precursors of the Surrealist movement. He wrote many remarkable works, among The Sonnet of the Vowels in which each vowel is assigned a colour.
• Jules Laforgue
• Jean Moréas
• Gustave Kahn
• Albert Samain
• Tristan Corbière
• Henri de Régnier
• René Ghil
• Saint-Pol Roux
• Oscar-Vladislas de Milosz
• Albert Giraud
• Emile Verhaeren
• Georges Rodenbach
• Tristan Klingsor (1874–1966)
• Maurice Maeterlinck

Twentieth century[link]

• Paul Valéry (1871–1945)
• Paul Claudel - used a form of free verse to explore his mystical conversion to Catholicism.
• Guillaume Apollinaire's (1880–1918) first collection of poetry was L'enchanteur pourrissant (1909), but it was Alcools (1913) which established his reputation. These poems, influenced in part by the symbolists, juxtapose the old and the new, using traditional forms and modern imagery.
• Max Jacob (a key member of the group around Apollinaire)
• Pierre Jean Jouve - a follower of Romain Rolland's "Unanism")
• Valery Larbaud - a translator of Whitman and friend to Joyce
• Victor Segalen - friend to Huysmans and Claudel
• Léon-Paul Fargue
• Paul Éluard was a leading exponent of Surrealism.
• André Breton
• Louis Aragon
• Robert Desnos
• Jacques Prévert's works move between Surrealism and the popular songs of Parisian café culture.
• Jean Cocteau
• Jules Supervielle
• Benjamin Péret
• Philippe Soupault
• Pierre Reverdy
• Henri Michaux
• René Char
• Saint-John Perse
• Edmond Jabès
• Yves Bonnefoy
• André du Bouchet
• Jacques Dupin
• Roger Giroux
• Philippe Jaccottet
• Francis Ponge
• Claude Royet-Journoud
• Anne-Marie Albiach
• Emmanuel Hocquard
• Seyhan Kurt
• Jean Daive
• Dominique Sorrente
• Eric Dubois

References[link]

• Maurice Allem, ed. Anthologie poétique française. 5 vols. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1965. (French)
• Paul Auster, ed. The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry. New York: Vintage, 1984.
• Henri Bonnard. Notions de style et de versification et d'histoire de la langue française. Paris: SUDEL, 1953. (French)
• John Porter Huston and Mona Tobin Houston, eds., French Symbolist Poetry: An Anthology, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1980. ISBN 0-253-16725-6
• Henri Morier. Dictionnaire de poétique et de rhétorique. Paris: PUF, 1961. (French)
• David Lee Rubin. The Knot of Artifice: A Poetic of the French Lyric in the Early 17th Century. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1981.
• David Lee Rubin, ed. La Poésie française du premier 17e siècle: textes et contextes. 1986. Augmented edition [with Robert T. Corum]. Charlottesville: Rookwood Press, 2006. Each poet's texts selected, established, introduced, and annotated by team of major scholars. (French)
• Doranne Fenoaltea and David Lee Rubin, editors. The Ladder of High Designs: Structure and Interpretation of French Lyric Sequences. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991.

Notes[link]

See also[link]

French literature portal

• List of French language poets (alphabetical)
• Parnassian poets
• Oeuvres poetiques de Thibaut de Champagne in Medieval History of Navarre
• The Oxford Book of French Verse

Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire ca. 1863
Born	Charles Pierre Baudelaire April 9, 1821 Paris, France
Died	August 31, 1867(1867-08-31) (aged 46) Paris, France
Occupation	Poet, art critic
Nationality	French
Period	1844–1866
Literary movement	Symbolist, Modernist
Signature

Charles Pierre Baudelaire (French: [ʃaʁl bodlɛʁ]; 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 Stéphane Mallarmé among many others. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.^[1]

Baudelaire the poet[link]

Baudelaire is one of the major innovators in French literature. His poetry is influenced by the French romantic poets of the earlier 19th century, although its attention to the formal features of verse connect it more closely to the work of the contemporary 'Parnassians'. As for theme and tone, in his works we see the rejection of the belief in the supremacy of nature and the fundamental goodness of man as typically espoused by the romantics and expressed by them in rhetorical, effusive and public voice in favor of a new urban sensibility, an awareness of individual moral complexity, an interest in vice (linked with decadence) and refined sensual and aesthetical pleasures, and the use of urban subject matter, such as the city, the crowd, individual passers-by, all expressed in highly ordered verse, sometimes through a cynical and ironic voice. Formally, the use of sound to create atmosphere, and of 'symbols', (images which take on an expanded function within the poem), betray a move towards considering the poem as a self-referential object, an idea further developed by the Symbolists Verlaine and Mallarmé, who acknowledge Baudelaire as a pioneer in this regard.

Beyond his innovations in versification and the theories of symbolism and 'correspondences', an awareness of which is essential to any appreciation of the literary value of his work, aspects of his work which regularly receive (or have received) much critical discussion include the role of women, the theological direction of his work and his alleged advocacy of 'satanism', his experience of drug-induced states of mind, the figure of the dandy, his stance regarding democracy and its implications for the individual, his response to the spiritual uncertainties of the time, his criticisms of the bourgeois, and his advocacy of modern music and painting (e.g., Wagner, Delacroix).

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Baudelaire was born in Paris, France on April 9, 1821 and baptized two months later at Saint-Sulpice Roman Catholic Church.^[2] His father, François Baudelaire, a senior civil servant and amateur artist, was thirty-four years older than Baudelaire's mother. François died during Baudelaire's childhood, in 1827. The following year, Caroline married Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Aupick, who later became a French ambassador to various noble courts. Biographers have often seen this as a crucial moment, considering that finding himself no longer the sole focus of his mother's affection left him with a trauma which goes some way to explaining the excesses later apparent in his life. He stated in a letter to her that, "There was in my childhood a period of passionate love for you".^[3] Baudelaire regularly implored his mother for money throughout his career, often promising that a lucrative publishing contract or journalistic commission was just around the corner.

Baudelaire was educated in Lyon, where he boarded. Baudelaire at fourteen was described by a classmate: "He was much more refined and distinguished than any of our fellow pupils [...] we are bound to one another[...] by shared tastes and sympathies, the precocious love of fine works of literature".^[4] Baudelaire was erratic in his studies, at times diligent, at other times prone to "idleness". Later, he attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, studying law, a popular course for those not yet decided on any particular career. Baudelaire began to frequent prostitutes and may have contracted gonorrhea and syphilis during this period. Baudelaire began to run up debts, mostly for clothes. Upon gaining his degree in 1839, he told his brother "I don't feel I have a vocation for anything." His stepfather had in mind a career in law or diplomacy, but instead Baudelaire decided to embark upon a literary career. His mother later recalled: "Oh, what grief! If Charles had let himself be guided by his stepfather, his career would have been very different... He would not have left a name in literature, it is true, but we should have been happier, all three of us".^[5]

Portrait by Emile Deroy (1820–1846)

His stepfather sent him on a voyage to Calcutta, India in 1841 in the hope of ending his dissolute habits. The trip provided strong impressions of the sea, sailing, and exotic ports, that he later employed in his poetry.^[6] (Baudelaire later exaggerated his aborted trip to create a legend about his youthful travels and experiences, including "riding on elephants".) Baudelaire returned to the taverns where he began to compose some of the poems of Les Fleurs du Mal. At twenty-one, he received a good-sized inheritance but squandered much of it within a few years. His family obtained a decree to place his property in trust^[7] which he resented bitterly, at one point arguing that allowing him to fail alone financially would have been the one sure way of teaching him the value of maintaining well-ordered finances.

Baudelaire became known in artistic circles as a dandy and free-spender. During this time Jeanne Duval became his mistress. His mother thought Duval a "Black Venus" who "tortured him in every way" and drained him of money at every opportunity.^[8] She was rejected by his family. He made a suicide attempt during this time.

Baudelaire took part in the Revolutions of 1848 and wrote for a revolutionary newspaper. However, his interest was passing, as he was later to note in his political writings in his journals.

In the early 1850s, Baudelaire struggled with poor health, pressing debts, and irregular literary output. He often moved from one lodging to another to escape creditors. He received many projects that he was unable to complete, though he did finish translations of stories by Edgar Allan Poe.

Upon the death of his stepfather in 1857, Baudelaire received no mention in the will but he was heartened nonetheless that the division with his mother might now be mended. At thirty-six he wrote her: "believe that I belong to you absolutely, and that I belong only to you".^[9]

Published career[link]

His first published work was his art review "Salon of 1845," which attracted immediate attention for its boldness. Many of his critical opinions were novel in their time, including his championing of Delacroix, and some of his views seem remarkably in tune with the future theories of the Impressionist painters.

In 1846, Baudelaire wrote his second Salon review, gaining additional credibility as an advocate and critic of Romanticism. His support of Delacroix as the foremost Romantic artist gained widespread notice.^[10] The following year Baudelaire's novella La Fanfarlo was published.

[edit] The Flowers of Evil

The first edition of Les Fleurs du mal with author's notes.

Baudelaire was a slow and fastidious worker, often sidetracked by indolence, emotional distress and illness, and it was not until 1857 that he published his first and most famous volume of poems, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil). Some of these poems had already appeared in the Revue des deux mondes (Review of Two Worlds), when they were published by Baudelaire's friend Auguste Poulet Malassis.

The poems found a small, appreciative audience, but greater public attention was given to their subject matter. The effect on fellow artists was, as Théodore de Banville stated, "immense, prodigious, unexpected, mingled with admiration and with some indefinable anxious fear".^[11] Flaubert, recently attacked in a similar fashion for Madame Bovary (and acquitted), was impressed and wrote to Baudelaire: "You have found a way to rejuvenate Romanticism... You are as unyielding as marble, and as penetrating as an English mist".^[12]

The principal themes of sex and death were considered scandalous. He also touched on lesbianism, sacred and profane love, metamorphosis, melancholy, the corruption of the city, lost innocence, the oppressiveness of living, and wine. Notable in some poems is Baudelaire's use of imagery of the sense of smell and of fragrances, which is used to evoke feelings of nostalgia and past intimacy.^[13]

The book, however, quickly became a byword for unwholesomeness among mainstream critics of the day. Some critics called a few of the poems "masterpieces of passion, art and poetry" but other poems were deemed to merit no less than legal action to suppress them.^[14] J. Habas writing in Le Figaro, led the charge against Baudelaire, writing: "Everything in it which is not hideous is incomprehensible, everything one understands is putrid". Then Baudelaire responded to the outcry, in a prophetic letter to his mother:

"You know that I have always considered that literature and the arts pursue an aim independent of morality. Beauty of conception and style is enough for me. But this book, whose title (Fleurs du mal) says everything, is clad, as you will see, in a cold and sinister beauty. It was created with rage and patience. Besides, the proof of its positive worth is in all the ill that they speak of it. The book enrages people. Moreover, since I was terrified myself of the horror that I should inspire, I cut out a third from the proofs. They deny me everything, the spirit of invention and even the knowledge of the French language. I don't care a rap about all these imbeciles, and I know that this book, with its virtues and its faults, will make its way in the memory of the lettered public, beside the best poems of V. Hugo, Th. Gautier and even Byron."^[15]

Illustration cover for Les Épaves, by Baudelaire's friend Félicien Rops.

Baudelaire, his publisher and the printer were successfully prosecuted for creating an offense against public morals. They were fined but Baudelaire was not imprisoned.^[16] Six of the poems were suppressed, but printed later as Les Épaves (The Wrecks) (Brussels, 1866). Another edition of Les Fleurs du mal, without these poems, but with considerable additions, appeared in 1861. Many notables rallied behind Baudelaire and condemned the sentence. Victor Hugo wrote to him: "Your fleurs du mal shine and dazzle like stars... I applaud your vigorous spirit with all my might".^[17] Baudelaire did not appeal the judgment but his fine was reduced. Nearly 100 years later, on May 11, 1949, Baudelaire was vindicated, the judgment officially reversed, and the six banned poems reinstated in France.^[17]

In the poem "Au lecteur" ("To the Reader") that prefaces Les Fleurs du mal, Baudelaire accuses his readers of hypocrisy and of being as guilty of sins and lies as the poet:

...If rape or arson, poison or the knife

Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff

Of this drab canvas we accept as life—

It is because we are not bold enough!

(Roy Campbell's translation)

Final years[link]

Baudelaire next worked on a translation and adaptation of Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater.^[18] Other works in the years that followed included Petits Poèmes en prose (Small Prose poems); a series of art reviews published in the Pays, Exposition universelle (Country, World Fair); studies on Gustave Flaubert (in L'Artiste, October 18, 1857); on Théophile Gautier (Revue contemporaine, September 1858); various articles contributed to Eugene Crepet's Poètes francais; Les Paradis artificiels: opium et haschisch (French poets; Artificial Paradises: opium and hashish) (1860); and Un Dernier Chapitre de l'histoire des oeuvres de Balzac (A Final Chapter of the history of works of Balzac) (1880), originally an article "Comment on paye ses dettes quand on a du génie" ("How one pays one's debts when one has genius"), in which his criticism turns against his friends Honoré de Balzac, Théophile Gautier, and Gérard de Nerval.

Jeanne Duval, in a painting by Édouard Manet

Apollonie Sabatier, muse and one time mistress, painted by Vincent Vidal.

By 1859, his illnesses, his long-term use of laudanum, his life of stress and poverty had taken a toll and Baudelaire had aged noticeably. But at last, his mother relented and agreed to let him live with her for a while at Honfleur. Baudelaire was productive and at peace in the seaside town, his poem Le Voyage being one example of his efforts during that time.^[19] In 1860, he became an ardent supporter of Richard Wagner.

His financial difficulties increased again, however, particularly after his publisher Poulet Malassis went bankrupt in 1861. In 1864, he left Paris for Belgium, partly in the hope of selling the rights to his works and also to give lectures.^[20] His long-standing relationship with Jeanne Duval continued on-and-off, and he helped her to the end of his life. Baudelaire's relationships with actress Marie Daubrun and with courtesan Apollonie Sabatier, though the source of much inspiration, never produced any lasting satisfaction. He smoked opium, and in Brussels he began to drink to excess. Baudelaire suffered a massive stroke in 1866 and paralysis followed. After more than a year of aphasia, he received the last rites of the Catholic Church.^[21] The last two years of his life were spent, in a semi-paralyzed state, in "maisons de santé" in Brussels and in Paris, where he died on August 31, 1867. Baudelaire is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.

Many of Baudelaire's works were published posthumously. After his death, his mother paid off his substantial debts, and at last she found some comfort in Baudelaire's emerging fame. "I see that my son, for all his faults, has his place in literature". She lived another four years.

Critiques[link]

Baudelaire was an active participant in the artistic life of his times. As critic and essayist, he wrote extensively and perceptively about the luminaries and themes of French culture. He was frank with friends and enemies, rarely took the diplomatic approach and sometimes responded violently verbally, which often undermined his cause.^[22] His associations were numerous and included: Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Franz Liszt, Champfleury, Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, Balzac and the artists and writers that follow.

Edgar Allan Poe[link]

In 1846 and 1847, Baudelaire became acquainted with the works of Poe, in which he found tales and poems that had, he claimed, long existed in his own brain but never taken shape. Baudelaire had much in common with Poe (who died in 1849 at age forty). The two poets display a similar sensibility of the macabre and supernatural turn of mind; each struggled with illness, poverty, and melancholy. Like Poe, Baudelaire believed in the doctrine of original sin, denounced democracy and the idea of progress and of man's natural goodness, and Poe held a disdainful aristocratic attitude similar to Baudelaire's dandy.^[23] Baudelaire saw in Poe a precursor and tried to be his French contemporary counterpart.^[24] From this time until 1865, he was largely occupied with translating Poe's works; his translations were widely praised. Baudelaire was not the first French translator of Poe, but his "scrupulous translations" were considered among the best. These were published as Histoires extraordinaires (Extraordinary stories) (1852), Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires (New extraordinary stories) (1857), Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym, Eureka, and Histoires grotesques et sérieuses (Grotesque and serious stories) (1865). Two essays on Poe are to be found in his Oeuvres complètes (Complete works) (vols. v. and vi.).

Eugène Delacroix[link]

A strong supporter of the Romantic painter Delacroix, Baudelaire called him "a poet in painting." Baudelaire also absorbed much of Delacroix's aesthetic ideas as expressed in his journals. As Baudelaire elaborated in his "Salon of 1846", "As one contemplates his series of pictures, one seems to be attending the celebration of some grievous mystery... This grave and lofty melancholy shines with a dull light... plaintive and profound like a melody by Weber".^[10] Delacroix, though appreciative, kept his distance from Baudelaire, particularly after the scandal of Les Fleurs du mal. In private correspondence, Delacroix stated that Baudelaire "really gets on my nerves" and he expressed his unhappiness with Baudelaire's persistent comments about "melancholy" and "feverishness".^[25]

Richard Wagner[link]

Baudelaire had no formal musical training, and knew little of composers beyond Beethoven and Carl Maria von Weber. Weber was in some ways Wagner's precursor, using the leitmotif and conceiving the idea of the "total art work" ("Gesamtkunstwerk"), both of which found Baudelaire's admiration. Before even hearing Wagner's music, Baudelaire studied reviews and essays about him, and formulated his impressions. Later, Baudelaire put them into his non-technical analysis of Wagner, which was highly regarded, particularly his essay "Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris".^[26] Baudelaire's reaction to music was passionate and psychological. "Music engulfs (possesses) me like the sea".^[26] After attending three Wagner concerts in Paris in 1860, Baudelaire wrote to the composer: "I had a feeling of pride and joy in understanding, in being possessed, in being overwhelmed, a truly sensual pleasure like that of rising in the air".^[27] Baudelaire's writings contributed to the elevation of Wagner and to the cult of Wagnerism that swept Europe in the following decades.

Théophile Gautier[link]

Gautier, writer and poet, earned Baudelaire's respect for his perfection of form and his mastery of language, though Baudelaire thought he lacked deeper emotion and spirituality. Both strove to express the artist's inner vision, which Heinrich Heine had earlier stated: "In artistic matters, I am a supernaturalist. I believe that the artist can not find all his forms in nature, but that the most remarkable are revealed to him in his soul".^[28] Gautier's frequent meditations on death and the horror of life are themes which influenced Baudelaire writings. In gratitude for their friendship and commonality of vision, Baudelaire dedicated Les Fleurs du mal to Gautier.

Édouard Manet[link]

Manet and Baudelaire became constant companions from around 1855. In the early 1860s, Baudelaire accompanied Manet on daily sketching trips and often met him socially. Manet also lent Baudelaire money and looked after his affairs, particularly when Baudelaire went to Belgium. Baudelaire encouraged Manet to strike his own path and not succumb to criticism. "Manet has great talent, a talent which will stand the test of time. But he has a weak character. He seems to me crushed and stunned by shock".^[29] In his painting Music in the Tuileries, Manet includes portraits of his friends Théophile Gautier, Jacques Offenbach, and Baudelaire.^[30] While it's difficult to differentiate who influenced whom, both Manet and Baudelaire discussed and expressed some common themes through their respective arts. Baudelaire praised the modernity of Manet's subject matter: "almost all our originality comes from the stamp that 'time' imprints upon our feelings".^[31] When Manet's famous Olympia (1863), a portrait of a nude prostitute, provoked a scandal for its blatant realism mixed with an imitation of Renaissance motifs, Baudelaire worked privately to support his friend, though he offered no public defense (he was, however, ill at the time). When Baudelaire returned from Belgium after his stroke, Manet and his wife were frequent visitors at the nursing home and she would play passages from Wagner for Baudelaire on the piano.^[32]

Nadar[link]

Nadar (Félix Tournachon) was a noted caricaturist, scientist and important early photographer. Baudelaire admired Nadar, one of his closest friends, and wrote: "Nadar is the most amazing manifestation of vitality".^[33] They moved in similar circles and Baudelaire made many social connections through him. Nadar's ex-mistress Jeanne Duval became Baudelaire's mistress around 1842. Baudelaire became interested in photography in the 1850s and denounced it as an art form and advocated for its return to "its real purpose, which is that of being the servant to the sciences and arts". Photography should not, according to Baudelaire, encroach upon "the domain of the impalpable and the imaginary".^[34] Nadar remained a stalwart friend right to Baudelaire's last days and wrote his obituary notice in Le Figaro.

Philosophy[link]

Many of Baudelaire's philosophical proclamations were considered scandalous and intentionally provocative in his time. He wrote on a wide range of subjects, drawing criticism and outrage from many quarters.

Love[link]

"There is an invincible taste for prostitution in the heart of man, from which comes his horror of solitude. He wants to be 'two'. The man of genius wants to be 'one'... It is this horror of solitude, the need to lose oneself in the external flesh, that man nobly calls 'the need to love'."^[35]

Marriage[link]

"Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage."^[35]

The artist[link]

"The more a man cultivates the arts, the less randy he becomes... Only the brute is good at coupling, and copulation is the lyricism of the masses. To copulate is to enter into another–and the artist never emerges from himself."^[35]

Pleasure[link]

"Personally, I think that the unique and supreme delight lies in the certainty of doing 'evil'–and men and women know from birth that all pleasure lies in evil."^[35]

"But what matters an eternity of damnation to one who has found an infinity of joy in a single second?"

Politics[link]

Along with Poe, Baudelaire named the arch-reactionary Joseph de Maistre as his maître à penser^[36] and adopted increasingly aristocratic views. In his journals, he wrote "There is no form of rational and assured government save an aristocracy. A monarchy or a republic, based upon democracy, are equally absurd and feeble. The immense nausea of advertisements. There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions."^[37]

The Public[link]

"In this regards, my friend, you're like the public, to whom one should never offer a delicate perfume. It exasperates them. Give them only carefully selected garbage." ^[38]

Time[link]

"The will to work must dominate, for art is long and time is brief." ^[38]

"Each man bears within himself his own dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from birth to death, how many hours can we count filled with pleasure,with prosperous and effective action?" ^[38]

Influence[link]

Portrait by Gustave Courbet, 1848.

Baudelaire's influence on the direction of modern French (and English) language literature was considerable. The most significant French writers to come after him were generous with tributes; four years after his death, Arthur Rimbaud praised him in a letter as 'the king of poets, a true God'.^[39] In 1895, Stéphane Mallarmé published a sonnet in Baudelaire's memory, 'Le Tombeau de Charles Baudelaire'. Marcel Proust, in an essay published in 1922, stated that along with Alfred de Vigny, Baudelaire was 'the greatest poet of the nineteenth century'.^[40]

In the English-speaking world, Edmund Wilson credited Baudelaire as providing an initial impetus for the Symbolist movement, by virtue of his translations of Poe.^[41] In 1930, T. S. Eliot, while asserting that Baudelaire had not yet received a "just appreciation" even in France, claimed that the poet had "great genius" and asserted that his "technical mastery which can hardly be overpraised... has made his verse an inexhaustible study for later poets, not only in his own language".^[42] Eliot also alluded to Baudelaire's poetry directly in his own poetry. For example, he quoted the last line of Baudelaire's 'Au Lecteur' ın the last line of Sectıon I of The Waste Land.

At the same time that Eliot was affirming Baudelaire's importance from a broadly conservative and explicitly Christian viewpoint,^[43] left-wing critics such as Wilson and Walter Benjamin were able to do so from a dramatically different perspective. Benjamin translated Baudelaire's Tableaux Parisiens into German and published a major essay on translation^[44] as the foreword.

In the late 1930s, Benjamin used Baudelaire as a starting point and focus for his monumental attempt at a materialist assessment of 19th century culture, Das Passagenwerk.^[45] For Benjamin, Baudelaire's importance lay in his anatomies of the crowd, of the city and of modernity.^[46] François Porche published a poetry collection called Charles Baudelaire in memory of Baudelaire.

In 1982, avant-garde performance artist and vocalist Diamanda Galás recorded an adaptation of his poem The Litanies of Satan (Les Litanies de Satan).

The Baudelaires, protagonists of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, were named after him.^{[citation needed]}

Currently, Vanderbilt University has "assembled one of the world’s most comprehensive research collections on...Baudelaire."^[47]

Works[link]

Bibliography[link]

Tomb of Baudelaire, located in the Montparnasse Cemetery

• Salon de 1845, 1845
• Salon de 1846, 1846
• La Fanfarlo, 1847
• Les Fleurs du mal, 1857
• Les paradis artificiels, 1860
• Réflexions sur Quelques-uns de mes Contemporains, 1861
• Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne, 1863
• Curiosités Esthétiques, 1868
• L'art romantique, 1868
• Le Spleen de Paris (Paris Spleen)/Petits Poèmes en Prose, 1869
• Oeuvres Posthumes et Correspondance Générale, 1887–1907
• Fusées, 1897
• Mon Coeur Mis à Nu, 1897
• Oeuvres Complètes, 1922–53 (19 vols.)
• Mirror of Art, 1955
• The Essence of Laughter, 1956
• Curiosités Esthétiques, 1962
• The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, 1964
• Baudelaire as a Literary Critic, 1964
• Arts in Paris 1845–1862, 1965
• Selected Writings on Art and Artist, 1972
• Selected Letters of Charles Baudelaire, 1986
• Twenty Prose Poems, 1988
• Critique d'art; Critique musicale, 1992

Discography[link]

• French composer Claude Debussy set five poems from Baudelaire into music in 1890: Le Balcon, Harmonie du soir, Le Jet d'eau, Recueillement and La mort des amants.
• French singer-songwriter Léo Ferré devoted himself to set Baudelaire's poetry into music in three albums: Les Fleurs du mal in 1957 (12 poems), Léo Ferré chante Baudelaire in 1967 (22 poems, of whom one comes from Le Spleen de Paris), and the posthumous Les Fleurs du mal (suite et fin) (21 poems), recorded in 1977 but released in 2008.
• French singer David TMX recorded the poem "Lesbos" from The Flowers of Evil.
• French metal/shoegaze groups Alcest and Amesoeurs used his poetry for the lyrics of the tracks "Élévation" (on Le Secret) and "Recueillement" (on Amesoeurs), respectively.
• Israeli singer Maor Cohen's 2005 album, the Hebrew name of which translates to French as "Les Fleurs Du Mal", is a compilation of songs from Baudelaire's book of the same name. The texts were translated to Hebrew by Israeli poet Dori Manor, while the music was composed by Cohen himself.
• Italian singer Franco Battiato set Invitation au voyage to music as Invito Al Viaggio on his 1999 album Fleurs (Esempi Affini Di Scritture E Simili).

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• Épater la bourgeoisie

References[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Richardson, Joanna (1994). Baudelaire. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-11476-1. OCLC 30736784. 

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Charles Baudelaire

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Charles Baudelaire

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Charles Baudelaire

• Charles Baudelaire International Association
• Works by or about Charles Baudelaire in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Nikolas Kompridis on Baudelaire's poetry, art, and the "memory of loss" (Flash/HTML5)
• baudelaireetbengale.blogspot.com—the influence of Baudelaire on Bengali poetry

Online texts[link]

• Charles Baudelaire—Largest site dedicated to Baudelaire's poems and prose, containing Fleurs du mal, Petit poemes et prose, Fanfarlo and more in French together with various English and Czech translations of his works.
• Works by or about Charles Baudelaire at the Internet Archive (scanned original editions, color illustrated)
• Works by Charles Baudelaire at Project Gutenberg (French) and (English)
• La Nouvelle Décadence—Extensive online library of Baudelaire translations and biographies
• Poems by Charles Baudelaire—Selected works at Poetry Archive
• Baudelaire's poems at Poems Found in Translation
• Baudelaire - Eighteen Poems
• "baudelaire in english", Onedit.net—Sean Bonney's experimental translations of Baudelaire (humor)
• (French) Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal and Petits Poèmes en Prose (Le Spleen de Paris), at athena.unige.ch

Single works[link]

• FleursDuMal.org—Definitive online presentation of Fleurs du mal, featuring the original French alongside multiple English translations
• An illustrated version (8 Mb) of Les Fleurs du Mal, 1861 edition (Charles Baudelaire / une édition illustrée par inkwatercolor.com)
• "The Rebel"—poem by Baudelaire
• Les Foules (The Crowds)—English translation

Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel (1955)
Background information
Birth name	Jacques Romain Georges Brel
Born	(1929-04-08)8 April 1929 Schaarbeek, Belgium
Died	9 October 1978(1978-10-09) (aged 49) Bobigny, France
Genres	Chanson
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, Actor
Years active	1953–1978
Labels	Philips Records Barclay Records Barclay/Universal
Website	www.jacquesbrel.be

Jacques Brel (French pronunciation: [ʒak bʁɛl]; 8 April 1929 – 9 October 1978) was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following in France initially, and later throughout the world. He was widely considered a master of the modern chanson.^[1] Although he recorded most of his songs in French, he became a major influence on English-speaking songwriters and performers such as David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, and Rod McKuen. English translations of his songs were recorded by many top performers in the United States, including Ray Charles, Judy Collins, John Denver, the Kingston Trio, Nina Simone, Frank Sinatra, Scott Walker, and Andy Williams.^[2] In French-speaking countries, Brel was also a successful actor, appearing in ten films. He also directed two films, one of which, Le Far West, was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973.^[3] Jacques Brel has sold over 25 million records worldwide, and is the third best-selling Belgian recording artist of all time.

Early life[link]

Jacques Romain Georges Brel was born on 8 April 1929 in Schaarbeek, Brussels, Belgium to Romain Brel and Elisabeth Lambertine Brel. Although his family spoke French, they were of Flemish descent, with some of the family originating from Zandvoorde, near Ypres. His father worked in an import-export firm, and later became co-director of a company that manufactured cardboard. Jacques and his older brother Pierre grew up in an austere environment, attending a Catholic primary school run by the Saint-Viateur Brothers. They were also members of the local Cub Scouts troop. The family lived at 138 Avenue du Diamant in Schaerbeek, one of the 19 Brussels communes. Jacques was close to his mother, fascinated by her generosity and sense of humor, which he inherited.^[4]

In 1941, his parents enrolled Jacques at the Saint-Louis College, at rue du Marais, near the Botanical Garden of Brussels. Although he did poorly in many subjects, he showed a talent for writing. He helped set up the Saint-Louis College Drama Club, and took on his first stage roles with great enthusiasm. He wrote short stories, poems, and essays.^[5] In 1944, at the age of 15, Jacques began playing the guitar.^[2] The following year, he formed his own theatre group with friends and began writing plays.^[6]

Brel was never a good student, failing many of his exams. In August 1947, at the age of 18, Jacques went to work at his father's cardboard factory. To offset the boredom of his daily office routine, he joined a local Catholic youth organization, La Franche Cordée, which was dedicated to philanthropic work. In 1948, Brel also enrolled for part-time military service. By 1949, Brel became president of La Franche Cordée, and produced a number of benefit plays for the organization, including Saint Exupéry's Le Petit Prince.^[6]

While working at La Franche Cordée, Brel met his future wife, Thérèse Michielsen, known to her friends as Miche. On 1 June 1950, Jacques and Miche were married at Laeken, a Brussels commune. On 6 December 1951, Miche gave birth to their first daughter, Chantal.^[6][4]

In 1952, Brel began writing songs and performing them at family gatherings and in Brussels' cabaret circuit. His family and friends were not supportive of Brel's stark lyrics and violent, emotional performances. That year he performed on a local radio station for the first time.^[7]

Music career[link]

1953–1959[link]

In January 1953, Brel performed at the cabaret La Rose Noire in Brussels. In February he signed a contract with Philips Records and recorded his first 78 rpm record, "La foire" (The Fair), which was released in March.^[8] The talent scout and artistic director at the record company, Jacques Canetti, invited Brel to move to Paris. Despite his family's objections and the added pressure of raising a second daughter, France, born on 12 July,^[4] Brel left Brussels for Paris in the fall of 1953.^[7]

In Paris, Brel worked hard to get his career off the ground. He stayed at the Hotel Stevens and gave guitar lessons to artist-dancer Francesco Frediani to pay his rent. He found work on the cabaret circuit at venues such as L'Ecluse, L'Echelle de Jacob, and in Jacques Canetti's cabaret Les Trois Baudets.^[7]

In 1954, Brel competed in the music contest Grand Prix de la Chanson in Knokke-le-Zoute, finishing a disappointing 27th out of 28 participants. One positive result of the experience was that the French star Juliette Gréco requested to sing one of Brel's songs, "Ça va le diable" (There goes the devil), at her upcoming concert at the prestigious Olympia music-hall.^[6] She went on to record the song that spring.^[5] In July 1954, Brel made his first appearance at the prestigious Olympia Theatre in Paris. Later that summer, Brel embarked on his first French tour, appearing on the bill with French singers Dario Moreno, Philippe Clay, and Catherine Sauvage.^[7] By the end of the year, Philips released his debut album, a nine-song, 10-inch LP called Jacques Brel et ses Chansons (Jacques Brel and his songs).^[8]