Flowers of Evil [Paperback]

Inspired, seminal translations of one of the greatest poets of all time by Edna St. Vincent Millay and George Dillon, now available in a sleek new edition.

Charles Baudelaire invented modern poetry, and Flowers of Evil has been a bible for poets from Arthur Rimbaud to T. S. Eliot to Edna St. Vincent Millay, who, with George Dillon, composed an inspired rhymed version of the book published in 1936 and reprinted here, with the French originals, for the first time in many years.

Millay and Dillon, while respectful of the spirit of the originals, lay claim to them as to a rightful inheritance, setting Baudelaire’s flowing lines to the music of English. The result is one of the most persuasive renditions of the French poet’s opulence, his tortured consciousness, and his troubling sensuality, as well as an impressive reimagining of his rhymes and rhythms on a par with Marianne Moore’s La Fontaine or Richard Wilbur’s Molière.

This bilingual edition includes the original French versions of each poem.“In [Millay and Dillon’s] Flowers of Evil a path has been opened for the blending of French and English poetry. Here are translations not smelling at all of the dictionary. ‘The Litanies of Satan’ in particular seems to come from a dim chapel draped with black banners....Let us hope that this book will stand as an English Baudelaire for some time, without the guidebook counterparts.”  —Agnes Lee Freer, Poetry

“The perfume of Baudelaire’s infernal flowers still wafts off the page, as powerful a deliriant as ever, 167 years on.” —Mark Dery, 4Columns Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) was born in Paris. His father died when he was l#G