Why read this Baudelaire biography?

"Cat Slave" Baudelaire: Baudelaire studied cats especially over a long period of time. He stopped the cat in the street, entered the shop where the cat was contemplating, watched the cat crouch on the counter, then gently stroked it and attracted it with a magnetic gaze. - The Baudelaire Biography

The poet, who was considered impersonal and boring aristocratic, was in fact a gentle, kind, humane, and populist poet.

- Proust

A model for poets of all modern countries.

- Elliot

Translation is a painful chore, especially when the original is a huge production.

In the process of translating the more than 700 pages of Baudelaire's biography, something happened that still haunts me: one day, after a high-intensity continuous translation, a strong dizziness grabbed me, and I slipped from my chair and lost consciousness. It was the closest experience to death in my life...

This experience gave me a realization: literature is a kind of dedication, but also a kind of self-help.

——Dong Qiang, translator of Baudelaire's Biography, director of the French Department of Peking University, chairman of the organizing committee of the Fu Lei Translation and Publication Award

Today is the 201st anniversary of Baudelaire's birth, share this hardcover edition of "Baudelaire Biography" commemorating the 200th anniversary of Baudelaire's birth, this book is the work of French recognized Baudelaire experts Pishua and Ziegler, and you yu Professor Dong Qiang, director of the French Department of Peking University and chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Fu Lei Translation and Publication Award, translated by Professor Dong Qiang. Step into the literary world and life of this modernist master.

Baudelaire is a heavy book, because Baudelaire is a heavy name. In the French modern and contemporary poetry world, there is no name that can be compared.

If we see the various contemporary poetic currents that began to emerge in the 1970s as a watershed, the era of "modernity" or, more precisely, "modernism", pioneered by Baudelaire, lasted exactly 100 years.

During this hundred years, Baudelaire influenced successive generations of literary scholars.

It is no exaggeration to say that Baudelaire is one of the best keys to understanding the century-old course of modern literature and art in the West.

Why read this Baudelaire biography?

A good biography may be worth more than just creating an image for someone, but more for an era. Perhaps more than just a Baudelaire emerges in the piles of materials and archives— because, after all, is Baudelaire's image really brought to life with these 700+pages? Rather, it is the interest of a society, a family, a system, and even multiple systems and an era, which involves all aspects of this era.

Reading Baudelaire's biography, we see living cities: Paris, Lyon, Honfleur, Brussels, and even the island of Reunion (then known as Bourbon); vivid faces (his friends of his youth, the "Normandy", the bohemian life of literati and artists); who can be indifferent to the publication of magazines in the French imperial era and smile? Who can read about Baudelaire's impoverished life without seeing the side of France's financial circulation system at that time? It is not without reason that mainland readers once loved French literature in such a way that our thinking, institutions, and moral customs have, to many extent, in common with this period in France.

From this point of view, the greatest benefit that this Baudelaire biography brings us is the large number of Baudelaire's own letters. Baudelaire was a master writer. His letter to Wagner was hailed as one of the most beautiful correspondences in French history.

The most revealing in the book is Baudelaire's letter to his mother. Pishua's approach to biography was almost Anglo-American, insisting on seeing a person's trajectory from documents, materials, and letters. Moreover, he firmly believed that from the epistles he could see something that pure theorists could not see, and thus better interpret some poems.

But even from an independent point of view, these letters have a unique value, especially from the young Baudelaire to his parents (birth mother, stepfather) and brothers are very immature in style and content, to the adult letters to the mother full of tenderness for the mother and hatred for society, let us see Baudelaire's unique style.

The paradoxical, highly rhetorical sentences were the places where his poetic "fencing skills" were exercised. The temperament that flows from it, after the arrogant character, makes people see the poet's side as an ordinary person.

Perhaps it is these letters that give us a better understanding of Proust's assessment of Baudelaire: "This poet, who was considered impersonal and boring aristocratic, was in fact the most gentle, the most gracious, the most humane, the most common poet." ”

Literature is a kind of dedication, but also a kind of self-help

Translation is a painful chore, especially when the original is a huge production. In the process of translating the more than 700 pages of Baudelaire's biography, something happened that still haunts me: one day, after a high-intensity continuous translation, a strong dizziness grabbed me, and I slipped from my chair and lost consciousness. It was the closest experience to death in my life, and I once told friends and family:

"That kind of vertigo, it's like being swept into an unfathomable vortex." I felt as if I could see myself falling towards the core of the vortex. And once you get to that core, it's death. ”

Fortunately, before reaching the core, an unknown force pulled me in. When I woke up, I didn't even know how long it had been. Since I was alone in a parisian apartment translating, no one even witnessed the scene, let alone called for emergency treatment or took me to the hospital.

This experience gave me a realization: literature is a kind of dedication, but also a kind of self-help. In the following translation, there seems to be a strengthened sensitivity, which gives me a better understanding of Baudelaire's hardships.

In fact, the translator's efforts are still much less than the author's. A thick book that takes a year or two to translate, but what about writing it? The author Pishua did the math: more than twenty years. Yes, the translator is a fire thief, and he spends his energy stealing it because he knows that the value of the fire is far beyond the strength he himself may have put in.

The translator's most reassuring point is the expectation that perhaps some Chinese readers, when closing the book, will hear Bo's verse in "Harmony at Dusk":

Memories of you shine in my heart like a eucharistic platform!

(Excerpt from the preface to the translation of Baudelaire's Biography, author: Dong Qiang)

According to the first-hand information from Baudelaire's relatives and friends, a large number of details of the poet's life and creation are disclosed, which is a more informative and reliable Biography of Baudelaire in the Chinese-speaking world, and it is also a fine work in literary biography

The book quotes a large number of detailed first-hand information from Baudelaire's former relatives and friends, which not only shows the reader the image of a flesh-and-blood poet, but also helps us to better understand Baudelaire's works and enter the spiritual world of this modernist master.

The huge production is to create a statue for Baudelaire, but also for the era

Through more than 700 pages of huge length and detailed archival materials, this book not only takes us through Baudelaire's bumpy life, but also leads us to witness the style of his time: the social events encountered in Lyon in middle school, the beginning and end of the ban on "The Flower of Evil", the tortuous publication process and financial situation of the poet's works during his lifetime, and his interactions with famous writers and artists such as Victor Hugo, Saint-Beuve, and Delacroix...

Translations by famous artists, new revisions, hardcover collections, and free book tickets

The author of this book, Claude Pishua, is a representative of the academic school among French biographers, who cooperated with Jean Ziegler to participate in the publication of the "Seven Stars Library" series of "Baudelaire Complete Works" and "Baudelaire Correspondence Collection" of Galima Publishing House, and has a large number of first-hand Baudelaire related materials; the translator is Professor Dong Qiang, director of the French Department of Peking University and chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Fu Lei Translation and Publication Award, who has long been engaged in the study of French literary history and Modern French Language and Literature.

In order to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Baudelaire's birth in 2021, the translation of nearly 700,000 words published this time has been comprehensively revised, and baudelaire's own paintings, manuscripts and other rich illustrations have been added, using hardcover on canvas, and each copy is accompanied by a book ticket, which is not only academic value, but also has great collection value.

About the Author:

Claude Pichois was a representative of the academic school among French biographers. Before his death, he established the world's only Baudelaire Research Center at Vanderbilt University in the United States. Claude Pishua cooperated with Jean Ziegler in the publication of the "Seven Stars Library" series of books "Baudelaire" and "Baudelaire Correspondence" of the French Gallimard Publishing House, and has a large number of first-hand Baudelaire-related materials, dedicating his life to Baudelaire research.

Translator's Bio:

Dong Qiang is a Liberal Arts Distinguished Professor and Doctoral Supervisor of Peking University, and the Head of the Department of French. Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Fu Lei Translation and Publication Award. He has long been engaged in the study of French literary history and Modern French Language and Literature, and was awarded the "Knight of Education" Medal of Honor by the French government in 2009, and was selected as the "50 Years/50 People" of the establishment of diplomatic relations between France and France in 2014. In 2015, he was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre de la Lélés des Hautes des Hautes de France by the President of France, and in November 2020, he collaborated with the famous French writer and Nobel Laureate Le Clézio to publish the Road of Tang Poems in French, which had a wide impact in France.

Contents:

Swipe up to view the table of contents

directory:

A century later / Claude Pishua

Part I Family Portrait

Chapter One Father: François Baudelaire

Chapter II: Mother: Madame François Baudelaire (1793-1827)

Commander O'Pic (1789-1827)

Chapter Four: The Marriage of Commander O'Pick to Baudelaire's Widow

Part II: Charles attends junior high school in Lyon and Paris

Chapter V: Lyon (1832-1836)

Chapter VI: The Le Déâtre Louis the Great (1836-1838)

Chapter Seven: "The Story of being Expelled from the Le Déâtre Louis the Great, taking the entrance examination" (1839)

Part III: Baudelaire's Choice

Chapter VIII: The Students of the Latin Quarter (August 1839 – May 1841)

Chapter IX: Travels in the Indian Ocean (June 1841 – February 1842)

Chapter X: From Return to France to the Appointment of a Guardian (1842-1844)

Chapter XI: Entering the Literary World (1842-1844)

Part IV: From Playboy Behavior to Socialist Thought

Chapter XII: Mr. Baudelaire-Difays (1844-1846)

Chapter 13: From the Language of Flowers to the Weapons of Barricades (1847-1848)

Chapter Fourteen: "We must go and shoot General O'Pike!" (February 1848 – December 1851)

Part V: From translating Ellen Poe to publishing The Flower of Evil

Chapter XV: Literary Life and Family Relations (1852-1856)

Chapter Sixteen: Jeanne, Madame Sabatier, Marie Doblan (1852-1856)

Chapter XVII: The Publication of The Flower of Evil and the Litigation against It (1857)

Part VI The Guilty Baudelaire and the Admitted Baudelaire

Chapter Eighteen: "Resistance Like Marble" (1857-1860)

Chapter Nineteen: Honfleur and Paris (1858–1860)

Chapter 20: "This Strange Classical Writer..." (1861-1864)

Chapter XXI Three Candidate Opportunities: The Académie de France, the Theatre Oderón, the Anthology of Eugène Crépai (1861-1864)

Chapter XXII Baudelaire's Financial Situation (1844-1864)

Part VII Exile and Death

Chapter XXIII Brussels (April 1864 – March 1866)

Chapter XXIV: Sickness and Dying (Brussels, March 1866 –Paris, August 1867)

Postscript

Baudelaire Biography

[French] Claude Pishua

[f] by Jean Ziegler

Translated by Dong Qiang

Pursue the truth of the legendary life of the modernist master Baudelaire

Reproduce the century-old history of literature and art in the West