Saturday, November 10, 2018

波特萊爾Baudelaire《惡之華》; EROTIC ILLUSTRATIONS FOR BAUDELAIRE’S ‘LES FLEURS DU MAL’








2016年12月27日 星期二


波特萊爾(Baudelaire, 1821-1867)

法.波特萊爾. 翻譯:莫渝. 書名:《惡之華》、《惡之花》. 出版社:志文出版社,新潮世界名著. 出版年:1985年九月初版. 






這首值得一讀:【惡之華】被禁詩篇【吸血鬼的化身】,杜國清臺大版頁300-01。

圖像裡可能有文字
Everyman's Library
"The Vampire's Metamorphoses" by Charles Baudelaire
The woman meanwhile, twisting like a snake
On hot coals and kneading her breasts against the steel
Of her corset, from her mouth red as strawberries
Let flow these words impregnated with musk:
— "I, I have moist lips, and I know the art
Of losing old Conscience in the depths of a bed.
I dry all tears on my triumphant breasts
And make old men laugh with the laughter of children.
I replace, for him who sees me nude, without veils,
The moon, the sun, the stars and the heavens!
I am, my dear scholar, so learned in pleasure
That when I smother a man in my fearful arms,
Or when, timid and licentious, frail and robust,
I yield my bosom to biting kisses
On those two soft cushions which swoon with emotion,
The powerless angels would damn themselves for me!"
When she had sucked out all the marrow from my bones
And I languidly turned toward her
To give back an amorous kiss, I saw no more
Than a wine-skin with gluey sides, all full of pus!
Frozen with terror, I closed both my eyes,
And when I opened them to the bright light,
At my side, instead of the robust manikin
Who seemed to have laid in a store of blood,
There quivered confusedly a heap of old bones,
Which of themselves gave forth the cry of a weather-cock
Or of a sign on the end of an iron rod
That the wind swings to and fro on a winter night.
*
This selection of poems from across the ages brings to life a staggering array of zombies, ghosts, vampires, and devils. Our culture's current obsession with zombies and vampires is only the latest form of a fascination with crossing the boundary between the living and the dead that has haunted humans since we first began writing. The poetic evidence gathered here ranges from ancient Egyptian inscriptions and the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh to the Greek bard Homer, and from Shakespeare and Milton and Keats to Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe. Here too are terrifying apparitions from a host of more recent poets, from T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath to Rita Dove and Billy Collins, from Allen Ginsberg and H. P. Lovecraft to Mick Jagger and Shel Silverstein. The result is a delightfully entertaining volume of spine-tingling poems for fans of horror and poetry both. READ an excerpt here: http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/240438/poems-dead-and-undead/

Erotic illustrations for Baudelaire’s ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ (NSFW)
From the DM archives.
EROTIC ILLUSTRATIONS FOR BAUDELAIRE’S ‘LES FLEURS DU MAL’

An illustration from 1935 by Italian-born artist Carlo Farneti for a posthumous edition of Charles Baudelaire’s book of poetry ‘Les Fleurs du Mal.’ 
“That heart which flutters like a fledgling bird,
I shall tear, bleeding, from his breast, to pitch
It blandly in the dust without a word
To slake the hunger of my favorite bitch.”
—a passage from Charles Baudelaire’s poetry book, Les Fleurs du Mal.
When French poet Charles Baudelaire first published his poetry book Les Fleurs du Mal(The Flowers of Evil) in 1857 it caused quite the scandal. Baudelaire, his publisher Poulet Malassis and the book’s printer were all prosecuted for creating “an insult to public decency.” Baudelaire would eventually be convicted on two charges—obscenity and blasphemy. He was also forced to remove several poems from the book when it was republished in 1861. Below is a portion from Les Fleurs du Mal “Une Charogne” (“A Carcass”) in which Baudelaire beautifully romanticizes a decomposing corpse:
“The blow-flies were buzzing round that putrid belly,
From which came forth black battalions
Of maggots, which oozed out like a heavy liquid
All along those living tatters.
Then tell the vermin as it takes its pleasance
And feasts with kisses on that face of yours,
I’ve kept intact in form and godlike essence
Our decomposed amours!”

The controversy over Les Fleurs du Mal would eventually lead to the demise of Baudelaire’s career as a poet. Heartbreakingly, Baudelaire would pass away in 1867—ten years after the publication of Les Fleurs du Mal, addicted to opium, penniless and in a state of perpetual paralysis. Les Fleurs de Mal was published yet again in 1868 to include previously unpublished poems written by the poet. This publication would reignite interest in his work which would continue to grow in the years following his death. In 1935 Italian artist Carlo Farneti created a series of evocative illustrations for Les Fleurs du Mal for Parisian bookstore Gibert Jeune. Farneti had relocated to France in 1926 and quickly became a sought-after artist creating illustrations for books by renowned French novelist Émile Zola and Edgar Allen Poe (who Baudelaire referred toas his “twin soul.”) Twelve of Farneti’s exquisite illustrations for Les Fleurs du Mal follow—some are gorgeously NSFW.























HT: 50 Watts

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