A Summer with Baudelaire

3 hrs. 22 min.

Miscellaneous

Language Russian

Author Antoine Compagnon

Narrator Grigory Perel

Description

Charles Baudelaire’s poems (1821–1867), brought together in the collection Flowers of Evil, challenged the literature and readership of his time with uncompromising individualism, sharp attention to the “trash” of everyday city life, and the chaos of mental impulses that trample every norm. The poet, who sought official recognition in every way and absolutely didn’t want to be known as a revolutionary, by the will of history became an inventor of modernism, the author of the very concept of modernity that formed the basis of the worldview and culture of the 20th century. Literary historian Antoine Compagnon (born 1950) tried to capture the kaleidoscopic universe of Baudelaire’s personality and poetic imagination in a series of “snapshots” from different angles. The chapters of this book, originally presented as short talks on the radio France Inter, portray the “poet of modern life” as a dandy, a socialist, a Catholic, a connoisseur of painting and photography—catching him in the company of friends, enemies, outstanding contemporaries, and mistresses, and, of course, before a mirror and a sheet of paper.