"Paris Melancholy" Author: [France] Baudelaire Publisher: Jiangxi People's Publishing House Translator: Hu Xiaoyue

【Content Introduction】

Paris Melancholy (Translated by Hu Xiaoyue, winner of the French Ministry of Culture's "Chevalier des Arts et Literaires" medal; about Paris, the streets, lust, dissatisfaction, and destruction. "It is small and lonely, just like my hopeless life." Rimbaud, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Dazai Osamu, and Eliot all praised it.)

"Paris Melancholy" includes five prose poems by Baudelaire, including 50 pieces of "Paris Melancholy", 25 pieces of "Miscellaneous Poems", 70 pieces of "Naked Heart", 33 pieces of "Poor Belgium", and 22 pieces of "Belgian Satire Collection". It was translated and introduced by Hu Xiaoyue, winner of the "Chevalier des Arts" medal of the French Ministry of Culture. About Paris, streets, lust, dissatisfaction, destruction... The tone of melancholy and cynical pessimism envelope the whole book, "It is small and lonely, just like my hopeless life."

In Europe and America, Baudelaire is regarded as the most important poet in the history of French literature. Especially since the 20th century, Baudelaire has been increasingly valued by the literary and academic circles of various countries. TS Eliot said that Baudelaire is "a model for poets in all modern countries". As a pioneer of French symbolist poetry and the founder of modernist literature, Baudelaire's style of writing has deeply influenced Rimbaud, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Dazai Osamu and others. Rimbaud said that "Baudelaire is a true God", Akutagawa wrote the famous sentence "Life is not as good as a line of Baudelaire", and Dazai Osamu's sentence "I'm sorry to be born as a human being" is a true legacy of Baudelaire.

Baudelaire strolled on the streets of Paris, recording what he saw, heard, thought and fantasized about: he saw a lonely old woman trying to be intimate with a baby, but the baby was frightened and cried loudly; two poor children fought to the death for a piece of bread; Baudelaire saw a Paris where joy and pain were in opposition, so he used the story of the donkey and the man to satirize the servile national character; he was out of tune with this city and felt lonely everywhere in this city, "I have no father, no mother, no sisters, and no brothers." He was like a statue in the park, "without love or friendship", lonely and sad. He wanted to leave this city, "to that quiet, dreamy and beautiful ideal paradise", to the port "full of sad songs, crowded with strong men of all nationalities... many ships moored", to "a rich, beautiful, hopeful land", "anywhere, as long as it is outside this world"...

Baudelaire discovered the unique sense of alienation of modern urbanites. Paris in the 19th century was already a developed capitalist metropolis, where "people met so many people every day, only saw each other but did not talk to each other, did not understand each other, yet had to live together in peace." Baudelaire, who came from a privileged family, fought against the depravity of the group with cold eyes and bohemianism, and found a subtle sense of closeness among urban prostitutes, vagrants, and garbage collectors.

【Editor's recommendation】

"Being a useful person, I always think this is abominable."

—Baudelaire

Baudelaire was a man of wide range of interests, including oil painting, drawing, and sculpture, and his artistic attainments were quite high, which made him describe the streets of Paris with incisiveness and passion. He rejected hypocrisy, so he often felt lonely and melancholy, which was more obvious in the crowd. That fleeting, lonely and somewhat anxious mood surprisingly fits with us, a century apart, and we can always find deep resonance between the lines:

About "Life":

A tiny sailboat is trembling in the sky. It is small and lonely, just like my hopeless life.

Life is a hospital, and every patient wants to change his bed. One would rather suffer facing the stove, while another feels that he can only recover by being near a window.

What is eternal punishment to one who becomes extremely happy in an instant!

About “Alienation”

Not everyone can be sociable, and enjoying being sociable is an art;

Crowd, solitude: these are two equal and interchangeable words for this active and prolific poet.

Those who do not know how to share their loneliness with others will not know how to maintain their loneliness among a busy crowd.

About Loneliness

Loneliness may be dangerous only to idle and bohemian people, because these people fill their loneliness with passion and fantasy.

All our misfortunes are caused by not being able to stay in our own rooms.

There is always an inevitable desire for devotion in people's hearts, from which comes the fear of loneliness.

To lose oneself in the body of another is what men elegantly call "the need for love."

About "Love"

Love wants to escape from itself and merge with its victim, just as the victor does with the vanquished, but it wants to retain the privileges of the victor.

Some women make you want to defeat them and enjoy them, but this woman makes you want to die slowly under her gaze.

The only and noblest joy of love is the conviction that one is doing evil. —Men and women are born knowing that evil is present in all pleasure.

About "Human Nature"

Don't underestimate anyone's feeling. A person's feeling is his talent.

I understand that people discard one reason to see how they feel using another.

It might be pleasant to alternate between being the victim and the executioner.

This book was translated by Hu Xiaoyue, a translator awarded the French "Knight of Arts and Letters" medal, based on Le spleen de Paris (Flammarion 1980 edition) and Fusées, Mon coeur mis à nu, La Belgique déshabillée, Amoenitates Belgicae (Gallimard Collection Folio, numéro 1727, 1986 edition).

【Celebrity Recommendation】

"Baudelaire is the first man of vision, the king of poets, a true God."

——Rimbaud (France)

“Life is not worth a line of Baudelaire.”

——(Japanese) Akutagawa Ryunosuke

"Baudelaire is the model for all modern poets."

——TS Eliot

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