Little Poems in Prose

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE No bolder task can possibly be undertaken than the translation of prose so musical, so subtle, so profound as that of Charles Baude- laire. For this task I have but the one qualifica- tion of a love so overmastering, so absorbing, that in spite of myself it claims for me a broth- erhood with him. Charles Baudelaire is incomparably the most divine, the most spiritually-minded, of all French thinkers. His hunger for the Infinite was so acute and so persistent that nothing earthly could content him even for a moment. He even made the mistake—if it be, after all, a mis- take!—of feeding on poison because he recog- nized the banality of food; of experimenting with death because he had tried life, and found it fail him. The thought of Baudelaire has thus been universally recognized as highly unsuitable for the suburbs, as incompatible with any view of life which advocates spiritual complacency, mental and physical contentment. His writings are indeed the deadliest poison for the idle, the optimistic, the overfed: they must fill every really human spirit with that intense and insuf- ferable yearning which drives it forth into the