Experience Histoires Extraordinaires Par Edgar Poe Traduction De Charles Baudelaire. [best Value] [C3diWuLw]

The first two collections of Baudelaire’s famous translations of the works of Edgar Allan Poe into French, “so distinguished and so well known” that Rémy de Gourmont “believed they alone would have assured Baudelaire a place in the history of French literature” (Hyslop, Baudelaire on Poe).

Baudelaire was deeply influenced by both Poe’s writings as well as the tragic difficulties of Poe’s life, which Baudelaire associated with his own struggles. On Poe’s influence, Baudelaire would reflect in a letter to the literary critic Armand Fraisse:

“… In 1846 or 1847 I happened to see some stories by Edgar Poe. I experienced a peculiar emotion. … And then, believe me if you will, I found poems and short stories which I had conceived, but vaguely and in a confused and disorderly way, and which Poe had been able to organise and finish perfectly. Such was the origin of my enthusiasm and of my perseverance” (quoted in Hyslop).

The first two volumes of Baudelaire’s translations presented here, Histoires Extraordinaires (1856) and Nouvelles Histoires Extraordinaires (1857), appeared before the publication of his great masterpiece Les Fleurs du mal and served to establish Baudelaire’s reputation in the French literary world.

Baudelaire would go on to publish a translation of Poe’s only novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym in 1858, followed by Poe’s lengthy theoretical work Eureka in 1863 and a final volume of Poe’s stories published under the title Histoires grotesques et sérieuses in 1865. By the end of Baudelaire’s life, he had accomplished one of his main aspirations – to make Poe “a great man in France,” perhaps even greater than he was in America (quoted in Hyslop).

Very good copies, with some rubbing to extremities and the corners, Vol. 1 with faint damp staining to the lower corners of terminal leaves, not effecting text, some occasional light spotting to both volumes.

Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire: his life.