Les Épaves
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Les Épaves (Translated as Scraps, or Flotsam) is the title of a collection of twenty-three poems by Charles Baudelaire, six of which were the suppressed poems from the publication of The Flowers of Evil, considered an outrage aux bonnes mœurs (Eng: "an insult to public decency"). Les Épaves were published in February 1866 in Brussels by Poulet-Malassis, with an introduction by Poulet-Malassis, and a frontispiece by the Belgian illustrator Félicien Rops.
The six suppressed poems (known as the Pièces condamnées or Condemned Poems) were numbers 20, 30, 39, 80, 81 et 87, namely "Lesbos", "Femmes damnées (À la pâle clarté)" ("Women Doomed (In the pale glimmer...)"), "Le Léthé" ("Lethe"), "À celle qui est trop gaie" ("To She Who Is Too Gay"), "Les Bijoux" ("The Jewels"), and " Les Métamorphoses du Vampire" ("The Vampire's Metamorphoses").
It was the last book overseen by Baudelaire himself, who suffered a stroke in March, 1866, and died the following year in Paris.
The ban on their publication was not lifted in France until 1949.
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Background
“Nouvelles Fleurs du mal” was the title given to sixteen poems published in the anthology Le Parnasse contemporain in 1866. The title is more a matter of marketing than an indication of real continuity between these poems and the previous notorious collection; indeed, many of these pieces are earlier works that Baudelaire had decided not to include in Les Fleurs. "To a Lady of Malabar" is one of his earliest poems, originally composed in 1840 at the age of 19. Flotsam (Les Épaves) was a collection (published in Belgium to get around censorship) that included the poems that had been excluded from the 1861 edition of the Fleurs, some of the Nouvelles Fleurs, and ten further pieces which Baudelaire judged unsuited for his other collections.
Les Épaves / Flotsam[1]
- Le Coucher du soleil romantique / Romantic Sunset
- Galanteries / Gallantries
- Le Jet d’eau / The Fountain
- Les Yeux de Berthe / Berthe's Eyes
- Hymne / Hymn
- Les Promesses d’un visage / The Promises of a Face
- Le Monstre / The Monster
- Franciscae meae laudes / In Praise of My Frances
- Épigraphes / Epigraphs
- Vers pour le portrait d’Honoré Daumier / Verses for the Portrait of Honoré Daumier
- Lola de Valence / Lola de Valence
- Sur le Tasse en prison d’Eugène Delacroix / On Eugene Delacroix’s Tasso in Prison
- Pièces diverses / Miscellaneous Poems
- La Voix / The Voice
- L’Imprévu / The Unforeseen
- La Rançon / The Ransom
- À une Malabaraise / To a Lady of Malabar
- Bouffonneries / Buffooneries
- Sur les Débuts d’Amina Boschetti / On the Debut of Amina Boschetti
- À M. Eugène Fromentin / To M. Eugène Fromentin
- Un Cabaret folâtre / A Jolly Tavern
Nouvelles Fleurs du mal / The New Flowers of Evil
- Épigraphe pour un livre condamné / Epigraph for a Condemned Book
- L’Examen de minuit / Midnight Examination of Conscience
- Madrigal triste / A Madrigal of Sorrow
- À une Malabaraise / To a Lady of Malabar (see above)
- L’Avertisseur / The Fang
- Hymne / Hymn (see above)
- La Voix / The Voice (see above)
- Le Rebelle / The Rebel
- Le Jet d’eau / The Fountain (see above)
- Les Yeux de Berthe / Berthe’s Eyes (see above)
- La Rançon / The Ransom (see above)
- Bien loin d’ici / Quite Far from Here
- Recueillement / Meditation
- Le Gouffre / The Abyss
- Les Plaintes d'un Icare / The Laments of an Icarus
- Le Couvercle / The Lid
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