Intimate Journals

Living from 1821 to 1867, primarily in Paris. Charles Baudelaire was his centuries poet of discontent. Religious, blasphemous, elitist and anti-snob, all at once, he seemed from the start to be a life driven to self-destruction. Absinthe, opium, and a mistress were his only relief. And in the end, the were what killed him. The epitome of the tortured soul.Most of us know of him now only by reputation, or from exposure to Fleurs du Mal. That thin volume of poetry has had an influence far beyond it's size. In many ways, Baudelaire was one of the beat generation's greatest precursors. The Intimate Journals is actually a collection of three sets of papers that frame the final years of Baudelaire's excruciating journey. They are the notes of a man who faced financial and physical ruin and yet still kept up his piercing intellect. In it you will find short notes essays about his world, society, and philosophy. This isn't poetry, but a direct look into the inner thinking of a poet who is often written off as the perfect degenerate. Intimate Journals offers an opportunity to re-evaluate Baudelaire as both a man and a writer, whose thinking is equally compelling a century and a half later. The preface written by translator Christopher Isherwood, and W. H. Auden's introduction are brilliant on their own as well (T. S. Eliot wrote the original introduction for the first edition).

This is the document of a poet consecrating himself to memory. His attempt to maintain perspective; his aesthetic self objectification that is repeatedly shattered when he looks into society; his Catholocism, his ennui, his mistress, his mother...all these cast a definitely "intimate" hue to the pages that are essential for any reader wishing to come to terms with Baudelaire's psyche: to see why his self-destruction was inseparable from his creations. For they were both necessary symptoms of his sensibility - an immaculately modern sensibility. The fragmented nature of the writings prevents the work from actually being a "work" - it is more like an authentic gesture, an unpremeditated act of self revelation. A fascinating and ultimately harrowing document from a poet - nothing more.