December 14th: Aaron Poochigian in Conversation with Saul Anton
Presented by 192 Books and Paula Cooper Gallery, Aaron Poochigian will discuss his new translation of Charles Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal) with Saul Anton.
The live event will stream directly on this page on Tuesday, December 14th at 6pm EST. There is no login or rsvp required. A recording will be archived and posted shortly afterwards. During the broadcast, please email your questions to Evan@192Books.com.
Charles Baudelaire—The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal), translated by Aaron Poochigian, with an introduction by Dana Gioia and an afterword by Daniel Handler (Liveright Publishing, 2021)
First published in 1857, the book that collected these poems together, Les Fleurs du mal, was an instant sensation—earning Charles Baudelaire plaudits and, simultaneously, disrepute. Only a year after Gustave Flaubert had endured his own public trial for published indecency (for Madame Bovary), a French court declared Les Fleurs du mal an offense against public morals and six poems within it were immediately suppressed (a ruling that would not be reversed until 1949, nearly a century after Baudelaire’s untimely death). Subsequent editions expanded on the original, including new poems that have since been recognized as Baudelaire’s masterpieces, producing a body of work that stands as the most consequential, controversial, and influential book of poetry from the nineteenth century.
Acclaimed translator and poet Aaron Poochigian tackles this revolutionary text with an ear attuned to Baudelaire’s lyrical innovations—rendering them in “an assertive blend of full and slant rhymes and fluent iambs” (A. E. Stallings)—and an intuitive feel for the work’s dark and brooding mood. Poochigian’s version captures the incantatory, almost magical, effect of the original—reanimating for today’s reader Baudelaire’s “unfailing vision” that “trumpeted the space and light of the future” (Patti Smith).
An introduction by Dana Gioia offers a probing reassessment of the supreme artistry of Baudelaire’s masterpiece, and an afterword by Daniel Handler explores its continued relevance and appeal. Featuring the poems in English and French, this deluxe dual-language edition allows readers to commune both with the original poems and with these electric, revelatory translations.
Aaron Poochigian has published four books of poetry, including American Divine, which won the 2020 Richard Wilbur Poetry Award, and several translations. He lives in New York.
Saul Anton is the author of Lee Friedlander: The Little Screens (2015), and the experimental critical fiction Warhol's Dream (2007). He is the translator of Jean-Luc Nancy's Discourse of the Syncope: Logodaedalus (Stanford UP, 2008) and has also published scholarly articles about Diderot, Kant, Winckelmann, Baudelaire, and others. His articles and essays about contemporary art and culture have appeared in Artforum, frieze, Bookforum, Afterall, Bomb, and many other publications. He currently teaches in the Department of Humanities and Media Studies at the Pratt Institute.