. Paris Spleen.

I am halfway through Baudelaire's Paris Spleen. I do want to read the original French, but I thought, I should give a quick reading of the English translation before beginning to labor with the original. Yes, it's gorgeous. I am trying to put my finger on why I like it so much, but there is something in those paragraphs that resists explanation. But still, if I have to enunciate what it is about these poems that are drawing me so much to them, it is the sense of despair. The sense of despair that invades a mind which can see more than others. The sense of despair which follows the realization that individual human beings are capable of immense fuck-up and immense greatness--sometimes within seconds.The same human being who has fucked something up gloriously, can also do something which will blow away your mind. Personally, I like those poems best, where he moves beyond his own sense of despair, where he takes a character and tries to see what lies beyond what immediately meets the eye. On the other hand, when I read his self-despairing rants, I have to keep reminding myself, this is one of the original alienationists. The ones I have grown-up reading, are more like derivates, fakes. Now, keeping that in mind, it also seems that the alienationists haven't really updated themselves much after Baudelaire! Now, this is the glitch:

Paris Spleen is so beautiful that sometimes I have to pinch myself to the reminder that Baudelaire was a jackass. A fucking egotistical jackass!