Baudelaire Self-Portrait

Flowers of Evil

Supervert - Necrophilia Variations
Fleursdumal.org is a labor of love produced and maintained by Supervert.

Resources

Links

Search

Les Épaves / Scraps
1866

Although Baudelaire had become increasingly successful as a writer, his success brought him more notoriety than income. In 1864 he moved from Paris to Brussels, largely to evade creditors. Earlier his friend and publisher Auguste Poulet-Malassis had also moved to Brussels to escape legal trouble, so together the two decided to put out another book of Baudelaire's verse.

This new work was not intended to be a comprehensive collection. It was, instead, a collection of incidental and recent verse — hence the title "épaves" or scraps. It also included the six poems censored from the first edition of Les Fleurs du mal. Published in February 1866 in an edition of only two hundred and sixty copies (plus ten hors commerce), Les Épaves contained twenty-three poems, an introduction by Poulet-Malassis, and a frontispiece of the author by Félicien Rops.

It was the last book overseen by Baudelaire himself, who suffered a debilitating stroke in March, 1866, and died the following year back in Paris.

Table of Contents
The Sunset of Romanticism
Pièces condamnées / Condemned Poems
Lesbos
Women Doomed (In the pale glimmer...)
Lethe
To She Who Is Too Gay
The Jewels
The Vampire's Metamorphoses
Galanteries / Gallantries
The Fountain
Berthe's Eyes
Hymn
The Promises of a Face
The Monster
In Praise of My Frances
Épigraphes / Epigraphs
Verses for the Portrait of Honoré Daumier
Lola de Valence
On Eugene Delacroix's Tasso in Prison
Pièces diverses / Miscellaneous Poems
The Voice
The Unforeseen
The Ransom
To a Lady of Malabar
Bouffonneries / Buffooneries
On the Debut of Amina Boschetti
To M. Eugène Fromentin
A Jolly Cabaret