Roberto Calasso is one of the most original and acclaimed of
writers on literature, art, culture and mythology. In Baudelaire's
Folly, Calasso turns his attention to the poets and writers of
Paris in the nineteenth century who created what was later called
'the Modern.' His protagonist is Charles Baudelaire: poet of
nerves, art lover, pioneering critic, man about Paris, whose
groundbreaking works on modern culture described the ephemeral,
fleeting nature of life in the metropolis - and the artist's role
in capturing this - as no other writer had done. With Baudelaire's
critical intelligence as his inspiration, Calasso ranges through
his life and work, focusing on two painters - Ingres and Delacroix
- about whom Baudelaire wrote acutely, and then turns to Degas and
Manet, who followed in the tracks Baudelaire laid down in his great
essay The Painter of Modern Life. In a mosaic of stories, insights,
dreams, close readings of poems and commentaries on paintings,
Paris in Baudelaire's years comes to life. In the eighteenth
century, a 'folie' was a garden pavilion set aside for people of
leisure, a place of delight and fantasy. Here Calasso has created a
brilliant and dramatic 'Folie Baudelaire': a place where the reader
can encounter Baudelaire, his peers, his city, his extraordinary
likes and dislikes, and his world, finally discovering that it is
nothing less than the land of 'absolute literature'. Born in
Florence, Roberto Calasso lives in Milan, where he is publisher of
Adelphi. He is the author of Tiepolo Pink, The Ruin of Kasch, The
Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, winner of the Prix Veillon and the
Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, Literature and the Gods, Ka and K.
General
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