le-plus-beau-des-mensonges:Épigraphe pour un livre condamné Lecteur paisible et buco
le-plus-beau-des-mensonges: Épigraphe pour un livre condamné Lecteur paisible et bucolique, Sobre et naïf homme de bien, Jette ce livre saturnien, Orgiaque et mélancolique.Si tu n’as fait ta rhétorique Chez Satan, le rusé doyen, Jette! tu n’y comprendrais rien, Ou tu me croirais hystérique.Mais si, sans se laisser charmer, Ton oeil sait plonger dans les gouffres, Lis-moi, pour apprendre à m’aimer;Ame curieuse qui souffres Et vas cherchant ton paradis, Plains-moi!… sinon, je te maudis! — Charles Baudelaire · “Nouvelles fleurs du mal” (1861) * * * Epigraph for a Condemned Book Quiet and bucolic reader, Upright man, sober and naive, Throw away this book, saturnine, Orgiac and melancholy. If you did not do your rhetoric With Satan, that artful dean, Throw it away, you’d grasp nothing, Or else think me hysterical. But if, without being entranced, Your eye can plunge in the abyss, Read me, to learn to love me; Inquisitive soul that suffers And keeps on seeking paradise, Pity me!… or else, I curse you! — Translation by William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil * * * “Extraordinary copy of the first edition Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (estimate: $80,000-120,000), printed in Paris in 1857. In addition to being a scarce first issue, containing seven poems that were later suppressed, this copy has been extra-illustrated with drawings, prints and, most importantly, two letters by Baudelaire himself to the publisher of the book. Each of the included letters mentions Edgar Allan Poe, the author Baudelaire translated and championed in France. The book is in a very fine fin-de-siecle mosaic binding by Charles Meunier.”(source: 1 - 2) -- source link