La Folie Baudelaire

In this lavishly illustrated book, 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. With Baudelaire's critical intelligence as his inspiration, Calasso ranges through Baudelaire's 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, 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. Following Baudelaire, Calasso has created a brilliant and dramatic " Folie Baudelaire"- a place where the reader can encounter Baudelaire, his peers, his city, and his extraordinary likes and dislikes, finally discovering that it is nothing less than the land of " absolute literature.