Charles Baudelaire (Part 2): The Poetics of Evil

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  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
  • In this video, Dana Gioia examines Baudelaire’s revolutionary theory that the doomed, the ugly, and the evil posses a kind of beauty.
    This video is part two in Dana Gioia's series on the poet Charles Baudelaire. For the full Charles Baudelaire video series, check out this playlist: • Charles Baudelaire - H...
    My website: danagioia.com
    My Twitter: / danagioiapoet

ความคิดเห็น • 29

  • @niccoloflorence
    @niccoloflorence ปีที่แล้ว +12

    Loved your poem Homage to Soren Kierkegaard, sir. Your voice has a unique depth and calm which make these beautiful lines come to life. Eagerly awaiting your next video!

    • @DanaGioiaPoet
      @DanaGioiaPoet  10 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      I just co-edited a new anthology of poems in response to Soren Kierkegaard with Wiseblood Books. Lots of writers are fascinated by his complex but compelling work.

  • @johnmartin2813
    @johnmartin2813 ปีที่แล้ว +23

    So in actual fact Baudelaire was intensely concerned with morality, and with the nature of good and evil. What he so successfully avoided was preachiness. In other words he used skillful means to actually get to the heart of the matter. And so involve the reader more intensely in the actual drama.

  • @darylcumming7119
    @darylcumming7119 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    ❤ thank you.

  • @peterchaloner2877
    @peterchaloner2877 9 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

    Baudelaire would have enjoyed MDMA as a means to mysterious grace.

  • @alankovacik1928
    @alankovacik1928 11 หลายเดือนก่อน

    use caution ⚠ ⚠ ⚠

  • @gratiamephpheta
    @gratiamephpheta ปีที่แล้ว +5

    Excellent.

  • @forerealz
    @forerealz ปีที่แล้ว +6

    This is captivating and amazing.. did you write this and read it to us? Or are you reading someone elses writings?

    • @DanaGioiaPoet
      @DanaGioiaPoet  10 หลายเดือนก่อน +13

      I wrote this script. It is adapted from a long introduction I wrote for a new English translation of Baudelaire by Aaron Poochigian.

  • @Borequee
    @Borequee ปีที่แล้ว +6

    Fantastic. Well researched. I think this is a good example of popularisation that does not come at the cost of content.

  • @Des393
    @Des393 5 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    Yes, 'One should remain drunk at all times, preferably on Virtue.
    I believe Baudelaire realized the masculine and feminine depths of the universes, the flowers of evil, a degeneration of cosmic love into a sensual whore.

  • @brannonmcclure6970
    @brannonmcclure6970 9 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    I keep coming to listen; I borrowed my copy of Evil Flowers from our public library. Sioux City!🧑‍🎨

  • @NTNG13
    @NTNG13 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    Chills at the last line. Such an adventurous spirit!

  • @solusr8655
    @solusr8655 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    It is no wonder that Baudelaire appreciated Wagner's music as much as Proust later did.

  • @stefanquist5091
    @stefanquist5091 10 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

    Bob Dylan couldn't agree more...

    • @DanaGioiaPoet
      @DanaGioiaPoet  10 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      You are so right. Part of Dylan's genius has been the ability and willingness to express dark emotions and cruel opinions in his work.

  • @Dave183
    @Dave183 10 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    Hearing the voice of women, is the new aesthetic these days. The modern cave man can only sit and wait- for the opportoonity to syncopate.

    • @billyfudd818
      @billyfudd818 9 หลายเดือนก่อน

      dude! thanks for your comment. it resonates

  • @brian_nirvana
    @brian_nirvana ปีที่แล้ว +1

    ty🌤

  • @guitarsz
    @guitarsz 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    just because you gaze at the repugnant does not mean it is beautiful or you can transform something evil into beauty. You can embrace, accept, or gaze upon something with no power to transform them into something different. It is in the eye of the beholder so perhaps if you are evil you may see evil as beautiful.
    He obviously was depressed as well. Drugs will do that to you.

  • @macleadg
    @macleadg 9 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

    I can only wonder how the victims of the Rwandan genocide would react to the notion of finding beauty in evil. What an ivory-tower, pedantic concept, taken seriously only by the privileged.

    • @blainestevens6701
      @blainestevens6701 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +2

      Did you not listen to what were Baudelaire’s words and concerns? Poetry should concern itself with itself. It needs to tap dance between reality and the imagination and create new symbols of rhyme and connection between both states of being. If every artist concerned themselves with every atrocity and political upheaval that is ongoing and will continue ad infinitum, than they would have little to differentiate themselves from most modern news casts; and the world, and most people within it, would cease, by and large, to have any sense of beauty or mystery to them. Creating art IS a privilege. Let artists have what privileges left to them. 🤣 Go throw rocks through some politician’s window if you’re so concerned, rather than dig up a dead poet’s corpse and beat em over the head with your morality. 🤣 It is ill placed.

    • @macleadg
      @macleadg 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@blainestevens6701You attack me rather than my ideas. This is what people do when they have no substantial argument. I did listen to this and I think it’s nonsense.

    • @blainestevens6701
      @blainestevens6701 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +1

      @@macleadg I have nothing substantial to argue against. 🤣 Nor do I really wish to argue at all. I just found your comment a little weird and pointless. You should direct your efforts to creating or achieving something more congruent to your own values.

    • @macleadg
      @macleadg 2 หลายเดือนก่อน

      @@blainestevens6701 You realize it’s no one’s prerogative to dictate to others what to say or how to spend their time, right? No? Ok, I’ll play by your rules. You should stop ad hominem attacks. You should stop assuming you know what someone’s value system is based on a couple of comments on social media. You should stop thinking you are entitled to tell others what to think, say, or do. Above all, you should check with me first before posting anything again. You should also realize that if you find a comment insubstantial, but take time to comment on it, you are contradicting yourself.

    • @blainestevens6701
      @blainestevens6701 2 หลายเดือนก่อน +3

      @@macleadg I have just a right to post what I feel as you do. I’ll take your suggestions to heart, and offer my sincere apologies if I fail to take them up when next you comment something as mean spirited as above.
      Baudelaire published the Flowers of Evil in 1857. To attack your ideas, rather than yourself, as you inferred, one could argue that publishing that book once again cemented an aesthetic that could draw from subject matter that most would overlook or deem vulgar; and furthermore, keep artists away from the shackles of government censorship, which was a fear in Baudelaire’s time. Whether Baudelaire intended the book to be ‘Art for Art’s sake’ is irrelevant. As the very act of publishing the Flowers was in itself a political statement.
      Hell, Charles Baudelaire is not necessarily a weird poet, per say, but he did help inspire the works of Clark Ashton Smith and others, so that, outside of any political sphere, is something I’m personally grateful for. He also helped cement Poe’s legacy abroad, another boon. Surely that is something substantial to our literary culture and the politics surrounding art.