Baudelaire è vivo: I fiori del male tradotti e raccontati

For the first time, the translation in Italian of the complete edtion of I fiori del male (Les fleurs du mal) by Charles Baudelaire is available with a precise story-commentary, poem by poem, of the full text. Giuseppe Montesano, one of the greatest Italian writer-essayists of this century has undertaken this work at 200 years after the poet’s birth, accompanying the reader into the world of an important text, a place in which the fury of writing, of poetry and of prose is constantly intertwined with the desire to live, precisely underlining our desire as humans to exist within the mysterious correspondence between art and life. Baudelaire’s “forest” is that of the dream into which each of us must be able to immerse ourselves with the certainty that “order and beauty, luxury, calm and voluptuousness” are for everyone: it is an invitation not to give up on becoming what each of us are bound to become, our true selves, and a rejection of the rampant “empire of darkness” that attempts to demean us, and an antidote to the definitive loss of memory. Giuseppe Montesano weaves the thread of this discourse, after Walter Benjamin, about a critical novel in which what matters is to delve into Baudelaire’s work as if there was a more intense life to bring to light, moving with us towards that amazing first time of discovery – when everything sounds new, exciting, and true to our hearts.