I was thirteen years old and we had moved, again. I hated it but back in the mid 20th Century that’s what ministers did. A lot. And my Dad was a minister. The problem wasn’t the bother of moving, it was that as a boy who stuttered, I had to face a whole new set of classmates, some of whom would certainly make my life very difficult. Up until that time in my life, I had always been called Richard. …
Tag: English
The Flask/Le Flacon: A Poem by Charles Baudelaire, Disreputable Man of Genius
In his 1919 introduction to The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire, which includes “The Flask,” James Huneker laments how in our modern era we attempt to rationalize the behavior of our dissolute favorites. Disheartened, he cries, “Spare us our dear, old-fashioned, disreputable men of genius!” But as he goes on to tell us, Charles Baudelaire has not been subjected to such unseemly resurrections. We have received intact the legend of Baudelaire: “the atrabilious, irritable poet, dandy, maniac, his …
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