It’s hard to like Baudelaire

Abstract

‘It’s hard to like Baudelaire.’ We were looking at an exhibition. In glass cases, there were copies of Les Fleurs du mal in all the languages the curator – no doubt pressed for time – had been able to track down. The books were pinned at an angle, like butterflies, but in no obvious order, slumbering in the heat of an Athens afternoon… the titles: some you could easily recognize, others you might guess at, others, dustier than all the rest, were lost in the outer regions of unknown languages, unknown scripts that could have disguised anything. Las flores del mal, I fiori del male, As Flores do Mal, Ta Anthi tou Kakou…