La Fanfarlo

Fanfarlo

Charles Baudelaire

Translated by Edward K. Kaplan
Part of The Art of the Novella

Ten years before Baudelaire published his masterpiece, The Flowers of Evil, the great poet penned the only prose fiction of his career: La Fanfarlo. The novella describes the torrid real-life affair the poet had with Jean Duval, a dancer whose beauty and sexuality Baudelaire came to obsess over. The outcome is a work of raw emotional power and a clear distillation of the Parisian’s poetic genius. As Baudelaire himself said, “Always be a poet, even in prose.”

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (1821–1867), was one of the founding and most influential poets of modern literature. His masterpiece, The Flowers of Evil, is known for its keen psychological insight into the dark side of human nature.

EDWARD K. KAPLAN is Kaiserman Professor in the Humanities at Brandeis University. He is the author of Baudelaire's Prose Poems: The Esthetic, the Ethical, and the Religious in The Parisian Prowler. His translation of Baudelaire's Parisian Prowler  is a winner of the Lewis Galantière Prize of the American Translators Association and a Choice Outstanding Academic Book.