Hey folks, it's Jack. Do you ever find yourself wondering about the little mysteries in life?

Like how refrigeration happened? Or just how many times did the CIA try to assassinate

Fidel Castro anyway? If you find yourself going down rabbit holes like these, then I recommend

a trip to the podcast, History of Everything. Hosted by History lover Steven Bell and

scientist Gabby Bell, the show dives into all the cool but weird little details that make

our world what it is today. You can count on them to cover literally the history of everything,

from potatoes to the crusades. So don't miss out, listen to History of Everything wherever

you get your podcasts, and tell them I sent you. Hello. He was in Dana Joy's words, quote,

the first modern poet. In both style and content, his provocative, alluring and shockingly

original work shaped and enlarged the imagination of later poets, not only in his native France,

but across Europe and the Americas. His ideas on the autonomy of art, the alienation of the artist,

the irrationality of human behavior, the intellectualization of poetry, the cult of beauty,

and the beauty of evil, and the frank depiction of sexuality, became central to modernist aesthetics.

End quote. His name, of course, was Charles Baudelaire, and his collection of poems,

called Le Flurdemolle, or Flowers of Evil, inspired and haunted poetry for decades to come.

Now, we have a new translation to inspire us, one performed by our friend of the show, Aaron

Puccigian. We'll have Aaron here today to talk about Baudelaire's love for Poe, the quality

and nature of his verse, Puccigian's own admiration for slash obsession with Baudelaire,

and what it was like to turn Le Flurdemolle into English poetry. Not high-falutin, perfume-soaked

fainting couch verse, but the direct, snarling poetry of the visionary with scooped-out eyes,

rangel intelligence, razor-wit, and a penetrating stare.

Aaron Puccigian and Charles Baudelaire, today on The History of Literature.

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