The Dream of Baudelaire

At the center of attention is Roberto Calasso (b. 1941), the creators of "modernism" - writers and artists who lived in Paris in the nineteenth century. Calasso describes the life of the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), who reflected the ephemeral nature of the metropolis and the place of the artist within it in his works. Calasso's book resembles a mosaic of the author's own stories, Baudelaire's poems, and comments on the paintings of Ingres, Delacroix, Degas, Manet, and others. From these details, a dramatic image of Baudelaire's Paris emerges.