Tab Article

Ratings: ★★★★★ (5/5)
Genre: Literary Criticism / Biography / Art History / Cultural Studies

Book Review:
Roberto Calasso is one of the most distinctive and erudite writers of our time, and La Folie Baudelaire stands as a worthy addition to his remarkable body of work. Following his celebrated explorations of Greek mythology (The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony) and Franz Kafka (K), Calasso turns his attention to Charles Baudelaire, the poet who more than any other defined modernity.

The book is not a conventional biography. Calasso is less interested in chronicling Baudelaire's life than in recreating the world in which he moved—the Paris of the mid-19th century, a city being transformed by Haussmann's boulevards and by the emergence of a new kind of urban consciousness. He places Baudelaire in conversation with his contemporaries: Manet, whose paintings capture the same flickering, ambiguous modernity; Delacroix, whose romanticism Baudelaire championed; Wagner, whose music embodied the total art Baudelaire sought; and Flaubert, whose Madame Bovary was published the same year as Les Fleurs du mal.

Calasso writes with a blend of philosophical depth, literary sensitivity, and sheer elegance. His prose is dense but luminous, rewarding slow reading. He shows how Baudelaire's ''folly''—his insistence on the value of art in a world increasingly governed by commerce and utility—became the template for the modern artist's struggle. The book is as much about the creation of modernity as it is about the poet who named it.

For readers of Calasso, for admirers of Baudelaire, or for anyone interested in the intellectual and artistic currents of the 19th century, La Folie Baudelaire is a masterpiece. It confirms Calasso's place as one of the great cultural critics of our time.