“I consider that there is no unpublished note, word, not even a letter from a man such as Baudelaire which should remain unknown, that everything concerning him is interesting. “I do not need to stress to you the primordial interest represented by this discovery of an original verse by the great poet,” writes Le Dantec. The lot will also include the 1928 letter from Le Dantec, in which he attempted to persuade the book’s previous owner to make the verse public. It y is the type of object that one always hopes to find in an estate.” The lines, which come after a verse in which Baudelaire’s naked lover is seen only in the light of the hearth, translate as: “And I was full then of this Truth: / That the greatest treasure reserved by God for the Genius / Is to know profoundly earthly Beauty / So that from there can spring forth Rhythm and harmony.”ĭrouot’s Myrtille Dumonteil told France Info that “the writing has been authenticated and is the hand of Baudelaire. “ Et je fus plein alors de cette Vérité: / Que le meilleur trésor que Dieu garde au Génie / Est de connaître à fond la terrestre Beauté / Pour en faire jaillir le Rythme et l’harmonie,” wrote Baudelaire. “The verse added by the poet is completely unknown, and gives this copy a major literary importance,” writes Drouot in its catalogue. Photograph: Francois Mallet/ArtValorem/Drouot Müller’s detailed process notes on the film may be read at fleurs … Baudelaire’s extra verse. The French-English translation of the poem in the subtitles is by Lewis Piaget Shanks (1878-1935).

As with Caroline Rumley’s, Open Season, shared on Moving Poems yesterday, the soundtrack of L’homme et la mer is punctuated by sudden breaks to silence, as if to give moments of contemplation before beginning anew with the next fragment of the film. The softness and quiet passion of Müller’s voice entices us inwards to the text and the film. This combination of analogue and digital creates uniquely beautiful images, with the sensuality of the film grain rendered in uncharacteristic clarity, and the choices in colour grading adding further to the poetry of the visual stream. Müller’s artisanal work includes hand-processing the film himself, then transferring it to the high-quality 4K video format for completion. The piece displays a distinctive approach by the film-maker, who shot it on the tiny and mostly obsolete super 8 celluloid format, popularised as a home movie medium from the time of its release by Eastman Kodak in 1965. This is his second adaptation of a Baudelaire poem, after Le Chat (2013). German film-maker Patrick Müller here adapts to the screen Charles Baudelaire‘s poem, “ L’homme et la mer (Man and the Sea)”, from the poet’s most famous collection, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), first published in 1857.

Baudelaire les fleurs du mal english