Magazine Project: Baudelaire's A Carcass

The publication of Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil was met with shock and outrage from 19th century French readers.  Both Baudelaire and his publisher were prosecuted for offence to public decency and 6 poems in the collection were banned.  More than a century later Flowers of Evil has come to be regarded as one of the greatest collections of modern poetry in any language.

Perhaps the most infamous poem in Baudelaire’s masterpiece is A Carcass — a lovingly detailed description of the author’s experience of stumbling across a dead animal while on a romantic stroll with his lover.  The poem is a meditation of mortality and on the possibility for beauty to arise from death and decay.

Baudelaire’s vivid descriptions of the unlikely beauty of dead animals have always resonated with me — I’m sure many of my fellow vultures out there can relate this.

I’m currently working on a short Zine project which will bring together a brand new translation of Baudelaire’s infamous poem, alongside a series of my own original still life compositions.  Each of these still life images is composed in the style of 17th century Dutch vanitas paintings which, like Baudelaire’s poem, were meant to emphasize the certainty of death and the transience of all things.  The focal point of each composition is a raccoon skull that I scavenged from a vacant lot near my home.  Just like the protagonist of A Carcass, I stumbled across this dead animal on a lovely stroll one afternoon and I was immediately struck by the many ways that the process of decay creates new beauty and new life.

For subscribers to my mailing list I’m going to make a physical version available at a reduced cost, and a digital version available for free download.  The idea here is to offer a gift to say thank you to those who’ve already subscribed, and to try to entice new subscribers to join my list.  If this sounds interesting to you you can sign up here.

I’m very excited about this project!  My timeline for completion is still up in the air, but I’m hoping to have something ready in 2-3 weeks.  If this goes well then I’m planning to make this the first in a series of narrowly-focused magazine projects. 

Stay tuned!

Working on a Zine!