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Article: BOOKS: Drugs rain down on his parade; Baudelaire in Chains - a portrait of the artist as a drug addict, by Frank Hilton, Peter Owen pounds 22.50. Reviewed by Richard Edmonds.(Features)
- Article from:
- The Birmingham Post (England)
- Article date:
- April 24, 2004
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Richard Edmonds
Peter Ackroyd has already contributed a fine review of Claude Pichois's book on the life of Charles Baudelaire, the French 19th century poete maudit, where the crumbling architecture of Baudelaire's perverse life is vividly defined.
Ackroyd describes the poet as 'a young man of inconstant ambitions and conflicting impulses, as indolent as he was profligate, and it is no surprise that he should quickly become the sport of syphilis, laudanum, drunkenness and indigence.'
It has been suggested that Baudelaire at 25 had plumbed a ...