Charles Baudelaire tote bag

Over time, the annotation " I absolutely care about this comma " became famous and typing it into a search engine today delivers an impressive quantity of publications about Charles Baudelaire's temperament, his manic inclination and his tenacity when it comes to completing his work!

From February to June 1857, he worked on the edition of his collection Les Fleurs du mal in association with his printer friend Auguste Poulet-Malassis, whose printing house was located in Orne, in Alençon. Unable to get there, countless exchanges took place between the two men, Baudelaire persisting in adding corrections to the proofs that Poulet-Malassis sent him, with the firm intention of obtaining a perfect edition.

In To the Reader , the introductory poem of the collection, Baudelaire warns those who begin reading his book that they will find throughout the pages a raw, black and uncompromising painting of the human heart and its soul. Placed in the incipit from the first edition of the collection and outside the numbering of all the other poems, Baudelaire grants it absolutely capital importance. In the eighth quatrain, a comma is present after the adjective “ creeping ” which qualifies “ The monsters ”. However, upon receipt of the first proof, Baudelaire noted the absence of this comma and pointed out to the typographers of the printing house by a note in the margin that " if there were no comma, it would be necessary to delete the S ”, since the present participles would no longer be used as adjectives, but as adverbs, which would change the syntax of the sentence and therefore its meaning!

Discovering its absence again in the following test, Baudelaire comes out of his wits and writes the famous annotation which he surrounds with an angry line: “ I absolutely care about this comma ”!

(sources: www.gallica.bnf.fr )

The presence of a simple comma can change many things and the Association La Chandelle Verte honors it by publishing this splendid and very literary tote bag (100% ecological cotton 220g screen-printed on both sides), entirely made in France !

Dimensions: width 38 cm, height 42 cm, long handles approximately 35 cm.

Machine washable at 30°, no dryer.

As an association under the French law of 1901, La Chandelle Verte is not subject to French VAT. Prices are therefore exclusive of tax.

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