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Charles Baudelaire

Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also worked as an essayist, art critic and translator. His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhyme and rhythm, containing an exoticism inherited from the Romantics, and are based on observations of real life.

His most famous work, a book of lyric poetry titled Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in the rapidly industrialising Paris caused by Haussmann's renovation of Paris during the mid-19th century. Baudelaire's original style of prose-poetry influenced a generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé. He coined the term modernity (modernité) to designate the fleeting experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of artistic expression to capture that experience. Marshall Berman has credited Baudelaire as being the first Modernist.

Early life
Baudelaire was born in Paris, France, on 9 April 1821, and baptized two months later at Saint-Sulpice Roman Catholic Church. His father, Joseph-François Baudelaire (1759–1827), a senior civil servant and amateur artist, who at 60, was 34 years older than Baudelaire's 26-year-old mother, Caroline (née Dufaÿs) (1794–1871); she was his second wife.

Joseph-François died during Baudelaire's childhood, at rue Hautefeuille, Paris, on 10 February 1827. The following year, Caroline married Lieutenant Colonel Jacques Aupick, who later became a French ambassador to various noble courts.

Baudelaire's biographers have often seen this as a crucial moment, considering that finding himself no longer the sole focus of his mother's affection left him with a trauma, which goes some way to explaining the excesses later apparent in his life. He stated in a letter to her that, "There was in my childhood a period of passionate love for you." Baudelaire regularly begged his mother for money throughout his career, often promising that a lucrative publishing contract or journalistic commission was just around the corner.

Baudelaire was educated in Lyon, where he boarded. At 14, he was described by a classmate as "much more refined and distinguished than any of our fellow pupils...we are bound to one another...by shared tastes and sympathies, the precocious love of fine works of literature."

Baudelaire was erratic in his studies, at times diligent, at other times prone to "idleness". Later, he attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, studying law, a popular course for those not yet decided on any particular career. He began to frequent prostitutes and may have contracted gonorrhea and syphilis during this period. He also began to run up debts, mostly for clothes.

Upon gaining his degree in 1839, he told his brother "I don't feel I have a vocation for anything." His stepfather had in mind a career in law or diplomacy, but instead Baudelaire decided to embark upon a literary career. His mother later recalled: "Oh, what grief! If Charles had let himself be guided by his stepfather, his career would have been very different...He would not have left a name in literature, it is true, but we should have been happier, all three of us."

His stepfather sent him on a voyage to Calcutta, India in 1841 in the hope of ending his dissolute habits. The trip provided strong impressions of the sea, sailing, and exotic ports, that he later employed in his poetry. Baudelaire later exaggerated his aborted trip to create a legend about his youthful travels and experiences, including "riding on elephants".

On returning to the taverns of Paris, he began to compose some of the poems of "Les Fleurs du Mal". At 21, he received a sizable inheritance but squandered much of it within a few years. His family obtained a decree to place his property in trust, which he resented bitterly, at one point arguing that allowing him to fail financially would have been the one sure way of teaching him to keep his finances in order.

Baudelaire became known in artistic circles as a dandy and free-spender, going through much of his inheritance and allowance in a short period of time. During this time, Jeanne Duval, a Haitian born actress became his mistress. She was rejected by his family. His mother thought Duval a "Black Venus" who "tortured him in every way" and drained him of money at every opportunity. Baudelaire made a suicide attempt during this period.

He took part in the Revolutions of 1848 and wrote for a revolutionary newspaper. However, his interest in politics was passing, as he was later to note in his journals.

In the early 1850s, Baudelaire struggled with poor health, pressing debts, and irregular literary output. He often moved from one lodging to another to escape creditors. He undertook many projects that he was unable to complete, though he did finish translations of stories by Edgar Allan Poe.

Upon the death of his stepfather in 1857, Baudelaire received no mention in the will but he was heartened nonetheless that the division with his mother might now be mended. At 36, he wrote to her: "believe that I belong to you absolutely, and that I belong only to you." His mother died on 16 August 1871, outliving her son by almost four years.

Publishing career
His first published work, under the pseudonym Baudelaire Dufaÿs, was his art review "Salon of 1845", which attracted immediate attention for its boldness. Many of his critical opinions were novel in their time, including his championing of Delacroix, and some of his views seem remarkably in tune with the future theories of the Impressionist painters.

In 1846, Baudelaire wrote his second Salon review, gaining additional credibility as an advocate and critic of Romanticism. His continued support of Delacroix as the foremost Romantic artist gained widespread notice. The following year Baudelaire's novella La Fanfarlo was published.

The Flowers of Evil
Baudelaire was a slow and very attentive worker. However, he often was sidetracked by indolence, emotional distress and illness, and it was not until 1857 that he published Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), his first and most famous volume of poems. Some of these poems had already appeared in the Revue des deux mondes (Review of Two Worlds) in 1855, when they were published by Baudelaire's friend Auguste Poulet-Malassis. Some of the poems had appeared as "fugitive verse" in various French magazines during the previous decade.

The poems found a small, yet appreciative audience. However, greater public attention was given to their subject matter. The effect on fellow artists was, as Théodore de Banville stated, "immense, prodigious, unexpected, mingled with admiration and with some indefinable anxious fear". Gustave Flaubert, recently attacked in a similar fashion for Madame Bovary (and acquitted), was impressed and wrote to Baudelaire: "You have found a way to rejuvenate Romanticism...You are as unyielding as marble, and as penetrating as an English mist."

The principal themes of sex and death were considered scandalous for the period. He also touched on lesbianism, sacred and profane love, metamorphosis, melancholy, the corruption of the city, lost innocence, the oppressiveness of living, and wine. Notable in some poems is Baudelaire's use of imagery of the sense of smell and of fragrances, which is used to evoke feelings of nostalgia and past intimacy.

The book, however, quickly became a byword for unwholesomeness among mainstream critics of the day. Some critics called a few of the poems "masterpieces of passion, art and poetry," but other poems were deemed to merit no less than legal action to suppress them. J. Habas led the charge against Baudelaire, writing in Le Figaro: "Everything in it which is not hideous is incomprehensible, everything one understands is putrid." Baudelaire responded to the outcry in a prophetic letter to his mother: "You know that I have always considered that literature and the arts pursue an aim independent of morality. Beauty of conception and style is enough for me. But this book, whose title (Fleurs du mal) says everything, is clad, as you will see, in a cold and sinister beauty. It was created with rage and patience. Besides, the proof of its positive worth is in all the ill that they speak of it. The book enrages people. Moreover, since I was terrified myself of the horror that I should inspire, I cut out a third from the proofs. They deny me everything, the spirit of invention and even the knowledge of the French language. I don't care a rap about all these imbeciles, and I know that this book, with its virtues and its faults, will make its way in the memory of the lettered public, beside the best poems of V. Hugo, Th. Gautier and even Byron."

Baudelaire, his publisher and the printer were successfully prosecuted for creating an offense against public morals. They were fined, but Baudelaire was not imprisoned. Six of the poems were suppressed, but printed later as Les Épaves (The Wrecks) (Brussels, 1866). Another edition of Les Fleurs du mal, without these poems, but with considerable additions, appeared in 1861. Many notables rallied behind Baudelaire and condemned the sentence. Victor Hugo wrote to him: "Your fleurs du mal shine and dazzle like stars...I applaud your vigorous spirit with all my might." Baudelaire did not appeal the judgment, but his fine was reduced. Nearly 100 years later, on 11 May 1949, Baudelaire was vindicated, the judgment officially reversed, and the six banned poems reinstated in France.

In the poem "Au lecteur" ("To the Reader") that prefaces Les Fleurs du mal, Baudelaire accuses his readers of hypocrisy and of being as guilty of sins and lies as the poet:

 * ... If rape or arson, poison or the knife
 * Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff
 * Of this drab canvas we accept as life—
 * It is because we are not bold enough!
 * (Roy Campbell's translation)

Final years
Baudelaire next worked on a translation and adaptation of Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Other works in the years that followed included Petits Poèmes en prose (Small Prose poems); a series of art reviews published in the Pays, Exposition universelle (Country, World Fair); studies on Gustave Flaubert (in L'Artiste, 18 October 1857); on Théophile Gautier (Revue contemporaine, September 1858); various articles contributed to Eugène Crépet's Poètes français; Les Paradis artificiels: opium et haschisch (French poets; Artificial Paradises: opium and hashish) (1860); and Un Dernier Chapitre de l'histoire des oeuvres de Balzac (A Final Chapter of the history of works of Balzac) (1880), originally an article "Comment on paye ses dettes quand on a du génie" ("How one pays one's debts when one has genius"), in which his criticism turns against his friends Honoré de Balzac, Théophile Gautier, and Gérard de Nerval.

By 1859, his illnesses, his long-term use of laudanum, his life of stress, and his poverty had taken a toll and Baudelaire had aged noticeably. But at last, his mother relented and agreed to let him live with her for a while at Honfleur. Baudelaire was productive and at peace in the seaside town, his poem Le Voyage being one example of his efforts during that time. In 1860, he became an ardent supporter of Richard Wagner.

His financial difficulties increased again, however, particularly after his publisher Poulet Malassis went bankrupt in 1861. In 1864, he left Paris for Belgium, partly in the hope of selling the rights to his works and to give lectures. His long-standing relationship with Jeanne Duval continued on-and-off, and he helped her to the end of his life. Baudelaire's relationships with actress Marie Daubrun and with courtesan Apollonie Sabatier, though the source of much inspiration, never produced any lasting satisfaction. He smoked opium, and in Brussels he began to drink to excess. Baudelaire suffered a massive stroke in 1866 and paralysis followed. After more than a year of aphasia, he received the last rites of the Catholic Church. The last year of his life was spent in a semi-paralyzed state in various "maisons de santé" in Brussels and in Paris, where he died on 31 August 1867. Baudelaire is buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris.

Many of Baudelaire's works were published posthumously. After his death, his mother paid off his substantial debts, and she found some comfort in Baudelaire's emerging fame. "I see that my son, for all his faults, has his place in literature." She lived another four years.

Poetry
"Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness. This obsessive idea is above all a child of giant cities, of the intersecting of their myriad relations."

Baudelaire is one of the major innovators in French literature. His poetry is influenced by the French romantic poets of the earlier 19th century, although its attention to the formal features of verse connects it more closely to the work of the contemporary "Parnassians". As for theme and tone, in his works we see the rejection of the belief in the supremacy of nature and the fundamental goodness of man as typically espoused by the romantics and expressed by them in rhetorical, effusive and public voice in favor of a new urban sensibility, an awareness of individual moral complexity, an interest in vice (linked with decadence) and refined sensual and aesthetic pleasures, and the use of urban subject matter, such as the city, the crowd, individual passers-by, all expressed in highly ordered verse, sometimes through a cynical and ironic voice. Formally, the use of sound to create atmosphere, and of "symbols" (images that take on an expanded function within the poem), betray a move towards considering the poem as a self-referential object, an idea further developed by the Symbolists Verlaine and Mallarmé, who acknowledge Baudelaire as a pioneer in this regard.

Beyond his innovations in versification and the theories of symbolism and "correspondences", an awareness of which is essential to any appreciation of the literary value of his work, aspects of his work that regularly receive much critical discussion include the role of women, the theological direction of his work and his alleged advocacy of "satanism", his experience of drug-induced states of mind, the figure of the dandy, his stance regarding democracy and its implications for the individual, his response to the spiritual uncertainties of the time, his criticisms of the bourgeois, and his advocacy of modern music and painting (e.g., Wagner, Delacroix). He made Paris the subject of modern poetry. He brought the city's details to life in the eyes and hearts of his readers.

Critiques
Baudelaire was an active participant in the artistic life of his times. As critic and essayist, he wrote extensively and perceptively about the luminaries and themes of French culture. He was frank with friends and enemies, rarely took the diplomatic approach and sometimes responded violently verbally, which often undermined his cause. His associations were numerous, including Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Félicien Rops, Franz Liszt, Champfleury, Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, and Balzac.

Edgar Allan Poe
In 1847, Baudelaire became acquainted with the works of Poe, in which he found tales and poems that had, he claimed, long existed in his own brain but never taken shape. Baudelaire saw in Poe a precursor and tried to be his French contemporary counterpart. From this time until 1865, he was largely occupied with translating Poe's works; his translations were widely praised. Baudelaire was not the first French translator of Poe, but his "scrupulous translations" were considered among the best. These were published as Histoires extraordinaires (Extraordinary stories) (1856), Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires (New extraordinary stories) (1857), Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym, Eureka, and Histoires grotesques et sérieuses (Grotesque and serious stories) (1865). Two essays on Poe are to be found in his Œuvres complètes (Complete works) (vols. v. and vi.).

Eugène Delacroix
A strong supporter of the Romantic painter Delacroix, Baudelaire called him "a poet in painting". Baudelaire also absorbed much of Delacroix's aesthetic ideas as expressed in his journals. As Baudelaire elaborated in his "Salon of 1846", "As one contemplates his series of pictures, one seems to be attending the celebration of some grievous mystery...This grave and lofty melancholy shines with a dull light.. plaintive and profound like a melody by Weber." Delacroix, though appreciative, kept his distance from Baudelaire, particularly after the scandal of Les Fleurs du mal. In private correspondence, Delacroix stated that Baudelaire "really gets on my nerves" and he expressed his unhappiness with Baudelaire's persistent comments about "melancholy" and "feverishness".

Richard Wagner
Baudelaire had no formal musical training, and knew little of composers beyond Beethoven and Weber. Weber was in some ways Wagner's precursor, using the leitmotif and conceiving the idea of the "total art work" ("Gesamtkunstwerk"), both of which gained Baudelaire's admiration. Before even hearing Wagner's music, Baudelaire studied reviews and essays about him, and formulated his impressions. Later, Baudelaire put them into his non-technical analysis of Wagner, which was highly regarded, particularly his essay "Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris". Baudelaire's reaction to music was passionate and psychological. "Music engulfs (possesses) me like the sea." After attending three Wagner concerts in Paris in 1860, Baudelaire wrote to the composer: "I had a feeling of pride and joy in understanding, in being possessed, in being overwhelmed, a truly sensual pleasure like that of rising in the air." Baudelaire's writings contributed to the elevation of Wagner and to the cult of Wagnerism that swept Europe in the following decades.

Théophile Gautier
Gautier, writer and poet, earned Baudelaire's respect for his perfection of form and his mastery of language, though Baudelaire thought he lacked deeper emotion and spirituality. Both strove to express the artist's inner vision, which Heinrich Heine earlier stated: "In artistic matters, I am a supernaturalist. I believe that the artist can not find all his forms in nature, but that the most remarkable are revealed to him in his soul." Gautier's frequent meditations on death and the horror of life are themes which influenced Baudelaire's writings. In gratitude for their friendship and commonality of vision, Baudelaire dedicated Les Fleurs du mal to Gautier.

Édouard Manet

Manet and Baudelaire became constant companions from around 1855. In the early 1860s, Baudelaire accompanied Manet on daily sketching trips and often met him socially. Manet also lent Baudelaire money and looked after his affairs, particularly when Baudelaire went to Belgium. Baudelaire encouraged Manet to strike out on his own path and not succumb to criticism. "Manet has great talent, a talent which will stand the test of time. But he has a weak character. He seems to me crushed and stunned by shock." In his painting Music in the Tuileries, Manet includes portraits of his friends Théophile Gautier, Jacques Offenbach, and Baudelaire. While it's difficult to differentiate who influenced whom, both Manet and Baudelaire discussed and expressed some common themes through their respective arts. Baudelaire praised the modernity of Manet's subject matter: "almost all our originality comes from the stamp that 'time' imprints upon our feelings." When Manet's famous Olympia (1865), a portrait of a nude prostitute, provoked a scandal for its blatant realism mixed with an imitation of Renaissance motifs, Baudelaire worked privately to support his friend, though he offered no public defense (he was, however, ill at the time). When Baudelaire returned from Belgium after his stroke, Manet and his wife were frequent visitors at the nursing home and she played passages from Wagner for Baudelaire on the piano.

Nadar
Nadar (Félix Tournachon) was a noted caricaturist, scientist and important early photographer. Baudelaire admired Nadar, one of his close friends, and wrote: "Nadar is the most amazing manifestation of vitality." They moved in similar circles and Baudelaire made many social connections through him. Nadar's ex-mistress Jeanne Duval became Baudelaire's mistress around 1842. Baudelaire became interested in photography in the 1850s, and denouncing it as an art form, advocated its return to "its real purpose, which is that of being the servant to the sciences and arts". Photography should not, according to Baudelaire, encroach upon "the domain of the impalpable and the imaginary". Nadar remained a stalwart friend right to Baudelaire's last days and wrote his obituary notice in Le Figaro.

Philosophy
Many of Baudelaire's philosophical proclamations were considered scandalous and intentionally provocative in his time. He wrote on a wide range of subjects, drawing criticism and outrage from many quarters. Along with Poe, Baudelaire named the arch-reactionary Joseph de Maistre as his maître à penser and adopted increasingly aristocratic views. In his journals, he wrote: "'There is no form of rational and assured government save an aristocracy. […] There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions.'"

Influence and legacy
Baudelaire's influence on the direction of modern French (and English) language literature was considerable. The most significant French writers to come after him were generous with tributes; four years after his death, Arthur Rimbaud praised him in a letter as "the king of poets, a true God". In 1895, Stéphane Mallarmé published "Le Tombeau de Charles Baudelaire", a sonnet in Baudelaire's memory. Marcel Proust, in an essay published in 1922, stated that, along with Alfred de Vigny, Baudelaire was "the greatest poet of the nineteenth century".

In the English-speaking world, Edmund Wilson credited Baudelaire as providing an initial impetus for the Symbolist movement by virtue of his translations of Poe. In 1930, T. S. Eliot, while asserting that Baudelaire had not yet received a "just appreciation" even in France, claimed that the poet had "great genius" and asserted that his "technical mastery which can hardly be overpraised...has made his verse an inexhaustible study for later poets, not only in his own language". In a lecture delivered in French on "Edgar Allan Poe and France" (Edgar Poe et la France) in Aix-en-Provence in April 1948, Eliot stated that "I am an English poet of American origin who learnt his art under the aegis of Baudelaire and the Baudelairian lineage of poets." Eliot also alluded to Baudelaire's poetry directly in his own poetry. For example, he quoted the last line of Baudelaire's "Au Lecteur" in the last line of Section I of The Waste Land.

At the same time that Eliot was affirming Baudelaire's importance from a broadly conservative and explicitly Christian viewpoint, left-wing critics such as Wilson and Walter Benjamin were able to do so from a dramatically different perspective. Benjamin translated Baudelaire's Tableaux Parisiens into German and published a major essay on translation as the foreword.

In the late 1930s, Benjamin used Baudelaire as a starting point and focus for Das Passagenwerk, his monumental attempt at a materialist assessment of 19th-century culture. For Benjamin, Baudelaire's importance lay in his anatomies of the crowd, of the city and of modernity. He says that, in Les Fleurs du mal, "the specific devaluation of the world of things, as manifested in the commodity, is the foundation of Baudelaire's allegorical intention."

François Porche published a poetry collection called Charles Baudelaire: Poetry Collection in memory of Baudelaire.

The novel A Singular Conspiracy (1974) by Barry Perowne is a fictional treatment of the unaccounted period in Edgar Allan Poe's life from January to May 1844, in which (among other things) Poe becomes involved with a young Baudelaire in a plot to expose Baudelaires' stepfather to blackmail, to free up Baudelaires' patrimony.

Vanderbilt University has "assembled one of the world's most comprehensive research collections on...Baudelaire". Les Fleurs du mal has a number of scholarly references.

Works

 * Salon de 1845, 1845
 * Salon de 1846, 1846
 * La Fanfarlo, 1847
 * Les Fleurs du mal, 1857
 * Les paradis artificiels, 1860
 * Réflexions sur Quelques-uns de mes Contemporains, 1861
 * Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne, 1863
 * Curiosités Esthétiques, 1868
 * L'art romantique, 1868
 * Le Spleen de Paris, 1869. Paris Spleen (Contra Mundum Press: 2021)
 * Translations from Charles Baudelaire, 1869 (Early English translation of several of Baudelaire's poems, by Richard Herne Shepherd)
 * Œuvres Posthumes et Correspondance Générale, 1887–1907
 * Fusées, 1897
 * Mon Cœur Mis à Nu, 1897. My Heart Laid Bare & Other Texts (Contra Mundum Press: 2017; 2020)
 * Œuvres Complètes, 1922–53 (19 vols.)
 * Mirror of Art, 1955
 * The Essence of Laughter, 1956
 * Curiosités Esthétiques, 1962
 * The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, 1964
 * Baudelaire as a Literary Critic, 1964
 * Arts in Paris 1845–1862, 1965
 * Selected Writings on Art and Artists, 1972
 * Selected Letters of Charles Baudelaire, 1986
 * Twenty Prose Poems, 1988
 * Critique d'art; Critique musicale, 1992
 * Belgium Stripped Bare (Contra Mundum Press: 2019)

Musical adaptations

 * British singer Marc Almond included two of Baudelaire’s poems set to music on his album Absinthe (Marc Almond album) in 1993: ‘Abel And Cain (Abel et Cain)’ and ‘Remorse Of The Dead (Remords posthume)’.
 * French composer Claude Debussy set five of Baudelaire's poems to music in 1890: Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire (Le Balcon, Harmonie du soir, Le Jet d'eau, Recueillement and La Mort des amants).
 * French composer Henri Duparc set two of Baudelaire's poems to music: "L'Invitation au voyage" in 1870, and "La vie antérieure" in 1884.
 * English composer Mark-Anthony Turnage composed settings of two of Baudelaire's poems, "Harmonie du soir" and "L'Invitation au voyage", for soprano and seven instruments.
 * American electronic musician Ruth White recorded some of Baudelaire's poems in Les Fleurs du Mal as chants over electronic music in a 1969 recording, Flowers of Evil.
 * French singer-songwriter Léo Ferré devoted himself to set Baudelaire's poetry into music in three albums: Les Fleurs du mal in 1957 (12 poems), Léo Ferré chante Baudelaire in 1967 (24 poems, including one from Le Spleen de Paris), and the posthumous Les Fleurs du mal (suite et fin) (21 poems), recorded in 1977 but released in 2008.
 * Soviet/Russian composer David Tukhmanov has set Baudelaire's poem to music (cult album On a Wave of My Memory, 1975).
 * American avant-garde composer, vocalist and performer Diamanda Galás made an interpretation in original French of Les Litanies de Satan from Les Fleurs du mal, in her debut album titled The Litanies of Satan, which consists of tape and electronics effects with layers of her voice.
 * French singer David TMX recorded the poems "Lesbos" and "Une Charogne" from The Flowers of Evil.
 * French metal/shoegaze groups Alcest and Amesoeurs used his poetry for the lyrics of the tracks "Élévation" (on Le Secret) and "Recueillement" (on Amesoeurs), respectively. Celtic Frost used his poem Tristesses de la lune as a lyrics for song on album Into the Pandemonium.
 * French Black Metal bands Mortifera and Peste Noire used Baudelaire's poems as lyrics for the songs "Le revenant" and "Ciel brouillé" (on Vastiia Tenebrd Mortifera by Mortifera) and "Le mort joyeux" and "Spleen" (on La Sanie des siècles – Panégyrique de la dégénérescence by Peste Noire)
 * Israeli singer Maor Cohen's 2005 album, the Hebrew name of which translates to French as "Les Fleurs du Mal", is a compilation of songs from Baudelaire's book of the same name. The texts were translated to Hebrew by Israeli poet Dori Manor, and the music was composed by Cohen.
 * Italian singer Franco Battiato set Invitation au voyage to music as Invito Al Viaggio on his 1999 album Fleurs (Esempi Affini di Scritture e Simili).
 * American composer Gérard Pape set Tristesses de la lune/Sorrows of the Moon from Fleurs du Mal for voice and electronic tape.
 * French band Marc Seberg wrote an adaptation of Recueillement for their 1985 album Le Chant Des Terres.
 * Dutch composer Marjo Tal set several of Baudelaire's poems to music.
 * Russian heavy metal band Black Obelisk used Russian translations of several Baudelaire poems as lyrics for their songs.
 * French singer Mylène Farmer performed "L'Horloge" to music by Laurent Boutonnat on the album Ainsi soit je, as the opening number of her 1989 concert tour, and as the finale of her 2019 concert series. On her album "Désobéissance" (2018), she recorded Baudelaire's preface to "Les Fleurs du Mal", "Au lecteur". The French journalist Hugues Royer mentioned several allusions and interpretations of Baudelaire's poems and quotations used by Farmer in various songs in his book "Mylène" (published in 2008).
 * In 2009 the Italian rock band C.F.F. e il Nomade Venerabile released Un jour noir, a song inspired by Spleen, contained in the album Lucidinervi (Otium Records / Compagnia Nuove Indye). The video clip is available on YouTube.
 * German aggrotech band C-Drone-Defect used the translation of "Le Rebelle" by Roy Campbell as lyrics for the song "Rebellis" on their 2009 album Dystopia.
 * English rock band The Cure used the translation of "Les yeux des pauvres" as lyrics for the song "How Beautiful You Are".
 * French singer-songwriter and musician Serge Gainsbourg has set Baudelaire's poem "Dancing Snake" (Le serpent qui danse) to music in his 1964 song "Baudelaire".
 * Greek black metal band Rotting Christ adapted Baudelaire's poem "Les Litanies de Satan" from Fleurs du mal for a song of the same name in their 2016 album Rituals. Fellow Greek band Necromantia has also adapted the same poem on their 1993 debut Crossing the Fiery Path.
 * Belgian female-fronted band Exsangue released the debut video for the single "A une Malabaraise", and the lyrics are based on Baudelaire's same-named sonnet in 2016.
 * Belgian electronic music band Modern Cubism has released two albums where poems of Baudelaire are used as lyrics, Les Plaintes d'un Icare in 2008, and live album Live Complaints in 2010.
 * American rapper Tyler, the Creator released his album Call Me If You Get Lost in 2021. Throughout the album, Tyler, the Creator refers to himself as "Tyler Baudelaire".
 * Canadian singer-songwriter Pierre Lapointe set Baudelaire's poem "Le serpent qui danse" to music on his 2022 album L'heure mauve.
 * "L'Invitation au voyage" makes up the lyrics to two tracks on I've Seen a Way from Mandy, Indiana in 2023.

Online texts

 * Charles Baudelaire – largest site dedicated to Baudelaire's poems and prose, containing Fleurs du mal, Petit poemes et prose, Fanfarlo and more in French
 * Poems by Charles Baudelaire – selected works at Poetry Archive
 * Baudelaire's poems at Poems Found in Translation
 * Baudelaire – Eighteen Poems
 * "baudelaire in english", Onedit.net – Sean Bonney's experimental translations of Baudelaire (humor)
 * Works by Charles Baudelaire
 * Baudelaire par ses Amis
 * Baudelaire – Eighteen Poems
 * "baudelaire in english", Onedit.net – Sean Bonney's experimental translations of Baudelaire (humor)
 * Works by Charles Baudelaire
 * Baudelaire par ses Amis

Single works

 * FleursDuMal.org – Definitive online presentation of Fleurs du mal, featuring the original French alongside multiple English translations
 * An illustrated version (8 Mb) of Les Fleurs du Mal, 1861 edition (Charles Baudelaire / une édition illustrée par inkwatercolor.com)
 * "The Rebel" – poem by Baudelaire
 * Les Foules (The Crowds) – English translation

title: Charles Baudelaire


text:
Casey at the Bat

"Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic, Sung in the Year 1888" is a mock-heroic poem written in 1888 by Ernest Thayer. It was first published anonymously in The San Francisco Examiner (then called The Daily Examiner) on June 3, 1888, under the pen name "Phin", based on Thayer's college nickname, "Phinney". Featuring a dramatic narrative about a baseball game, the poem was later popularized by DeWolf Hopper in many vaudeville performances. It has become one of the best-known poems in American literature.

Synopsis
A baseball team from the fictional town of "Mudville" (the home team) is losing by two runs in its last inning. Both the team and its fans, a crowd of 5,000, believe that they can win if Casey, Mudville's star player, gets to bat. However, Casey is scheduled to be the fifth batter of the inning, and the first two batters (Cooney and Barrows) fail to get on base. The next two batters (Flynn and Jimmy Blake) are perceived to be weak hitters with little chance of reaching base to allow Casey a chance to bat.

Surprisingly, Flynn hits a single, and Blake follows with a double that allows Flynn to reach third base. Both runners are now in scoring position and Casey represents the potential winning run. Casey is so sure of his abilities that he does not swing at the first two pitches, both called strikes. On the last pitch, the overconfident Casey strikes out swinging, ending the game and sending the crowd home unhappy.

Text
The text is filled with references to baseball as it was in 1888, which in many ways is not far removed from today's version. As a work, the poem encapsulates much of the appeal of baseball, including the involvement of the crowd. It also has a fair amount of baseball jargon that can pose challenges for the uninitiated.

This is the complete poem as it originally appeared in The Daily Examiner. After publication, various versions with minor changes were produced.

Inspiration
Thayer said he chose the name "Casey" after a non-player of Irish ancestry he once knew named Daniel H. Casey; it is open to debate whom, if anyone, he modeled the character after. It has been reported that Thayer's best friend Samuel Winslow, who played baseball at Harvard, was the inspiration for Casey.

Another candidate is National League player Mike "King" Kelly, who became famous when Boston paid Chicago a record $10,000 for him. He had a personality that fans liked to cheer or jeer. After the 1887 season, Kelly went on a playing tour to San Francisco. Thayer, who wrote "Casey" in 1888, covered the San Francisco leg for the San Francisco Examiner.

Thayer, in a letter he wrote in 1905, mentions Kelly as showing "impudence" in claiming to have written the poem. The author of the 2004 definitive biography of Kelly—which included a close tracking of his vaudeville career—did not find Kelly claiming to have been the author.

Composition and publication history
"Casey at the Bat" was first published in The Daily Examiner on June 3, 1888.

A month after the poem was published, it was reprinted as "Kelly at the Bat" in the New York Sporting Times. Aside from omitting the first five verses, the only changes from the original are substitutions of Kelly for Casey, and Boston for Mudville. King Kelly, then of the Boston Beaneaters, was one of baseball's two biggest stars at the time (along with Cap Anson).

In 1897, the magazine Current Literature noted the two versions and said, "The locality, as originally given, is Mudville, not Boston; the latter was substituted to give the poem local color."

Live performances
DeWolf Hopper gave the poem's first stage recitation on August 14, 1888, at New York's Wallack Theatre as part of the comic opera Prinz Methusalem in the presence of the Chicago White Stockings and New York Giants baseball teams; August 14, 1888 was also Thayer's 25th birthday. Hopper became known as an orator of the poem, and recited it more than 10,000 times (by his count—some tabulations are as much as four times higher) before his death.

On stage in the early 1890s, baseball star Kelly recited the original "Casey" a few dozen times and not the parody. For example, in a review in 1893 of a variety show he was in, the Indianapolis News said, "Many who attended the performance had heard of Kelly's singing and his reciting, and many had heard De Wolf Hopper recite 'Casey at the Bat' in his inimitable way. Kelly recited this in a sing-song, school-boy fashion." Upon Kelly's death, a writer would say he gained "considerable notoriety by his ludicrous rendition of 'Casey at the Bat,' with which he concluded his 'turn' [act] at each performance."

During the 1980s, the magic/comedy team Penn & Teller performed a version of "Casey at the Bat" with Teller (the "silent" partner) struggling to escape a straitjacket while suspended upside-down over a platform of sharp steel spikes. The set-up was that Penn Jillette would leap off his chair upon finishing the poem, releasing the rope which supported Teller, and send Teller to a gruesome death if Teller had failed to free himself by that time. Jillette enhanced the drama of the performance by drastically accelerating the pace of his recital after the first few stanzas, greatly reducing the time that Teller had left to work free from his bonds.

Recordings
The first recorded version of "Casey at the Bat" was made by Russell Hunting, speaking in a broad Irish accent, in 1893; an 1898 cylinder recording of the text made for the Columbia Graphophone label by Hunting can be accessed from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.

DeWolf Hopper's more famous recorded recitation was released in October 1906.

In 1946, Walt Disney released a recording of the narration of the poem by Jerry Colonna, which accompanied the studio's animated cartoon adaptation of the poem (see below).

In 1973, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra commissioned its former Composer-in-Residence, Frank Proto, to create a work to feature Baseball Hall-of-Famer Johnny Bench with the orchestra. The result "Casey At The Bat – an American Folk Tale for Narrator and Orchestra" was an immediate hit and recorded by Bench and the orchestra. It has since been performed more than 800 times by nearly every major and Metropolitan orchestra in the U.S. and Canada.

In 1980, baseball pitcher Tug McGraw recorded Casey at The Bat—an American Folk Tale for Narrator and Orchestra by Frank Proto with Peter Nero and the Philly Pops.

In 1996, actor James Earl Jones recorded the poem with arranger/composer Steven Reineke and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra.

On a 1997 CD set with memorable moments and stories from the game of baseball titled Take Me Out to the Ball Game produced by Jerry Hoffman and Douglas Duer, a Vincent Price oration of the poem is a slightly altered version of the original.

In 1998, actor Sir Derek Jacobi recorded the poem with composer/arranger Randol Alan Bass and the National Symphony of London, with the composer conducting. This work, titled "Casey at the Bat", has been recorded by the Boston Pops Orchestra, Keith Lockhart conducting. In 2013, Dave Jageler and Charlie Slowes, both radio announcers for the Washington Nationals, each made recordings of the poem for the Library of Congress to mark the 125th anniversary of its first publication.

Mudville
A rivalry of sorts has developed between two cities claiming to be the Mudville described in the poem. Residents of Holliston, Massachusetts, where there is a neighborhood called Mudville, claim it as the Mudville described in the poem. Thayer grew up in nearby Worcester, Massachusetts, where he wrote the poem in 1888; his family owned a wool mill less than 1 mi from Mudville's baseball field.

However, residents of Stockton, California—which was known for a time as Mudville prior to incorporation in 1850—also lay claim to being the inspiration for the poem. In 1887, Thayer covered baseball for The Daily Examiner—owned by his Harvard classmate William Randolph Hearst—and is said to have covered the local California League team, the Stockton Ports. For the 1902 season, after the poem became popular, Stockton's team was renamed the Mudville Nine. The team reverted to the Mudville Nine moniker for the 2000 and 2001 seasons. The Visalia Rawhide, another California League team, currently keeps Mudville alive playing in Mudville jerseys on June 3 each year.

Despite the towns' rival claims, Thayer himself told the Syracuse Post-Standard that "the poem has no basis in fact."

Adaptations
The poem has been adapted to diverse types of media:

Books

 * Ralph Andreano's 1965 book, No Joy in Mudville, laments the death of heroes in modern baseball.
 * In the book Faithful by Steward O'Nan and Stephen King, describing the 2004 season of the Boston Red Sox, a chapter contributed by King is named "The Gloom is gone from Mudville".
 * Wallace Tripp illustrated a popular 1978 book of the poem.
 * Kurtis Scaletta's 2009 children's novel, Mudville, is about a town where it has been raining for 22 years, delaying a baseball game between two rival towns.

Comics

 * Marvel Comics published a spoof in August 1969, in the 9th issue of Not Brand Echh, featuring parodies of their popular heroes and villains, and the Bulk (parody of the Hulk) as Casey.
 * DC Comics' series Fables from the Vertigo Comics imprint featured an adaptation titled "Out to the Ball Game", which features a similar baseball match, with Weyland Smith playing the part of Casey against a team of goblins.

Film

 * In 1922, Lee De Forest recorded DeWolf Hopper reciting the poem in DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process.
 * In 1927, a feature-length silent film Casey at the Bat was released, starring Wallace Beery, Ford Sterling, and ZaSu Pitts. At least three other films based on Thayer's poem preceded this 1927 release: an Edison short in 1899, another short starring Harry T. Morey in 1913, and a five-reel feature starring DeWolf Hopper in 1916.
 * Walt Disney Productions produced an Animated Segment adaptation of the poem for the film Make Mine Music (1946) and uses the original text, but is set in 1902 according to the opening song's lyrics, instead of 1888. This version is recited by Jerry Colonna. It was later released as an individual short on July 16, 1954. A sequel short was also produced Casey Bats Again and released on June 18, 1954.
 * A 1976 animated short adaptation, featuring narration by Paul Frees, was released in 1976 by Fine Arts Films.
 * In 1986, Elliott Gould starred as "Casey" in the Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales and Legends adaptation of the story, which also starred Carol Kane, Howard Cosell, Bob Uecker, Bill Macy and Rae Dawn Chong. The screenplay, adapted from the poem, was written by Andy Borowitz and the production was directed by David Steinberg.
 * In The Dream Team (1989), Michael Keaton's character announces that "there is no joy in Mudville" after giving a fellow mental patient three "strikes" for psychotic behavior.
 * In 1993 the last paragraph is quoted in the film Short Cuts (by Robert Altman), when Lyle Lovett as Andy Bitkower is calling anonymously Andie MacDowell as Ann Finnigan in minute 01:34:58.

Radio

 * The poem was adapted for an episode of On Stage that aired on CBS on April 16, 1953. It was written by E. Jack Neuman and starred Elliott Lewis, Cathy Lewis, Hy Averback, Herb Butterfield, Byron Kane, Peter Leeds, Hal March, Howard McNear, and Sidney Miller.
 * Radio personality Casey Kasem self-identified on-air as "Casey at the mic."

Television

 * Jackie Gleason in his "Reginald Van Gleason III" persona (in full Mudville baseball uniform) performed a recitation of the poem on his And Awaaaay We Go! album.
 * Season 1, episode 35 of The Twilight Zone, "The Mighty Casey", concerns a baseball player who is actually a robot (June 17, 1960).
 * In the Northern Exposure episode "The Graduate", Chris Stevens gains his Master's degree in Comparative literature by subjecting his assessors to a spirited re-enactment of the poem.
 * In General Hospital, Steve Hardy performs the poem during the 1994 Nurses' Ball while dressed in a Mudville baseball uniform. He concludes by telling the audience not to worry because Casey is married to the Mudville owner's daughter.
 * In How I Met Your Mother, the episode "Bedtime Stories" (which is done entirely in rhymes) features a subplot called "Mosby At The Bat". The start of that section of the episode begins with "The outlook wasn't brilliant for poor Ted's romantic life", a line based on the opening of the original poem.
 * In One Tree Hill, season 8 episode "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul" was a flashback-heavy episode revolving around a baseball game with Jamie Scott narrating the poem throughout.

Music

 * Art-song composer Sidney Homer turned the poem into a song. Sheet music was published by G. Schirmer in 1920 as part of Six Cheerful Songs to Poems of American Humor.
 * William Schuman composed an opera, The Mighty Casey (1953), based on the poem.
 * The song "No Joy in Mudville" from Death Cab for Cutie's album We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes directly references the poem.
 * The song "Centerfield" by John Fogerty includes the line "Well, I spent some time in the Mudville Nine, watchin' it from the bench. You know I took some lumps when the Mighty Casey struck out."
 * The song "No Joy In Pudville" by Steroid Maximus is a reference to this poem.
 * Joe Walsh's 1973 song "Rocky Mountain Way" features the lyrics "Bases are loaded/ And Casey's at bat/ Playin' it play-by-play/ Time to change the batter."
 * In 2008 American composer Randol Alan Bass used the song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" by Alfred Von Tilzer and Jack Norworth in Casey at the Bat, a setting of the poem for concert band and narrator.

Theatre

 * "Casey at the Bat" was adapted into a 1953 opera by American composer William Schuman.
 * An orchestral adaptation by composer Frank Proto has been recorded by the Cincinnati Pops orchestra conducted by Erich Kunzel with baseball star Johnny Bench narrating.
 * The Dallas Symphony commissioned an arrangement of "Casey" by Randol Alan Bass in 2001, which he later arranged for concert band.

Derivations
For a relatively short poem apparently dashed off quickly (and denied by its author for years), "Casey at the Bat" had a profound effect on American popular culture. It has been recited, re-enacted, adapted, dissected, parodied, and subjected to just about every other treatment one could imagine.

Sequels

 * "Casey's Revenge", by Grantland Rice (1907), gives Casey another chance against the pitcher who had struck him out in the original story. It was written in 1906, and its first known publication was in the quarterly magazine The Speaker in June 1907, under the pseudonym of James Wilson. In this version, Rice cites the nickname "Strike-Out Casey", hence the influence on Casey Stengel's name. Casey's team is down three runs by the last of the ninth, and once again Casey is down to two strikes—with the bases full this time. However, he connects, and hits the ball so far that it is never found.
 * "Casey - Twenty Years Later", by Clarence P. McDonald (1908), imagines a different redemption for Casey, long after his retirement. The poem, which was indeed published twenty years after the original, in the San Francisco Examiner, sees Casey attending a championship game between the fictional team of "Bugville" and an unspecified opponent. In a losing effort, Bugville's players are benched and injured throughout the game, until the captain is forced to call for a volunteer from the attendees. An aged Casey answers the call and fills the role surprisingly well, culminating with him hitting the game-winning home run, in his first swing at bat. He then reveals his identity to the joyous fans and players.
 * In response to the popularity of the 1946 Walt Disney animated adaptation, Disney made a sequel, Casey Bats Again (1954), in which Casey's nine daughters redeem his reputation.
 * In 1988, on the 100th anniversary of the poem, Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford constructed a fanciful story (later expanded to book form) for what happened before and after the famous ball game.

Parodies
Of the many parodies made of the poem, some of the notable ones include:
 * Mad magazine republished the original version of the poem in the 1950s with artwork by Jack Davis and no alterations to the text. Later lampoons in Mad included "'Cool' Casey at the Bat" (1960), an interpretation of the poem in beatnik style, with artwork by Don Martin although the ending still has Casey striking out; "Casey at the Dice" in 1969, about a professional gambler; "Casey at the Contract Talks" in 1974 (which ends with the owner telling Casey to "practice hard at home this year 'cause now you've struck out twice"); Casey at the Talks" in 1977, a "modern" version of the famed poem in which Mudville tries unsuccessfully to sign free agent Casey [the last line of which is "Mighty Casey has held out"]; "Baseball at the Bat", a satire on baseball itself, "Howard at the Mike", about Howard Cosell; "Casey at the Byte" (1985), a tale of a cocky young computer expert who accidentally erases the White House Budget Plan; "Clooney as the Bat", a mockery of George Clooney's role as Batman in Batman and Robin; and in 2006 as "Barry at the Bat", poking fun at Barry Bonds' alleged involvement in the BALCO scandal; in 2001, "Jordan at the Hoop", satirizing Michael Jordan's return to the NBA and his time with the Washington Wizards; and in 2012, "Casey at the Trial", satirizing Casey Anthony's acquittal in the case of the death of her daughter Caylee. It also includes a "Poetry Round Robin" where famous poems are rewritten in the style of the next poet in line, featured Casey at the Bat as written by Edgar Allan Poe.
 * Sportswriter Leonard Koppett claimed in a 1979 tongue-in-cheek article that the published poem omits 18 lines penned by Thayer, which changed the overall theme of the poem. Koppett added lines, claiming to have transcribed them off an old phonograph recording, that take the pitch count on Casey to full. Meanwhile, his uncle Arnold stirs up wagering action in the stands, before a wink passes between them. Casey throws the game.
 * Foster Brooks ("the Lovable Lush" from the Dean Martin Show) wrote "Riley on the Mound", which recounts the story from the pitcher's perspective.
 * In his 1987 Baseball Abstract, Bill James published "Casey Chases A Knuckler", which employed a five-line stanza and AAAAB structure, about former MLB knuckleball pitcher Charlie Hough
 * Author Phil Bolsta penned a parody entitled "Hrbek at the Bat" about Twins slugger Kent Hrbek which was published in 1987 in the Minneapolis Review of Baseball.
 * Radio performer Garrison Keillor's parodic version of the poem reimagines the game as a road game, instead of a home game, for the Mudville team. The same events occur with Casey striking out in the ninth inning as in the original poem, but with everything told from the perspective of other team.
 * An episode of Tiny Toon Adventures featured a short titled "Buster at the Bat", where Sylvester provides narration as Buster goes up to bat. The poem was parodied again for an episode of Animaniacs, this time with Wakko as the title character and Yakko narrating. Both versions end on a happier note with the main character hitting a home run.
 * In the fourth season of Garfield and Friends the episode entitled "Mind Over Matter/Orson at the Bat/Multiple Choice Cartoon" features Wade Duck narrating a parody of the poem as Orson Pig experiences it in a dream sequence.
 * In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius episode "Return of the Nanobots", Cindy's poem is identical to the ending of "Casey at the Bat" but replaces Mudville with Retroville and the last famed line with "cause Jimmy is an idiot!"
 * The New York Times published a parody by Hart Seely and Frank Cammuso in which the poem was narrated by Phil Rizzuto, a New York Yankees announcer who was known to veer off on tangents while calling the game. The poem was later published in Seely and Cammuso's book, 2007 Eleven And Other American Comedies.
 * David Pogue penned a parody version titled 'A Desktop Critic: Steven Saves the Mac' for Macworld magazine that ran in their October 1999 issue. It tells the story of Steve Jobs' triumphant return to a struggling Apple Inc and his early efforts to reverse the company's fortunes.
 * Dick Flavin wrote a version titled Teddy at the Bat, after Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams died in July 2002. Flavin performed the poem at Fenway Park during the night-long tribute to Williams done at the park later that month. The poem replaced Flynn and Blake with Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky, the batters who preceded Williams in the 1946 Red Sox lineup.
 * In 2000, Michael J. Farrand adapted the rhyming scheme, tone, and theme of the poem—while reversing the outcome—to create his poem "The Man Who Gave All the Dreamers in Baseball Land Bigger Dreams to Dream" about Kirk Gibson's home run off Dennis Eckersley in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. The poem appears at the Baseball Almanac.
 * Norman Jackman wrote a reversed-outcome version in 1951 called "Bobby Thomson at the Bat," which went unknown for over 60 years until the San Francisco Giants published it in 2012. It's about Thomson's famous home run in a 1951 Giant-Dodger playoff game. In 2016, the poem was accepted into the poetry files of the National Baseball Library and Archive of the Hall of Fame.
 * The New York Times best-selling author and poet laureate of The Ringer, Shea Serrano, penned a loving tribute to NBA player Gordon Hayward in the vein of "Casey at the Bat" in 2017.
 * Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster created "Shakespearean Baseball", featuring William Shakespeare-esque characters and dialogue in a skit based upon the poem. They performed the play on The Ed Sullivan Show and on Canadian TV numerous times between the 1950s and 1980s.
 * Baseball writer and Villanova professor Mitchell Nathanson updated the poem for contemporary times in 2019, publishing "Casey @ the Bat" in The Washington Post.

Translations
There are three known translations of the poem into a foreign language, one in French, written in 2007 by French Canadian linguist Paul Laurendeau, with the title Casey au bâton, and two in Hebrew. One by the sports journalist Menachem Less titled "התור של קייסי לחבוט" [Hator Shel Casey Lachbot], and the other more recent and more true to the original cadence and style by Jason H. Elbaum called קֵיסִי בַּמַּחְבֵּט [Casey BaMachbayt].

Names
Casey Stengel describes in his autobiography how his original nickname "K.C." (for his hometown, Kansas City, Missouri) evolved into "Casey". It was influenced not just by the name of the poem, which was widely popular in the 1910s, but also because he tended to strike out frequently in his early career so fans and writers started calling him "strikeout Casey".

Video games

 * The poem is referenced in the Super Nintendo Entertainment System game EarthBound, where a weapon is named the Casey Bat, which is the strongest weapon in the game, but will only hit 25% of the time.

Television

 * A recurring character in the Pokémon anime, a girl who is a very enthusiastic fan of baseball, is named "Casey" in the English version in reference to the poem.
 * Season 1, episode 35 of The Twilight Zone was named "The Mighty Casey" in reference to the poem's lead character, though the plot is unrelated.
 * The title of Season 3, episode 17 of The Simpsons, "Homer at the Bat", is a reference to the poem.
 * A third-season episode of Storm Chasers was titled "Sean Casey At Bat". The episode featured Casey (a chaser) intercepting a tornado for the first time in TIV 2.
 * In the show Friends, Ross clarifies how to spell "Casey" as in "at the bat" in the Season 2, episode 14 titled "The One with the Prom Video."
 * In the show Containment, Season 1, episode 6 takes its name, "He Stilled the Rising Tumult", from the poem.
 * In the show Black Mirror, Season 6, episode 3, "Beyond the Sea" quotes the poem.

Theme parks

 * Casey's Corner is a baseball-themed restaurant in Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, which serves primarily hotdogs. Pictures of Casey and the pitcher from the Disney animated adaptation are hanging on the walls, and a life-size statue of a baseball player identified as "Casey" stands just outside the restaurant. Additionally, the scoreboard in the restaurant shows that Mudville lost to the visitors by two runs.
 * A hot dog restaurant featuring the Disney character can be found at Disneyland Paris' Disneyland Park since its opening in 1992, under the name Casey's Corner.
 * A game called Casey at the Bat is in the Games of the Boardwalk at the Disneyland Resort's Disney California Adventure.

Theatre

 * In Cabaret (1993) Clifford Bradshaw recites the end of "Mighty Casey" to Sally Bowles.

Postage stamp
On July 11, 1996, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp depicting "Mighty Casey." The stamp was part of a set commemorating American folk heroes. Other stamps in the set depicted Paul Bunyan, John Henry, and Pecos Bill.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Casey at the Bat


text:
Talk:Country music

New Zealand omitted
How come New Zealand isn't mentioned at all in this article? I'm quite sure country music is popular there, given that it's an English speaking country. 93.143.225.229 (talk) 11:47, 22 July 2022 (UTC) some of these songs say fuck and ass and more

A lead rewrite is in order
Hi all,

I apologize for blowing in so boldly earlier this month with lead and infobox edits. These edits were reverted, which is why I'm here in the talk section. I am here to say that I cringe when I read this lead, and it seems to have turned even worse since I last touched it. It's unwieldy, unorganized, and overall a big stinking mess.

My concerns, as follows.

Unsourced lists of genres appear three times in the article introduction: once in the infobox and twice in the lead text. Clearly these are a longstanding problem, since they were brought up over four years ago and nothing has constructively changed since then. In my lead rewrite from ~the 5th of this month, my primary goal was getting rid of these lists. I highlight the following cases:
 * "church: Southern gospel, spirituals" (in infobox). "Church music" is an incredibly broad category, one that spans 2,000 years of Christian religious music. Therefore, I assert that references to "church music" are non-constructive bloat, and that the traditions it describes would be better served under a "traditional American" label or the like, alongside secular folk traditions.

 * ...and American folk music forms including Appalachian, Cajun, Creole... Creole music, which is African-American, is not clearly distinguished from predominately white Cajun and Appalachian music. This is but one example of the article's poor treatment of different ethnic musical traditions, and the (often blurry) divides between them.

 * "...and the cowboy Western music styles of Hawaiian, New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country." One editor who rolled my changes back claimed I had a prejudice against including country's "origins in Western music." I have no prejudice against this; my prejudice is against poorly written references to these origins. And of all my issues with this lead, this selection is the one that drives me furthest up the wall.

 * As with the rest of the lead, reference to Western music is followed by an indiscriminate vomit of genres. Contemporary styles of Western music, such as Red Dirt and Texas country, seem to be listed as antecedents of country as a whole. Hawaiian music, which is important in its own right as the originator of steel guitar, is tacked on as an afterthought. Additionally, Tejano and New Mexico music have not-insubstantial overlap with northern Mexican music; like with the already-mentioned poor treatment of African-American music, country's relationship to Mexican music should be more clearly highlighted.

 * This statement is followed by six consecutive citations, most of which should be placed in the middle, after commas, so the reader can tell where specific assertions originate from. Also, none of these are strictly "cowboy music."

 * It has historical roots in the indigenous music of North America, Celtic music, early music of the British Isles, jota, Irish traditional music, singing cowboys, corrido, ranchera, norteño, French folk music, African-American music, and other traditional folk music traditions. This is uncited and entirely superfluous. The information here, where substantiated, should be merged into a single, unified account of country's contributing musical traditions.

 * Most of the listed traditions are too tenuous to warrant inclusion: these include Native American music, Celtic, Irish, early British, and French folk music, and jota. Mexican (corrido, norteño, ranchera) and African-American music, on the other hand, deserve more attention than they currently receive. Also, "singing cowboys"? The last time I checked, those were from Hollywood movies. (This is even how the article body uses the term! Come on!) "Cowboy ballads" is a better, more accurate turn of phrase, if we're to include anything like it at all.

 * There is a similar issue in the "origins" section of the infobox, which lists some of the traditions from this list: either substantiate your claims, or don't add them at all.

I have additional concerns about the general article tone and content, but these are addressed well enough by other users (see, , and ). All in all, my main issue is the terrible lead and introduction. The rest can wait, it's contentious enough on its own.

If I have not been clear enough, I hope I can articulate myself better throughout the rest of this thread. Have a great day. 15:50, 30 December 2022 (UTC) Marisauna (talk) 15:50, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

 * As a scot I can blatantly hear the celtic folk influence in the early recordings. I'd find it weird not to be mentioned. It's cited in the CMA museum. But wouldn't be offended either by the way, it would just be a weird omission. All of those listed do not seem tenuous at all to me but accurately describe the root of the genre. 92.7.174.253 (talk) 00:36, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Country and Western Music
Country and Western mus ic are not the same. Country music is from Southeastern US, not Western US. Western Music is “cowboy music” from old Wild West US. Cowboy songs are story telling songs. A radio disc jockey worked at a radio station in the States somewhere and mixed genre of country music and western music songs played in the radio station and coined the term/genre of Country and Western Music. But the two genres are not the same. Country music is not also termed Country and Western. 2001:569:F95F:9400:70AF:AB64:657D:61A8 (talk) 04:34, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Country Music Edit
Unless I read over it. I would love to see someone who is more eloquent with words than I, to add Albert E Brumley to this. He might be gospel but his songs Ill Fly Away, Turn the Radio On etc.. are crossover songs that have had solid influence on country music and bluegrass. He might even be considered 1st generation country music if not early second generation. He wrote over 600 hundred songs and I heard (not fact) that Ill Fly Away has been translated into more languages than any other American Song 2605:46C0:1279:0:A180:AC91:A87B:F683 (talk) 02:51, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Restructuring of the "Criticism" segment
I redid the "Criticism" segment, renaming it to "Culture" and instead making it a segment within that section. I know that this is a sensitive topic, so to avoid any edit wars, I think we should all discuss the topic here. Sprucecopse (talk) 21:57, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Millions
Millions on millions on millions — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6C5E:4AF0:B210:D83D:9D0:1881:A9F9 (talk) 21:30, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: English Composition 1102
— Assignment last updated by MatthewT04 (talk) 04:16, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Overstatement
Removing or belittling Appalachian influence within the article must be corrected 2603:6011:F400:DAC:4492:FE1D:3BB1:95A6 (talk) 14:36, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Country music