Jean-Paul Avice recital of poems from Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire

Jean-Paul Avice is a profoundly knowledgeable specialist of Charles Baudelaire and Yves Bonnefoy, and he has gained considerable acclaim for his recitals – by heart – of Baudelaire’s poems. On the invitation of Professor Robert Barsky and the Vanderbilt librarian Yvonne Boyer, Jean-Paul traveled to Vanderbilt in 2013 where he presented a talk on “Baudelaire de L’Albatros au Cygne, L’invention des tableaux parisiens”, and delighted Vanderbilt students at West House with recitals of Baudelaire’s poetry. Vanderbilt University continues to resonate with the echo of Jean-Paul’s remarkable voice! In the spring of 2023, Rémi Labrusse from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris and Laurence Campa from l’Université de Paris Nanterre, contacted Barsky with a project of recording Jean-Paul reciting 25 of Baudelaire’s poems. This extraordinary effort, recorded here with such precision thanks to Thomas Debeugny (sound engineer) of the CRAL Centre de recherche sur les arts et le langage, has provided the Bandy Center with a remarkable collection of recitals that bring Baudelaire’s works to life. As Labrusse wrote in his description of the project, “aucune autre lecture n’est comparable” (no other reader can compare). We offer you this collection of exceptional readings as part of our effort to bring the Bandy Center to the world, and to entice the world to come research here, at Vanderbilt University.