New York might get a bad rap for sky-high rents, but at least it isn’t Antwerp. Antwerp in the 1860’s, that is. A vitriolic diatribe written by Charles Baudelaire against the defenseless little country of Belgium appears in the latest issue of the Pushcart Prize-hoarding magazine Conjunctions. According to Baudelaire, the 19th century poet and essayist, low rents were the only things the “ragamuffin” of a state had going for it in the mid-1800’s.

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