in vaporous shrouds, in sepulchres of rain. Let’s try to understand why Charles Baudelaire chose to become a translator. Rain when will you gust?’, Unfortunate, strange, fatal symbol, it seems, I see you, still: sometimes, like Ovid’s true, man transformed, his head, on a convulsive neck, strained. the stars in their sweet dress, go treading after you, do you see the lovers, in their bed’s happiness. As I leaned towards you, queen of adored ones. HENNEQUET Claire, “Baudelaire traducteur de Poe” (2005) URL: http://baudelaire-traducteur-de-poe.blogsport.com/ Page consulted on 02/20/2017. Dreams! Note: Trismegistes. and casts her eyes over snow-white bowers. - And yet you too will resemble that ordure. the silence, the fearful compelling spaces... With his knowing hand, in my dark, God traces. and its black inscription written in fire. It’s now that the pains of the sick increase! the buildings all seemed heightened, cold. In the hot blue lands where God gave you your nature. from the sleepwalker on the sky-scraper’s cliff. His translation is very different from the original work. O you, the most knowing, and loveliest of Angels. as it grazes the slope, of a distant dell. preaching love, while your sewers run with blood. and the heart that’s once transfixed, seduced by pain. takes that pale tear in the hollow of his palm. The curtain had risen, and I was still waiting. where regret, smiling, surges from the watery deeps. One dawn, at the hour when labour wakes, there, under the cold, clear sky, or, when the road-menders set free. He laid the groundwork so the readers will be ready to receive his own vision of poetry and beauty. where each actor treads a blood-drenched stage: Freethinkers’ fear, the hermit sets his hope on: the Sky! Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses! – and unhealthy evenings, then, feverish nights. those spectres, those grimaces, the cries. we’ve worked!’ – It refreshes, this evening hour. Like an old tramp, trudging through the mire. See, where the lost years. when she tore her dress, on the briars, in her flight. and my breast, where each man has bruised his soul. when twisted, stirred by some unknown hurt. ....and of many more! what fills limpid space, that lucid fire. – her feet weighed down by premature ennui. was tearing itself away from the world I saw. the last heap of chips in the gambler’s grasp. worthy of gracing the manors of olden days. In 1895, Stéphane Mallarmé published "Le Tombeau de Charles Baudelaire", a sonnet in Baudelaire's memory. National Gallery of Art, Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2001-2010 All Rights Reserved. If I could only have one English-language translation of Baudelaire in my library, this would be a good first choice. He had an unrivaled sense of his own age, just as Robert Lowell, one of his translators, had of ours. it would willingly send this world to hell. travel, following the rhythm of the seas. Take flight! Valery replied with a statement that was reproduced on the dust jacket in French in his handwriting with the English beneath. lightening the tedium of our prison tales. She wrote her master’s thesis on the translations Baudelaire made of Poe and how they influenced his work as a poet. See the article in its original context from. The wings had been made for the two of them by his father Daedalus, who buried him on the island (See Ovid, Metamorphoses VIII 195). as the suns that are young again climb in the sky. And others, whose throats love scapularies. Translation was the only way to reach this goal, the only way to make it accessible to a public mostly unable to read in English. Those huge ships they carry charged with riches, from which rise monotonous sailors chants, those are my thoughts that sleep or glide over your breast. building a scaffold makes no duller echoes. lips without blood, jaws without the rest. Then his double: beard, eyes, rags, stick, back. blend the sweats of joy with the tears of torment. the poet bruising his forehead on his troubles. and her eye surrounds us in robes of infinity. Often, for their amusement, bored sailors, take albatrosses, vast sea-birds, that sleep. Helped by his status as a reputed critic, he gave himself authority. the rivers of smoke climbing the firmament. and carving the green bark of young trees. no trait distinguished his centenarian twin: they marched in step, two ghosts of the Baroque. matured by your sonnets, prepared by your stanzas. The Carrousel is a bridge over the Seine in Paris, recent at the time of the poem. The sunsets that colour the dining-room, the salon, so richly, are softened by fine fabrics, or those high latticed windows divided in sections by leading. Such you’ll become, o queen of grace. in eyes where for years our greedy eyes burrowed? The women of pleasure, with their bleary eyes. but, angel, all I ask of you is your prayers. I though, have found my black tulip, my blue dahlia! of the vast procuress, who can always make things fresh. with sobs to soothe the spoiled child’s fear. When he complained that ''I am dangerous to myself,'' he anticipated Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Theodore Roethke, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. have pure mirrors that magnify everything’s beauty: my eyes, my huge eyes, bright with eternity. In this vast landscape where chill south winds play. Baudelaire developed a true empathy toward Poe. where, buried, the race of metals slumbers. his gaze, bewitched, discovering Capua’s fire. Hell, it’s a rock!’ it cries. On those hills where the wind effaces all signs. the walls high, blackened, filled with dread, with the scorching heat, or when autumn haze, lit the sky with its one monotonous blaze. where what one loves is worthy of being loved. and on the balcony, veiled, rose-coloured, misted. One would say your gaze was a misted screen: your strange eyes (are they blue, grey or green? from which one can see, the city, complete. where the passer-by, at dawn, meets the spectre! tell us, lovely witch, oh, tell us, if you know, tell the one in agony the wolf’s already scented, tell the shattered soldier! to contemplate my heart, and body, without disgust! the primitive creature’s absolute candour. Baudelaire used translation to promote his own career as a poet and as a critic. a cock-crow far away broke through the fog: a sea of mist bathed the buildings, dying men, in the depths of the workhouse, groaned again. as if by a cruel Angel that whips the sun! the cult of the wound, adoration of rags.