Poet's Corner: Charles Baudelaire
Jun. 13th, 2020 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stonepicnicking_okapiI finished reading Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal and have picked out six favourites, which I will post in two separate entries. As far as I can tell, and I am no scholar, Baudelaire was banned for writing poems about lesbians, sex, and vampires. So, in other words, win, win, win! All of these that I am posting are English translations by Richard Howard. I have included a link to the original French in the title. Baudelaire was a rather gloomy poet, as well as a good one, and I like that. And he rhymed! In French, at least.
Epigraph for a Banned Book by Charles Baudelaire [translator: Richard Howard]
Gentle reader, being - as you are -
a cautious man of uncorrupted tastes,
lay aside this disobliging work,
as orgiastic as it is abject.
Unless you’ve graduated from the school
of Satan (devil of a pedagogue!)
the poems will be Greek to you, or else
you’ll set me down for one more raving fool.
If, however, your impassive eye
can plunge into the chasms on each page,
read on, my friend: you’ll learn to love me yet.
Inquiring spirit, fellow-sufferer
in search, even here, of your own Paradise,
pity me … If not, to Hell with you!
Spleen (I) by Charles Baudelaire [translator: Richard Howard]
(I)
February, peeved at Paris, pours
a gloomy torrent on the pale lessees
of the graveyard next door and a mortal chill
on tenants of the foggy suburbs too.
The tiles afford no comfort to my cat
that cannot keep its mangy body still;
the soul of some old poet haunts the drains
and howls as if a ghost could hate the cold.
A churchbell grieves, a log in the fireplace smokes
and hums falsetto to the clock's catarrh,
while in a filthy reeking deck of cards
inherited from a dropsical old maid,
the dapper Knave of Hearts and the Queen of Spades
grimly disinter their love affairs.
The Clock by Charles Baudelaire [translator: Richard Howard]
Impassive god! whose minatory hands
repeat their sinister and single charge:
Remember! Pain is the unfailing bow,
as arrow after arrow find your heart.
Pleasure fades and dances out of sight -
one pirouette, the theater goes dark;
each instant snatches from you what you had,
the crumb of happiness within your grasp.
Thirty-sex hundred times in every hour
the Second whispers: Remember! and Now replies
in its maddening mosquito hum: I am Past,
who passing lit and sucked your life and left!
Remember! Souviens-toi! Esto memor!
(My metal throat is polyglot.) The ore
of mortal minutes crumbles, unrefined,
from which your golden nuggets must be panned.
Remember! Time, that tireless gambler, wins
one every turn of the wheel: that is the law.
The daylight fades … Remember! Night come on:
the pit is thirst and the sands run out …
Soon it will sound, the tocsin of your Fate -
from noble Virtue, your still-virgin bride,
or from Repentance, last resort … from all
the message comes: ‘Too late, old coward! Die!’
Epigraph for a Banned Book by Charles Baudelaire [translator: Richard Howard]
Gentle reader, being - as you are -
a cautious man of uncorrupted tastes,
lay aside this disobliging work,
as orgiastic as it is abject.
Unless you’ve graduated from the school
of Satan (devil of a pedagogue!)
the poems will be Greek to you, or else
you’ll set me down for one more raving fool.
If, however, your impassive eye
can plunge into the chasms on each page,
read on, my friend: you’ll learn to love me yet.
Inquiring spirit, fellow-sufferer
in search, even here, of your own Paradise,
pity me … If not, to Hell with you!
Spleen (I) by Charles Baudelaire [translator: Richard Howard]
(I)
February, peeved at Paris, pours
a gloomy torrent on the pale lessees
of the graveyard next door and a mortal chill
on tenants of the foggy suburbs too.
The tiles afford no comfort to my cat
that cannot keep its mangy body still;
the soul of some old poet haunts the drains
and howls as if a ghost could hate the cold.
A churchbell grieves, a log in the fireplace smokes
and hums falsetto to the clock's catarrh,
while in a filthy reeking deck of cards
inherited from a dropsical old maid,
the dapper Knave of Hearts and the Queen of Spades
grimly disinter their love affairs.
The Clock by Charles Baudelaire [translator: Richard Howard]
Impassive god! whose minatory hands
repeat their sinister and single charge:
Remember! Pain is the unfailing bow,
as arrow after arrow find your heart.
Pleasure fades and dances out of sight -
one pirouette, the theater goes dark;
each instant snatches from you what you had,
the crumb of happiness within your grasp.
Thirty-sex hundred times in every hour
the Second whispers: Remember! and Now replies
in its maddening mosquito hum: I am Past,
who passing lit and sucked your life and left!
Remember! Souviens-toi! Esto memor!
(My metal throat is polyglot.) The ore
of mortal minutes crumbles, unrefined,
from which your golden nuggets must be panned.
Remember! Time, that tireless gambler, wins
one every turn of the wheel: that is the law.
The daylight fades … Remember! Night come on:
the pit is thirst and the sands run out …
Soon it will sound, the tocsin of your Fate -
from noble Virtue, your still-virgin bride,
or from Repentance, last resort … from all
the message comes: ‘Too late, old coward! Die!’
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Date: 2020-06-14 03:18 pm (UTC)