stonepicnicking_okapi

Two more poems by Baudelaire. I can't find a cut-and-pasteable version of "Jewels," which is another one I liked.

The Voice by Charles Baudelaire [translator: Richard Howard]

Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where
Latin ashes and the dust of Greece
mingled with novels, history, and verse
in one dark Babel. I was folio-high
when I first heard the voices. 'All the world,'
said one, insidious but sure, 'is cake -
let me make you an appetite to match,
and then your happiness need have no end.'
And the other: 'Come, O come with me in dreams
beyond the possible, beyond the known!'
That second voice sang like the wind in the reeds,
a wandering phantom out of nowhere, sweet
to hear yet somehow horrifying too.
'Now and forever!' I answered, whereupon
my wound was with me - ever since, my Fate:
behind the scenes, the frivolous decors
of all existence, deep in the abyss,
I see distinctly other, brighter worlds;
yet victimized by what I know I see,
I sense the serpent coiling at my heels;
and therefore, like the prophets, form that hour
I've loved the wilderness, I've loved the sea;
no ordinary sadness touches me
though I find savor in the bitterest wine;
how many truths I trade away for lies,
and musing on heaven, stumble over trash...
Even so, the voice consoles me: 'Keep your dreams,
the wise have none so lovely as the mad.'

( Metamorphoses of the Vampire )

I had a visceral reaction of joy and relief when I read Richard Howard's translation of Bauldelaire's poem about 10 days ago. I applaud everyone who is finding silver linings and thinking positive and looking for (and discovering) happies in these strange and troubling times. I am doing a bit of that myself. But I was feeling a great deal of angst, too, not just at the state of the world and my household but at all the exhortations to find the good in what's going on.

I am a dark poet (at times) and a dark person (at times) and I find a lot of comfort in Baudelaire's darkness. I mean, one only need know a little of his life (or look at his portrait) to know the fellow wasn't filling up gratitude journals or looking for happies.

And so it seems fitting (to me, for me) to begin this month of poetry on a dark note. And Richard Howard is, in his own words, a poet translating a poet, and I find his rendering of Bauldelaire very beautiful (even though it doesn't rhyme!)

And sometimes life is 'squeezing the hardest orange harder yet.' Baudelaire knew that, and I know it, too.

To the Reader by Charles Baudelaire [trans. Richard Howard]


Our sins are stubborn, our contrition lame;
we want our scruples to be worth our while—
how cheerfully we crawl back to the mire:
a few cheap tears will wash our stains away!

Satan Trismegistus subtly rocks
our ravished spirits on his wicked bed
until the precious metal of our will
is leached out by this cunning alchemist:

the Devil’s hand directs our every move—
the things we loathed become the things we love;
day by day we drop through stinking shades
quite undeterred on our descent to Hell.

Like a poor profligate who sucks and bites
the withered breast of some well-seasoned trull,
we snatch in passing at clandestine joys
and squeeze the oldest orange harder yet.

( The rest )