`
The
Seven Old Man
after Baudelaire
To
Victor Hugo
Teeming
city, city of dreams,
Where
ghosts in plain view can assail the pedestrian!
Mysteries,
everywhere, pour out like sap
Into
the powerful colossus of the narrow canal.
One
morning, and so on the melancholy street
The
houses, which the mist had aligned with in height,
Simulating
the two banks of a narrow river,
And
which, the décor resembling the soul of an actor,
A
dirty, jaundiced fog inundates the space;
I
follow, my nerves stiffening like a hero’s
In
discussion with my already wearied soul;
The
whole district is shaken by heavy loads.
Suddenly,
an old man in rags
The
colour of the mercurial sky,
And
whose aspect would make any proffered alms cry,
Without
any hint of malice which glimmers in his eye.
Appears
to me. You would have thought that his pupils
Had
been dipped in bile; his look was sharpening
The
already frosty air, and his long pointy beard, rigid
Like
a dagger, was similar to that of Judas.
As
for his spine, it was not hunched but more broken
And
with his right leg formed a perfectly straight right angle,
As
straight as a stick, complementary to his mind,
And
it gave to his whole demeanour something out of step.
From
an infirm quadruped to an old Jew with three legs,
Deep
in the mud and the snow they were penetrating,
As
if walking over the dead beneath their feet,
And
hostile to the universe rather than indifferent.
All
of the nomenclature follows them; beard, eyes, hunch back, staff
And
rags; no singular distinguishing trait alone,
But
from the same hell of origin alone they originate,
This
centenary twin with the baroque aspect, marching aimlessly.
What
infamous plot is their goal,
Or
which awful accident humiliates me so?
For
I count several now, minute after countless minute,
This
sinister old man who keeps multiplying…!
And
who is one and the same that laughs at my unease,
And
who is not seized with a fraternal shiver,
Knowing
well that despite his apparent decrepitude
These
seven monsters have an eternal quality about them.
Would that I could without dying contemplate
an eight;
Inexorably
fatal and ironic,
Repulsive
Phoenix, father and son of himself –
But
I turn my back on this infernal cortege.
Exasperated
like a drunk that sees double,
I
return home closing the door behind me, disgusted,
Sick
and afraid, spirit in a fever, deeply troubled
And
wounded also by the mystery of the absurdity of it all.
Vainly
my reason wishes to take to its pulpit;
But
the storm all around unsettles its efforts,
And
so my soul dances, and dances, dances like an old Guinness barge,
Rudderless and
wayward upon the monstrous sea !
I must say, the antisemitic nature of the poem
threw me when I was translating this piece, asI had not noticed it before; or perhaps,
rather, I had chosen to ignore it! But this is what is soimportant about translation, as when you
are translating a text like Les Fleurs du Mal by apoet like Charles Baudelaire, a poet one
must remember who has had nothing less than a Copernican effect on the whole way in
which we see the world, you must expect the moststrange things, rather like as you would
expect translating, or so I would imagine, a poet of a similar stature, so a poet such as
Shakespeare or Dante. I myself would rank Baudelaire in the third position, with Dante on top, and
the great Bard himself in numero duo. But, I realise of course that this is totally a
subjective point of view, one that I have cultivated over years and years of practice.
As an Irishman, antisemitism, or religious
intolerance of any kind, I should point out, I find tobe a particularly unsettling form of
prejudice as growing up in the Republic of Ireland during the seventies and eighties one saw
everyday printed in the newspapers and broadcast on the television and radio the awful often
violent, deadly violent, nature that such prejudice oftentakes. Indeed, I was so traumatised by
witnessing such violence everyday that I have yet to visit Belfast, a city where I have had
three collections of poetry published! I think Irish people in general would have notions like
mine. There is a deep understanding among us, particularly with people of my own
generation (I was born in 1967), that religious intolerance of any kind is despicable, as it can only
lead to violence and hatred. So, when I come across antisemitic writings by someone as
exceptionally gifted as a poet like Baudelaire, or LouisFerdinand Céline for that matter, I tend
to take a step back as I realise that I am now seeingthe man, and by this I mean his weakness,
and not the artist. What do I mean by thisstatement? Even as I have written this, I
realise how quintessentially contemporary this whole issue is, just one reason more why
Baudelaire is so relevant to people today!
Often when I see debates of this kind, and
they happen more and more these days, I often find myself referencing Caravaggio.
Caravaggio, as well as being an extraordinary painter who revolutionized not only painting but,
again like Baudelaire, also influenced how we actually perceive the world. His celebrated
Chiarascuro technique is analogous with how we see the world; contrasted in light and
darkness, good and evil. And so, when someone, like the other day, asks me whether I can
distinguish between the artist and the man, someone was making this remark in relation to Céline’s
antisemitism, I tend to dismiss the argument as being infantile, as people are typically
non-binary. What we used to call Grey! We are far more complex than to be described in such
narrowly defining terms, one only has to look to the whole gender debate for further proof of
this. And yet, when I translated the above poem,which is clearly antisemitic, I did so
with some foreboding. As I am not in favour of antisemitism, and would be at pains now to
distinguish the term antisemitism as opposed to antizionist, particularly in the context
of today ( 2026) when Israel, which is being led by Benjamin Netanyahu, is conducting a
genocidal war against the people of Palestine and Lebanon and also Iran, in cahoots with the
USA should add, while many countries, though not all, idly stand by. I am glad to see that my own
government have taken a stand, along with Spain and have chosen to boycott importing products
from Israel as indeed was done in the eighties against the apartheid regime in South
Africa when Nelson Mandela was still in prison. I remember it well.
You see, because of the historic context
in which I am now reading this poem, which is historically of course a context that is
totally unlike that of Baudelaire’s or even Céline’s time, it still allows me to read into it a
meaning that is specific to me, in other words one that I can live with; one that is making the
distinction between antizionist, as in the meaning of the current genocidal context, as opposed to
antisemitic. You see, I actually love Jewish culture and writers. My library is full of
books written by great Jewish writers. Only just recently I bought books by the Jewish
novelist Paul Cohen, the political scientist John Mearsheimer and the Nobel Prize winning
physicist Roger Penrose. I regularly refer to theworks of Walter Benjamin, particularly in
relation to Baudelaire, and Hannah Arendt. Kafka, Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig are also novelists
that interest me, so, you see, I have been deeply, profoundly influenced by Jewish
writers and thinkers, and so have come by association to love also the history and
culture of European jews particularly. So, when I read a poem like this above, and particularly
by a poet like Baudelaire who is one of my all time favourite poets, I am not going to simply
cancel him. Are you nuts! No, I am simply going to take it on board that he was a human,
and so – terribly flawed, like most of us. And, this weakness that I have discovered in him is
merely going to make me love and understand him more. Not less.
Peter Sean O’Neill
Spring, 2026
