The
Crown of Pain
Some
initial Difficulties One Encounters
When
Translating Baudelaire
Since 1909, when the first translation into English
appeared by Cyril Scott, Les Fleurs du Mal by Baudelaire has
been translated as The Flowers of Evil, and yet, while I was translating the text over a period of thirteen years,
2013-2026, the overwhelming feeling that I got from my reading of the book was not evil,
but pain. “Ca fait mal!” you will hear French people say, every day, and when you hear them
saying this phrase, it is not evil that they mean but pain. “That hurts!” they are
saying. “Ca fait Mal!” “It Hurts!” So, why then did Cyril Scott translate mal as evil in
the context of Les Fleurs du Mal and so many subsequent translators since? This is one
of the fundamental things you have to ask yourself when you are approaching a translation
yourself, as the title is the most important job that you will do, and particularly with
a book like Les Fleurs du Mal by Baudelaire.
Well, the answer to that question lies in the historic
context of the publication of the book, so Cyril Scott’s translation appeared in 1909. What was
the literary context of the time, in relation to Baudelaire I mean? This is what we will
now examine, as it is only by doing so that we will come close to understanding the origin of
the title into English The Flowers of Evil. Evil, that is a
very charged word in the English language, and it means something different to every generation. For example, when we
speak of evil today, and people do, it usually evokes Hannah Arendt and Eichmann in
Jerusalem, A Report on the Banality of Evil ( 1963). This is still the context that most modern
readers think about when they hear the word today, Arendt’s bureaucratic nightmare which
results in the holocaust of millions and all orchestrated by some little bespectacled figure
sitting behind a glass screen. This is a very different image of evil to what the connotations of
the word meant at fin de siècle London and Paris. So, what visions the word conjure up back
then?
III
Thou
sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,
Secrets
and sorrows unbeheld of us;
Fierce
loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous,
Bare
to thy subtler eye, but for none other
Blowing
by night in some unbreathed-in-clime;
The
hidden harvest of luxurious time,
Sin
without shape, and pleasure without speech;
And
where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep
Make
the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep;
And
with each face thou sawest the shadow on each,
Seeing
as men sow men reap.
The above verse is taken from Algernon Charles
Swinburn’s ( 1837-1909) elegy Ave Alque Vale which the poet
dedicated to Baudelaire appearing in Swinburn’s most popular and scandalous book Poems and Songs ( 1866), just a
year before Baudelaire died. It was Swinburn who had introduced the British reading public
to the work of Baudelaire in an article first published in The Spectator
in September, 1862. The first edition of Les Fleurs du Mal published by
Auguste Poulet- Malassis in June of that year, eleven hundred copies printed (1857) and within a month of their publication
the authorities were condemning the book, and six of the poems were subsequently banned
that August granting Les Fleurs du Mal an immediate
scandal which of course was the best thing that could ever have happened to the author, as he was now an instant talking point,
yet much to his apparent distress. So, by the time Swinburn’s article appears in The
Spectator, the second edition ( 1861) has already been placed upon the shelves.
As you can see from Swinburn’s verse above, the
language is immediately recognisable as being quintessentially Victorian.
Thou
sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,
Secrets
and sorrows unbeheld of us;
The Victorian age was a period, rather like our own
today, of sweeping changes. Particularly in Britain, the industrial revolution was in full
tilt, the empire was at its peak. Just as Baudelaire’s beloved medieval Lutece was being thorn
down to be replaced by Hausmann’s Boulevards, the industrialisation that was manifesting
itself all around the city of London was having an equal impact on poets and writers and
artists there. One only had to think of the novels of Charles Dickens ( 1812-1870), his famous
novel depicting such advancing social change A Tale of Two Cities ( 1859), but also
later writers from Ireland such as Oscar Wilde (1854- 1900) who was profoundly influenced by poets
like Baudelaire and also another former Trinity scholar Bram Stoker ( 1847-1912) whose novel Dracula
( 1897) was to have such a success, and the former’s novel The Picture of
Dorian Gray ( 1890) both being considered two of the finest examples of Gothic fiction and which
was being produced at the time.
The Victorian Age was one of many revivals, Gothic
being just one of them. The poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti ( 1828-1882) had founded the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood ( 1848) which was to have had such an influence on poets like
Swinburn, the two knew each other quite well. Indeed, Rossetti was to champion Dante as
Swinburn would champion Baudelaire, Rossetti’s translation of Dante’s Vita nuova (
1861) appearing right around the same time as Swinburn was writing about Baudelaire. This is the
climate that Swinburn is in, and indeed it is from out of such a heady culture of influences -
Gothic, Pre-Raphaelite that Baudelaire’s first translator comes from. Cyril Scott ( 1879 –
1931) was born into this world, and although principally a composer of some renown, he was also a
poet and something of an occultist, but most importantly for our present work he also
befriended a the French poet Charles Bonnier ( 1863 – 1926) who studied under the French linguist
Ferdinand Saussure and who introduced Scott to the works of Baudelaire and other French
poets while he was a professor at the University of Liverpool.
I think the Gothic revival that was going on in
England at the time must have been very influential on Scott, but there is also the figure of
Arthur Symons ( 1865-1945) who is associated with the decadent movement and the famous Yellow
Book which published the illustrations and art work of Audrey Beardsley ( 1872
– 1898) who was to illustrate Wilde’s play Salomé ( 1893) written in French by Wilde
and published in France too before being translated into English. It was Arthur Symons,
apparently, who was to encourage Cyril Scott to translate Baudelaire and whose Flowers of Evil was
to be published in 1909. Scott was a young man of thirty at the time. I find this
quotation by his biographer to be most revealing.
Even
Baudelaire whom he translated as a tour de force
(
inspired to be so by the encouragement of Arthur Symons)
only
appealed to him in a very limited degree; for though
he
went through what is called a decadent phase, he confessed
he
only did so half-heartedly and with no conviction.
I want to present a translation by Scott of Baudelaire
now before going any further, and the poem that I have chosen, or rather the translation
that I have decided to present is one of the most famous sonnets in the French language, and which
I personally consider to be the most important sonnet of the 19th century. But
the reason why I have picked this particular sonnet, or translation by Scott is because I want to focus now
on two things which I believe are fundamental when translating the poetry of Baudelaire.
The first thing is to do with rhyme, and the second is to do with literal translation. But
first, here are the first two verses of poem XCIII A UNE PASSANTE.
A
Une Passante
La
rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait.
Longue,
mince, en grand deuil, douleur majesteuse,
Une
femme passa, d’une main fastueuse
Soulevant,
balançant le festoon et l’ourlet;
Agile
et noble, avec sa jambe de statue.
Moi,
je bouvais, crispé comme un extravagant,
Dans
son œil, ciel livide oû germe l’ouragan,
La
douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui tue.
Now, here is the translation into English by Cyril
Scott which was to appear in the very first translation into English of The Flowers of Evil
( 1909).
To
a Passer-by
Around
me thundered the deafening noise of the street,
In
mourning apparel, portraying majestic distress,
With
queenly fingers, just lifting the hem of her dress,
A
stately woman passed with hurrying feet.
Agile
and noble, with limbs of perfect poise,
Ah,
how I drank, thrilled through like a Being insane,
In
her look, a dark sky, from whence springs forth the hurricane,
There
lay but the sweetness of her charms, and the joy that destroys.
The first thing that needs to be pointed out is the
ABBA ABBA rhyming scheme, as it Predetermines everything that has come to pass; street
in the first line rhymes with feet in the last line of the first verse, and distress in the
second rhymes with dress in the last word of the third! All has been abandoned for the sake of these
rhymes. Of course, the second verse follows the exact same rhyming scheme. I should say a
word at this point on the Rhyming Club, which still exits apparently, having been founded by
William Butler Yeats ( 1890) no less.
Before I go into the whole debate about rhyming or
not, ( to rhyme or not to rhyme, that is the question when it comes to Baudelaire, it seems to
me?) I want to first present my own, non-rhyming translation of the same tow opening
stanzas of A Une Passante before commenting on them and comparing them to those of
Scott, and then I will show why I think this is still a very problematic issue in the whole
subject of the public’s perception of Baudelaire and his poetry by looking at some near
contemporary translations which continue to use rhyming schemes much to the detriment of
Baudelaire, at least such is my opinion.
To
a Woman Passing
The deafening street about you screams.
Majestic suffering, a great dual;
Tall and slim, a woman passes with a fastidious
hand,
Balancing and raising it with the hem of her skirt.
Agile and noble, and with statuesque limb.
Overcome
like some fool, you drink her in.
In her eye exists a livid storm where hurricanes
originate;
The gentleness which fascinates, the pleasure which
kills.
The first
thing to note is the title, A Une Passante – the French article une is
in the feminine case as
is the corresponding noun passante, the male form is signalled without
the e (Un
passant-
masculine, une passante feminine). So ,by giving the title To a
Passer-by we are
already missing a very important distinction in the subject of the poem, as the
poem is about
a Woman passing. I have left out the preposition as it just appears to be
unnecessary. This may
appear to be grammatical pedantry, I don’t think so. I think it is pretty
fundamental!
I wish to
turn to the magnificent opening line in French now. ‘La rue assourdissante
autour de moi
hurlait.’ There is an astonishing onomatope going on in this line which mimics
the sound of a
screaming carriage passing by on the street. It is very violent. But instead of
this very brutal
violence of passing traffic, which is the effect that Baudelaire is trying to
get across, the
rhymer is merely thinking about his rhyme.
Around
me thundered the deafening noise of the street,
A
stately woman passed with hurrying feet.
Thus
foregoing all of the drama of the poem, and what we are left is a very dainty
rhyme, the complete
opposite of the effect that Baudelaire conveys in the French original. Brooding violence
is one of the singular hallmarks of Les Fleurs du Mal, not in any
Satanic sense, but just on a
purely sensory level; its visceral and
its so important this very nuance to this poem as the
violence of the street is animating also the violence of the encounter; for the
woman who is
passing is not some dainty little lady, no, she is the ideal incarnate of the
very first section
of the collection Spleen et idéal – the amazon incarnate! This is the
genius of Baudelaire’s
poem, as in one sublime aphorism he manages, rather like Heraclitus himself, to
contain a whole philosophy in one line, one line which Cyril Scott absolutely
butchers.
Dans
son œil, ciel livide oû germe l’ouragan,
La douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui
tue.
In
her look, a dark sky, from whence springs forth the hurricane,
There lay but the sweetness of her charms,
and the joy that destroys.
In her eye exists a livid storm where hurricanes
originate;
The gentleness which fascinates, the pleasure which
kills.
This is
why translations of Baudelaire, of all canonical works, need to be constantly
updated. But the
problem, rather than being resolved, it seems to me, is sometimes merely echoed
in a kind of
insane game of Chinese whispers! Let me illustrate what I mean by exploring the work of a
much more contemporary poet than Scott and yet one who seems to be following exactly
the same tradition as him. I am speaking of none other than Derek Mahon.
*
I remember sitting in The Gladstone Inn in my
hometown of Skerries in the early summer of 2015. Lapwing in Belfast had just published a
collection of my first transversions from Baudelaire and I had a roomful of fellow poets, some
of whom I really admired, sitting in the audience waiting for me to start reciting some of
my translations. There was even a poet over from Belgium, sadly deceased now, Jean-Claude
Crommelynck ( dit CeeJay), who read the original poems by Baudelaire in French. He was a
rather large garrulous figure and the locals, typically fishermen, looked in on us with some
amusement and curiosity. While I sat there admiring CeeJay’s delivery, it suddenly
dawned on me that I would have to read my transversions aloud and I had not even given any
real thought as yet to their delivery. Well, as my transversions were mainly without rhyme, I
didn’t have too long to find a suitably corresponding figure in English literature
and that was John Milton. Imagine that you are reading Milton aloud in English to them,
I thought. And I would say the same here. Here is a verse translated by Nathan Brown (
Verso, 2025) in which he guards the rhyme.
I
practice my fantastic fencing as I go,
Sniffing
very corner for the chance of rhyme,
Stumbling
over words like paving stones,
Bumping
into lines dreamed of long ago.[i]
This is the second verse from the second poem in on
section two, poem LXXXVIII LE SOLEIL/ THE SUN.
Je
vais m’exercer seul à ma fantasque escrime,
Flairant
dans tous les coins les hazards de la rime,
Trébuchant
sur les mots comme sur les pavés,
Heurtant
parfois des vers depuis longtemps rêvés.
French is a romance language where every vowel sound
is emphasised giving it its very wonderful serpentine nature, rolling up and down upon
the tongue, rhyming effortlessly. English, in stark contrast, is a Germanic language
where the stress is placed on the content words, as I keep insisting with my third year
undergraduate Business English students who mainly hail from France.
There,
I exercise alone my fantastic duel,
Teasing
out every possible hazardous off-rhyme,
Stumbling
upon the words like upon cobble stones,
Falling
upon verse a long time dreamed of before.
The above translation is my own, without the atrocious
one two one two rhyme which I find to be a mere distraction. Admittedly, this is all a
question of taste, which, at the end of the day, is completely subjective. However, if you, like
me, find the rhyming translations which for the large part exist in English not to your
liking, perhaps you may appreciate my translations and transversions which contain a few
rhymes which generally when they did appear appeared by their own volition, as opposed to
being forced. I can’t help but feel the rather forced feeling of the rhyming versions in
English.
Here is another rhyming version, this time of the
celebrated poem Le Cynge / The Swan and this translation is made by Aaron Poochigian [ii] , once again the
translator has stuck with the self-same title The Flowers of Evil which shows
a certain conformity to the status quo, this is something extremely important. As The Crown of Pain
is distinctive not only by the fact that it is a non-rhyming version, but also it does not
follow the typical reading of Baudelaire, the one that we have all become so familiar with; the poet
of ‘Evil!’ I find this all so tedious at this stage, and it really offering the reader the
self -same standard variation of the poems by Baudelaire. Here is the opening verse of
Poochigian’s version of The Swan.
My
thoughts turn to you, Andromache –
that
little stream, the mournful looking glass
that
caught your whole widowhood’s majesty,
the
tears you shed to feed the ‘Simoïs’.
that
quickened in my fecund recollection,
as
I walked through the modern Carrousel
the
old Paris is gone. A town’s complexion,
like
human hearts, never stays put at all.
While I find this ABAB rhyming scheme much more
palatable, as it is less intrusive, I still find that all of the drama of the original is lost.
Andromaque,
je pense à vous! Ce petit fleuve,
Pauvre
et triste mirror oû jadis resplendit
L’immense
majesté de vos douleurs de veuve,
Ce
Simoïs menteur qui par vos pleurs grandit,
A
fécondé soudain ma mémoire fertile,
Comme
je traversais le nouveau Carrousel.
Le
vieux Paris n’est plus ( la forme d’une ville
Change
plus vite, hélas! que le cœur d’un mortel);
Adromaque,
I think of you! That little river,
Poor
sad mirror that reflects a resplendent past
And
the immense majesty of a widow’s sorrows,
That
lying Simoeis who by tears rises,
Suddenly
awakened my fertile memory,
As
I walked past the Carrousel.
Old
Paris exists no more ( the shape of the city
Changes
quicker, sadly, then the heart of a mortal);
For me, one of the main areas of contention that I
have with a lot of the existing translations of Baudelaire, as above, is the absence of some of the
great Baudelairean collocations that exist in the original and which, along with the French
rhymes, are part of the overall DNA of a poem by Baudelaire. As a translator, this is
something you become instinctively attuned to when you are making your word choice, as you want
to, whenever possible, not alter these unmistakable signs of the poet. For example, in
the verses above the collocations ‘L’immense
majesté’, or ‘Immense majesty’ as
opposed to ‘widowhood’s majesty’ of Poochigian’s version. This is so typical of
translations which are focused on rhyme, the whole architectural drama, notice the collocation
starts the phrase in Capitals; again something which Poochigian alters, by taking out the
capitals and foregoing the ‘immense majesty’ Poochigian looses out completely on the overt
majesty of Baudelaire’s poetics. Immense majesty is far more than a collocation, it is
an architectural trope I would posit rather like a portico over a Georgian door. To extract
it is to extract a fundamental essence of this most majestic poet.
I should like to move on now and treat another rhyming
translation but this time by a famous Irish poet, namely Derek Mahon, once again the poem is
taken from the Tableaux Parisiens section as the previous two. The poem in question is
the very first LXXXVI PAYSAGE, PAYSAGE. Here is the original first in French.
Je
veux, pour composer mes écologues,
Coucher
auprès du ciel, comme les astrologues,
Et,
Voisin des clocher, écouter en révant
Leurs
hymnes solennels emportés par le vent.
Les
deux mains au menton, du haut de ma mansard,
Je
verrai l’atelier qui chante et qui bavarde;
Les
tiyaux, les clochers, ces mats de la cité,
Et
les grands ciel qui fond réver d’éternité.
This magnificent poem, in the French original it just
flows along, so it is imperative to try and catch the flow, but also, retain the majesty!
In
order to compose more chastely my eclogues, I wish
To
sleep under the sky like the cosmologists,
And
listen while dreaming under the bells
Under
their solemn hymns transported on the winds.
Up
in the attic, with both hands under my chin,
Where
I’d see in the atelier those who’d talk and sing;
The
pipes and the bells, those steeples and the city,
And
the great skies which make you dream of eternity.
This version certainly flows, thanks to the rhymes in
part, AABB this time, yet also with those wonderful collocations that I have referred to
as Baudelaire’s DNA. Read the last line above again, as it is one of my favourite lines
by the poet. Now, here is Mahon’s ‘adaptation’ as he called them.
Chastely
to write these eclogues I need to lie,
like
the astrologers, in an attic next the sky
where,
high among church spires, I can dream and hear
their
grave hymns wind-blown to my ivory tower.
Chin
in hand, up here in my apartment block,
I
can see workshops full of noise and talk,
cranes
and masts of the ocean-going city,
vast
cloud-pack photographs of eternity. [iii]
I simply don’t know why he did it! If you are going to
make a change to a line, as a rule, it must surely be because you cannot translate literally!
Otherwise, what would be the point? Unless you think that you can out Baudelaire
Baudelaire!!!! As I say, I don’t know why Mahon committed the above monstrosity, as that is what
it is. Here are the lines again.
Et
les grands ciel qui fond réver d’éternité.
And
the great skies which make you dream of eternity.
Notice also that Mahon, like Poochigian, does not use
capital letters to begin the first line. This was a style of that particular generation of
poets who disdained formal register, and once again I would posit that this less formal style simply
does not suit Baudelaire’s grandeur.
Now, to terminate this brief study on different styles
and versions of translation, a comparative exercise, I should like to now choose a
couplet, my favourite couplet in the French language taken from one of the censored
poems LE LETHÉ. This time I will give the poem in full.
IV
LE
LETHÉ
Viens
sur mon cœur, âme cruelle et soured,
Tigre
adore, monster aux airs indolents;
Je
veux longtemps plonger mes doigts tremblants
Dans
l’épaisseur de ta criniere lourde;
Dans
tes joupons remplis de ton parfum
Ensevelir
ma tête endolorie,
Et
respire, comme une fleur flétrie,
Le
doux relent de mon amour defunct.
Je
veux dormir! dormir plutôt que vive !
Dans
un sommeil aussi doux que la mort,
J’étalerais
mes baisers sans remord
Sur
ton beau corps poli comme le cuivre.
Pour
engloutir mes sanglots apaisés
Rien
ne me vaut l’abîme de ta couche;
L’oubli
puissant habite sur ta bouche,
Et
le Léthe coule dans tes baisers.
A
mon destin, désormais mon délice,
J’obérais
comme un prédstiné;
Martyr
docile, innocent condamné,
Don’t
la fervour attise le supplice,
Je
sucerai, pour noyer ma rancœur,
Le
néphentes et le bonne ciguë,
Aux
bouts charmants de cette gorge aigues
Qui
n’a jamais emprisonné de cœur.
IV
A
FRENCH KISS
For
a longtime I have wanted to plunge my trembling fingers
Into
the depths of your heavy mane of hair;
Deaf and cruel soul, come
to my heart,
Adored
tigress, monster with the indolent airs,
In
your perfumed lap I have long wanted
To bury my aching head,
And
like an old fetid flower breath in
The
gentle collapse of my defunct Love.
I
want to sleep, Sleep more than live
In
a sleep that is as gentle and as soft as Death.
Remorselessly,
I’ll spread my kisses
All
over your beautiful sun-kissed body.
For
nothing is quite like the abyss of your bed
To
soothe my burning tears;
Forgetfulness
inhabits your lips, and in the river
of oblivion, I am pulled into their powerful
currents.
From
herein my fated delicacy
Appears
to be obeying you like one predestined;
A
docile martyr, an innocent condemned;
The
fervour merely fuels the torture,
And
to drown all of my remaining rancour, I have considered
Pitcher
Plants or the good hemlock,
At
the bottom of that charming steep gorge
Which
has never imprisoned a single soul.
Whenever people ask me why do I bother translating the
poetry of Charles Baudelaire, as he is one of the most translated poets that exists in the
literary pantheon, I merely will guide them to the following couplet, which for me is one of
the finest in the French language.
L’oubli
puissant habite sur ta bouche,
Et
le Léthe coule dans tes baisers.
Now, there are many ways you could approach
translating this beautiful couplet. For instance…
Oblivion
lives upon your lips,
And
the Lethe flows through your kisses.
This is a rather traditional way of translating it, as
the translator is remaining almost as loyal as they possibly can changing as little of the words
used by the poet in the original and with any changes striving to keep as much the original
meaning, which can be very difficult at times. L’oubli pussiant swapped for Oblivion as
powerful forgetfulness, which is literally what we have in the French simply doesn’t cut it.
Hence Oblivion is the word of choice here. Now lips instead of mouth, also, is the next change.
As if you say..
A
powerful forgetfulness lives in your mouth
This is the French line translated literally as it is
into English, it simply doesn’t make any sense. It sounds like a dental issue! Are we talking
about dental plaque? No, impossible. So, we take a few liberties and we come up with the
couplet above. So why then did I come up with the following?
Forgetfulness
inhabits your lips, and in the river
of oblivion, I am pulled into their powerful
currents.
One of the principal changes is taking out the
reference to Lethe, which most contemporary readers will not understand. Classics is no longer a
study in most universities, so the reference will most probably be lost upon them, and
moreover, Lethe in English sounds flat and I very much wanted to get the idea of a passionate
kiss across in English, as this is what the poet is describing here. And it is a monumental
couplet for this reason, as Baudelaire, as only Baudelaire can do, describes a passionate kiss in
the most poetic way possible but poetic in a very visceral and profound way, as this is
exactly what a kiss should feel like. A river of forgetfulness where your partner’s lips are attaching
gently onto yours and they are pulling you in like a current in a river, a very powerful
current which is very dangerous, because it is so strong. I really wanted to get that feeling across,
of the passionate kiss.
Now, I want to show you now, after I have explained my
choices a few existing translationsthat are out there of the same couplet, so that you
can see why, perhaps, I feel so strongly about the need to translate Baudelaire into English in
a realistic manner which may bring him to more English speaking readers.
Potent
oblivion inhabits your mouth,
And
Lethe flows in your kisses.
(
Translation Nathan Brown, as before Verso edition 2026 )
Forgetfulness
is moistening your breath,
Lethe
itself runs smoothly in your kiss.[iv]
Forgetfulness
dwells in your mouth,
And
Lethe flows from your kiss. [v]
(
New Directions )
[i] Brown, Nathan : The
Flowers of Evil, The Definitive English Language Edition, Verso Books,
2025. ISBN-1804296600.
[ii] Poochigian,
Aaron: The Flowers of Evil, Liveright, 2020. ISBN – 978-1631498602.
[iii] Mahon, Derek: Collected
Poems, The Gallery Press, 2001. ISBN – 1-85235-255-8.
[iv] McGowan, James: The Flowers of Evil, Oxford
World’s Classics, 2008. ISBN – 13 – 978-0199535583.
[v] The Flowers of Evil, Edited by Jackson Meadows and
Michael Mathews, New Directions, New York, 1990. ISBN – 10 – 97808112111.
