LXXXV MADRIGAL TRISTE / SAD MADIGRAL BY BAUDELAIRE

                                                                                     LXXXV

MADRIGAL TRISTE

 

Que m’importe que tu sois sage?

Sois belle ! et sois triste ! Les pleurs

Ajoutent un charme au visage,

Comme le fleuve au paysage;

L’orage rajeunit les fleurs.

 

Je t’aime surtout quand la joie

S’enfuit de ton front terrassé;

Quand ton cœur dans l’horreur se noie;

Quand sur ton present se déploie

Le nuage affreux du passé.

 

Je t’aime quand ton grand œil verse

Une eau chaude comme le sang;

Quand, malgré ma main qui te berce,

Ton angoisse, trop lourde, perce

Comme un râle d’agonisant.

 

 

 

 

 

J’aspire, volupté divine !

Hymne profonde, délicieux !

Tous les sanglots de ta poitrine,

Et crois que ton cœur s’illumine

Des perles que versent tes yeux!

 

Je sais que ton cœur, qui regorge

De vieux amours déracinés,

Flamboie encor comme une forge,

Et que tu couves sous ta gorge

Un peu de l’orgueil des damnés;

 

Mais tant, ma chère, qui tes rêves

N’auront pas reflété l’Enfer,

Et qu’en un cauchemar sans trèves,

Songeant de posions et de glaives,

Éprise de poudre et de fer,

 

N’ouvrant à chacun qu’avec crainte,

Déchiffrant le Malheur partout,

Te convulsant quand l’heure tinte,

Tu n’auras pas senti l’entreinte

De l’irrésistible Dégoût,

 

 

 

Tu ne pourras, esclave reine

Qui ne m’aimes qu’avec effroi,

Dans l’horreur de la nuit malsaine

Me dire, l’âme de cris pleine;

“Je suis ton égal, ô mon Roi!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LXXXV

SAD MADIGRAL

 

 

What do I care if you are sage?

Be beautiful and sad; Your tears

Add to the charm of your features,

Like a river in a landscape;

The storm rejuvenating the flowers.

 

I love you particularly when the joy

Flies from your terraced features;

When your heart drowns in the horror;

And the awful clouds of the past 

Are deployed upon your present.

 

I love you when your astonishing eyes

 Verse tears like warm blood;

When despite when I am holding you,

 Your anguish, so heavy, pierces you

Like an agonising death rattle.

 

 

 

I desire divine voluptuousness,

Delicious hymns profound,

All of the tears falling in cascades

Thinking about your heart which shines

Upon the pearls which pour from your eyes.     

 

I know that your heart which regorges

The old deracinated loves,

Flambéing once again like an old forge

And that you still swallow

 All of that pride of the damned.

 

But so many of your dreams, my dear,

Wouldn’t have Hell’s reflection

And a nightmare without end,

Dreaming of stilettos and poison,

Infatuated with gunpowder and iron,

 

Opening up to people only through fear,

Seeing evil everywhere,

Convulsing you till the hour is stained,

You’ll hardly have felt the touch

Of the irresistible feeling of disgust,

 

Slavish Queen, you cannot but

Love through Fear,

Through horror and all that is disturbing,

Saying to me, while secretly screaming,

“ I am your equal, o my King!”

 

LXXXII LA PRIÉRE D’UN PAÏEN / A PAGAN PRAYER

 

                                                                                         

                                                                                    

 

LXXXII

LA PRIÉRE D’UN PAÏEN

 

 

Ah! ne ralentis pas tes flammes ;

Réchauffe mon cœur engourdi,

Volupté, torture des âmes !

Diva ! supplicem exaudi !

 

Déesse dans l’air répandue,

Flamme dans notre souterrain !

Exauce une âme morfondue,

Qui te consacre un chant d’airain.

 

Voulpté, sois toujours ma reine !

Prends le masque d’une siréne

Faite de chair et de velours,

 

Ou verse-moi tes sommeils lourds

Dans le vin informe et mystique,

Volupté, fantôme élastique !

 

 

 

 

 

 

LXXXII

A PAGAN PRAYER

 

 

Ah! don’t let your flame die ;

Rekindle my dead heart,

Voluptuary, torture of souls!

Diva ! supplicem exaudî !

 

Goddess diffused through the air,

Subterranean flame !

Grant a melancholy soul

Who consecrates a leaden song to you.

 

Voluptuousness, always be my Queen !

Take the mask of a siren

Made of flesh and velvet,

 

And Verse upon me the heavy sleep

Which wine informs with all its mystique,

Voluptuous, transparent phantom.

LXV LES CHATS , PAR BAUDELAIRE

 

                                                                                    

LXV

 

LES CHATS

 

Les amoureux fervents et les savants austères

Aiment également, dans leur mûre saison,

Les chats puissants et doux, orgeuil de la maison,

Qui comme eux sont frileux et comme eux sédentaires.

 

Amis de la science et de la volupté,

Ils cherchent le silence et l’horreur des ténébres ;

L’Érèbe les eût pris pour ses cousiers funèbres,

S’ils pouvaient au servage incliner leur fierté.

 

Ils prennent en songeant les nobles attitudes

Des grands sphinx allongés au fond des solitudes,

Qui semblent s’endormir dans un rêve sans fin;

 

Leurs reins féconds sont pleins d’éntincelles magiques,

Et des parcelles d’or, ainsi qu’un sable fin,

Étoilent vahuement leurs prunelles mystiques.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LXV

THE CATS

 

 

In their mid-years, fervent lovers and austere savants

Love in equal proportion proudly dwelling in their homes

Powerful and gentle cats,

And who are like them both frivolous and sedentary.

 

Friends of both science and voluptuousness,

They search in silence both horror and darkness,

Erebus has taken them as his funerary cortege;

If only they could incline their pride to serve him!

 

Knowingly, they put on haughty airs

Like Great sphinxes lying about in solitude,

And who would appear to sleep in a dream without end:

 

And whose fruitful loins are possessed with a magical drive,

 Their golden substance, just like a fine sand,

Dances vaguely within their starry eyes.

 

CHOPIN

                                                                                     

Chopin

 As Played by Andre Gide

and

Arturo Benetti Michelangeli

 

There is an inexorable fatality

In the pompe funèbre; a deep holding back

In the voluptuous restraint.

Le petit mort à sa propre douceur.

 

The vertiginous sustenance of enjambement,

A la Baudelaire!  

The tender enigmas which uncurl with your hair,

Their slow, unkempt deliverance.

 

I have been listening to you now for close to four decades,

And your image is still hallucinatory;

Incantatory, trance!...

 

To be distilled in the finger’s deep tributaries,

That are as if aligned upon the ivories;

Le petit mort à sa propre douceur.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDz8DbgUV1Q&list=RDyDz8DbgUV1Q&start_radio=1&rv=esKjnh0vBYk

 

IV LE LETHÉ / THE RIVER OF OBLIVION, BY CHARLES BAUDELAIRE ( 1821-1867)

                                                                                     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 Lethé 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

The Lethe

 

 

 

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 lives upon your lips and into the river of oblivion

 I am pulled into with the powerful currents of your kiss !  

  

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 into the river of oblivion, 

I am pulled into their powerful currents with your kiss.

 

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 translations that 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, Verso Books, 2025. )

 

Forgetfulness is moistening your breath,

Lethe itself runs smoothly in your kiss.

 

( James McGowan, Oxford Classics, 2008 )

 

Forgetfulness dwells in your mouth,

And Lethe flows from your kiss.

 

( New Directions )

 

 

As you can see, everyone went for mouth! Jesus, bring out the mouth wash!

 

 

https://fleursdumal.org/poem/129

( Check out some more English translations  )