Do You Like Chopin?
The doorbell rang interrupting Christopher’s lengthy period of engagement with thetranslation, causing him to immediately look up from his desk which was facing the window directly so he could immediately see who the intruder was. It was Lai. She was standing outside his ground floor apartment looking directly in at him, smiling. Chris had been so submersed in La Lethé , he had been comparing multiple variations of one of his favourite couplets in all of French poetry which would roll off of his tongue whenever he wanted to hear their mysterious hypnotism. In fact, whenever people would ask him why he bothered translating the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, as he is one of the most translatedpoets that exists in the literary pantheon, Chris knew now that he would merely guide them tothe following couplet, which for him was one of the finest couplet not only in the French language but in modern poetry in general, at least lyrically.
L’oubli
puissant habite sur ta bouche,
Et
le Léthe coule dans tes baisers.
Chris mouthed the words on his lips for Lai to see him, which caused her to laugh and knock on the window as a sign that he should maybe open the door and let her in. She had never been to his apartment before, it was her first time. She was pointing now at the door, as a further sign that he should open it for her. Chris immediately got up from his desk, looking at the clock as he did and noticing the time. He had been sitting there for over two hours now working on his translation of the poem. There were many ways that he could have approached translating this beautiful couplet. For instance…
Oblivion
lives upon your lips,
And
the Lethe flows through your kisses.
All of this had been swimming in his head when Lai knocked on the window. He hurried now to approach her still dressed in the light blue cotton pjs that he had slept in. He was bare foot and stubbed his toe on the threshold of the doorway leading into the hall as he had done countless times before.He unlocked the front door and opened it slightly wincing still with the pain.
“Are you alright?”
Lai asked looking at him rather concerned now as Chris was hopping up and down in the hallway on the black and white checkered stone- cold tiles.
“Stubbed my toe on the…!” he gave up struggling to find the appropriate word ( again!), which for some reason wouldn’t come to him.
Lai giggled delightfully.
“Classic Nerdareeno!”
She walked into the room to the dramatic sounds of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli playing the famous Scherzo b-moll op. 31. The music seemed to stop her dead in her tracks, as she stood there listening to it she slowly looked around the interior of the apartment with much curiosity.
“ Do you like a Chopin?” Chris heard himself ask. And the minute the words were out of his mouth he just wanted to kill himself as he must have sounded like the lamest lamo of the lame; but fortunately Lai was feeling generous.
“Yes, of course. Who doesn’t?” She returned, walking slowly yet surely over to the table where Christoper had been working on the translation. The rather imposing leatherbound edition of Les Fleurs du Mal opened on La Lethé was what had attracted her.
“Baudelaire!” She said, looking back at Christopher with a look signalling that she was very impressed with him.
“May I?” she enquired, indicating his laptop screen which contained the poem as translated by him so far in English.
“Be my guest,” he replied. “Can I make you a coffee?”
Lai ordered a double espresso with a single spoon of
brown sugar.
“You do have brown sugar, right?”
It was almost a test on his whole character, the way she asked it. Chris liked the irony in her voice. It soothed him, and he relaxed in the kitchenette and concentrated on making the espresso while Lai read his fresh translation of the famous poem by Baudelaire.
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 breathe 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.
“Wow, that’s some kiss!” Lai’s irony came again. She pulled away from the table and went to the great shelf of books on the far wall and started looking at the rather worn spines of some of the volumes before returning to the translation on the screen.
“So, why does the world need another translation of
Charlie Boy?”
Chris couldn’t believe his luck. He approached Lai like a lion approaching some unassuming prey.
“Let me show you. Do you see these two lines here?”
Chris pointed to the mysterious couplet.
“L’oubli puissant… habite sur ta bouche…!” Lia read the text slowly aloud with her basic school French that she had learned years ago.
“ The powerful forgetfulness… lives on your mouth…!”
Lai turned to face Chris with a rather painful
expression.
“That couldn’t be right, could it?” she asked him
genuinely seeming a little perplexed
Seizing his chance, Chris steadied himself before
going into it.
“This would be a rather traditional way of translating it, as you are translating almost word for word, literally!”
“Which is bad, isn’t it?” Lai responded making a face as if she wanted to puke!
“Well, in all fairness, you’ve done what most translators of Baudelaire have done.” Chris mansplained.
“Let me show you 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.”
Chris opened a new window on the laptop and typed in the words Fleurs du Mal and clicked on a link that he was obviously well familiar with.
“Let me show you.” He was moving animatedly through the site with definitive purpose. Lai observed him with much interest, he was clearly very engaged with the subject matter which was rare to see, these days. Eventually he found the piece he was looking for and he read out the two lines.
Potent
oblivion inhabits your mouth,
And
Lethe flows in you kisses
“This translation is by Nathan Brown and was published only last year by Verso Books. But you see, it is still rather stilted reading very much like a literal translation. The translator has taken no great risks, and, you see, this is the whole problem!”
The website offered various translations of each poem
by the poet and in chronological order.
“Here is another one…I should warn you that this one is particularly awful and was published by Oxford paperbacks, no less, so it just goes to show you!”
Chris read in a rather mock dramatic way.
Forgetfulness
is moistening your breath,
Lethe
itself runs smoothly in your kiss.
“That particular gem was curtesy of James McGowan and was published in 2008.” Clearly relishing what he was doing, Chris went on.
“Here’s another!”
Forgetfulness
dwells in your mouth,
And
Lethe flows from your kiss.
“This was taken from a New Directions paperback edition, and it is the closest to what you did.”
“Okay, I see. Now, let me see what you did again!” Lai asked him.
Chris recited the couplet aloud in French.
L’oubli
puissant habite sur ta bouche,
Et
Le Lethé coule dans tes baisers.
Before reading out the following in English.
Forgetfulness
lives upon your lips in a river of oblivion,
And
I am pulled into its powerful currents, when we kiss !
“It’s radically different!” Lai pronounced.
“Yes, it is!...I guess.” Chris responded.
“So, what do you think? Which version do you prefer?”
He asked with much anticipation.
“Why yours, stupid!” Lai said reaching up to his lips, before
planting on them a great French kiss.
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.
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