Translations: Translations of Baudelaire’s Works
Correspondences (Keith Waldrop) | Einklänge (Stefan George)
Avec Baudelaire, la poésie française sort enfin des frontières de la nation. Elle se fait lire dans le monde; elle s’impose comme la poésie même de la modernité; elle engendre l’imitation, elle féconde même de nombreux esprits.
— Paul Valéry, “Situation de Baudelaire” in Variété II (Paris : Gallimard, 1948)
Baudelaire exerted a profound influence on poets of his generation and next generations, and his fame extends well beyond the intellectual borders of France. It is thus not surprising that major and minor British and American poets have been fascinated by Baudelaire’s texts and have attempted to translate them. The translated works of Baudelaire selected for the exhibit held at the John Hay Library are for the most part in English. They range from the late 19th century to the present day. Some of the translations offer a literal rendering in prose or verses in which the author may try to replicate the poems’ rhythms, sound effects and alliterations. Others are free translations or adaptations which convey the author’s own interpretation of the poems.
Nature is a temple whose columns are alive and sometimes issue disjointed messages. We thread our way through a forest of symbols that peer out, as if recognizing us.
Like long echoes from far away, merging into a deep dark unity, vast as night, vast as the light, smells and colors and sounds concur.
There are perfumes cool as children’s flesh, sweet as oboes, green like the prairie. And others corrupt, rich, overbearing,
with the expansiveness of infinite things — like ambergris, musk, spikenard, frankincense, singing ecstasy to the mind and to the senses.
— The Flowers of Evil, “Spleen and Ideal,” trans. Keith Waldrop
Reproduced with the permission of Keith Waldrop
The most recent English translation of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, published in 2006, is by Keith Waldrop. Waldrop teaches at Brown University and lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where he runs the Burning Deck Press with his wife, Rosemarie. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry and has translated contemporary French poets, such as Edmond Jabès, Claude Royet-Journoud, Anne-Marie Albiach, Jean Grosjean and Paol Keineg. He has received an award from the Fund for Poetry, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Berlin Artists Program of the DAAD, and a Medal from the French government with rank of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters, for his contributions to French literature.
In the introduction to his translation of Les Fleurs du mal, Waldrop says: “My effort…to make Les Fleurs du mal into The Flowers of Evil…leans on the verset, a measured prose that allows the sentence to dominate, as in prose, checked by a sense of line that restricts it. The restriction is rhythmic, not metrical.…What I have tried to capture, in a different formal setting…is the thought and feeling Baudelaire put into the poems, coming as close as I can to his tone.”
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Aus de Natur belebten tempelbaun
Oft unverständlich wirre worte weichen
Dort geht der mensch durch einen wald von zeichen
Die mit vertrauten blicken ihn beschaun
Wie lange echo fern zusammenrauschen
In tiefer finsterer geselligkeit
Weit wie die nacht und wie die helligkeit
Parfüme farben töne rede tauschen
Parfüme giebt es frisch wie kinderwangen
Süss wie hoboen grün wie eine alm —
Und andre die verderbt und siegreich prangen
Mit einem hauch von unbegrenzten dingen
Wie ambra moschus und geweihter qualm
Die die verzückung unsrer seelen singen.
— Baudelaire, die Blumen des Boesen, Stefan George
Stefan George was a poet, translator and essayist. Inspired by Mallarmé, he spent some time in Paris and participated in the symbolist poet’s “soirées du mardi.” His German translation of Les Fleurs du mal was first published in 1889. A great admirer of Baudelaire, George’s intent was not to produce a literal translation but to use the German language to express the rhythm, alliteration and poetic expression conveyed by Baudelaire. George himself describes his translations as “Umdichtungen” (adaptations) and, in the preface, refers to “verdeutschung [‘germanizing’] der Fleurs du mal” rather than “Übersetzung” (translation).
George, Stefan Anton, 1868-1933
Baudelaire, die Blumen des Boesen : Umdichtungen / von Stefan George.
Berlin : Bondi, 1922.
Brown University Library Collections
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