Translations of some poems of Baudelaire
Here are some of my translations of Charles Baudelaire’s poems.
Baudelaire is one of the best and most famous French poets. All of his poems have
several English translations, and the more famous ones have a very large number,
many translated by excellent poets. So why am I retranslating these poems? One reason
is that, as far as I can tell, nobody has translated them and preserved the original meter.
Is this important? No, not really; it's kind of a quixotic exercise, but it was a lot of fun.
The predominant meter of French poetry is the alexandrine, composed of 12-syllable lines
with a caesura (a natural pause) in the middle, after the sixth syllable. This project
started as an experiment to see whether French-style alexandrines worked in English.
I began by attempting to translate two of Baudelaire’s alexandrines into a corresponding
English meter (these were The Albatross and Mist and Rain). I liked the results so much
that I kept on translating Baudelaire’s poetry. I have posted eight of the best here. You
can read my translations and judge for yourself how well alexandrines work in English.
Since I hate coming across a poem translated from a language I know and not being able
to find the original, I’m including the French titles below the English titles in these
translations.
I have another webpage (link here) where I have written comments about most of these
poems. You can think of those as footnotes, and you should feel no obligation to look
at this page unless you want to.
Peter Shor
The Albatross
(L'Albatros)
Charles Baudelaire
To entertain themselves, mariners long at sea
Ensnare albatrosses, vast ocean birds that keep
Company with vessels, following lazily
As the ship smoothly glides across the bitter deep.
As soon as their captors have laid them on the boards,
These kings of the azure, awkward and mortified,
Let their immense white wings, like a pair of long oars,
Hang piteously down and trail at their side.
That handsome wanderer, who of late roamed the sky,
How ugly he’s become! How comical! How meek!
Waddling, one tar mimics this cripple who could fly;
Another tries to stick a pipestem in his beak.
The poet is akin to this lord of the clouds
Who rides the wild storm and scoffs at the longbow;
Banished from the heavens, ringed round by jeering crowds,
He cannot walk on earth — his great wings weight him so.
Mist and Rain
(Brumes et Pluies)
Charles Baudelaire
Ends of autumns, winters, early springs steeped in mud,
O slumberous seasons, that I love and I laud,
I bless you for wrapping around my heart and brain
A winding-sheet of mist and a gray shroud of rain.
On this wide, cloudy plain, where the cold south wind sports,
Where, during the long nights, the weathercock grows hoarse,
My soul, that likes these more than new-flowering springs,
Will spread wide in the dusk its great black raven wings.
O queens of our climate, pallid seasons of gloom,
Nothing could better please a heart haunted by doom,
Over which the hoarfrost has implacably spread,
Than your pale darkness, perpetually in sight
— Except for, two by two, late on a moonless night,
Laying our cares to rest in an uncertain bed.
Cats
(Les Chats)
Charles Baudelaire
The passionate lover and austere sage, when old,
Prize strong and gentle cats, the household’s greatest pride,
Who, like them, love to sit by the warm fireside,
Likewise sedentary and prone to getting cold.
They are friends of science and sensuality,
And are drawn to darkness, filled with silence and dread.
Erebus would choose them to bear away the dead
If servitude did not offend their dignity.
Lost in thought, they take on the noble attitude
Of great sphinxes who lie in lonely solitude
And appear to slumber in an eternal dream.
On their fertile haunches, miraculous sparks teem,
And in their mystic eyes, minute gold flakes are strewed,
Scattered thick as the stars, and like them, all agleam.
Spleen
(Spleen)
Charles Baudelaire
When the low, heavy sky weighs like an immense cover
On my glum mind, that is in Boredom’s snares caught tight,
And from the horizon’s round rim, there spreads all over
A black day gloomier and sadder than the night;
When the wide earth has turned into a humid jail
Where Hope flits like a bat, vertiginously reeling,
Bumping against the walls, which her tattered wings flail,
And knocking her shy head on the moldering ceiling;
When the pitiless clouds spew water down in gallons,
And the bars of vast cells seem to form from the rain;
When mute spiders arrive, in uncounted battalions,
To spin their loathsome webs in the depths of my brain,
Then all of a sudden, bells furiously leap
And hurl towards Heaven a cacophonous chiming,
Like wandering specters who have nowhere to sleep
And set to incessant caterwauling and whining;
Long and melancholy, a funeral procession
With no music or drums winds slowly through my soul,
And Hope sobs, defeated, while, declaring possession,
Anguish plants her black flag atop my downcast skull.
Exotic Perfume
(Parfum exotique)
Charles Baudelaire
When, with eyes shut tightly, some warm night in autumn,
I inhale the odor that wafts from your bare skin,
There unfolds before me a blissful coastal scene
Lit by the dazzling rays of an unmuted sun:
An indolent island where from kind nature comes
Ambrosial fruit on trees of unimagined greens;
Active men whose bodies are vigorous and thin,
Women whose open gaze, with its sheer frankness, stuns.
Guided by your odor to climates sweet and mild,
I behold a harbor crowded with masts and tops’ls
Still fatigued from riding the waves that surge and roll;
Meanwhile, green tamarinds give off a scent unrivaled
That lingers in the air and ravishes my nostrils,
Commingling with the crews’ sea shanties in my soul.
Man and the Sea
(L'Homme et la Mer)
Charles Baudelaire
Deep in your heart, free man, you will forever keep
That great mirror, the sea; you ponder your soul
In its billows as they endlessly unroll,
And your mind is surely just as bitter a deep.
You love to dive into your image’s bosom,
Embracing it fiercely with your arms when you meet,
And your heart half forgets the sound of its own beat
At the sound of its wild, untamable rhythm.
Both of you hoard treasures in your shadowy depths:
Man, no one has sounded your profound abysses,
And Sea, nobody knows your innermost riches,
Since you two are jealous and your secrets well–kept.
For countless centuries, you’ve fought with each other,
Extending no mercy so long as you drew breath,
So much are you in love with strife, bloodshed, and death,
Like your eternal foe, your unyielding brother.
A Fantastic Engraving
(Une gravure fantastique)
Charles Baudelaire
This strange specter isn't even wearing a rag,
Just a hideous crown set askew on his skull
(One much better suited to a fancy-dress ball),
And he's riding bareback on a most bony nag;
Steam pours from its nostrils — well, drool, to tell the truth,
Like an epileptic. The pair gallop through space,
High above solid ground, and with their every pace,
Tread on infinity with a precarious hoof.
The horseman, who wields a great sword wreathed in flames,
Wheels his mount, trampling multitudes with no names.
Like a lord inspecting his estate, he surveys
The cold cemetery, without a horizon,
Where beneath the flat rays of a lifeless white sun,
Lie the storied peoples of past and present days.
Hymn to Beauty
(Hymne à la beauté)
Charles Baudelaire
Do you come from the Pit or celestial climes,
O Beauty? Your regard, infernal and divine,
Puzzlingly inspires benevolence and crimes,
And for this, we perhaps could compare you to wine.
You spread fragrance around like an evening gale;
The sunset and the dawn can be seen in your gaze;
Your kiss is a potion and your mouth is a grail
That make heroes cowards and that turn children brave.
Did you fall from the stars or crawl from the abyss?
With Fate trailing, spellbound, like a dog at your heels,
You scatter at random catastrophe and bliss;
You command everyone, and with none will strike deals.
You trample on the dead, Beauty, and at them jest;
Horror is not the least of your bright jewelry,
And Murder, that pendant you prize more than the rest,
Dances on your belly so voluptuously.
Candle, the dazzled moth flies to that light of yours,
Cries “Blessings on the flame!” and perishes ablaze;
The impassioned lover above his paramour
Looks like a dying man caressing his own grave.
Was it Hell that spawned you, or Heaven? I don’t care,
O Beauty, great monster, if your smile and your eyes
Can open up a door to realms wondrously fair
That I had never known and that I love and prize.
From God or the Devil? I don’t care! Evil fiend
Or angel? I don’t care, if you — proud fairy, fire,
Color, rhythm, perfume, my one and only queen —
Make the world less loathsome and the moments less dire!
I have another translation of a poem of Baudelaire (into iambic pentameter
and not alexandrines) on my webpage here.