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Title: Les Fleurs Du Mal by Charles P. Baudelaire, Richard Howard, Michael Mazur ISBN: 0-87923-462-8 Publisher: David R Godine Pub. Date: September, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.62 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: exemplary translation; mediocre volume
Comment: Let me declare immediately that I agree with the other reader-reviews here: Richard Howard's translations of these poems are rich, sensual, potent, lurid renderings. His verse forgoes the shoehorn of obeying the foreign rhymes (a decision shared by Dante's best translators) and pursues instead a laden, incantatory English that is utterly full and alive--really alive and vital, almost writhing in his versions of Baudelaire's most charnel poems (like "Carrion," "Against Her Levity," and the grim crescendo of "To the Reader"), and with a nearly pungent eros in the coutless mistress poems. One need only read the French originals (included in the book's second half) to appreciate the alchemy of Howard's admixture of fidelity and music. They don't sound self-conscious like most translations, and I find myself reading them aloud.
But as for the whole volume--well, despite Howard's introductory apologia and his Keats quip, we could use explanatory notes, even if they're just stashed inobtrusively in the back, as with the Oxford Press edition. Howard calls such notes an "overbearing gloss," but we could always ignore them, if we wanted, so I don't see what the danger is. I find context valuable--after all, Baudelaire wrote within one. Howard's Baudelaire both stirs and harrows me, but it also awakens an earnest and respectful curiosity, the kind that must bring any translator to their authors in the first place, and ironically my proper curiosity makes this unannotated book incomplete.
I appreciate Howard's stout chronolgy of Baudelaire's life and work, but we could use an account of Baudelaire's aims, of symbolist poetry, of his sources and his impact. Howard's introduction offers four pages of detailed translator's defense and thanks to his supporters; surely Baudelaire and his work deserve at least as much attention! Baudelaire wrote "The Living Torch," for instance, in response to Poe's "To Helen": why not reprint Poe's little poem for us, with clarifying remarks about the history between the two writers? Baudelaire dedicates other poems to Hugo--but how come, and how are they fitting responses to Hugo? Such background would allow this volume to be a definitive Baudelaire experience, not just a definitive English rendering. Every other edition I've seen offers such helps, though I'm sure many others don't. And as I said, a book can include notes and you can choose to ignore them.
Anyway, Howard still gives us a bravura, rousing, chilling English Baudelaire. That is, obviously, the most essential thing about a book of foreign poetry, and it is what I celebrate and recommend about Howard's volume.
Rating: 5
Summary: This is the Best Translation
Comment: I am not a writer, nor a critic. I am a mere reader who appreciates good works. This is one of my staple books, which I often reread and recommend to people who I feel might have the mind to appreciate genius. This is the best translation I know of and as a necessary feature of translated poetry, it includes the original French text, as well. Baudelaire reveals the beauty within darkness and exposes the darkness within light. Brilliance has always been rare, but I would say now it is more rare than ever within the literary field. This may very well be due to books like this going unread by the majority of the population. This is a wonderful book to enhance a person's writing depth, and their understanding of the world. Other great author's and books are: Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud, Mallarme, Antonin Artaud's Anthology and The Death of Satan, Lautremont and Maldoror by Issidore Ducasse, All of the Marquis de Sade's works, Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce, Anne Sexton's Complete Works, La Batarde by Violette Leduc, the diaries of Anais Nin, and Sylvia Plath's poetry.
Rating: 5
Summary: A bilingual tour de force
Comment: ... This book does indeed include the original French version in its second half, and Richard Howard's breathtakingly vivid and vital English translation in its first half. This is the definitive English translation of Les Fleurs du Mal, and by far my favorite.
As to the substance of this remarkable book of poetry, Baudelaire's work is one of such groundbreaking genius on so many levels that it may never be equaled. He has achieved Gustave Flaubert's great aim of "le seul mot juste" (the unique right word) with such consistency that one can only smile in amazement and wonder. The aural music created by this poetry intoxicates as the meaning of the words strikes deep into the heart of the reader, putting into words thoughts and feelings that he could never express. These alternate with shocking and horrifying images that bring to mind Kafka's "Metamorphosis." Longing, irony, desolation, desire, betrayal, anger, melancholy, ecstasy, alienation, and more are Baudelaire's subjects, and his words are the arrows in his quiver that never miss their mark. A few of my favorites are: The Albatross, Elevation, Hymn to Beauty, The Head of Hair, The Cat, Spleen III, The Clock, and Hymn.
As a look into the human heart and mind, I rank this work with Michel de Montaigne's "Essays." It would also land on my list of universal, desert-island books.
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Title: Collected Poems by Stephane Mallarme, Henry Weinfield ISBN: 0520207114 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Flowers of Evil (Oxford World's Classics) by James McGowan, Charles P. Baudelaire, Jonathan Culler ISBN: 0192835459 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Torture Garden by Octave Mirbeau, Alvah C. Bessie ISBN: 0965104265 Publisher: Juno Books Pub. Date: 31 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.99 |
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Title: Paris Spleen by Charles P. Baudelaire, Louise Varese ISBN: 0811200078 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: February, 1988 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Cinema 1: Movement-Image by Gilles Deleuze, Hugh Tomlinson ISBN: 0816614008 Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr (Txt) Pub. Date: October, 1986 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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