Charles Baudelaire, His Life

It is very rarely indeed that a master of English prose can find time to translate from the foreign. He is occupied entirely with his own creations. Translation, to him, would be a labour of love; the financial reward would be infinitesimal. This being so, the English public must depend upon inferior translations made by people who understand French, but are often incapable of literary appreciation, of reproducing the "atmosphere" of the authors they translate.

If Oscar Wilde had translated the French verse of Baudelaire into English verse, for example, then Baudelaire would by now be a household word. If any well-known stylist and novelist of to-day would spend a year over translating Flaubert's "Salammbô" then that masterpiece would rank with "Esmond" or "The Cloister and the Hearth" in the minds of Englishmen.

But this is too much to expect. Great creative artists are busily engaged in doing their own work, and French classics must remain more or less hidden from those lovers of literature who are not intimately conversant with the language.

We are a commercial race. Successful writers do not care to explain writers of other countries to their own countrymen. English men of letters have a deep love for English letters, but very few of them carry their amourettes over the Channel. Yet if any one doubts my contention that foreign work can be translated almost flawlessly let me remind him of John Addington Symonds' "Life of Benvenuto Cellini"; the Count Stenbock's rendering of Balzac's "Shorter Stories"; Rossetti's "La Vita Nuova" of Dante, or the translations of Maeterlinck by Mr. Teixeira de Mattos.

Charles Baudelaire, when once he had found work that appealed to him enormously, proceeded to translate it into his own language. His renderings of Poe have not only introduced Poe to the public of France, but have even improved upon the work of the American.

And Baudelaire says of his master:

"Ce n'est pas, par ces miracles matériels, qui pourtant ont fait sa renommée, qu'il lui sera donné de conquérir l'admiration des gens qui pensent, c'est par son amour du beau, par sa connaissance des conditions harmoniques de la beauté, par sa poésie profonde et plaintive, ouvragée néanmoins, transparente et correcte comme un bijou de cristal, – par son admirable style, pur et bizarre, – serré comme les mailles d'une armure, – complaisant et minutieux, – et dont la plus légère intention sert à pousser doucement le lecteur vers un but voulu, – et enfin surtout par ce génie tout spécial, par ce tempérament unique qui lui a permis de peindre et d'expliquer, d'une manière impeccable, saisissante, terrible, l'exception dans l'ordre moral. – Diderot, pour prendre un example entre cent, est un auteur sanguin; Poe est l'écrivain des nerfs, et même de quelque chose de plus – et le meilleur que je connaisse."

This, of course, is only a paragraph taken from a considerable essay. But with what insight and esprit is it not said! There is all the breadth and generality which comes from a culture, minute, severe, constantly renewed, rectifying and concentrating his impressions in a few pregnant words.

It is as well, also, that Baudelaire's marvellous flair for translation should be illustrated in this book. I have had some difficulty in making choice of an example, in gathering a flower from a garden so rich in blooms. I think, however, that the following parallel excerpts from "Ligeia" exhibit Poe in his most characteristic style and Baudelaire at his best in translation. (For purposes of comparison the English and the French are printed in parallel columns.)

"There is one topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It is the person of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease of her demeanour, or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study, save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was the radiance of an opium dream, an airy and spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were not of that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labours of the heathen.

"Il est néanmoins un sujet très cher sur lequel ma mémoire n'est pas en défaut. C'est la personne de Ligeia. Elle était d'une grande taille, un peu mince, et même, dans les derniers jours, très amaigrie. J'essayerais en vain de dépeindre la majesté, l'aisance tranquille de sa démarche, et l'incompréhensible légèreté, l'élasticité de son pas. Elle venait et s'en allait comme une ombre. Je ne m'apercevais jamais de son entrée dans mon cabinet de travail que par la chère musique de sa voix douce et profonde, quand elle posait sa main de marbre sur mon épaule. Quant à la beauté de la figure, aucune femme ne l'a jamais égalée. C'était l'éclat d'un rêve d'opium – une vision aérienne et ravissante, plus étrangement céleste que les rêveries qui voltigent dans les âmes assoupies des filles de Délos. Cependant ses traits n'étaient pas jetés dans ce moule régulier qu'on nous a faussement enseigné à révérer dans les ouvrages classiques du paganisme.

'There is no exquisite beauty,' says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all forms and genera of beauty, 'without some strangeness in the proportion.' Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a classic regularity, although I perceived that her loveliness was indeed 'exquisite,' and felt that there was much of 'strangeness' pervading it, I have tried in vain to detect the irregularity and to trace home my own perception of the 'strange.' I examined the contour of the lofty and pale forehead – it was faultless; how cold indeed that word when applied to a majesty so divine! the skin rivalling the purest ivory, the commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the regions above the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and naturally curling tresses, setting forth the full force of the Homeric epithet, 'hyacinthine'! I looked at the delicate outlines of the nose, and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a similar perfection. There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface, the same scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded the sweet mouth.

'Il n'y a pas de beauté exquise,' dit lord Verulam, parlant avec justesse de toutes les formes et de tous les genres de beauté, 'sans une certaine étrangeté, dans les proportions.' Toutefois, bien que je visse que les traits de Ligeia n'étaient pas d'une régularité classique – quoique je sentisse que sa beauté était véritablement 'exquise,' et fortement pénétrée de cette 'étrangeté,' je me suis efforcé en vain de découvrir cette irrégularité et de poursuivre jusqu'en son gîte ma perception de 'l'étrange.' J'examinais le contour de front haut et pâle – un front irréprochable – combien ce mot est froid appliqué à une majesté aussi divine! – la peau rivalisant avec le plus pur ivoire, la largeur imposante, le calme, la gracieuse proéminence des régions au-dessus des tempes et puis cette chevelure d'un noir de corbeau, lustrée, luxuriante, naturellement bouclée, et démontrant toute la force de l'expression homérique: 'chevelure d'hyacinthe.' Je considérais les lignes délicates du nez – et nulle autre part que dans les gracieux médallions hébraïques je n'avais contemplé une semblable perfection. C'était ce même jet, cette même surface unie et superbe, cette même tendance presque imperceptible à l'aquilin, ces mêmes narines harmonieusement arrondies et révélant un esprit libre. Je regardais la charmante bouche.

Here was indeed the triumph of all things heavenly, the magnificent turn of the short upper lip, the soft, voluptuous slumber of the under, the dimples which sported, and the colour which spoke, the teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy almost startling, every ray of the holy light which fell upon them in her serene and placid, yet most exultingly radiant of all smiles. I scrutinised the formation of the chin – and here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the majesty, the fulness and the spirituality of the Greek – the contour which the god Apollo revealed but in a dream to Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian. And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia."

C'était là qu'était le triomphe de toutes les choses célestes: la tour glorieux de la lèvre supérieure, un peu courte, l'air doucement, voluptueusement reposé de l'inférieure, – les fossettes qui se jouaient et la couleur qui parlait, – les dents réfléchissant comme une espèce d'éclair chaque rayon de la lumière bénie qui tombait sur elles dans ses sourires sereins et placides, mais toujours radieux et triomphants. J'analysais la forme du menton, et là aussi je trouvais le grâce dans la largeur, la douceur et la majesté, la plénitude et la spiritualité grecques – ce contour que le dieu Apollon ne révéla qu'en rêve à Cléomène, fils de Cléomène d'Athènes. Et puis je regardais dans les grands yeux de Ligeia."

I have said, and I thoroughly believe, that it is possible for a great writer to translate the prose of another country into fine and almost literal prose of his own.

It is, however, when we come to verse that we find the literal translation inadequate. A verse translation, by the very necessity of the limits within which the artist works – that of metre and cadence – must necessarily have a large amount of freedom. The translator has first to study the poem with a care that directs itself to the dissecting, analysing and saturating himself with what the poet means to convey, rather than the actual words in which he conveys it. One does not translate ventre à terre as "belly to the earth" but as "at full gallop." The translator must have a kind of loving clairvoyance, an apprehension of inner beauty, if he is to explain another mind in the medium of poetry.

It seems unkind to instance what I mean by quoting a translation of some lines of Baudelaire which, while literally accurate, fail to give the English reader the least hinting of an atmosphere profoundly wonderful in the original.

I need not mention names, however, but will contrast the following lines —

"A languorous island, where Nature abounds
With exotic trees and luscious fruit;
And with men whose bodies are slim and astute,
And with women whose frankness delights and astounds" —

with Baudelaire's own corresponding verse from that lovely poem "Parfum exotique."

"Une île paresseuse où la nature donne
Des arbres singuliers et des fruits savoureux;
Des hommes dont le corps est mince et vigoureux,
Et des femmes dont l'œil par sa franchise étonne."

Voltaire once said of Dante that his reputation would go on growing because he was so little read. That was a satire, not upon Dante, but upon humanity.

Baudelaire has a great reputation, but is still comparatively little known to English readers.

It is my hope that this translation of Gautier, and the small attempts at rendering Baudelaire, may serve as hors d'œuvre to a magic feast which awaits any one who cares to wander through the gates of the garden where flowers of unexampled beauty blow … and not only Flowers of Evil.

    G. T.

APPENDIX

Letter from M. Sainte-Beuve

    1857.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I have received your beautiful volume, and first I have to thank you for the kind words with which it was accompanied; for a long time you have accustomed me to your good and loyal sentiments towards me. I knew some of your verses from having read them in other selections; collected together, they have quite a different effect. To say to you that this general effect is sad would not astonish you; it is what you wanted. To tell you that you have not hesitated in gathering your flowers together for any sort of image and colour, terrible and distressing though it might be, you know it better than I do; again, it is what you have wished. You are a true poet of the school of "art," and if we could talk to each other on the subject of this book, there would be much to say. You, also, are of those who look for poetry everywhere; and because, before you, others have sought it in all the easily accessible places, because you have been left little room, because the earthly and the celestial fields were rather too heavily harvested, and that for thirty years and more lyrics of all kinds have been written, because you have come so late and the last, you have said to yourself, I imagine: "Ah well, I shall still find poetry, and I shall find it where no one else has thought of gathering and extracting it," and you have taken Hell, you have made yourself devil. You wanted to wrest their secrets from the demons of the night. In doing this with subtilty, with refinement, with a careful talent, and an almost meticulous surrender of expression, in stringing the detail, in playing upon what is horrible, you seem to have been amusing yourself. You have suffered, however, you have tormented yourself to display your wearinesses, your nightmares, your moral tortures; you must have suffered much, my dear fellow. This particular sadness that shows itself in your pages, and in which I recognise the last symptom of a sick generation of whom the seniors are well known to us, is also that which you will have experienced.

You say somewhere, in marking the spiritual awakening which comes after ill-spent nights, that, when "the white and rosy dawn," appearing suddenly, comes in company with "the tormenting Ideal," at that moment, by a sort of avenging expiation —

"Dans la brute assoupie un ange se réveille!"

It is this angel that I invoke in you and that must be cultivated. If only you had let it intervene a little oftener in two or three separate places, that would have been sufficient to have disentangled your thought, so that all these dreams of evil, all these obscure forms, and all these outlandish interweavings wherein your imagination has wearied itself would have appeared in their true guise – that is to say half scattered, ready and waiting to flee before the light. Your book, then, would have yielded, like a "Temptation of St. Antony," at the moment when dawn draws near and one feels that it is about to break.

It is thus that I picture and that I understand it. One must quote oneself as an example as little as possible. But we also, thirty years ago, have sought poetry where we could. Many fields were already reaped, and the most beautiful laurels cut. I remember in what melancholy state of mind and soul I wrote "Joseph Delorme," and I am still astonished when I happen (which is rarely) to reopen this little volume, at what I have dared to say, to express in it. But, in obedience to the impulse and natural progress of my sentiments, I wrote a selection the following year, still very imperfect, but animated by a gentler, purer inspiration, "Les Consolations," and, thanks to this simple development towards good, I have been almost pardoned. Let me give you some advice which would surprise those who do not know you. You mistrust passion too much; with you it is a theory. You accord too much to the mind, to combination. Let yourself alone, do not be afraid to feel too much like others. Never fear to be common; you will always have enough in your delicacy of expression to make you distinguished.

I do not wish any longer to appear more prudish in your eyes than I am. I like more than one part of your volume – those "Tristesses de la Lune," for example, a delightful sonnet that seems like some English poet contemporary with Shakespeare's youth. It is not up to these stanzas, "A celle qui est trop gaie," which seem to me exquisitely done. Why is this piece not in Latin, or rather in Greek, and included in the section of the "Erotica" of the "Anthology"? The savant, Brunck, would have gathered it into the "Analecta veterum poetarum"; President Bouhier and La Monnoye – that is to say, men of authority and sober habits —castissimæ vitæ morumque integerrimorum, would have expounded it without shame and we should put on it the sign of the lovers. Tange Chlœn semel arrogantem…

But, once again, it is not a question of that nor of compliments. I would rather grumble, and, if I were walking with you by the side of the sea, along a cliff, without pretending to play the mentor, I should try to trip you up, my dear friend, and throw you roughly into the water, so that you, who can swim, would go straightway under the sun in full course.

    Yours always,
    SAINTE-BEUVE.