![]() ![]() In “Autumn Song,” for example, the sound of men chopping wood at the end of summer evokes not just images of autumn but of siege-machines, gallows, and coffins:īuilders of gallows make no worse a sound. The whole raison d’être of my translation is the recreation in English of his “trance music.” Because this music is made of words, it simultaneously calls up lush, extravagant, and even disturbing images. What moves me most in Baudelaire’s poetry is its incantatory sound. How much has changed in the 200 years since his birth in 1821! ![]() What is a contemporary translator to do with him? In talking a bit about the challenges I had to grapple with while translating The Flowers of Evil, I hope to reveal some characteristics not just of Baudelaire but of ourselves. Furthermore, if Baudelaire were writing today, his treatment of racial difference would hardly fly. Here in the 21st century, free verse is in, and formalism and rhetorical tropes are out. CHARLES BAUDELAIRE WAS a formalist poet given to passé rhetorical tropes, who also used stereotypes when depicting black people. ![]()
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