Translations
A Selection of Four Love Poems
by GIAN FRANCO SPOTTI
By JOHN KAMINSKI
16 November 2020
360-degree scan of a rotting civilization
“The real war is between every country in the world and Israel … The central issue of human existence at the present time is that Jews have totally taken over reality … conspiring to turn the world into one giant Jewish run superstate.” — John Kaminski
Never has censorship in the United States been so in-your-face as now when the President can’t even post his comments on Twitter because they are ruled fake news by an unreconstructed Jewish Communist dupe. What hope to tell the truth does an ordinary blogger have? Read More
Translated from the French
by Lasha Darkmoon
LD: In August 1857, less than two months after Charles Baudelaire published Les Fleurs du Mal (‘The Flowers of Evil’), a French court banned six poems from its contents: Lesbos, Femmes damnés, Le Léthé, À celle qui est trop gaie, Les Bijoux, and Les Métamorphoses du Vampire. The poem below, though it also featured an erotic vampire, was so well written that the censors decided not to ban it; though it was thought that it might have a corrupting effect on susceptible young men— if not women with lesbian tendencies. The femme fatale described in the poem was Baudelaire’s mistress, Jeanne Duval, an actress and dancer of mixed French and black African ancestry. A sex addict who frequently visited brothels, Baudelaire was completely bewitched by her. Here is a sketch of this temptress by Baudelaire. Read More
Translated into Italian
by GIAN FRANCO SPOTTI
DAL PROFONDO GRIDAVO
(‘De Profundis Clamavi’) Read More
By CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Translated from the French
by Lasha Darkmoon
DE FROFUNDIS CLAMAVI
Translated by Lasha Darkmoon Read More
Translated from the French
by Lasha Darkmoon
[LD] The poem is ostensibly about a cat. In actual fact, it is about Baudelaire’s dusky mulatto mistress, Jeanne Duval, a feline beauty with whom the French poet remained totally obsessed for roughly 20 years. He is said to have loved his half-French half-Haitian mistress more than any other woman in his life, apart from his mother who always came first.
Baudelaire is a symbol as well as a symptom of the human sickness. This is what happens to a man who has lost his spiritual bearings and expects to find an artificial paradise in drugs, sex and Satanism.
By CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Translated from the French
by Lasha Darkmoon
O you among all angels consummate,
God stripped of honor, God betrayed by fate,
Satan, have pity on my long despair!
O Prince of exiles, you who suffered wrong,
Who still undaunted rise up ever strong,
Satan, have pity on my long despair!
You, lord and master of the occult art,
Wise healer of the harrowed human heart,
Satan, have pity on my long despair!
You who, through love, beneath malignant skies,
Give lepers their first taste of paradise,
Satan, have pity on my long despair!
You who, in teaching girls to act like whores,
Bring them to rags and syphilitic sores,
Satan, have pity on my long despair!
You who, on a tall building’s outer ledge,
Propel the sleepwalker toward the edge,
Satan, have pity on my long despair!
You who, to soothe his soul, inspires man
To make the best gunpowder that he can,
Satan, have pity on my long despair!
You who, with death, your darling in delusion,
Invented Hope—that beautiful illusion—
Satan, have pity on my long despair!
O refuge of all who in God’s angry eyes
Have failed the entrance test to paradise,
Satan, have pity on my long despair!
Glory and praise to thee, Satan on high
Who reigned in heaven once, yet vanquished lie
In deepest hell now—plunged in dreams and silence!
Grant that my soul rest one day in thy presence:
There where the Tree of Knowledge spreads its shade,
Building a brave new temple round your head.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We offer below the French original of Baudelaire’s Les Litanies de Satan (‘Hymn to Satan’), followed by two translations of the poem, the first by William Aggeler and the second by Lasha Darkmoon.
Skeptics who doubt the Devil’s real existence will obviously derive little satisfaction from reading a poem in praise of a non-existent person. They are therefore advised either to skip the poem and its translations, or, if they prefer, to display their intellectual superiority in the Comments section by poking fun at Baudelaire for his gullibility. Read More
This imitation translation of the Isha Upanishad, the first to be done in trimetrical rhyming quatrains—i.e., with three stresses per line—was composed over 10 years ago as a literary exercise by Lasha Darkmoon.
Read More
