Category: Translations
Translations
THE CAT: An ‘Erotic’ Poem by Charles Baudelaire *
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.
Hymn to Satan: A Baudelaire Translation
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
Hymn to Satan
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!
PRAYER
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.
Baudelaire’s ‘Hymn to Satan’, Two Translations
“La plus belle des ruses du diable
est de vous persuader qu’il n’existe pas.”
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
Two Baudelaire translations in different styles
Left, portrait of French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
Editor John Scott Montecristo: These two translations of Baudelaire’s sonnet Sépulture (‘Sepulchre’) illustrate the difference between an accurate, literal translation by William Aggeler and an “imitation translation” by Lasha Darkmoon.
The Aggeler version follows the original French poem closely, word for word. It can do this easily enough because it makes no attempt to capture the musicality of Baudelaire’s poem. By using free verse—i.e., chopped-up prose—Aggeler is prepared to sacrifice the sound effects of the original in order to obtain strict verbal accuracy.
The second version by Lasha Darkmoon does the opposite. Though less accurate verbally, it makes use of rhyme and metre, as Baudelaire himself does, to capture the rhythm and musicality of the original. For Darkmoon, sound takes precedence over sense.
Read More
The Isha Upanishad, translated by Lasha Darkmoon
Introduced by John Scott Montecristo
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
Three Sanskrit Poems
These three translations from the Sanskrit were published
in the British literary magazine Acumen in 2006 and 2008.
1. In the Beginning
Last Words Of Gautama Buddha To His Disciples
Based on extracts from The Gospel of Buddha,
complied from Ancient Records by Paul Carus, 1883
LD: The term ‘Tathagata’ is a title of the Buddha. (See endnote). Ananda, the Buddha’s cousin, was also his closest and most devoted disciple.
“SEEK YE FOR THAT WHICH IS PERMANENT
AND WORK OUT YOUR OWN SALVATION WITH DILIGENCE.”
Au Lecteur — Charles Baudelaire
four years before his death
Baudelaire’s first book of poems, Les Fleurs du Mal (“Flowers of Evil”), was published in 1857 when the poet was 36. Six of the poems, some of which have already been translated here by Lasha Darkmoon, were immediately banned as obscene. Au Lecteur stood as the book’s preface, containing some of the most quotable lines in French literature.
Victor Hugo was to enthuse, “Your fleurs du mal shine and dazzle like stars. I applaud your vigorous spirit!” Others were not so impressed. “Everything in it which is not hideous is incomprehensible,” the poetry critic of Le Figaro wrote angrily. “And everything one understands is putrid”.
Selections from the Bhagavad-Gita: [2] Man Perfected
Translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood Read More
One Night I Lay, by Charles Baudelaire (trans. Darkmoon)
One night I lay next to a hideous whore
like a corpse cuddling a rotting cadaver.
Then I began dreaming of a far more
attractive female. Wow, how I fancied her!
I began picturing this lady’s noble air
of command. The cool authority of
her eye. The perfumed helmet of her hair.
Such hot thoughts! Jeeze, I’m all steamed up for love!
Lady, I’d like to cover you with kisses!
Wild kisses! Are you ready for caresses
from head to foot, my charming chickadee?
If only, cruel temptress, you could try
to melt the glacier in your icy eye!
No? You mean you can’t spare a tear for me?
Rotting Corpse, by Charles Baudelaire (Darkmoon translation)
Rotting Corpse
Remember that thing we saw, my love,
one fine sweet summer morning as we turned
the path. Across the gravel-strewn ground
lay sprawled a rotting corpse. Its legs aloft,
kicking the air like a whore on heat,
seething and dripping with poisons,
displaying in a shameless fashion its fetid
womb, reeking with rotten smells!
The sun blazed down upon this festering
heap of putrescence, as if to toast it to a turn,
giving back to Nature with a vengeance
all the bits and pieces she had put together.
The sky watched that gorgeous corpse
blossom like a baleful flower. The stench
of it was so appalling, you almost
swooned away on the grass! Flies buzzed
round that foul womb. From it poured forth
black batallions of maggots like a viscous
jelly, oozing across the mass of living rags.
Rising and falling in waves, the whole thing
popped and crackled and sputtered
like a sparkling devilfroth. It was as if
the body, inflated with unmentionable
gases, was alive and kicking!
one fine sweet summer morning as we turned
the path. Across the gravel-strewn ground
lay sprawled a rotting corpse. Its legs aloft,
seething and dripping with poisons,
displaying in a shameless fashion its fetid
womb, reeking with rotten smells!
heap of putrescence, as if to toast it to a turn,
giving back to Nature with a vengeance
all the bits and pieces she had put together.
blossom like a baleful flower. The stench
of it was so appalling, you almost
swooned away on the grass! Flies buzzed
black batallions of maggots like a viscous
jelly, oozing across the mass of living rags.
Rising and falling in waves, the whole thing
like a sparkling devilfroth. It was as if
the body, inflated with unmentionable
gases, was alive and kicking!