{"id":16656,"date":"2009-11-26T20:56:27","date_gmt":"2009-11-26T20:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/?p=16656"},"modified":"2009-11-27T20:53:14","modified_gmt":"2009-11-27T20:53:14","slug":"the-flowers-of-evil-charles-baudelaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/the-flowers-of-evil-charles-baudelaire\/","title":{"rendered":"The Flowers of Evil<\/em> – Charles Baudelaire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Translated by Will Stone.<\/p>\n

\"charles_baudelaire\"<\/p>\n

Obsession<\/strong><\/p>\n

Great forests, like cathedrals you terrify me;
\nBellowing like organs; and in our accursed hearts,
\nLimitless latitudes of mourning where
\nAncient death rattles resonate,
\nSwells the echo of your \u2018De Profundis’.<\/p>\n

Ocean, how I despise you! Your surges and commotion
\nMirror my own mind;
\nI hear in the vast laughter of the sea
\nThe bitter laughter of beaten man,
\nLaced with sobbing and profanities.<\/p>\n

O’ Night! How you would please me,
\nWithout those stars whose radiance speaks
\nA language I know only too well!
\nFor I seek the void, darkness, revelation!<\/p>\n

But shadows are themselves a canvas on which,
\nTeeming in their thousands from my eyes,
\nThe vanished souls with familiar glance reside.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Spleen<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pluvius, exasperated with the whole city,
\nTips from his urn torrents of dismal cold
\nOver the ghastly tenants of a nearby cemetery,
\nAnd on the fog bound suburbs unrelenting mortality.<\/p>\n

My cat, her mangy wasted body ever restless
\nCrosses the tiles to seek out a litter,
\nThe old poet’s soul roams the gutter
\nWith the sorrowful refrain of a shivering ghost.<\/p>\n

The great bell mourns, and the smoke veiled log
\nIn falsetto accompanies the snivelling clock,
\nAs from a rankly scented deck of cards,<\/p>\n

Fatal legacy of some dropsical old crone,
\nThe smart Jack of Hearts and Queen of Spades
\nDarkly discuss their perished loves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Laments of an Icarus<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lovers of whores are happy,
\nRefreshed and sated;
\nAs for me, my arms are weary
\nFor having embraced clouds.<\/p>\n

And it’s thanks to those unrivalled stars,
\nWho blaze from the sky’s remotest depths,
\nThat my charred eyes see nothing
\nBut the memories of suns.<\/p>\n

In vain I sought space,
\nTo know its boundary and heart;
\nBeneath an impossible eye of fire
\nI feel my wings buckle then expire;<\/p>\n

And seared by the love of beauty,
\nI’ll not have the sublime honour
\nOf lending my name to the abyss
\nThat doubles as my tomb.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Burial<\/strong><\/p>\n

If on a night leaden and dreary
\nA good Christian, through charity,
\nInters your cherished corpse
\nBehind some old rubble ruin,<\/p>\n

At the hour when the chaste stars
\nClose their over-burdened eyes,
\nThe spiders will lay their nets there,
\nAnd the viper nurse its young;<\/p>\n

Then you’ll hear all year long
\nOver your condemned head,
\nThe pitiful howling of wolves<\/p>\n

And scrawny witches,
\nThe frolicking of lecherous old men
\nAnd black-hearted felons plotting crimes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"will_-_emmas_garden_july_2009_3\"
\nABOUT THE TRANSLATOR<\/strong>
\nWill Stone<\/strong>, born 1966, is a poet living in Suffolk. In November 2008 his first collection Glaciation<\/em><\/a>, published by Salt, won the international Glen Dimplex Award for poetry. His published translations include To The Silenced<\/em><\/a> – selected poems of Georg Trakl (Arc Publications, 2005). Arc will also publish two further collections of translations of long neglected Belgian poets Emile Verhaeren and Georges Rodenbach in 2010. A first English translation of Stefan Zweig’s travel writings will also appear in 2010 from Hesperus Press. More on Charles Baudelaire<\/a>, one of the original po\u00c3\u00a8tes maudits<\/em>, can be found at Fleurs du Mal<\/em><\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"charles_baudelaire1\"The old poet’s soul roams the gutter
\nWith the sorrowful refrain of a shivering ghost.<\/p>\n

The great bell mourns, and the smoke veiled log
\nIn falsetto accompanies the snivelling clock,
\nAs from a rankly scented deck of cards,<\/p>\n

Fatal legacy of some dropsical old crone,
\nThe smart Jack of Hearts and Queen of Spades
\nDarkly discuss their perished loves.<\/p>\n

A selection of new translations by Will Stone<\/STRONG>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}