Illustration

L'albatros

Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821–1867)

• Français // French

Souvent, pour s’amuser, les hommes d’équipage
Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers,
Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage,
Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.

À peine les ont-ils déposés sur les planches,
Que ces rois de l'azur, maladroits et honteux,
Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes blanches
Comme des avirons traîner à côté d'eux.

Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule !
Lui, naguère si beau, qu'il est comique et laid !
L'un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule,
L'autre mime, en boitant, l'infirme qui volait !

Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées
Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l'archer ;
Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,
Ses ailes de géant l'empêchent de marcher

The Albatross

• English // Anglais (tr. David K Smythe)

Often, to amuse themselves, the crewmen
Catch albatrosses, vast sea-birds,
Which follow, indolent companions of the voyage,
The ship gliding on the bitter gulfs.

Hardly have they put them on deck,
When these kings of the azure, clumsy and ashamed,
Pitifully let go their great white wings,
Like oars dragging alongside them.

This winged voyager, how awkward and weak he is!
He, once so beautiful, he's so funny and ugly!
One teases his beak with a pipestem,
Another mimes, limping, the cripple that once flew!

The Poet is like this prince of the clouds
Who haunts the tempest and laughs at the archer;
Exiled on the ground, in the midst of jeers,
His giant wings keep him from walking.

​

From Les fleurs du mal - Spleen et idéal. Four quatrains alexandrins: ABAB rhyme scheme. Alternating word-genders. Verses I-III: 1842; Verse IV: 1859.

Hello, Symbolist friends and decadent dears;

I was wondering whether the late, great Samuel Beckett had translated any other works by the legendary Arthur Rimbaud (excluding Le bateau ivre's exquisite rendering as Drunken Boat) into English; probably amongst the sublimest that I've ever read—dare I quip, even equal to the original (bracing, of course, for all scrutiny...).

My attempts to scour for more information have barely sourced any fruition: the Poetry Foundation remarked that he had translated works by Rimbaud. Would you please, please help me? If not, I am curious as to which other alternatives may be similar in-vein to the former.

Thank you very much; dearest archipelagos of stars and isles who launch me aloft into the deep delirium of the skies!

P.S.: I do appreciate you being 'round.

Oil on panel. Alte Nationalgalerie Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

“Arnold Böcklin spent the autumn of 1879 on Ischia. The Castello Alfonso, on a small island nearby, deeply impressed him during his stay. When the young, widowed Marie Berna visited Böcklin’s studio in Florence in 1880 and asked for a “picture to dream by,” the memory of that landscape must have merged with earlier memories of, for example, the islands of the dead like San Michele in Venice and Etruscan cliff-necropolises. The Isle of the Dead became one of Böcklin’s most popular pictorial works. He achieved this by combining a limited number of ideas into an impressive atmospheric composition. The motifs — island, water, and castle or vil-la by the sea — are already familiar from many of his earlier works. However, in this case they have been concentrated into a statement of the artist’s Weltanschauung. The location is sinister. The viewer’s gaze is led up the steps but can penetrate no further into the darkness. The island’s strict symmetry, the calm horizontals and verticals, the circular island surrounded by high cliff walls, and the magical lighting create an atmosphere that is both solemn and sublime, evoking a sense of stillness and other-worldliness. The ripple-less surface of the water and the boat bearing the coffin with a figure shrouded in white behind it add a melancholy tone to the whole. The picture owned by the Nationalgalerie is the third of five versions. It was commissioned in 1883 by the art dealer Fritz Gurlitt. It was Gurlitt who then gave the work its memorable title and, with a keen eye for business, asked Max Klinger to make an etching of it. This was the version that established the extraordinary fame of the picture in the late nineteenth century. All-pervasive in the form of photographs and prints, the Isle of the Dead mirrored the feeling of a whole epoch: people identified with it and it became a favorite fin de siècle image.”

-Source: Google Arts & Culture The Isle of the Dead https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-isle-of-the-dead-arnold-b%C3%B6cklin/0wFgMTIQ3kZCpg

Oil on canvas. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

From Sotheby’s catalogue notes when another great painting by Delville on the same subject, Orphée Aux Enfers (Orpheus in Hell) was sold as part of the Collection of Mrs. Seymour Stein (Widow of founder of Island Records):

“The myth of Orpheus has provided inspiration to artists for centuries and was especially popular among Symbolists who “embraced the figure of Orpheus – martyr, savior, mediator of the earthly and the divine, and archetype of artistic genius”. The narrative varies among sources, but the most represented legend tells of his wife, the wood-nymph Eurydice, being fatally bitten by a snake. Refusing to accept her death, Orpheus journeyed from his home in Thrace to reclaim her from the Underworld, taming Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of Hades, to gain entry (the scene which inspired the present work). Charming Pluto and Proserpine with his lyre and music, they allow Eurydice to leave the underworld with Orpheus, provided that he does not look at her until they return to the light; unable to overcome his temptation, a misguided glance at his wife banished her into darkness forever. The death of Orpheus has also been a potent source of inspiration, as he is eventually ripped apart by maenads leaving his still-singing head to float down the river Hebrus and out to sea, washing ashore on the island of Lesbos. The image of the severed head appears often at the fin-de-siècle, notably in Gustave Moreau’s large and influential canvas, Orphée (1865, Musée d’Orsay), where the poet’s head rests on a lyre and is gazed upon by a young woman. In Gustave Courtois’ Orphée (1875, Musée Pontalier) and in Delville’s earlier work, La Mort d’Orphée (1893, Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Belgium, Brussels), which he presented as a centerpiece of the 1893 Salon de la Rose + Croix, his head is poignantly presented in isolation.”

Source: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2019/19th-century-european-art/jean-delville-orphee-aux-enfers

India ink, watercolour and crayon on paper. Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ostende.

“Resistance is one of four prints from the series called “The Way of Silence”. Its name alludes to La Voix du Silence (1889), a treatise written by the theosophist Helena P. Blavatsky. The prints in the series were a sort of visual memento of the modern Man in quest, who should address not only the great ancient cultures, but also the cosmic laws of the Universe. Resistance was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s poem Dream−Land of 1844 about a pilgrim journeying through an obscure and desolate landscape, where Eidolon, called Night, sits erect on a black throne. This is a wild landscape of lone and dead waters. There the pilgrim finds layered memories of the past. The scene is dominated by a colossal figure of a ruler with the head of a sphinx. In the drawing, the lord of the earth looks defiantly up to the heavens, his hands twisted in a gesture of convulsive determination. In theosophy, Eidolon, meaning “image, idol, apparition, phantom” in Greek, represents the astral look−alike of the human form.” -Collections From the National Gallery of Prague https://sbirky.ngprague.cz/en/dielo/CZE:NG.R_23011

Oil on canvas.

Oil pastel and graphite on paper.

Manuscript in the hand of Rimbaud's boyfriend, Paul Verlaine.

Le Bateau ivre.

Jean-Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)

• Français // French

Comme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles,

Je ne me sentis plus guidé par les haleurs :

Des Peaux-Rouges criards les avaient pris pour cibles,

Les ayant cloués nus aux poteaux de couleurs.

J’étais insoucieux de tous les équipages,

Porteur de blés flamands ou de cotons anglais.

Quand avec mes haleurs ont fini ces tapages,

Les Fleuves m’ont laissé descendre où je voulais.

Dans les clapotements furieux des marées,

Moi, l’autre hiver, plus sourd que les cerveaux d’enfants,

Je courus ! Et les Péninsules démarrées

N’ont pas subi tohu-bohus plus triomphants.

La tempête a béni mes éveils maritimes.

Plus léger qu’un bouchon j’ai dansé sur les flots

Qu’on appelle rouleurs éternels de victimes,

Dix nuits, sans regretter l’œil niais des falots !

Plus douce qu’aux enfants la chair des pommes sures,

L’eau verte pénétra ma coque de sapin

Et des taches de vins bleus et des vomissures

Me lava, dispersant gouvernail et grappin.

Et dès lors, je me suis baigné dans le Poème

De la Mer, infusé d’astres, et lactescent,

Dévorant les azurs verts ; où, flottaison blême

Et ravie, un noyé pensif parfois descend ;

Où, teignant tout à coup les bleuités, délires

Et rythmes lents sous les rutilements du jour,

Plus fortes que l’alcool, plus vastes que nos lyres,

Fermentent les rousseurs amères de l’amour !

Je sais les cieux crevant en éclairs, et les trombes

Et les ressacs, et les courants : je sais le soir,

L’Aube exaltée ainsi qu’un peuple de colombes,

Et j’ai vu quelquefois ce que l’homme a cru voir !

J’ai vu le soleil bas, taché d’horreurs mystiques,

Illuminant de longs figements violets,

Pareils à des acteurs de drames très antiques

Les flots roulant au loin leurs frissons de volets !

J’ai rêvé la nuit verte aux neiges éblouies,

Baisers montant aux yeux des mers avec lenteurs,

La circulation des sèves inouïes,

Et l’éveil jaune et bleu des phosphores chanteurs !

J’ai suivi, des mois pleins, pareille aux vacheries

Hystériques, la houle à l’assaut des récifs,

Sans songer que les pieds lumineux des Maries

Pussent forcer le mufle aux Océans poussifs !

J’ai heurté, savez-vous, d’incroyables Florides

Mêlant aux fleurs des yeux de panthères à peaux

D’hommes ! Des arcs-en-ciel tendus comme des brides

Sous l’horizon des mers, à de glauques troupeaux !

J’ai vu fermenter les marais énormes, nasses

Où pourrit dans les joncs tout un Léviathan !

Des écroulements d’eaux au milieu des bonaces,

Et les lointains vers les gouffres cataractant !

Glaciers, soleils d’argent, flots nacreux, cieux de braises !

Échouages hideux au fond des golfes bruns

Où les serpents géants dévorés des punaises

Choient, des arbres tordus, avec de noirs parfums !

J’aurais voulu montrer aux enfants ces dorades

Du flot bleu, ces poissons d’or, ces poissons chantants.

— Des écumes de fleurs ont bercé mes dérades

Et d’ineffables vents m’ont ailé par instants.

Parfois, martyr lassé des pôles et des zones,

La mer dont le sanglot faisait mon roulis doux

Montait vers moi ses fleurs d’ombre aux ventouses jaunes

Et je restais, ainsi qu’une femme à genoux…

Presque île, ballottant sur mes bords les querelles

Et les fientes d’oiseaux clabaudeurs aux yeux blonds.

Et je voguais, lorsqu’à travers mes liens frêles

Des noyés descendaient dormir, à reculons !

Or moi, bateau perdu sous les cheveux des anses,

Jeté par l’ouragan dans l’éther sans oiseau,

Moi dont les Monitors et les voiliers des Hanses

N’auraient pas repêché la carcasse ivre d’eau ;

Libre, fumant, monté de brumes violettes,

Moi qui trouais le ciel rougeoyant comme un mur

Qui porte, confiture exquise aux bons poètes,

Des lichens de soleil et des morves d’azur,

Qui courais, taché de lunules électriques,

Planche folle, escorté des hippocampes noirs,

Quand les juillets faisaient crouler à coups de triques

Les cieux ultramarins aux ardents entonnoirs ;

Moi qui tremblais, sentant geindre à cinquante lieues

Le rut des Béhémots et les Maelstroms épais,

Fileur éternel des immobilités bleues,

Je regrette l’Europe aux anciens parapets !

J’ai vu des archipels sidéraux ! et des îles

Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur :

— Est-ce en ces nuits sans fonds que tu dors et t’exiles,

Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur ? —

Mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré ! Les Aubes sont navrantes.

Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer :

L’âcre amour m’a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes.

Ô que ma quille éclate ! Ô que j’aille à la mer !

Si je désire une eau d’Europe, c’est la flache

Noire et froide où vers le crépuscule embaumé

Un enfant accroupi, plein de tristesse, lâche

Un bateau frêle comme un papillon de mai.

Je ne puis plus, baigné de vos langueurs, ô lames,

Enlever leur sillage aux porteurs de cotons,

Ni traverser l’orgueil des drapeaux et des flammes,

Ni nager sous les yeux horribles des pontons.

Drunken Boat.

• English // Anglais (tr. Samuel Beckett)

Downstream on impassive rivers suddenly

I felt the towline of the boatmen slacken.

Redskins had taken them in a scream and stripped them and

Skewered them to the glaring stakes for targets.

Then, delivered from my straining boatmen,

From the trivial racket of trivial crews and from

The freights of Flemish grain and English cotton

,I made my own course down the passive rivers.

Blanker than the brain of a child I fled

Through winter, I scoured the furious jolts of the tides,

In an uproar and a chaos of Peninsulas,

Exultant, from their moorings in triumph torn.

I started awake to tempestuous hallowings.

Nine nights I danced like a cork on the billows, I danced

On the breakers, sacrificial, for ever and ever,

And the crass eye of the lanterns was expunged.

More firmly bland than to children apples’ firm pulp,

Soaked the green water through my hull of pine,

Scattering helm and grappling and washing me

Of the stains, the vomitings and blue wine.

Thenceforward, fused in the poem, milk of stars,

Of the sea, I coiled through deeps of cloudless green,

Where, dimly, they come swaying down,

Rapt and sad, singly, the drowned;

Where, under the sky’s hemorrhage,

slowly tossingIn thuds of fever, arch-alcohol of song,

Pumping over the blues in sudden stains,

The bitter redness of love ferment.

I know the heavens split with lightnings and the currents

Of the sea and its surgings and its spoutings; I know evening,

And dawn exalted like a cloud of doves.

And my eyes have fixed phantasmagoria.

I have seen, as shed by ancient tragic footlights,

Out from the horror of the low sun’s mystic stains,

Long weals of violet creep across the sea

and peals of ague rattle down its slats.

I have dreamt the green night’s drifts of dazzled snow,

The slow climb of kisses to the eyes of the seas,

The circulation of unheard saps,

And the yellow-blue alarum of phosphors singing.

I have followed months long the maddened herds of the surf

Storming the reefs, mindless of the feet,

The radiant feet of the Marys that constrain

The stampedes of the broken-winded Oceans.

I have fouled, be it known, unspeakable Floridas, tangle of

The flowers of the eyes of panthers in the skins of

Men and the taut rainbows curbing,

Beyond the brows of the seas, the glaucous herds.

I have seen Leviathan sprawl rotting in the reeds

Of the great seething swamp-nets;

The calm sea disemboweled in waterslides

And the cataracting of the doomed horizons.

Iridescent waters, glaciers, suns of silver, flagrant skies,

And dark creeks’ secret ledges, horror-strewn,

Where giant reptiles, pullulant with lice,

Lapse with dark perfumes from the writhing trees.

I would have shown to children those dorados

Of the blue wave, those golden fish, those singing fish;

In spumes of flowers I have risen from my anchors

And canticles of wind have blessed my wings.

Then toward me, rocking softly on its sobbing,

Weary of the torment of the poles and zones,

The sea would lift its yellow polyps on flowers

Of gloom and hold me—like a woman kneeling—

A stranded sanctuary for screeching birds,

Flaxen-eyed, shiteing on my trembling decks,

Till down they swayed to sleep, the drowned, spreadeagled,

And, sundering the fine tendrils, floated me.

Now I who was wrecked in the inlets’ tangled hair

And flung beyond birds aloft by the hurricane,

Whose carcass drunk with water Monitors

And Hanseatic sloops could not have salved;

Who, reeking and free in a fume of purple spray,

Have pierced the skies that flame as a wall would flame

For a chosen poet’s rapture, and stream and flame

With solar lichen and with azure snot;

Who scudded, with my escort of black sea-horses,

Fury of timber, scarred with electric moons,

When Sirius flogged into a drift of ashes

The furnace-cratered cobalt of the skies;

I who heard in trembling across a waste of leagues

The turgent storms and Behemoths moan their rut,

I weaving for ever voids of spellbound blue,

Now remember Europe and her ancient ramparts.

I saw archipelagoes of stars and islands launched me

Aloft on the deep delirium of their skies:

Are these the fathomless nights of your sleep and exile,

Million of golden birds, oh Vigour to be?

But no more tears. Dawns have broken my heart,

And every moon is torment, every sun bitterness;

I am bloated with the stagnant fumes of acrid loving—

May I split from stern to stern and founder, ah founder!

I want none of Europe’s waters unless it be

The cold black puddle where a child, full of sadness,

Squatting, looses a boat as frail

As a moth into the fragrant evening.

Steeped in the langours of the swell, I may

Absorb no more the wake of the cotton-freighters,

Nor breast the arrogant oriflammes and banners,

Nor swim beneath the leer of the pontoons.

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Fuite d'automne

Cécile Anne Marie Antoinette Sauvage (1883-1927)

English translation in comments

​

Sors de ta chrysalide, ô mon âme, voici

L'Automne. Un long baiser du soleil a roussi

Les étangs ; les lointains sont vermeils de feuillage,

Le flexible arc-en-ciel a retenu l'orage

Sur sa voûte où se fond la clarté d'un vitrail ;

La brume des terrains rôde autour du bétail

Et parfois le soleil que le brouillard efface

Est rond comme la lune aux marges de l'espace.

​

Mon âme, sors de l'ombre épaisse de ta chair

C'est le temps dans les prés où le silence est clair,

Où le vent, suspendant son aile de froidure,

Berce dans les rameaux un rêve d'aventure

Et fait choir en jouant avec ses doigts bourrus

La feuille jaune autour des peupliers pointus.

La libellule vole avec un cri d'automne

Dans ses réseaux cassants ; la brebis monotone

A l'enrouement fêlé des branches dans la voix ;

La lumière en faisceaux bruine sur les bois.

​

Mon âme en robe d'or faite de feuilles mortes

Se donne au tourbillon que la rafale apporte

Et chavire au soleil sur la pointe du pied

Plus vive qu'en avril le sauvage églantier ;

Cependant que de loin elle voit sur la porte,

Écoutant jusqu'au seuil rouler des feuilles mortes,

Mon pauvre corps courbé dans son châle d'hiver.

Et mon âme se sent étrangère à ma chair.

​

Pourtant, docilement, lorsque les vitres closes

Refléteront au soir la fleur des lampes roses,

Elle regagnera le masque familier,

Et, servante modeste avec un tablier,

Elle trottinera dans les chambres amères

En retenant des mains le sanglot des chimères.