Alchemy and Amalgam
Translation in the Works of
246
Etudes de langue et littérature françaises
publiées sous la direction de
Keith Busby, M.J. Freeman,
Sjef Houppermans, Paul Pelckmans
Emily Salines
Alchemy and Amalgam
Translation in the Works of
Charles Baudelaire
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ISBN: 90-420-1931-X
Acknowledgements 7
Abbreviations 9
Introduction 11
Chapter 1: ‘L’amour du métier’?
Baudelaire’s approaches to translation 19
Chapter 2: Translation in 19th-century France 61
Chapter 3: Translation and creation
in Un Mangeur d’opium 87
Chapter 4: Le ‘procès baudelairien’ 121
Baudelaire and literary property
Chapter 5: Baudelaire’s aesthetics of amalgame 165
Chapter 6: The limits of translation 201
Conclusion: Translation as metaphor? 247
Appendix A: Chronology of Baudelaire’s translations 255
Appendix B: Annotated extract from Un Mangeur d’opium 261
Appendix C: Literary Property Law of 19 July 1793 269
Appendix D: ‘Le Joujou du pauvre’ / Morale du joujou 271
Bibliography 275
I would like to thank Dr Sonya Stephens, Profs Edward Hughes, Peter Broome and Michele Hannoosh for their invaluable advice and help at various stages of the manuscript.
The Centre for Research in Translation at Middlesex University has been the ideal environment in which to develop my ideas about Baudelaire and translation. I thank my colleagues and students of the Centre, who through their comments and questions have enriched my work.
I thank the Women Graduates Association for awarding me an emergency grant for the summer of 1995, and Royal Holloway, University of London for awarding me a travel grant in the same year, which allowed me to spend a month at the Bibliothèque Nationale. I am very grateful to Middlesex University for awarding me a period of sabbatical leave in the Autumn of 1999, during which the manuscript was completed.
The following abbreviations are used:
ŒCI and ŒCII: Baudelaire, Charles, Œuvres complètes, ed. by Claude Pichois (Paris: Gallimard, 1975-76).
CI and CII:Baudelaire, Charles, Correspondance, ed. by Claude Pichois with the collaboration of Jean Ziegler (Paris: Gallimard, 1973).
S L W: Baudelaire, Charles, Un Mangeur d’opium avec le texte parallèle des Confessions of an English Opium Eater et des Suspiria de profundis de Th. De Quincey, édition critique et commentée par Michèle Stäuble-Lipman Wulf, Études Baudelairiennes VI-VII (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1976).
EAP: Poe, Edgar Allan, Œuvres en prose, Traduites par Charles Baudelaire, Texte établi et annoté par Y.-G. Le Dantec (Paris: Gallimard, 1951).
Ouvrages73:Baudelaire, Charles, Edgar Alan Poe, sa vie et ses ouvrages, Edition commentée par W. T. Bandy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973).
Est-il normal que, pendant une quinzaine d’années, l’auteur des Fleurs du Mal
ait consacré la plus grande partie de son activité à traduire des œuvres souvent médiocres?
(...)
Pour sa difficulté à créer, Poe lui fut un alibi: les traductions sont une justifi-cation, une caution bourgeoise, destinée à rassurer sa mère, Ancelle et lui-même.1
Claude Pichois’s question and his answer are emblematic of critics’ general approach to Charles Baudelaire’s translations. ‘Traduire’ – even in the corpus of a canonical writer – cannot but be a stopgap, the sign of a lack, an abnormal activity. Such a view of translation is not restricted to Baudelaire studies, of course. Translation has traditionally been considered as a derivative activity (and one, therefore, that is less worthy of interest). Susan Bassnett describes this tradition very clearly:
Translation has been perceived as a secondary activity, as a ‘mechanical’ rather than a ‘creative’ process, within the competence of anyone with a basic grounding in a language other than their own; in short, as a low status occu-pation.2
Because of its dependence on a source text, translation is generally seen as less valuable than so-called ‘original’ writing, and totally an-cillary, dependent on its source. Despite the large volume of Baude-laire criticism, it is not surprising, therefore, to note that, of all his works, his translations have indeed been relatively little studied, and are generally considered as marginal in his corpus, a sign of his
1 Claude Pichois, ‘Baudelaire ou la difficulté créatrice’ in Baudelaire, Études et témoignages (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1967), pp. 242-61 (p. 246).
tive incapacity, manifested in an over-reliance on derivative writing. Very rarely are they seen to be relevant to the poet’s creative process.
The few studies which concentrate on Baudelaire’s translations focus mainly on Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe, and mostly from the point of view of a possible affinity between the two authors. They ex-plore mainly the question of Poe’s influence on Baudelaire and the-matic echoes between the two writers.3 Of such studies, P.M.
Wethe-rill’s Charles Baudelaire et la poésie d’Edgar Allan Poe is the most complete and enlightening.4 Other traditional paths of enquiry are
concerned with Baudelaire’s knowledge of the English language and of English literature, and generally highlight his faulty knowledge of the language and patchy understanding of the literature.5 His interest
in Poe is often quoted as an example of his poor appreciation of Eng-lish / American literature, as Poe’s status as a writer is questioned and belittled. Claude Pichois perpetuates that tradition when he writes that ‘deux écrivains du même nom: un Américain, plutôt médiocre, et un Français de génie’ hide under the name of Poe.6 The reasons for this
supposed improvement achieved through translation are rarely ex-plored, critics generally satisfying themselves with pointing out Baudelaire’s genius, although one does find some comparative studies of source and target texts such as P.M. Wetherill’s.
In comparison with the Poe translations – which, admittedly, constitute the largest part of Baudelaire’s translation corpus – Baude-laire’s other translations and adaptations have been very little studied. The most notable and useful contributions of critics in the field have
3 Among the best of early studies of this type are Léon Lemonnier’s Les Traducteurs d’Edgar Poe en France de 1845 à 1876: Charles Baudelaire (Paris: PUF, 1928),
Edgar Poe et la critique française de 1845 à 1875 (Paris: PUF, 1928), Edgar Poe et les poètes français (Paris: Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Critique, 1932). These works consider Baudelaire’s translations of Poe in context and explore – and minimize – Poe’s influence on Baudelaire. Also very useful is Patrick F. Quinn’s The French Face of Edgar Poe (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1957), which despite its general title concentrates in fact on Baudelaire’s reading of Poe. See also Louis Seylaz, Edgar Poe et les premiers symbolistes français (Lausanne: Imprimerie la Concorde, 1923).
4 P.M. Wetherill, Charles Baudelaire et la poésie d’Edgar Allan Poe (Paris: Nizet,
1962).
5 See for instance Francis Scarfe’s ‘Baudelaire angliciste?’, Études anglaises, 21
(1968), 52-57, or Margaret Heinen Matheny ‘Baudelaire’s Knowledge of English Literature’, Revue de Littérature Comparée, 1970, 98-117.
been through the publication of parallel text editions. W.T. Bandy and Claude Pichois’s ‘Un inédit: “Hiawatha. Légende indienne”, adapta-tion de Charles Baudelaire’ offers the French and the English texts in parallel, and includes a short section on ‘Baudelaire traducteur’.7L e
Jeune Enchanteur has also benefitted from W. T. Bandy’s scholarship, culminating with the publication in 1990 of an excellent parallel-text edition.8Similarly, Edgar Allan Poe, sa vie et ses ouvrages is an
ex-cellent edition by Bandy of Baudelaire’s text in parallel with its sources, with a very thorough introduction.9 In the case of Un
Mangeur d’opium and its source texts, Thomas De Quincey’s Confes-sions of an English Opium-Eater and Suspiria de Profundis, Michèle Staüble-Lipman Wulf’s edition has provided the most complete intro-duction to the source and target texts, together with a parallel edition.10
In addition to the above studies, there has been in recent years only a slow movement towards a recognition of the importance of translation for Baudelaire. Nicole Ward Jouve devotes a section of her Baudelaire: A Fire to Conquer Darkness to ‘Baudelaire and Transla-tion’, and suggests that ‘translating from one language into another calls into play attitudes not altogether different from translating paint into words, or life into art’.11 She does not, however, pursue that line
of enquiry, and instead produces a study of Baudelaire’s reading of De Quincey rather than of his work as a translator. Alan Astro’s ‘Allegory of Translation in Un Mangeur d’opium’ explores the hybrid nature of this text in terms of translation;12 Mary Ann Caws’ ‘Insertion in an
Oval Frame: Poe Circumscribed by Baudelaire’ looks at the interac-tion between Baudelaire’s translainterac-tion of Poe’s ‘The Oval Portrait’ with its source text and the poem ‘Un Fantôme’ in Les Fleurs du mal;13 and Mira Levy-Bloch’s ‘La traduction chez Baudelaire: Les
7Études Baudelairiennes II (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1971), 7-68.
8Le Jeune Enchanteur, A critical edition by W. T. Bandy (Nashville: Publications of
the W. T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire Studies, 1990). See also W. T. Bandy, ‘Baudelaire et Croly – la vérité sur Le Jeune Enchanteur’, Mercure de France (1 February 1950), 230-47.
9 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973).
10 Études Baudelairiennes VI-VII (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1976). The only other
notable study of Baudelaire and De Quincey is to be found in G. T. Clapton,
Baudelaire et De Quincey (Paris:‘Les Belles Lettres’, 1931).
11 Nicole Ward Jouve, Baudelaire: A Fire to Conquer Darkness (London: Macmillan,
1980), p. 200.
12 Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 18, 1-2 (Fall-Winter 1989-90), 165-71.
trois imaginations du poète-traducteur’ explores the links between translation metaphors and imagination for Baudelaire (but does not take into account Baudelaire’s translations).14 These articles are very valuable but remain inevitably limited in scope. There has been to date no overall study of Baudelaire’s translating technique or of his use of English texts in general, nor has there been any contextualized study of his translation corpus. Nor indeed has there been any attempt to link Baudelaire’s translations and adaptations to his other writings.
This book is part of a growing movement in translation stud-ies to reassess the significance of the act of translation, and a ques-tioning of the ancillary position of translation. Particularly representa-tive of this movement is the work of the so-called ‘manipulation’ school, inherited from the polysystem theories of the 1970s and early 1980s.15 As its name suggests, the manipulation school focuses on the transformative powers of translation, which are dictated by the trans-lator’s subjectivity but also, as importantly, the translational norms of the target system (that is to say the prevalent approaches to translation of the receiving culture) as well as the socio-cultural context to which the translations are being transplanted. This resolutely target-oriented approach to translation has the advantage of moving away from con-cerns of faithfulness to a sacrosanct original. It should be seen, how-ever, in parallel with studies such as those of Lawrence Venuti or Antoine Berman, who explore the appropriating dimension of the act of translation, and emphasize the fallacy of fluency and transparency in translation, arguing that these hide in fact the translator’s tendency to take over the source text and erase the source author’s voice.16
Moving away from the theory of creative incapacity, my aim is, therefore, to respond to the lacuna in Baudelaire criticism and to pursue the line of enquiry set by translation studies by reassessing the
Chelsea House Publishers, 1987, pp. 101-23 (initially published in The French Review, 56, April-May 1983).
14 Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 20, 1-2 (Fall-Winter 1991-92), 361-83.
15 See Itamar Even-Zohar, ‘Polysystem Theories’, Poetics Today, 1, 1-2 (Autumn
1979), 287-310; Gideon Toury, In Search of a Theory of Translation (Tel Aviv: Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1980); Theo Hermans (ed.), The Manipulation of Literature, Studies in Literary Translation (London: Croom Helm, 1985).
16 Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, A History of Translation (London
significance of the translating act in the Baudelairean corpus and its importance in Baudelaire’s writing technique. In order to achieve that, this study will focus on the interaction between translation and crea-tion and will move away from tradicrea-tional distinccrea-tions between Baudelaire’s derivative and original writings. Instead, it will aim to uncover a common approach to writing both in the translations and in the rest of Baudelaire’s corpus.
The scope of this study will be deliberately wide, therefore. It will explore Baudelaire’s translations from English for signs of sub-jectivity and creativity, and will try and discover forms of translation other than intralingual in the Baudelairean corpus. In other words, it will not only explore the direct translations of Poe’s texts, but instead will also focus on more ambiguous texts, such as the ‘adaptations’ from English (Un Mangeur d’opium, for instance), and other forms of dual writing in Baudelaire’s works as the doublets and transpositions d’art.
Thus the term ‘translation’ will be taken in a wide sense, en-compassing a range of forms of derivative writings (that is to say texts created through the rewriting of an earlier text), an approach largely influenced by Roman Jakobson’s seminal ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’.17 Jakobson defines three types of translation:
1) Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language.
2) Interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language.
3) Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of non-verbal sign systems.18
Jakobson’s definitions have the advantage of opening up the discus-sion of translation to forms of writing which would not necessarily be included in more traditional approaches. ‘Translation proper’, that is to say from one language to another, is only one form of translation, which includes rewriting (intralingual) and transposition (intersemi-otic). The traditional distinction between translation, adaptation and version should not indeed hide the fact that all these are forms of dual,
17 in On Translation, ed. by Reuben A. Brower (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1959), pp. 232-243. See also Aron Kibédi Varga’s commentary on Jakobson’s three types of translation in ‘Pragmatique de la traduction’, RHLF, 1997, 3, 428-36 (pp. 428-30).
or derivative, writing, and are, therefore, part of a common approach to writing. Henri Meschonic, in his article ‘Traduction, adaptation – palimpseste’, shows the links and differences between adaptation and translation:
Je définirais la traduction la version qui privilégie en elle le texte à traduire et l’adaptation, celle qui privilégie (volontairement ou à son insu, peu importe), tout ce hors-texte fait des idées du traducteur sur le langage, et sur la littéra-ture, sur le possible et l’impossible (par quoi il se situe) et dont il fait le sous-texte qui envahit le sous-texte à traduire.19
Meschonic emphasizes translation as a source-oriented exercise, and adaptation as target-oriented. As Yves Gambier argues, the division between translation and adaptation is based, then, on the implicit idea that translation is ‘un effort littéral, une mimesis de l’original’.20 Gam-bier attacks what he calls ‘une antinomie intenable’: ‘d’une part, la traduction serait vouée à la littéralité, d’autre part, elle se changerait en “adaptation” dès que son souci cibliste dominerait’.21
From this point of view, Reuben Brower’s approach offers an alternative to the traditional division between translation and adapta-tion. Brower argues that the word ‘version’ is a better term to refer to the ‘scale of varying but related activities that we call “translation”’,22
because it does not carry the same overtones of literalness as the word ‘translation’. He then details the range of approaches possible:
A few of the many degrees on a scale of versions might be named here – from the most exact rendering of vocabulary and idiom to freer yet responsible translation, to full imaginative re-making (‘imitation’), to versions where no particular original is continuously referred to, to allusion, continuous or spo-radic, to radical translation, where a writer draws from a foreign writer or tra-dition the nucleus or donnée for a wholly independent work.23
While Brower’s open concept of version may be too wide for the pur-pose of the present study (allusions, for instance, will not be consi-dered as forms of translation), his inclusion of varying degrees of
19Palimpsestes, 3(1990), 1-10 (p. 1).
20 Yves Gambier, ‘Adaptation: une ambiguité à interroger’, Meta, 37 (1992), 421-25,
p. 421.
21 Gambier, p. 421.
22 Reuben Brower, Mirror on Mirror, Translation, Imitation, Parody (Cambridge
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), p. 1.
closeness to and variation from a source is very helpful as a basis for a study of varying forms of translation in Baudelaire’s works.24
An inclusive (or ‘totalizing’, to use George Steiner’s phrase)25
definition of translation clearly brings the present study within the framework of intertextuality, and the study of palimpsestic writing as
explored by Gérard Genette.26 Genette’s analysis of the five levels of
transtextuality (transtextuality being ‘tout ce qui met [le texte] en re-lation manifeste ou secrète avec d’autres textes’) provides indeed the necessary theoretical framework in which to look at the relationship between Baudelaire’s translations and his other writings, and also between the translations and their source texts. Genette details five types of transtextuality – the first type, ‘intertextualité’, is defined as a ‘relation de coprésence entre deux ou plusieurs textes’, as encountered for instance in quotation, plagiarism or allusion; the second type, ‘paratextualité’, which is ‘la relation, généralement moins explicite et plus distante, que, dans l’ensemble formé par une œuvre littéraire, le texte proprement dit entretient avec ce que l’on ne peut guère nommer que son paratexte’, that is to say the relationship between the text and everything that surrounds it (for instance its title, prefaces, cover, etc...); the third type, ‘métatextualité’, is ‘la relation (...) de commen-taire qui unit un texte à un autre texte’; the fourth type (the most im-portant within the context of this study), ‘hypertextualité’ describing the relationship between a text B (‘hypertexte’) and an earlier text A (‘hypotexte’) in a relationship which is not metatextual, but rather, based on a creative transformation of text A by text B; and, finally, ‘architextualité’, ‘relation tout à fait muette, que n’articule, au plus, qu’une mention paratextuelle de pure appartenance taxinomique’.27
Genette’s classification has the advantage of providing a use-ful terminology and a clear distinction between different types of rela-tionships between texts. Underlying the analysis of the place of trans-lation in Baudelaire’s work is the question of the status of
24 George Steiner advocates a similar approach in After Babel, Aspects of Language and Translation (London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), where he underlines the study of ‘all meaningful exchanges of the totality of semantic communication (including Jakobson’s intersemiotic translation or “transmutation”)’ as the most instructive trend in translation studies (p. 279).
25Steiner, p. 279.
26 Gérard Genette, Introduction à l’architexte (Paris: Seuil, 1979); Palimpsestes, la littérature au second degré (Paris: Seuil, 1982).
Baudelaire’s translations in relation to their source texts – whether or not they can be considered as hypertexts depends on Baudelaire’s creative input in the target text, and assessing that input will be central to this study.
‘L’AMOUR DU MÉTIER’?
BAUDELAIRE’S APPROACHES TO TRANSLATION
Baudelaire’s approaches to English texts were far from uniform, ranging from very close translation to free adaptations.1 They can,
however, be divided into two main strands. On the one hand, there are what could be called source-oriented, direct translations (that is to say translations in which the source text is paramount, and the translating act focuses on the faithful rendering of the original); and, on the other, there are target-oriented adaptations and transformations, in which the source text is appropriated, sometimes even hijacked, to suit Baude-laire’s aims. In the latter, the target text becomes paramount, the source text serving mainly as the bottom layer of the creative palimp-sest. As in most classifications, variations do exist within these two main strands, as will revealed in the course of this study. It is never-theless useful to examine the specific features of direct translations and adaptations separately.
The direct translations constitute the bulk of Baudelaire’s activi-ties: this is the approach adopted with Edgar Allan Poe’s works and despite his experiments with freer approaches, Baudelaire never aban-doned the use of direct translation. Although the most remarkable of Baudelaire’s direct translations are the Poe translations, other texts follow similar approaches. His first and last translations are both direct translations: Le Jeune Enchanteur, based on an 1836 story by the Reverend Croly,2 was published in 1846 while ‘Le Pont des soupirs’,
based on Thomas Hood’s ‘Bridge of Sighs’, was dictated to Arthur Stevens in 1865. This approach was also applied to English songs by
1 See the chronology of Baudelaire’s translations, in Appendix A.
2 ‘The Young Enchanter – From a papyrus of Herculanum’, in The Forget me not; A
T. E. Walmisley and Doctor Cooke.3 These, published in Paris on 29
January 1853, were translated for Alfred Busquet, who inserted them in an account of London (Londres fantastique, published in Paris from 16 December 1852 to 30 January 1853). In most direct translations, the source text is fully acknowledged and respected as an original to be reproduced as faithfully as possible. The situation is not always so straightforward, however, as the example of Le Jeune Enchanteur suggests a more complex relationship with the source text. Indeed, W. T. Bandy showed in 1950 that Le Jeune Enchanteur, first published in 1846 under Baudelaire’s name, is in fact an unacknowledged translation. That a relatively close translation should pass as a text by Baudelaire is remarkable and may be an early hint of the link between his translations and his other works and of the fluency of his translation. Such fluency, linked with the dissimulation of the transla-tional nature of Le Jeune Enchanteur, poses clear questions of literary property, questions which also arise from the freer translations where the source text is very infrequently acknowledged.
The adaptations, although less numerous than the direct trans-lations, form an important part of Baudelaire’s translation corpus. As in the case of the direct translations, the free translations include work done at the request of a third party. In the same way as the English Songs were translated at the request of Alfred Busquet, the unfinished translation of Longfellow’s ‘Hiawatha’ was ordered by Robert August in 1860, and became the occasion for experiments with the rendering of poetry and with varying levels of transformation. Edgar Allan Poe, sa vie et ses ouvrages and Edgar Allan Poe, sa vie et ses œuvres, al-though presented by Baudelaire as his own account of Poe’s life and works, are in fact essays based on American articles which are blended with Baudelaire’s personal comments on Poe’s art. In Les Fleurs du Mal, ‘Le Guignon’ is based on Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ and Longfellow’s ‘A Psalm of Life’, while ‘Le Flambeau vivant’ is a loose translation of a section from Poe’s ‘To Helen’. In both cases, there is no direct recognition of the source text. Finally, Un Mangeur d’opium is, openly this time, both a presentation and a reflexion on Thomas De Quincey’s autobiographical Confes-sions of an English Opium-Eater and Suspiria De Profundis.
Despite the wide range of approaches adopted by Baudelaire in his translations, one is struck by the fact that they stand in their own
right, independently of their original, be it acknowledged or not. In the
introduction to his Pléiade edition of Poe’s prose works, Y.-G. Le Dantec emphasizes the fact that the translations are a Baudelairean text,4 and that Poe’s stories are ‘magistralement transcrites’ by
Baudelaire.5 It is revealing that, in his project to present Poe’s tales to
French readers in the highly prestigious Pléiade edition, Le Dantec should choose to omit the stories which were not translated by Baudelaire on the grounds that Baudelaire’s text cannot be supple-mented by another translator’s versions, and that French readers are used to Baudelaire’s presentation and selection. Thus Baudelaire’s version has taken over its original and the canon established by him is eventually seen as more important than Poe’s.6 Claude Pichois
ex-presses the same idea when he writes that:
les traductions de Poe sont devenues la substance de Baudelaire et constituent une œuvre d’art appartenant au patrimoine français. Ce qui faisait dire à un humoriste qu’il y avait deux écrivains du même nom: un Américain, plutôt médiocre, et un Français de génie, par la grâce de Baudelaire et de Mallarmé.7
Similarly, Le Jeune Enchanteur is still classified as part of Baude-laire’s ‘essais et nouvelles’ in Claude Pichois’ Pléiade edition, whereas the translations of Poe make up a separate volume. In the same vein, W. T. Bandy’s excellent 1990 edition of Le Jeune En-chanteur does not mention on its title page the fact that the text is a translation, and there is no reference to the source author. It is as if the critics’ last verdict on Baudelaire’s appropriation of Croly’s text was that it was successful, although of lesser importance than Baudelaire’s other works, because of the act of translation it involved.8U n
4 ‘Bien que ce volume ne fasse pas partie des Œuvres de Baudelaire éditées dans la
Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, c’est encore un texte baudelairien que nous donnons ici, en publiant une édition des œuvres d’Edgar Allan Poe’, EAP, p. 7.
5EAP, p. 7.
6 This common view of Baudelaire’s translations seems in contradiction with the no
less common critical tendency to see his translating activity as a sideline in the corpus of his works – a contradiction to which we shall return at a later stage.
7 Pichois, ‘Baudelaire ou la difficulté créatrice’, p. 242. ‘La substance de Baudelaire’
describes well the impregnation of Poe’s text with Baudelairean elements, and the phrase ‘une œuvre d’art appartenant au patrimoine français’ calls to mind once more the concept of appropriation through translation already mentioned.
8 Pichois’ notes to Le Jeune Enchanteur state somewhat disappointedly that ‘cette
nouvelle n’est qu’unetraduction d’un texte anglais’ (ŒCI, p. 1405, emphasis added) and yet ‘on a néanmoins recueilli cette traduction dans cette section [essais et
Mangeur d’opium, although often presented as secondary to its origi-nal, is also seen as belonging fully to Baudelaire’s works. Such views imply a strong dimension of appropriation through translation, con-scious or unconcon-scious, which will be studied at a later stage in this book. They also emphasize the strength of Baudelaire’s voice as a translator, a voice which makes itself heard not only in the free trans-lations, but also in apparently source-oriented, direct translations.
The present chapter will present the corpus of Baudelaire’s translations from English and explore the target texts for the presence of his voice and subjectivity, starting with the direct translations be-fore turning to the free translations.9
Le Jeune Enchanteur is a useful starting point in a study of Baude-laire’s direct translations. As a ‘pseudo-original’ (to use Anthony Pym’s terminology),10 that is to say a translation presented and read as
an original, this text is engaged in a very specific relationship with the target culture and the target translator’s corpus. The reasons why Le Jeune Enchanteur should have been believed for so long to be part of Baudelaire’s ‘original works’ may be found both in the paratext and in
velles], celle des traductions ayant été réservée aux poésies.’ (ŒCI, p, 1404).
9 Studying such a large corpus poses methodological issues. Antoine Berman’s Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne (pp. 64-97) provides a useful framework. Berman’s method is complementary to polysystem approaches in so far as it insists on the importance of target-oriented criticism, and contextual studies, and has the addi-tional advantage of highlighting, as Lawrence Venuti does too, the fallacy of a trans-parent translation. The main characteristic of Berman’s method is that he sees com-parisons of source and target texts as only a step in the study of a given translation, advocating an approach which would look at the target text as a text in its own right before turning to the close analysis of passages revealing the foreignness of transla-tional writing, and would take into account the translator’s translatransla-tional context (the target culture in general as well as its favoured translational approaches in particular, and also the translator’s other translations and creative works if available). The pre-sent study of Baudelaire’s translation approaches will be inspired by Berman’s method and will endeavour to look at the target texts as self-standing works before engaging in detailed comparisons of source and target texts. The translations will be replaced in their context in the next chapter.
10 Anthony Pym, Method in Translation History (Manchester: St Jerome, 1998).
the text of the story. Baudelaire’s statements on Le Jeune Enchanteur claim the story as his own in very unambiguous terms:
Tu ignores sans doute qu’il paraît maintenant une nouvelle de moi dans L’Esprit public – j’ai traité à 3 sols la ligne – ce n’est payable qu’à la fin du mois.11
J’ai eu, comme tu sais, une nouvelle à L’Esprit public ces jours derniers.12
The strength of both statements makes it very tempting indeed to take them at face value and to accept Le Jeune Enchanteur as Baudelaire’s without more analysis, and it is not surprising that Baudelaire’s claims of authorship should have remained unchallenged for so long. More importantly, there are in Le Jeune Enchanteur some Baudelairean elements which seem to confirm the paratextual claims. The classico-oriental setting of the story allows descriptions and scenes which no doubt appealed to Baudelaire. Callias’s love for luxury and his cyni-cism make him close to a Baudelairean dandy – and a precursor for Huysmans’ Baudelairean hero, Des Esseintes. His paintings and his arrangement of them according to light reveal the character of an art-lover close to Baudelaire. To cite just one example, the description of sunlight as it reaches paintings, rich and dark, announces the transla-tions of Poe’s stories:
le soleil prenait plaisir à tamiser ses rayons cramoisis à travers le cristal des fenêtres,13
while the fantastic element in the description of the painting coming to life with sunlight is very close to the thematics of Poe’s Oval Portrait, suggesting a unity in Baudelaire’s translational corpus. Sempronius’s quest for the mysterious priestess, on the other hand, announces the quest for the ideal of Les Fleurs du Mal:
Il était amoureux d’un être aussi idéal qu’un brillant habitant des nuées; son amour était l’amour insensé d’un homme qui voudrait faire descendre Diane de la sphère où elle trône glorieusement sur le bord des cieux,14
11 Letter to Madame Aupick, 20-22 February 1846, CI, p. 133. 12 Letter to Madame Aupick, end of February 1846, CI, p. 134. 13ŒCI, p. 525.
while his relationship with his father, referred to in phrases such as ‘cet instrument de la tyrannie paternelle’, echo that of Baudelaire and the General Aupick.
To these elements of the plot, one must add the style of the French text, which contains many Baudelairean elements. Some phrases sound distinctly Baudelairean and may have contributed to the lasting impression that Le Jeune Enchanteur is an original work by
Baudelaire. Phrases such as ‘amoureuse et pestilentielle étoile’, ‘fol-lement accouplés dans notre enfance dans le burlesque dessein d’apprendre à nous aimer’, ‘les commandements funèbres d’un père’, ‘les étranges et diaboliques délires’ – to quote but a few examples – announce some of the vocabulary, and themes, of Les Fleurs du Mal. In such instances, Baudelaire’s strategy is clearly to domesticate his source, to cover the source author’s voice with his own.
And yet, at the same time, the foreignness of the text cannot be
denied. As Antoine Berman shows in his excellent L’Épreuve de
l’étranger, translation is both appropriation and dialogue with the Other. Caught in the tension between an ethnocentric target system and the foreignness of the source system, the translator is forced to be doubly violent: first to his / her own language on which he / she im-poses the foreignness of the source language, and secondly to the fo-reign language, forced into contact with the translator’s own language. And indeed the ‘injonction appropriatrice’ of translation (that is to say the natural way in which translation domesticates the foreign)15 which
has been noted about Le Jeune Enchanteur is balanced out by a very strong presence of the foreign within Baudelaire’s text. First of all, the text is sprinkled with anglicisms, which point to its origin. Such angli-cisms are sometimes lexical, as in the case of ‘accointance’, ‘désap-pointé’, ‘ce maître en magie manègera ses démons’, ‘un couple de chiens’, ‘actuellement’.16 They are also syntactical, the most obvious
and repeated example of this being the place of adjectives which in Baudelaire’s text often follows an English order, and give to the target text an almost précieux flavour: ‘la malheureuse, – non, – la désolée, la lamentable situation de mon âme’, ‘religieuses offrandes’, ‘entêté compagnon’, ‘insigne folie’, ‘fatal couteau’ (to quote but a few exam-ples).17 These incursions of English-inspired elements in the French
text are symptomatic of the foreignness inherent to translation and of
15L’Épreuve de l’étranger, p. 16.
the tensions between the Baudelairean and the foreign elements of Le Jeune Enchanteur. Such tensions between inside and outside elements are in many ways emblematic of Baudelaire’s approach to translation, and are made all the more obvious as the link between translation and creation was only starting to appear in those early days of Baudelaire’s creative life, and would become more subtle and difficult to grasp in later works such as Un Mangeur d’opium.
Moving on from the examination of the target text to a compari-son between target text and source text, one of the most striking ele-ments is the general closeness of the translation. Baudelaire’s aim seems to be to render the original text with as few changes as possible. There are, however, a number of modifications operated in the French text – the most obvious (and the most noted by critics) being Baude-laire’s so-called ‘mistranslations’ of the original text.18 I have already
quoted examples of ‘false friends’ translated literally into French by Baudelaire, thus changing the sense of the original (‘actual / actually’ translated as ‘actuel / actuellement’, for instance);19 more interestingly
perhaps, such interferences between the two languages seem to trigger more creative translations –
a flash of rich-coloured radiance rose, quivered for a moment on the crown of the temple, and then disappeared, high in heaven.
une longue flamme rose, d’une riche couleur, trembla un moment sur le fron-ton du temple, et disparut ensuite dans les hauteurs du ciel.20
The English verb ‘rose’ reappears in the French version, this time as its French homonym, the colour adjective ‘rose’ thus creating what appears as a translation mistake, but also conjuring up in the French text a very different image, which, when the French text is read with-out reference to the English text (as it was for more than a century), seems most appropriate to the context. Another example of this phe-nomenon may be found in the translation of one of Callias’s direct speeches:
18 These have been the basis on which critics have argued that Baudelaire’s
knowledge of English in 1846 was still very faulty. P. M. Wetherill, basing himself on so-called ‘translation mistakes’ in the Poe translations, argues that such knowledge was never perfect (see chapter on ‘Baudelaire et la langue anglaise’, in Baudelaire et la poésie d’Edgar Allan Poe, pp. 155-68).
19 See for example ŒCI, p. 542.
I am an Epicure. I am delicate in my tastes, choice in my acquaintance, careful in my loves and fastidious in my country-houses.
Je suis un véritable Épicure; délicat dans mes goûts, réservé dans mes accoin-tances, tendre dans mes amitiés et mes amours, je ne suis cruel et dédaigneux que pour mes pauvres maisons de campagne.21
The use of the archaic ‘accointances’ in the French text is clearly a manifestation of an interference between the English original and its French source, shown by Georges Mounin to be a natural consequence of the act of translation.22 In addition, the translation of the end of the
second sentence is based on a transformation of the sense of the word ‘fastidious’, which modifies the meaning of the whole sentence, but which, if read without reference to the English text, makes perfect sense. A similar phenomenon occurs in other early translations, as for example the English songs:
Then she made the shepherd call All the heav’ns to witness truth. Never lov’d a truer youth.
Puis elle contraignit le berger à appeler Tous les cieux en témoignage
Qu’il n’avait jamais aimé une fille plus candide.23
Baudelaire’s translation of ‘never lov’d a truer youth’ overlooks the inversion and makes ‘truer youth’ the object of ‘lov’d’ whereas it is the subject of the verb in the original, and refers to the shepherd rather than to the girl. While this choice may be seen as a misreading on the part of Baudelaire, the target text, if read independently from its source, makes sense, does not in any way betray the spirit of its
21The Young Enchanter, p. 11, ŒCI, p. 524.
22 Georges Mounin, Les Problèmes théoriques de la traduction, (Paris: Gallimard,
1963): ‘[L]’influence de la langue que [le traducteur] traduit sur la langue dans laquelle il traduit peut être décelée par des interférences particulières, qui dans ce cas précis, sont des erreurs ou fautes de traduction, ou bien des comportements linguis-tiques très marqués chez les traducteurs: le goût des néologismes étrangers, la ten-dance aux emprunts, aux calques, aux citations non traduites en langue étrangère, le maintien dans le texte une fois traduit de mots et de tours non-traduits’ (p. 4).These interferences, born from the contact between the target and the source language, are the manifestation of the foreignness of the source text.
nal and in this respect is successful. In this example, as in the previous one, Baudelaire’s deviations from his original might be an indication of his faltering knowledge of English, as critics generally see it, but, on the other hand, his way of overcoming this difficulty reveals the strength of his voice, and is, therefore, a sign of his creative input in the translations.24
Similarly, when it comes to adjusting the target text to the ge-nius of the French language, as is necessary in the act of translation, Baudelaire’s personal stylistic preoccupations come to the fore. Evi-dence of this may be found throughout Le Jeune Enchanteur, as in the following examples:
Among the chambers of the house of Alcmæon, opened in the excavations made in presence of the King of Naples, on his restoration in 1815, there was found a large fresco, of remarkable beauty, representing a group of nymphs gazing on a principal figure, with a Cupid whispering in her ear.
Pendant les fouilles faites en présence du roi de Naples, lors de la restauration de 1815, on trouva dans une des chambres de la maison d’Alcmœon une grande fresque d’une beauté très particulière, qui représentait un groupe de nymphes, dont les yeux étaient tournés vers une figure principale. Derrière celle-ci, un jeune Amour, penché galamment vers son oreille, avait l’air de lui chuchoter quelque mystère.25
The typographical transformation of the name of Alcmæon into Alcmœon may well be due to a printer’s mistake. We can also read it as symptomatic of Baudelaire’s lack of attention to the name or, more interestingly for our present concerns, an unconscious desire to trans-form his source, to make it his. In addition to this rather small detail, the above passage has more striking examples of Baudelaire’s ma-nipulations of his source text. His version produces two sentences out of one in the source text, thus making the French lighter and more natural while at the same time focusing more on the figure of the Cu-pid than in the source. The elements of the source are redistributed: the circumstances of the discovery of the fresco are moved to the be-ginning of the sentence; the main interest of the fresco – the ‘figure principale’ – is pushed to the end of the first sentence, which, because of the preceding four clauses and the delay in its appearance,
24 One could even argue that these mistranslations are a form of deliberate misreading
on the part of Baudelaire, as will be seen in Chapter 4.
lights it as central. The additions to the description of the Cupid
(‘der-rière celle-ci’, ‘penché galamment’, ‘avait l’air’, ‘quelque mystère’) bring more life to the scene and attribute more importance to him, an-nouncing the main theme of the story to come. This blending of ele-ments directly translated from the original and Baudelairean elabora-tions faithful to the spirit of the story are the rule in Le Jeune En-chanteur. Extended further, this blend leads Baudelaire to add a whole passage of his own at the end of the translation:
‘Contemplez mon bonheur, incrédule ami’, dit Sempronius en jetant un regard de passion indicible sur la beauté de sa femme qui tenait déjà un bel enfant dans ses bras.
Notre épicurien touché, mais souriant toujours, murmurait tout bas l’hymne sentimental de l’excellent poète latin:
C’est l’heure favorable aux baisers; la tempête, Qui blasphème le ciel et fait trembler le faîte, Invite les bons vins du fond de leur grenier À descendre en cadence au conjugal foyer. Car l’intime chaleur de l’âtre qui pétille Sert à rendre meilleurs les pères de famille Et la foudre fera, complice de l’amour
L’épouse au cœur tremblant docile jusqu’au jour.26
This is the occasion for Baudelaire to add yet another translation, this time a free version of the Ode to Thaliarch by Horace. The poem pro-duced follows French metre (alexandrines) but its antique origins are appropriate to the context of the Herculanum manuscript. What we have here is Baudelaire’s own reaction to the text he is translating through the introduction of an intertextual link. That this interaction between himself and the source text would go undetected without a confrontation of the source and target texts, suggests a close blending of his creativity and the act of translation, and goes some way to justi-fying his claims to authorship of the text.
Baudelaire’s first translation is revealing in several ways, then: the presence of this substantial addition to the English text in Le Jeune Enchanteur prefigures Baudelaire’s later manipulations of his hypo-text(s) in works such as Un Mangeur d’opium; and yet, at the same time, the general strategies of closeness to the source text to be found in this early translation announce the more systematic approaches to Poe’s works. With this first contact with translation, Baudelaire shows
himself to be aware of the possible choices at his disposal regarding the text of the Other – choices which his later translations explore more fully.
While Le Jeune Enchanteur displays many characteristics to be found in later translations, the Poe translations offer a more complex, de-tailed picture. Looking at the target texts without referring to their sources, as a preliminary to a more detailed study of translation ap-proaches, one is struck by the unity and harmony of the Poe corpus. This of course is hardly surprising since all the stories belong to the œuvre of a single author. But there is more to the overall effect of Baudelaire’s collections of Poe’s works than this natural unity. Patrick F. Quinn’s statement that ‘we find represented in the translations of Baudelaire very nearly all (I would say all) of Poe’s greatest and most memorable stories, and enough samples of his less successful ones to illustrate the variety of the work he attempted’ is an early critical ac-knowledgement of the importance of Baudelaire’s selection of the sto-ries.27 And indeed the two volumes of Histoires extraordinaires and
Nouvelles Histoires extraordinaires reflect clearly Baudelaire’s per-ception of Poe’s stories. Thus the order in which he presents them is far from innocent:
Le premier volume est fait pour amorcer le public: jongleries, conjecturisme, canards, etc. Ligeia est le seul morceau important qui se rattache moralement
au deuxième volume.
Le deuxième volume est d’un fantastique plus relevé; hallucinations, maladies mentales, grotesque pur, surnaturalisme, etc... 28
The stories in Histoires extraordinaires and Nouvelles Histoires ex-traordinaires were published between 1848 and 1857, first in periodi-cals (mainly Le Pays) and then in book form in 1856 (Histoires ex-traordinaires) and in 1857 (Nouvelles Histoires extraordinaires).29
The thirteen stories of Histoires extraordinaires are thematically united while offering a representative sample of the generic range of Poe’s stories: the first three (‘Double Assassinat dans la rue Morgue’, ‘La Lettre volée’, ‘Le Scarabée d’or’) each presenting a particular in-vestigation; the next four (‘Le Canard au ballon’, ‘Aventure sans
27The French Face of Edgar Poe, p. 111.
reille d’un certain Hans Pfaal’, ‘Manuscrit trouvé dans une bouteille’, ‘Une Descente dans le Maelstrom’) each giving accounts of travel ad-ventures; the last seven (‘La Vérité sur le cas de M. Valdemar’, ‘Révélation magnétique’, ‘Les Souvenirs de M. Auguste Bedloe’, ‘Morella’, ‘Ligeia’, ‘Metzengerstein’) dwelling on the supernatural and the fantastic. The Nouvelles Histoires extraordinaires are less united, thematically, than the stories in the Histoires extraordinaires. As announced by Baudelaire in the passage quoted above, the fantastic element is more developed, however.30 A very strong philosophical
content also unites the stories in the volume: ‘L’Homme des foules’, ‘Le Cœur révélateur’, ‘Le Puits et le Pendule’, ‘Petite Discussion avec une momie’, and, more importantly, ‘Puissance de la parole’, ‘Collo-que entre Monos et Una’, ‘Conversation d’Eiros avec Charmion’, ‘Ombre’, ‘Silence’ and ‘L’Ile de la fée’ all explore the question of the nature of human life and the difference between life and death, themes which are also present in the numerous stories involving catalepsy (such as ‘La Chute de la maison Usher’ and ‘Bérénice’ among others). Les Aventures d’Arthur Gordon Pym, first published in Le Moniteur in 1857,is, as its title amply suggests, primarily an adventure novel, and from that point of view closely linked to similar texts in Histoires ex-traordinaires. The fantastic element is, however, also a very strong component, in particular in the final episodes of the exploration to the pole.31 ‘Eureka’, first published in part in the Revue internationale
mensuelle (Geneva) in 1859-60 before appearing in book form, pub-lished by Michel Levy, in 1864, furthers the philosophical trends of stories translated earlier. Finally, the volume of Histoires grotesques et sérieuses, published in 1864 by Michel Lévy,32 is the least united of
the volumes with a blend of fiction and philosophy texts, some stories belonging to the two trends.33 Thematically, however, the texts pursue
trends already noted in the other Poe translations.
30 It is particularly prominent in ‘Le Chat noir’, ‘William Wilson’, ‘Bérénice’, ‘La
Chute de la Maison Usher’, ‘La Barrique d’Amontillado’, ‘Le Portrait ovale’.
31 The final voyage leading to the fantastic white apparition is the most striking
exam-ple of this dimension.
32 Most of the individual texts contained in the volume were first published between
1854 and 1862 in magazines and newspapers (see appendix A).
33 ‘Le Mystère de Marie Roget’, ‘Éléonora’, ‘Un Événement à Jérusalem’, ‘L’Ange
du Bizarre’, ‘Le Système du Docteur Goudron’ are above all works of fiction, al-though not devoid of philosophical content, while ‘Le Domaine d’Arnheim’, ‘Le Cot-tage Landor’, ‘Philosophie de l’ameublement ‘and ‘La Genèse d’un poëme’are either mainly descriptive or theory texts. The lack of unity of the volume is convincingly
Beside the presence of Baudelaire’s subjectivity in the choice of stories to be translated and subsequent organisation of the volumes, it is noteworthy at this stage to emphasize the recurrence of themes of interpretation and decoding at the core of many of Poe’s tales, and which may be seen as mises en abyme of the translating act, itself based on interpretation and decoding. Particularly obvious in the ‘de-tective’ stories,34 the theme of investigation is also prominent is stories such as ‘Le Scarabée d’or’, in which the (mis)interpretation of charac-ters’ speech, actions, secret codes and even drawings underlies the narrative.35 Even more strikingly, the final chapter of Gordon Pym,
‘Conjectures’, centres around the decoding of mysterious words in ancient tongues spelt out by the shape of some caves. The theme of the double (or Doppelgänger) is also very strong in the stories, mir-roring not only the act of repetition at the core of translation but the sense of identification between source author and translator. ‘Odleb’ in ‘Les Souvenirs de M. Auguste Bedloe’ is, for instance, Bedloe’s double (and his name Bedloe’s reverse translation, so to speak). In ‘Morella’, Morella’s daughter is her mother’s double, and the story culminates with the discovery that the double is in fact the same, the second Morella appearing as a re-incarnation of the first. In ‘Ligeia’, Lady Rowena and Lady Ligeia are described as opposites but in the final scene merge into one. ‘William Wilson’ of course is entirely
explained by Patrick F. Quinn (The French Face of Edgar Allan Poe, p. 112) by the fact that the translations were made under the pressure of Michel Lévy who refused to publish a new edition of the earlier volumes which would have contained the stories in Histoires grotesques et sérieuses.
34 Such as ‘Double Assassinat dans la rue Morgue’, ‘La Lettre volée’ and ‘Le Mystère
de Marie Roget’. The latter, being set in an imaginary Paris, which is in fact a trans-position of New York (numerous footnotes, duly reproduced by Baudelaire, indicate the original locations of the story)encourages the reader to perform an act of transla-tion. Interestingly, ‘La Lettre volée’ and its significance in terms of translation theory have been noted by deconstructionists. See Fritz Gutbrodt, in ‘Poedelaire: Translation and the Volatility of the Letter’, Diacritics, 22.3-4 (fall-winter 1992), 49-68 and John P. Muller and William J. Richardson (eds), The Purloined Poe, Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1988).
35 To a lesser extent, ‘Maelzel’ presents the interpretation of a phenomenon by the
built on the thematics of the alter ego. A final example among many is ‘Le Portrait ovale’, which explores the relationship between art and its origin, through the opposition of the young bride and her picture.36
The source texts, then, contain in their very thematics issues of duality, identity and interpretation, which are at the core of the act of translation. Given Baudelaire’s ambiguous relationship to his source texts – an ambiguity already present in the appropriation of Le Jeune Enchanteur – and use of translation for creative ends, the fact that Poe’s texts should themselves play with such questions may well have been a reason for his fascination with Poe and of his choice to trans-late his works. In addition, if we follow the Benjaminian notion of translatability, that is to say the idea that certain works call for trans-lation, contain the need for translation at their core, and reach their fulfilment only when translated, then Poe’s tales, by their very the-matics, not only announce Baudelaire’s transformation and fusion with his source text, but in fact also call for them.37
This fusion makes itself felt in the style and the presentation of the French versions. The translations read as French texts, the presence of the foreign inherent to all translations remaining only a minor part. The Baudelairean dimension of the text appears in many ways, not least through a large number of footnotes and prefaces, in which the translator’s voice comes to the forefront.38 First and foremost, two
dedications to Poe’s mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, both by their place and their content, reveal Baudelaire’s voice in the clearest way. The first dedication takes the form of a letter to Maria Clemm, and was published in Le Pays on 25 July 1854, with the first of the long series of tales which appeared in the journal until 20 April 1855, and which would then be published in book form as Histoires extraordinaires and Nouvelles Histoires extraordinaires. The letter is the occasion for Baudelaire to express his profound admiration for Poe; more
36The opposition between the young healthy Bérénice and the diseased woman she becomes may be seen as a further example of doubles in the stories. Similarly the schyzophrenic personality of many of the narrators of the stories, not least in Berenice, is a variation on the theme. In La Chute de la maison Usher, Roderick and his sister are two sides of the same personality.
37 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Task of the Translator’, translated by Harry Zohn, in
Theo-ries of Translation, ed. by Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (Chicago: Chicago Uni-versity Press, 1992), pp. 71-82.
38 The importance of the paratext in the ‘transaction’ between author and readers has
tantly, it presents his own reading of his author’s character, and re-veals Baudelaire’s perception as central. Although the letter is un-doubtedly a tribute to Poe, the predominance of the first person throughout the text and the focus on Baudelaire’s work (‘L’Edgar Poe
que mon imagination avait créé’; ‘cette ironique antithèse me remplit d’un insurmontable attendrissement’; ‘son fantôme m’a toujours ob-sédé’; ‘le travail que j’ai composé’; ‘vous me direz si j’ai bien com-pris’)39 make him ultimately the focus of the text. One could say,
therefore, that the letter is more about Baudelaire than about Poe. The second dedication, which replaced the first in 1856, is made up of an envoi and the translation of Poe’s To my Mother, andlessens the pre-sence of Baudelaire’s voice. However, the wording of the envoi sug-gests the importance of the translation as an independent text. It also presents a Baudelairean reading of the relationship between Poe and his adoptive mother close to Baudelaire’s own aspirations.
CETTE TRADUCTION EST DÉDIÉE À
MARIA CLEMM
À LA MÈRE ENTHOUSIASTE ET DÉVOUÉE À CELLE POUR QUI LE POËTE
A ÉCRIT CES VERS40
Even more strikingly, prefaces and introductions (such as the opening page of Genèse d’un poëme) present Baudelaire’s voice and interpre-tation of Poe’s life and work as paramount.41 Such presence of the
translator may also be felt in the footnotes to the translations. The contents of the footnotes range from remarks on the translation to pre-cisions on Poe’s art and aims. In Double Assassinat dans la rue Morgue, the following footnote brings information to the French read-ers about Poe’s knowledge of Paris: ‘Ai-je besoin d’avertir à propos de la rue Morgue, du passage Lamartine, etc., qu’Edgar Poe n’est ja-mais venu à Paris?’42 At the same time, it creates a foreign space,
which is not the Paris known by the French, and, is, therefore, a
39EAP, p. 16. 40EAP, p. 13.
41 The fact that Edgar Allan Poe, sa vie et ses ouvrages, which was the preface of the
Histoires extraordinaires, was largely based on English and American sources, suggests a complex relationship between the translator’s voice and that of his source, as will be seen later on in this chapter.
French translation of the foreign space presented to American readers through the creation of a fictitious Paris. Elsewhere, as in ‘La Lettre
volée’, the footnotes are explanatory, for instance: ‘Encore un meurtre dont Dupin refait l’instruction. – ‘Le Double Assassinat dans la rue Morgue’, ‘Le Mystère de Marie Roget’ et ‘La Lettre volée’ font une espèce de trilogie’,43 which puts the story within its context. The
translator’s role is metatextual, here: rather than only rendering the source text, he comments on it.44 More importantly, the footnotes
sometimes supplement the translation when the latter fails to restitute fully the source text. In ‘Le Scarabée d’or’, for instance, a pun on the words ‘antennae’ and ‘tin’ in the source text prompts Baudelaire to offer an analysis of Poe’s text in a footnote (‘La prononciation du mot antennæ fait commettre une méprise au nègre, qui croit qu’il est ques-tion d’étain: Dey aint no tin in him. Calembour intraduisible’),45 and
at the same time to acknowledge a failure in the translating act to re-produce exactly the original.46 In ‘Aventure sans pareille d’un certain
Hans Pfaall’, a lengthy note offers an account of a note by Poe on various stories on the same subject. The method used by Baudelaire in that note is close to that chosen in Un Mangeur d’opium: paraphrases, translations and commentaries by Baudelaire all form the text of the note.47 In other instances, Baudelaire comments on Poe’s text and
jus-tifies modifications made to the original in the target text. For in-stance, in ‘Metzengerstein’, the footnote to a quotation in French starts as follows:
J’ignore quel est l’auteur de ce texte bizarre et obscur; cependant je me suis permis de la rectifier légèrement en l’adaptant au sens moral du récit. Poe cite quelquefois de mémoire et incorrectement,48
thus implying that the translator’s sensitivity to the source text is as important as its author’s. In ‘Révélation magnétique’, first published
43EAP, p. 1098.
44 This metatextual dimension of translation will be explored in greater detail at a later
stage.
45EAP, pp. 1098-99. Baudelaire’s translation strategies in this story will be looked at
in more detail in Chapter 2.
46 On the other hand, in ‘L’Ange du bizarre’, Baudelaire’s choice is to restitute the
‘angel’’s German accent and, therefore, to contradict the translation approach outlined here.
in La liberté de penser in 1848, Baudelaire’s voice is even stronger, as extracts from a note to the text will show:
Le morceau d’Edgar Poe qu’on va lire est un raisonnement
exceptionnelle-ment ténu parfois, d’autres fois obscur, et de temps en temps singulièreexceptionnelle-ment audacieux. Il faut en prendre son parti, et digérer la chose telle qu’elle est. Il faut surtout bien s’attacher à suivre le texte littéral. Certaines choses seraient devenues bien autrement obscures si j’avais voulu paraphraser mon auteur, au lieu de me tenir servilement attaché à la lettre. J’ai préféré faire du français pénible et parfois baroque et donner dans toute sa vérité la technie philosophi-que d’Edgar Poe.49
Baudelaire describes here the two options offered to him in his pres-entation of Poe’s text: either paraphrase or, in his own words, ‘servile’ word for word translation. Although the terms in which the latter is alluded to (‘servilement’, ‘français pénible et parfois baroque’) may well imply that the chosen solution is only a compromise, and the di-gestion metaphor suggests that some sort of appropriation may be taking place, Baudelaire nevertheless favours literal translation and discards a freer approach (‘servilement’ makes the implicit reference to free translation quite clear, by a process of opposition). The dangers of close translation, which are presented as a possible awkwardness of the target text, could be described, in Berman’s terms, as a presence of the foreignness of the source text and language, and therefore a natural part of the act of translation.
This reference to a literal approach is confirmed in other places of the paratext to the translations, not least in Baudelaire’s correspon-dence. His worries before the publication of ‘Le Mystère de Marie Roget’ are particularly enlightening in this respect.50
Vous avez sans doute quelque fois lu de l’Edgar Poe, et vous savez quels sont les procédés de l’auteur. Je n’ai ici que le texte anglais. Marie Roget est une instruction criminelle. Or il y a des paragraphes des dépositions des témoins, et des citations de journaux (PLUSIEURS FOIS RÉPÉTÉS, relatifs à une om-brelle, à une écharpe, à un mouchoir, à une robe, à un jupon, etc.; il faut que
49EAP, p. 1506 (emphasis mine).
50 Y.-G. Le Dantec retraces in the Pléiade edition (pp. 1138-39) the circumstances of
ces paragraphes soient répétés strictement DANS LES MÊMES TERMES, à la fin.51
– Un travail comme Marie Roget, étant une instruction judiciaire, comme L’Assassinat dans la rue Morgue, – demande une exactitude minutieuse dans les plus petits détails, et, en cas de citations tirées du commencement, une si-militude absolue dans la répétition de ces citations à la fin. (...)
Vous savez, mon cher, que je ne tire vanité que d’une seule vertu, c’est de l’amour du métier.52
Baudelaire’s rigorous approach to his work as translator is well illus-trated in the two extracts above, which by their repetitiveness show how important the exact reproduction of the style of the original was to Baudelaire. In fact, the complex history of the publication of ‘Marie Roget’ is emblematic of these concerns: many letters from Baudelaire, then in Brussels, to Michel Lévy and Noël Parfait, are linked with the long process of checking the translation against its original and at-tempts to stay as close to Poe’s text as possible. ‘L’amour du métier’ remarkably emphasizes the craft of translation as opposed to its crea-tivity: in the same way as the fact that Baudelaire dictated his close translation of ‘Bridge of Sighs’ as late as 1865, the publication of ‘Marie Roget’ in the same year, that is to say after more ‘creative’ translations such as Un Mangeur d’opium had been achieved, points to the important place of literal translation in Baudelaire’s approaches of foreign texts.53
One should not take Baudelaire’s professed concerns for accu-racy and subservience to the source text entirely at face value, how-ever. The Poe translations read like Baudelairean texts in many places, both thematically and stylistically. In ‘William Wilson’, the hero leads the debauched life of a dandy. In ‘L’Homme des foules’, the narrator is a flâneur in the city.54 Roderick in ‘La Chute de la maison Usher’ is
described as a ‘mangeur d’opium’,55 while opium visions play an
51 Letter to Noël Parfait, 31 May 1864, CII, p. 371. 52 Letter to Michel Lévy, 1 June 1864, CII, p. 373.
53 The closeness of Baudelaire’s translations of Poe is noted by Pamela Faber in
‘Charles Baudelaire and his Translations of Edgar Allan Poe’, Meta, 34, 2 (1989), 253-58.
54 In this respect, it is revealing that at least one of Baudelaire’s prose poems, ‘Les
Foules’, should be closely linked to this story, both thematically and stylistically (see Chapter 6).
portant role in ‘Les souvenirs de M. Auguste Bedloe’and are the oc-casion for poetic prose close to Baudelaire’s creative texts:
Cependant, l’opium avait produit son effet accoutumé, qui est de revêtir tout le monde extérieur d’une intensité d’intérêt. Dans le tremblement d’une feuille, – dans la couleur d’un brin d’herbe, – dans la forme d’un trèfle, – dans le bourdonnement d’une abeille, – dans l’éclat d’une goutte de rosée, – dans le soupir du vent, – dans les vagues odeurs qui venaient de la forêt, – se produi-sait tout un monde d’inspirations, – une procession magnifique et bigarrée de pensées désordonnées et rapsodiques.56
The transformations operated by opium on the vision of nature are thematically very close to the Paradis artificiels, which, incidently, do quote this passage.57 Moreover, the rhythm of this passage, which is
punctuated by regular pauses, and the inspiration and correspondances derived from the spectacle of nature makes this passage almost a doublet of ‘Correspondances’.58 Monos addresses Una, in ‘Colloque
entre Monos et Una’, as ‘ma très-belle et très chère’,59 an appelation
used in the Sabatier poems of Les Fleurs du Mal;60 in ‘Manuscrit
trouvé dans une bouteille’, the solitary narrator facing the infinity of the sea gazes at a spectacle close to that conjured up in the Spleen et Idéal section of the Fleurs du Mal61 (phrases such as ‘nous
prome-nions nos regards avec amertume sur l’immensité de l’Océan’, ‘descendant avec une horrible vélocité dans un enfer liquide’, for in-stance, offer a Baudelairean worldview);62 in ‘Le Puits et le pendule’,
the term ‘joujou’ in ‘je restai étendu, souriant à cette mort étincelante, comme un enfant à quelque précieux joujou’63 echoes the title of
‘Mo-rale du joujou’. In ‘Morella’, the narrator’s alternation between de-pression and elation is described in terms which are evocative of the dialectics of spleen and ideal in Baudelaire’s works:
56EAP, p. 238.
57Le Poème du hachisch, ŒCI, p. 428.
58 The references to opium also take a Baudelairean tone in ‘Ligeia’, in particular in
the description of the bedroom.
59EAP, p. 476.
60 see ‘Que diras-tu ce soir’and ‘Hymne’.
61 The figure of the albatros is present, while the sea is described in similar terms as in
‘L’Homme et la mer’.
