Charles Baudelaire :: svět prokletého básníka :: Poezie a próza
Úvodní stránka  |  Poezie a próza  |  Život v datech  |  Galerie  |  Citáty a glosy  |  Téma Baudelaire  |  Odkazy
English version  |  Version Française

české překlady

Květy zla

Malé básně v próze

Báseň o hašiši

Fanfarlo

Důvěrný deník


originale française

Les fleurs du mal

Petits poemes en prose

La Fanfarlo


Baudelaire in English

» The Flowers of Evil «

Inscription
To the Reader

Spleen and the Ideal
Benediction
The Albatross
The Elevation
Correspondences
I love the thought...
The Beacons
The Sicks Muse
The Venal Muse
The Wretched Monk
The Enemy
Ill Fortune
A Former Life
Gypsies Travelling
Man and the Sea
Don Juan in Hell
Punishment for Pride
Beauty
The Ideal
The Giantess
The Mask
Hymn to Beauty
The Jewels
Exotic Parfume
Head of Hair
I love you as I love...
You'd entertain the universe...
Sed non satiata
The way her silky garments...
The Dancing Serpent
A Carcass
De profundis clamavi
The Vampyre
Lethe
Beside a monstrous Jewish whore...
Remorse after Death
The Cat
Duellum
The Balcony
The Possessed
A Phantom
I give to you these verses...
Semper Eadem
Completely One
What will you say tonight...
The Living Torch
To One Who Is Too Cheerful
Reversibility
Confession
The Spiritual Dawn
The Harmony of Evening
The Flask
Poison
Misty Sky
The Cat
The Splendid Ship
Invitation to the Voyage
The Irreparable
Conversation
Autumn Song
To a Madonna
Song of the Afternoon
Sisina
Praises for My Francisca
For a Creole Lady
Moesta et errabunda
The Ghost
Autumn Sonnet
Sorrows of the Moon
Cats
Owls
The Pipe
Music
Burial
A Fantastical Engraving
The Happy Corpse
The Cask of Hate
The Cracked Bell
Spleen
Spleen
Spleen
Spleen
Obsession
The Taste for Nothingness
Alchemy of Suffering
Congenial Horror
Prayer of a Pagan
The Pot Lid
Midnight Examination
Sad Madrigal
The Cautioner
The Rebel
Very Far From France
The Gulf
Lament of an Icarus
Meditation
Heautontimoroumenos
The Irremediable
The Clock

Parisian Scenes
Landscape
The Sun
The Insulted Moon
To a Red-Haired Beggar Girl
The Swan
The Seven Old Man
The Little Old Women
The Blind
To a Woman Passing By
Skeletons Digging
Dusk
Gaming
Danse macabre
The Love of Illusion
I have not forgotten...
That kind heart you were jealous of...
Mists and Rains
Parisian Dream
Dawn

Wine
The Soul of Wine
The Ragman's Wine
The Murderer's Wine
The Solitary's Wine
The Lovers' Wine

Flowers of Evil
Epigraph for a Condemned Book
Destruction
A Martyr
» Lesbos «
Condemned Women: Delphine and Hippolyta
Condemned Women
The Two Good Sisters
The Fountain of Blood
Allegory
A Beatrice
The Metamorphoses of the Vampire
A Voyage to Cythera
Passion and the Skull

Revolt
St Peter's Denial
Abel and Cain
Litanies of Satan

Death
The Death of Lovers
The Death of the Poor
The Death of Artists
Day's End
Dream of a Curious Man
Voyaging

Accessories
To Theodore de Banville

The Waifs
The Setting of the Romantic Sun

Gallantries
The Fountain
Bertha's Eyes
Hymn
A Face Makes Promises
The Monster

Epigraphs
Poem on the Portrait of Honoré Daumier
Lola de Valence
On Tasso in Prison

Diverse Pieces
The Voice
The Unforeseen
The Ransom
To a Girl of Malabar

Buffioneries
On the Debut of Amina Boschetti
To M. Eugene Fromentin
A Jolly Tavern

Prose Poems

Fanfarlo




Navštivte

Malý koutek poezie

Malý koutek poezie


Baudelaire


The Flowers of Evil

Previous    Next


Lesbos

Mother of Roman games and Greek delights,
Lesbos, where kisses languorous or glad,
As hot as suns, or watermelon-fresh,
Make festivals of days and glorious nights;
Mother of Roman games and Greek delights,

Lesbos, where love is like the wild cascades
That throw themselves into the deepest gulfs,
And twist and run with gurglings and with sobs,
Stormy and secret, swarming underground;
Lesbos, where love is like the wild cascades!

Lesbos, where Phrynes seek each other out,
Where no sigh ever went without response,
Lovely as Paphos· in the sight of stars,
Where Venus envies Sappho, with good cause!
Lesbos, where Phrynes seek each other out.

Lesbos, land of the warm and languid nights
That draw in mirrors sterile fantasies,
So girls with hollow eyes make love alone,
Fondling their avid bodies' mellow fruit;
Lesbos, land of the warm and languid nights,

Let some dry Plato frown with narrowed eye;
Queen of sweet empire - pleasant, noble land -
You're pardoned by the excess of your kisses,
And by your endless subtleties in love.
Let some dry Plato frown with narrowed eye.

You're pardoned by eternal martyrdom
Lived constantly in those with hungering hearts
Who glimpse that radiant smile beyond our grasp
That beckons from the brink of other skies!
You're pardoned by eternal martyrdom!

What God would dare to act as Lesbos' judge
And to condemn your pale and wasted brow,
Without the weighing in those golden scales
Of floods of tears your brooks have swept to sea?
What God would dare to act as Lesbos' judge?

What do we care for laws of right and wrong?
Maidens of highest heart, pride of the land,
As worthy as another's is your creed,
And love will laugh at Heaven and at Hell!
What do we care for laws of right and wrong!

Since I am Lesbos' choice from all on earth
To sing the secret of her flowering maids,
And I from childhood worshipped in the cult
Of frenzied laughter mixed with sombre tears -
Since I am Lesbos' choice from all on earth,

I spend my time on watch from Leucas' peak,
A sentinel with sure and piercing eye,
Who searches night and day for sail or hull,
The distant forms that tremble in the blue;
I spend my time on watch from Leucas' peak

To find out if the sea is ever kind,
And to the land where sobbing lives in stones
Will carry home, to Lesbos who forgives,
The worshipped corpse of Sappho, who made trial
To find out if the sea is ever kind!

Of Sappho, male in poetry and love,
Fairer than Venus, though her face be pale!
- The azure eye is conquered by the black
Shadowed by circles drawn by all the grief
Of Sappho, male in poetry and love!

- Fairer than Venus rising on the world
Who spreads out treasures of serenity
And all the radiance of her blonde youth
On father Ocean, dazzled by his child;
Fairer than Venus rising on the world!

- Of Sappho who that day blasphemed and died,
When she, against the rite the cult devised,
Let her sweet body be the rutting-ground
For a brute whose pride condemned the heresy
Of one who on that day blasphemed and died.

And since that time Lesbos has lived with tears;
Neglecting honours that the world holds forth,
She stupefies herself each night with cries
That beat her barren shores against the skies!
And since that time Lesbos has lived with tears!


Přeložil James McGowan


originale française: CXa. Lesbos

český překlad: Lesbos



Vysvětlivky:
Lesbos: the Greek island associated with the poet Sappho. On her love poetry was based the cult of female ('lesbian') love.
Phrynes: Phryne was a beautiful Greek courtesan of the fourth century BC.
Paphos: a village on the island of Cyprus associated with the worship of Aphrodite (Venus).
Venus errvies Sappho: because Sappho is worshipped on Lesbos as avidly as is Venus on Cyprus.
some dry Plato: possibly Plato is invoked here because he argued against physical love, in favour of spiritual, an idea counter to the rites of Sappho or Venus.
Leucas' peak: Sappho committed suicide by leaping into the sea from a cliff on the island of Leucas. The poem goes on to indicate that she had blasphemed against the rites of the cult by accepting a male lover. Baudelaire is departing from the legend that she killed herself over unrequited love for the boatman, Phaon.






www.baudelaire.cz :: Since 2002 :: Based On Layout Designed By Danny Is On Fire Productions © 2006