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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




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Baudelaire


The Flowers of Evil

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Benediction

When, by an edict of the powers supreme,
The Poet in this bored world comes to be,
His daunted mother, eager to blaspheme,
Rages to God, who looks down piteously:

-'Rather than have this mockery to nurse
Why not a nest of snakes for me to bear!
And may that night of fleeting lust be cursed,
When I conceived my penance, unaware!

Since from all women you chose me to shame,
To be disgusting to my grieving spouse,
And since I can't just drop into the flames
Like an old love-note, this misshapen mouse,

1'1l turn your hate that overburdens me
Toward the damned agent of your spiteful doom,
And I will twist this miserable tree
So its infected buds will never bloom!'

She swallows thus her hatred's foaming spit
And, never grasping the divine design,
She makes herself within Gehenna's pit
The pyre suited to a mother's crimes.

Still, with an angel guarding secretly,
The misfit child grows drunk on sunny air;
In all he drinks or eats in ecstasy
He finds sweet nectar and ambrosia there.

Free as a bird, he plays with clouds and wind,
Sings of the Passion with enraptured joy;
Tending his pilgrimage, his Guardian
Must weep to see the gladness of the boy.

Those he would love watch him with jaundiced eye,
Or, growing bold with his tranquillity,
Look for a certain way to make him cry,
Testing on him their own ferocity.

In bread and wine intended for his mouth
They muddle filthy spit with dirt and ash;
Hypocrites, all that he touches they throw out,
And blame their feet for walking in his path.

His woman cries to all the countryside:
'Since he has found me worthy to adore
I'll let the heathen idols be my guide
And gild myself, as they have done before;

I'll sate myself with incense, myrrh, and nard,
With genuflections, meats and wines galore,
To prove I can in that admiring heart
Laughingly claim the homage due the Lord!

I'll set on him my frail, determined hand
When I am bored with this blasphemous farce;
My fingemails, like harpies' talons, can
Claw out a bloody pathway to his heart.

I'll dig the bright red heart out of his breast,
A pitiful and trembling baby bird;
To satisfy the dog I like the best
I'll toss it to him, with a scornful word!'

Toward Heaven, where he sees a throne of gold,
The Poet lifts his arms in piety,
And brilliant flashes from his lucid soul
Block from his sight the people's cruelty:

- 'Be praised, my God, who gives us suffering
As remedy for our impurities,
And as the best and purest nurturing
To fit the strong for holy ecstasies!

I know in Heaven there's a place for me
Kept for the poet in celestial zones,
And that I'll feast throughout eternity
With Virtues, Powers, Dominations, Thrones.

Man's sorrow is a nobleness, I trust,
Untouchable by either earth or he11;
I know to weave my mystic crown I must
Tax a11 the times, the universe as we11.

But treasure lost from old Palmyra's wealth,
The unknown metals, pearls out of the sea,
Can't equal, though you mounted them yourself,
This diadem of dazzling clarity,

Since it is perfect luminosity,
Drawn from the holy hearth of primal rays,
Of which men's eyes, for a11 their majesty,
Are only mournful mirrors, dark and crazed!'


Přeložil James McGowan


originale française: I. Bénédiction

český překlad: Žehnání



Vysvětlivky:
my penance: the baby; the young poet.
Gehenna: the Valley of Hinnon, south of Jerusalem, where sacrifices of children were made in ancient times. The word has become a synonym for 'Hell'.
harpies' talom: in Greek mythology, a Harpy was a vicious, winged monster with the head and body of a woman, but the talons of a bird of prey.
Virtues, Powers, Dominations, Thrones: the reference here is to the angelic orders, as they were understood in medieval angelology. There were nine orders: in descending importance, Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels.
old Palmyra's wealth: Palmyra was the opulent ancient capital of Syria, located north-east of Damascus.






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