Les aveugles by Baudelaire
Today I’m christening a new category on the blog: Translations. This past semester, I took a class on transferring meaning between French and English, English and French. Ever since, I’ve been entranced by translation’s melange of science, skill, chance, and art.
In “Les aveugles,” I struggled to maintain semantic accuracy within Baudelaire’s poetic form. Yet, because the poet, at times, deviated from the sonnet’s regular rhythm, I did too. All in all, what follows should be considered a rough draft. See the original poem, along with translations from writers who abandoned Baudelaire’s meter and rhymescheme, here.
THE BLIND FELLOWS
Do ponder them, my soul; they truly be a fright!
Resembling mannequins, they somewhat ludicrous,
And dreadful, curious as like somnambulists,
For from within their darkly globes beams unknown light.
Their eyes, from whence the holy flickering has fled,
Appear to gaze at distant places, lifted lone
To God-ward; never low to streets of cobbled stone
Will bow in wistful dreams their heavy-ladened head.
They thus traverse across the black infinity,
That brother of eternal silence. O city!
For while encircling us you sing, laugh and bellow,
Besotted by my pleasure till atrocity,
See, I too am trudging! But past perplexity,
I ask: What seek they from the Sky, these blind fellows?
Entasis 