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Unread 06-05-2021, 09:50 AM
Aaron Poochigian Aaron Poochigian is offline
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Default Baudelaire's "Swan" in Literary Matters

Here's my translation of Baudelaire's "The Swan" (one of the greatest poems ever written): http://literarymatters.org/13-3-the-swan/
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Unread 06-05-2021, 02:46 PM
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Sarah-Jane Crowson Sarah-Jane Crowson is offline
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It's beautiful.

I love the 'bric-a-brac and frills' and other things, like how the sight of the swan 'hits home' & more than all of that - the way you're catapulted, as a reader, into the 'feel' of the place, the hurt of it, the something-of-buried-hope of it.


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Unread 06-05-2021, 04:16 PM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Hi Aaron,

Many congratulations on your translation and publication. Baudelaire must be fun to have a go at!

AP: "Baudelaire's "The Swan" (one of the greatest poems ever written)."
It is splendid, isn't it? Critics like to point out that "Le Cygne" is a pun. I just like to say this: "Le vieux Paris n'est plus. La forme d'une ville /
Change plus vite, helas! que le coeur d'un mortel."

Cheers,
John
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Unread 06-07-2021, 02:21 PM
F.F. Teague F.F. Teague is offline
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Magnifique 🦢
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Unread 06-11-2021, 01:52 PM
David Callin David Callin is offline
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Baudelaire, translated, somehow sounds wrong to me in pentameter. That's only a personal preference, I know. Still, I report it here, as a matter of interest (or not).

David
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Unread 06-11-2021, 07:44 PM
Aaron Poochigian Aaron Poochigian is offline
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It's ok. Many other people have told that this translation is great.
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Unread 06-12-2021, 05:21 AM
David Callin David Callin is offline
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Well that's good then. Congrats.
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Unread 06-13-2021, 04:43 AM
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Just a question. You write Pyrrhus' and Helenus' but I can't make those lines scan without adding the lost "s". Is that what you intended?
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Unread 06-13-2021, 06:29 AM
Andrew Frisardi Andrew Frisardi is offline
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Loved it, Aaron. It reads like a poem that happens to be a translation, i.e. very nicely. I'll get the book for sure when it's out.
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Unread 06-14-2021, 06:49 AM
Bill Carpenter Bill Carpenter is offline
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Excellent, Aaron. Thanks for posting. You make Baudelaire speak modern American.

Ann, we learned to drop the s in the possessive of polysyllabic names ending in s. That protects us from constructions like Ulysses's and Aristophanes's.

I don't know Aaron's inclinations in this, but Derek Attridge advocated scanning an "implied offbeat" between the syllables of a spondee to reflect the actual slight pause when the speaker transitions between two stressed syllables. "Rough pride" in Aaron's line could call for such an addition. For the writer to scan it that way invites the reader to add stress.

In the Helenus' line, possibly we are invited to count the caesura as a syllable.
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