While the peculiarities of language render completely accurate translations impossible, by following certain criteria the translator can ensure that the author’s creation is well preserved. Most important is the preservation of the theme and style of the text, after which a literal translation may be attempted. The original text should be adhered to; the translator’s biases should be minimized, if not entirely disregarded. Ultimately, the translation must exist as an effective poem in English. For these reasons, I much prefer Patrick Barnard’s translation of Baudelaire’s Correspondances to the other three.
The prevailing themes in Baudelaire’s poem are man’s reverence for his environment, and simultaneously his symmetry and connection with it. These themes are adequately conveyed in Barnard’s translation. Notably, unlike the other three translators, he keeps Baudelaire’s intentions for the first four lines intact. It is in this first stanza that the author establishes the canvass on which the details of the subsequent stanzas are to be painted. I did not receive the same sense of man placed in context with nature as effectively from the other translations; Arthur Symons’s translation, with “birds watching [man’s] illusions” and “Sperpent’s mesh”, seems to be an entirely different poem. Barnard uses the same metaphors and symbols as Baudelaire: Nature’s pillars utter confused words (confuses paroles) in line 2; echoes long and distant (longs échos qui de loin...) in line 5; life and death, symbolized by the contrary smells of lines 9-11, are shown to exist harmoniously in line 12. These images are vital to the original text, and changing them, as for example Richard Wilbur has, proves to greatly disturb the poem. By changing “Qui chantent les transports de l’esprit et des sens” to “that excite/ The ecstasies of sense, the soul’s delight”, the reader loses the transcendency of the soul apparent in the original. While none of the translations adequately captures this final line, Barnard’s translation proves to be the most exact in emotional and thematic composition; in my view, changing the word “raptures” to something like ‘the transport’ or ‘the transcendency’ would better preserve Baudelaire’s concluding line. The organic quality of Baudelaire’s descriptions are preserved throughout Barnard’s text. In the original, the reader tangibly perceives the descriptions of the senses; this culminates in “parfums frais comme des chairs d’enfants”, which conveys the smells of both a newborn child and a dead one. This sense is only kept in Barnard’s text, although were it not for the word “succulent”, Richard Howard would have been close. Such ‘earthy’ descriptions are very important to Baudelaire’s poetry, and it is nearly sacrilegious to remove them in a translation. Indeed, as a side-note it is interesting to observe the biases of the authors changing over time. The earlier translations modified “parfums frais comme des chairs d’enfants” to avoid the reference to children, which greatly dilutes the emotional charge of the original. Yet, several decades later this reference became less questionable and was included in translation. In addition to the aforementioned themes, Barnard’s translation conveys to the reader the sense of mild bewilderment and sensual delight found in the original text. His text twists and turns through the descriptions of the various sensations, which much more effectively conveys the sense of helplessness—much like being forced upon an amusement ride—found in the original text. In contrast is the translation by Arthur Symons, which leads the reader through the descriptions in a “logical”, and therefore less emotive, manner. Barnard preserves the emotion from Baudelaire’s text. It is interesting to note that in this instance a literal translation proves to be the most effective. It retains all of the impact of the original text, yet it can stand on its own as a poem in english. Barnard did not force the text to rhyme, which I view as a common error of translation. Such an intention is found in both the Symons and Wilbur texts. By forcing the text to rhyme they seem very contrived; in some instances the order and even the entire meaning of a line has been reconstructed or omitted to suit this purpose. Barnard retains the free-flowing text of the original, and one can follow the aforementioned circuitous descriptions more easily than in the other translations.
While I stressed the importance of the translator’s objectivity toward the original text, I cannot relieve this essay of my own biases. I prefer Patrick Barnard’s translation of Correspondances because it most aptly preserves the themes, style, and images of Baudelaire’s text. Superficially, by being a literal interpretation, it can be seen to have followed the easiest method of translation. Yet the judgement and objectivity required in order to produce such a translation is sometimes hard to attain. A translator’s conceptions of the text may mask those of the author; certainly Symons’s translation is an example of such an occurrence. Barnard’s text in comparison proves its worth to those not fortunate enough to understand the original french.
