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Charles Baudelaire’s L'Invitation au Voyage-Invitation To Voyage- Recast In True Poetic Form
From Les Fleurs du Mal- Flowers of Evil 1857
P. S. Remesh Chandran
Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum
Charles Baudelaire’s L'Invitation au Voyage-Invitation To Voyage- Recast In True Poetic Form
From Les Fleurs du Mal- Flowers of Evil 1857
My 'child, my sister,
Dream 'of the sweetness
Of 'journeying down there to live together!
To 'love at leisure,
To 'love and to die
In thë länd which resembles you!
The 'watèry suns
In threatèning skies
Have 'for my soul the charms so mysterious,
Of 'your treach΄rous eyes
Shining through teárs.
There, 'there’s nothing but order and beauty.
Glea'ming furniture,
Po'lished by th'years,
'Would decoræte our chamber;
The 'rarest flowers
Min'gling their perfumes
'With vague 'scents of ämber,
O'pulent ceilings,
'Mirrors profound,
Splendor of the East:
All 'would be speaking
'To the soul in secret
'In her sweet 'native mother tongue.
There, there's nothing but
Order and beauty,
Luxury, calm, and sensual pleasure.
See 'on the canals
'Ships with furled sails,
Whose 'inclination is vagabond;
'It’s to satisfy
Your 'least desire that
They’ve 'journeyed here from the end of the world.
The 'low setting suns
Paint 'all the champagnes
The canals and the city’s whole expanse
In 'hyacinth and gold;
As the 'world falls asleep
In a hot light. There’s nothing but luxury,
Calm, and sensual pleasure.
NOTE: There have been so many translations of the Flowers of Evil (Fleurs du mal) first published in 1857 by the French poet Charles Baudelaire- some capturing the exotic musical content in them, some not. If it cannot be sung rhythmically by people through generations who love to sing and love poems, it does injustice to the poet in whose mind the tune had originated first and words followed to give it repetitional scope and permanent verbal form, thereby making it pass through times. Unlike Edward Fitzgerald’s fine translation of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, Charles Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil lacks in fine truly musical translations. At least this writer feels so. Here is one poem L’Invitation au Voyage- Invitation To A Journey- recast from an existing one translated by William Aggeler in 1954, recast by this author decades earlier for personal singing. Imperfections and impurities are mine, not the original poets’ or the translator’s.
Charles Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil 1857 is a hot book of sensuousness, considered (in his times) as ‘an insult to good manners and morality, the central theme being sensual human love. Some even consider them as prose poems- the same mistake they made with Kahlil Gibran. Baudelaire is known for his eroticism which does not much manifest in this here poem.
Baudelaire’s L’Invitation au Voyage is a poem which has been translated so many times. Meaning, music, words, atmosphere- nothing can be sacrificed in a translation. The sublimity and poetical elevation which exists throughout the poem have to be cherished, retained as such. Not all translations have done this.
Invitation to the Voyage imparts the reflection of an antithesis of the ordinary world, an impossible and indefinite place, through a series of undefined images. Like the later age English poet W. B. Yeats in his The Lake Isle of Innisfree, he would escape and flee from this tiresome world and go to and settle in that quiet and timeless island of solace. The only difference with Yeats is that in Baudelaire’s place of retreat everything is created in the likeness of his sweetheart and material. treasures, this The furniture, the luxury, the perfumes, the flowers, the rivers, the canals, the rich cargo-carrying ships, the sailors’ songs, are manifestations and likenesses of his lover. In his imagination, in his poetry, everything there is made in the image of his lover.
That Baudelaire was inspired by Dante is evident. Only Dante’s Christianity and purity touches not Baudelaire. Where Dante is moral, Baudelaire is immoral and amoral, justifying why his book The Flowers of Evil was once banned in France during the Second Regime, six poems including Lesbos, Women Doomed, To Her Who Is Too Joyful, The Jewels, and The Vampire's Metamorphoses in it were censored, suppressed and removed from the publication, and the publisher and the poet fined 300 francs each for ‘controversiality, immorality, breaking with tradition, dealing with decadence and eroticism, focusing on original sin, obsession with death. Only his aspiration toward an ideal world was let go’! T. S. Eliot found his ‘density of language, thought, feeling and astonishing clarity’ captivating.
Since this is not an academic work, Baudelaire’s French original is not included alongside the recast translation in English.
UNDER EDIT
Written in 1982 and first published on 31 May 2023
