nunia
[个人文集]
加入时间: 2005/11/04
文章: 2184
经验值: 5079
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作者：nunia 在 寒山小径 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
I love translation done by Kendall Lappin in his book 'Echoes of Baudelaire'.
But it is also true and right to say:
'The whole volume is an asylum full of inanities of the human mind, of all the putrescences of the human heart. All this would be permissible if its object were to cure them, but they are incurable.' [ wrote one critic for Le Figaro, in an article which typified the literary establishment's response to the book's publication in 1857]
Oh, Our incurable thirst to return to the Word and the Other God.
* The Happy Corpse
Somewhere in rich, fertile earth full of snails
I will dig with my own hands a pit wide and deep,
In which I can calmly stretch out my old bones
And sleep in oblivion like a shark in the wave.
No testaments, no mausoleums for me;
Rather than plead with the world for a tear,
I'd prefer, still alive, to beckon the crows
Every inch of my vile, filthy carcass to bleed.
O worms! dark companions with no ear nor eye,
To you now comes a dead man who's happy and free;
Epicurean philosophers, scions of decay,
Feel free then to bore through my ruins at will,
And tell me if some torment still lies in store
For this soulless old body, more dead than alive.
* The Self-Tormentor
I'll strike you coldly, without hate
Or anger, as a butcher strikes,
As Moses smote the Horeb rock!
And from your lids I'll make gush forth,
To irrigate my Sahara,
The floods of suffering and pain.
My hot desire, blown large by hope,
Will swim upon your salt tears like
A ship that's putting out to sea,
And in my heart, made drunk thereby,
Your cherished sobs will echo like
A drum that's beating out the charge!
Am I not a discordant note
In God's celestial symphony,
Thanks to voracious Irony
Who bites and shakes me in her jaws?
She's in my voice, the strident scold!
It's all my blood, this poison black!
I am the mirror sinister
Wherein the shrew regards herself!
I am the stab-wound and the knife!
I am the stung cheek and the slap!
I am the members and the wheel
The victim and the hangman too!
I am the vampire of my heart,
-- One of those great forsaken few
Condemned eternally to laugh,
And able nevermore to smile!
* The Clock
O clock! thous impassive, dread, sinister god,
Whose menacing finger "Remember!" exhorts,
The shattering Griefs that thy fearsome heart holds
Will soon, like winged shafts in a target, strike home!
Ephemeral Pleasure will fade from the scene
As a sylphid flees offstage and into the wings;
Each moment devours one more portion of those
Sweet delights meted out for his lifetime to each.
Three thousand six hundred times every hour,
The Second still whispers: "Remember!" Swift Now,
With its insect-like voice, ticks out: " I am the Past,
And my filthy proboscis has sucked out thy life!"
Souviens-toi! Remember! Wastrel! Esto memor!
( My gullet of metal speaks all the world's tongues!)
Feckless mortal, the minutes are matrices, gangues,
Which must not be let go without yielding their gold!
Remember that Time is a dice-player keen
Who wins without fraud, every cast! That's the law.
The day wanes; the night waxes; remember! The pit
Is forever athirst, and the clepsydra drains.
The hour will soon strike when omnipotent Chance,
When radiant Virtue, they still-virgin spouse,
When Repentance itself (ah - the last wayside inn!),
When all will say: "Die, old poltroon! It's too late!"
作者：nunia 在 寒山小径 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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'The Happy Corpse' - echoes of Baudelaire
