Notes on "Le Mauvais Moine"

I thought I might make some notes on the translation I posted yesterday, it being my first to appear here.

The easiest way for me to do this I suppose would be to discuss my translation of this poem in comparison with others that I’ve encountered.

Willam Aggeler’s version, for example, begins:

Cloisters in former times portrayed on their high walls
The truths of Holy Writ with fitting pictures
Which gladdened pious hearts and lessened the coldness,
The austere appearance, of those monasteries.

Aggler here is extremely prosaic; this would never pass for poetry if it didn’t appear visually in the form of a sonnet. Which is fine if all you want is a literal gloss, but Aggler isn’t particularly literal here either. “The truths of Holy Writ” isn’t nearly as affirmative as “la sainte Vérité,” and this is made obvious by the fact that Baudelaire chooses to capitalize “Truth,” Aggler only “Holy Writ,” which of course is always capitalized. What on earth he means to say with “fitting pictures” I don’t know but it’s clearly not as straightforward as Baudelaire’s “tableaux” – essentially “pictures." (Although I chose “frescoes” to avoid repetition and dissonance following “depict” - to me it's obviously frescoes that Baudelaire is talking about). Aggler’s last two lines are very clumsy solution (in my opinion) to the difficulty presented by Baudelaire’s unusual word choice “entrailles” and the complexity of his syntax. The word “entrailles” is of course related to the English “entrails,” so would more commonly be used in reference to living beings – hence Aggler’s “gladdened pious hearts.” Literally, however, since in the next line we are told that the “effet” of the “tableaux” would “temper the coldness of their austerity,” I read the “entrails” as more strictly referring to the interior spaces of the "austere" monasteries, (although of course the other meaning is also implied, the “reheating” effect of the tableaux being metaphorical). So basically, Aggler has tried to iron out all ambiguity from the Baudelaire, bleaching the passage thereby of its interest and beauty.

For the second stanza, Roy Campbell writes:

In times when every sowing flowered for Christ
Lived famous monks, now out of memory's reach;
The graveyard for their library sufficed,
And Death was glorified in simple speech.

Frankly I much prefer Campbell’s approach to Aggler’s here, and obviously he has made an effort to preserve Baudelaire’s rhyme scheme, which Aggler totally disregards. But Campbell’s first line here “In times when every sowing flowered for Christ” – although interestingly drawing attention to a secondary, implied meaning in Baudelaire’s unusual word order “du Christ florissaient le semailles” – does seem to contradict the natural meaning of that line in my opinion. In the remainder of the stanza, I made more of an effort to follow Baudelaire’s syntax than Campbell, but otherwise these lines are fairly satisfying really.

The third stanza by L. G. Schanks:

my soul's a tomb, which — wretched friar! — I
have paced since Time began, and occupy;
bare-walled and hateful still my cloister stands.

Shanks’ version is rather more histrionic than original (note the "!" punctuation) but otherwise this isn’t bad. He attempts to follow the rhyme scheme but I find the “I” in the first line rather something of a cheat, since read aloud anyone would group it with the following line rather than where it is. The apostrophe “wretched friar!” brings up a number of issues. Baudelaire’s “cenobite” technically exists also in English, but for us the word is so obscure that I couldn’t allow myself to use it; Shanks’ “friar” is about as equally acceptable with my “hermit.” Another issue is, who exactly is the “bad monk” of this apostrophe and (presumably) the poem’s title? For me the obvious and only logical answer is that the poet refers to himself, and this reading is reflected in my translation; apparently there are others who disagree however. And this is why for me “Le Mauvais Moine” can only be translated as “The Bad Monk” since the poet is a “bad” monk – incapable of translating his miserable surroundings into beauty etc. like the monks of old – but not an “evil monk,” actually doing anything actively wicked. (At least not as far as we know here – it’s true that in the context of the collection as a whole the monk might be seen as "evil," but only in a very Baudelairian sense dependent on material external to this poem - although after all, "The Flowers of Evil" for "Les Fleurs du mal" has never really been a satisfying solution, it may be the only one however). Anyway, continuing, “odieux” is quite a common insult in French, so “awful” seems to me rather more natural than the (for me) somewhat theatrical “hateful” or other alternatives. (It also introduces a neat and rather appropriate reminiscence of Pope which you may have appreciated). Likewise “cloitre” is more common in French than is “cloister” in English – Baudelaire I imagine was thinking of the old monasteries in general, whereas in English the word has a fairly specific meaning, and so I’ve preferred other substitutes.

Finally, William A. Sigler for the ending:

O lazy monk! When will I see
The living spectacle of my misery,
The work of my hands and the love of my eyes?

I’ve left out the apostrophic “O” which is so frequently an issue in English poetry. Again, Sigler’s translation isn’t bad; the biggest issue is that it isn’t entirely clear in Sigler that the poet wants to see “the living spectacle of my misery” as “The work of my hands and the love of my eyes.” (I notice now that our last line is exactly the same in fact! I suppose this is the most obvious way to handle it after all). Some of the poignancy of Baudelaire's question is also lost with the simple "when will I see...?" (The original rather reminds me of the Latin "Quando fiam uti chelidon, ut tacere desinam?" from the Vigil of Venus, that is: "When will I be like the swallow, that I may leave off being silent?" - this may well not have been on the mind of Baudelaire but the two questions, both posed by poets desperate for inspiration, are comparable in many ways. I haven't drawn any direct attention to the resemblance in my translation, but to the extent that it exists in the French, I have wanted to preserve it in the English)

So, overall I’m rather happy with my result, I hope you are too. In my (rather biased) opinion, it’s the closest to Baudelaire both formally and syntactically, while maintaining a balance between readability and interest. Please tell me if you have any thoughts or questions.

The Bad Monk (Le Mauvais Moine)

This evening I've been working on translating Charles Baudelaire's "Le Mauvais Moine." Here's what I came up with, followed by the original:

The Bad Monk

The old monasteries, on their massive faces
Used to depict in frescoes Holy Verity;
Whose influence, rekindling those pious spaces,
Tempered the iciness of their austerity.

Christ's sowings flourished in those ages
When many great monks (of lost celebrity)
Choosing the graveyard for their offices,
Glorified Death, without pomposity.

--My soul is a tomb which I, a bad hermit,
For all eternity traverse and inhabit.
In these awful cells, nothing beautifies.

Lazy monk! When will I too learn to make
From the living spectacle of my miserable state
The work of my hands and the love of my eyes?

Le Mauvais Moine

Les cloîtres anciens sur leurs grandes murailles
Etalaient en tableaux la sainte Vérité,
Dont l'effet réchauffant les pieuses entrailles,
Tempérait la froideur de leur austérité.

En ces temps où du Christ florissaient les semailles,
Plus d'un illustre moine, aujourd'hui peu cité,
Prenant pour atelier le champ des funérailles,
Glorifiait la Mort avec simplicité.

— Mon âme est un tombeau que, mauvais cénobite,
Depuis l'éternité je parcours et j'habite;
Rien n'embellit les murs de ce cloître odieux.

Ô moine fainéant! quand saurai-je donc faire
Du spectacle vivant de ma triste misère
Le travail de mes mains et l'amour de mes yeux?

Introduction

I plan to use this blog to post translations of mine, primarily into English from Spanish, French, Italian, German, Latin and Greek. More details I'll fill in later as I'm anxious to get started. Please feel welcome to post all your comments/suggestions!