Alchemy and Amalgam Translation in the Works of Charles Baudelaire

  Alchemy and Amalgam Translation in the Works of Charles Baudelaire

  

FAUX TITRE

246

Etudes de langue et littérature françaises

publiées sous la direction de

  

Keith Busby, M.J. Freeman,

Sjef Houppermans, Paul Pelckmans

et Co Vet

  

Emily Salines

Alchemy and Amalgam

  

Translation in the Works of

Charles Baudelaire The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of

‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -

Requirements for permanence’.

Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions

de "ISO 9706:1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents

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ISBN: 90-420-1931-X

  

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

  7 Abbreviations

  9 Introduction

  11 Chapter 1: ‘L’amour du métier’? Baudelaire’s approaches to translation

  19 Chapter 2: Translation in 19th-century France

  61 Chapter 3: Translation and creation in Un Mangeur d’opium

  87 Chapter 4: Le ‘procès baudelairien’ 121 Baudelaire and literary property

  

Chapter 5: Baudelaire’s aesthetics of amalgame 165

Chapter 6: The limits of translation 201 Conclusion: Translation as metaphor? 247

Appendix A: Chronology of Baudelaire’s translations 255

Appendix B: Annotated extract from Un Mangeur d’opium 261

Appendix C: Literary Property Law of 19 July 1793 269

Appendix D: ‘Le Joujou du pauvre’ / Morale du joujou 271

Bibliography

  275

  

Index of source authors and translations 299

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank Dr Sonya Stephens, Profs Edward Hughes, Peter Broome and Michele Hannoosh for their invaluable advice and help at various stages of the manuscript.

  The Centre for Research in Translation at Middlesex University has been the ideal environment in which to develop my ideas about Baudelaire and translation. I thank my colleagues and students of the Centre, who through their comments and questions have enriched my work.

  I thank the Women Graduates Association for awarding me an emergency grant for the summer of 1995, and Royal Holloway, University of London for awarding me a travel grant in the same year, which allowed me to spend a month at the Bibliothèque Nationale. I am very grateful to Middlesex University for awarding me a period of sabbatical leave in the Autumn of 1999, during which the manuscript was completed.

  I would like to express my gratitude to Linzy Dickinson for her help and friendship throughout this project. Last but not least, Steve Russell, my family and friends deserve special thanks for their encouragement and support, as well as their patience!

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ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations are used:

ŒCI and ŒCII: Baudelaire, Charles, Œuvres complètes, ed. by

Claude Pichois (Paris: Gallimard, 1975-76).

CI and CII: Baudelaire, Charles, Correspondance, ed. by Claude

Pichois with the collaboration of Jean Ziegler (Paris: Gallimard,

1973).

  

S L W : Baudelaire, Charles, Un Mangeur d’opium avec le texte

parallèle des Confessions of an English Opium Eater et des Suspiria

de profundis de Th. De Quincey, édition critique et commentée par

Michèle Stäuble-Lipman Wulf, Études Baudelairiennes VI-VII

(Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1976).

  

EAP: Poe, Edgar Allan, Œuvres en prose, Traduites par Charles

Baudelaire, Texte établi et annoté par Y.-G. Le Dantec (Paris:

Gallimard, 1951).

  

Ouvrages73 : Baudelaire, Charles, Edgar Alan Poe, sa vie et ses

ouvrages, Edition commentée par W. T. Bandy (Toronto: University

of Toronto Press, 1973).

  

Poe: Poe, Edgar Allan, The Complete Tales and Poems (New York:

Dorset Press, 1989).

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INTRODUCTION

Est-il normal que, pendant une quinzaine d’années, l’auteur des Fleurs du Mal ait consacré la plus grande partie de son activité à traduire des œuvres souvent médiocres? (...) Pour sa difficulté à créer, Poe lui fut un alibi: les traductions sont une justifi- cation, une caution bourgeoise, destinée à rassurer sa mère, Ancelle et lui- ₁ même.

  

Claude Pichois’s question and his answer are emblematic of critics’

general approach to Charles Baudelaire’s translations. ‘Traduire’ –

even in the corpus of a canonical writer – cannot but be a stopgap, the

sign of a lack, an abnormal activity. Such a view of translation is not

restricted to Baudelaire studies, of course. Translation has traditionally

been considered as a derivative activity (and one, therefore, that is less

worthy of interest). Susan Bassnett describes this tradition very

clearly:

  Translation has been perceived as a secondary activity, as a ‘mechanical’ rather than a ‘creative’ process, within the competence of anyone with a basic grounding in a language other than their own; in short, as a low status occu- ₂ pation.

  

Because of its dependence on a source text, translation is generally

seen as less valuable than so-called ‘original’ writing, and totally an-

cillary, dependent on its source. Despite the large volume of Baude-

laire criticism, it is not surprising, therefore, to note that, of all his

works, his translations have indeed been relatively little studied, and

₁

are generally considered as marginal in his corpus, a sign of his crea-

  

Claude Pichois, ‘Baudelaire ou la difficulté créatrice’ in Baudelaire, Études et

(Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1967), pp. 242-61 (p. 246). témoignages

2 Susan Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies (London and New York: Methuen, 1980), p. 2.

  12 Alchemy and Amalgam

tive incapacity, manifested in an over-reliance on derivative writing.

  Very rarely are they seen to be relevant to the poet’s creative process.

  The few studies which concentrate on Baudelaire’s translations

focus mainly on Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe, and mostly from the

point of view of a possible affinity between the two authors. They ex-

plore mainly the question of Poe’s influence on Baudelaire and the-

₃

matic echoes between the two writers. Of such studies, P.M. Wethe-

rill’s Charles Baudelaire et la poésie d’Edgar Allan Poe is the most

₄

complete and enlightening. Other traditional paths of enquiry are

concerned with Baudelaire’s knowledge of the English language and

of English literature, and generally highlight his faulty knowledge of

₅

the language and patchy understanding of the literature. His interest

in Poe is often quoted as an example of his poor appreciation of Eng-

lish / American literature, as Poe’s status as a writer is questioned and

belittled. Claude Pichois perpetuates that tradition when he writes that

‘deux écrivains du même nom: un Américain, plutôt médiocre, et un

₆ Français de génie’ hide under the name of Poe. The reasons for this

supposed improvement achieved through translation are rarely ex-

plored, critics generally satisfying themselves with pointing out

Baudelaire’s genius, although one does find some comparative studies

of source and target texts such as P.M. Wetherill’s.

  In comparison with the Poe translations – which, admittedly,

constitute the largest part of Baudelaire’s translation corpus – Baude-

laire’s other translations and adaptations have been very little studied.

The most notable and useful contributions of critics in the field have

  

3 Among the best of early studies of this type are Léon Lemonnier’s Les Traducteurs

d’Edgar Poe en France de 1845 à 1876: Charles Baudelaire (Paris: PUF, 1928),

Edgar Poe et la critique française de 1845 à 1875 (Paris: PUF, 1928), Edgar Poe et

  (Paris: Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Critique, 1932). These les poètes français

works consider Baudelaire’s translations of Poe in context and explore – and

minimize – Poe’s influence on Baudelaire. Also very useful is Patrick F. Quinn’s The

French Face of Edgar Poe (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1957),

which despite its general title concentrates in fact on Baudelaire’s reading of Poe. See

also Louis Seylaz, Edgar Poe et les premiers symbolistes français (Lausanne:

₄ Imprimerie la Concorde, 1923).

  

P.M. Wetherill, Charles Baudelaire et la poésie d’Edgar Allan Poe (Paris: Nizet,

₅ 1962).

  

See for instance Francis Scarfe’s ‘Baudelaire angliciste?’, Études anglaises, 21

(1968), 52-57, or Margaret Heinen Matheny ‘Baudelaire’s Knowledge of English

Literature’, Revue de Littérature Comparée, 1970, 98-117.

  Introduction

  13

been through the publication of parallel text editions. W.T. Bandy and

Claude Pichois’s ‘Un inédit: “Hiawatha. Légende indienne”, adapta-

tion de Charles Baudelaire’ offers the French and the English texts in

₇

parallel, and includes a short section on ‘Baudelaire traducteur’. L e

  

Jeune Enchanteur has also benefitted from W. T. Bandy’s scholarship,

culminating with the publication in 1990 of an excellent parallel-text

₈

edition. Similarly, Edgar Allan Poe, sa vie et ses ouvrages is an ex-

cellent edition by Bandy of Baudelaire’s text in parallel with its

₉

sources, with a very thorough introduction. In the case of Un

  

Mangeur d’opium and its source texts, Thomas De Quincey’s Confes-

sions of an English Opium-Eater and Suspiria de Profundis, Michèle

Staüble-Lipman Wulf’s edition has provided the most complete intro-

₁₀ duction to the source and target texts, together with a parallel edition. In addition to the above studies, there has been in recent years

only a slow movement towards a recognition of the importance of

translation for Baudelaire. Nicole Ward Jouve devotes a section of her

Baudelaire: A Fire to Conquer Darkness to ‘Baudelaire and Transla-

tion’, and suggests that ‘translating from one language into another

calls into play attitudes not altogether different from translating paint

₁₁

into words, or life into art’. She does not, however, pursue that line

of enquiry, and instead produces a study of Baudelaire’s reading of De

Quincey rather than of his work as a translator. Alan Astro’s ‘Allegory

of Translation in Un Mangeur d’opium’ explores the hybrid nature of

₁₂

this text in terms of translation; Mary Ann Caws’ ‘Insertion in an

  

Oval Frame: Poe Circumscribed by Baudelaire’ looks at the interac-

tion between Baudelaire’s translation of Poe’s ‘The Oval Portrait’

with its source text and the poem ‘Un Fantôme’ in Les Fleurs du

_{13 7}

mal ; and Mira Levy-Bloch’s ‘La traduction chez Baudelaire: Les

₈ Études Baudelairiennes II (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1971), 7-68.

  

Le Jeune Enchanteur, A critical edition by W. T. Bandy (Nashville: Publications of

the W. T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire Studies, 1990). See also W. T. Bandy,

‘Baudelaire et Croly – la vérité sur Le Jeune Enchanteur’, Mercure de France (1

₉ February 1950), 230-47. ₁₀ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973).

  (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1976). The only other Études Baudelairiennes VI-VII

notable study of Baudelaire and De Quincey is to be found in G. T. Clapton,

₁₁ Baudelaire et De Quincey (Paris: ‘Les Belles Lettres’, 1931).

  

Nicole Ward Jouve, Baudelaire: A Fire to Conquer Darkness (London: Macmillan,

₁₂ 1980), p. 200.

  Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 18, 1-2 (Fall-Winter 1989-90), 165-71.

  14 Alchemy and Amalgam

trois imaginations du poète-traducteur’ explores the links between

translation metaphors and imagination for Baudelaire (but does not

₁₄

take into account Baudelaire’s translations). These articles are very

valuable but remain inevitably limited in scope. There has been to date

no overall study of Baudelaire’s translating technique or of his use of

English texts in general, nor has there been any contextualized study

of his translation corpus. Nor indeed has there been any attempt to

link Baudelaire’s translations and adaptations to his other writings.

  This book is part of a growing movement in translation stud-

ies to reassess the significance of the act of translation, and a ques-

tioning of the ancillary position of translation. Particularly representa-

tive of this movement is the work of the so-called ‘manipulation’

school, inherited from the polysystem theories of the 1970s and early

1980s.

15 As its name suggests, the manipulation school focuses on the

  

transformative powers of translation, which are dictated by the trans-

lator’s subjectivity but also, as importantly, the translational norms of

the target system (that is to say the prevalent approaches to translation

of the receiving culture) as well as the socio-cultural context to which

the translations are being transplanted. This resolutely target-oriented

approach to translation has the advantage of moving away from con-

cerns of faithfulness to a sacrosanct original. It should be seen, how-

ever, in parallel with studies such as those of Lawrence Venuti or

Antoine Berman, who explore the appropriating dimension of the act

of translation, and emphasize the fallacy of fluency and transparency

in translation, arguing that these hide in fact the translator’s tendency

₁₆ to take over the source text and erase the source author’s voice. Moving away from the theory of creative incapacity, my aim

is, therefore, to respond to the lacuna in Baudelaire criticism and to

pursue the line of enquiry set by translation studies by reassessing the

Chelsea House Publishers, 1987, pp. 101-23 (initially published in The French

56, April-May 1983).

  Review, _{14 15} Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 20, 1-2 (Fall-Winter 1991-92), 361-83.

  

See Itamar Even-Zohar, ‘Polysystem Theories’, Poetics Today, 1, 1-2 (Autumn

1979), 287-310; Gideon Toury, In Search of a Theory of Translation (Tel Aviv: Porter

Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1980); Theo Hermans (ed.), The Manipulation of

₁₆ Literature, Studies in Literary Translation (London: Croom Helm, 1985).

  

Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, A History of Translation (London

and New York: Routledge, 1995); Antoine Berman, L’Épreuve de l’étranger, Culture

et traduction dans l’Allemagne Romantique (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), and Pour une

critique des traductions: John Donne (Paris: Gallimard, 1995).

  Introduction

  15

significance of the translating act in the Baudelairean corpus and its

importance in Baudelaire’s writing technique. In order to achieve that,

this study will focus on the interaction between translation and crea-

tion and will move away from traditional distinctions between

Baudelaire’s derivative and original writings. Instead, it will aim to

uncover a common approach to writing both in the translations and in

the rest of Baudelaire’s corpus.

  The scope of this study will be deliberately wide, therefore. It

will explore Baudelaire’s translations from English for signs of sub-

jectivity and creativity, and will try and discover forms of translation

other than intralingual in the Baudelairean corpus. In other words, it

will not only explore the direct translations of Poe’s texts, but instead

will also focus on more ambiguous texts, such as the ‘adaptations’

from English (Un Mangeur d’opium, for instance), and other forms of

dual writing in Baudelaire’s works as the doublets and transpositions

d’art.

  Thus the term ‘translation’ will be taken in a wide sense, en-

compassing a range of forms of derivative writings (that is to say texts

created through the rewriting of an earlier text), an approach largely

influenced by Roman Jakobson’s seminal ‘On Linguistic Aspects of

Translation’.

  

17 Jakobson defines three types of translation:

1) Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language. 2) Interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language. 3) Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal ₁₈ signs by means of signs of non-verbal sign systems.

  

Jakobson’s definitions have the advantage of opening up the discus-

sion of translation to forms of writing which would not necessarily be

included in more traditional approaches. ‘Translation proper’, that is

to say from one language to another, is only one form of translation,

which includes rewriting (intralingual) and transposition (intersemi-

otic). The traditional distinction between translation, adaptation and

₁₇

version should not indeed hide the fact that all these are forms of dual,

in On Translation, ed. by Reuben A. Brower (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press, 1959), pp. 232-243. See also Aron Kibédi Varga’s commentary on

  

Jakobson’s three types of translation in ‘Pragmatique de la traduction’, RHLF, 1997,

3, 428-36 (pp. 428-30).

  16 Alchemy and Amalgam

or derivative, writing, and are, therefore, part of a common approach

to writing. Henri Meschonic, in his article ‘Traduction, adaptation –

palimpseste’, shows the links and differences between adaptation and

translation:

  Je définirais la traduction la version qui privilégie en elle le texte à traduire et l’adaptation, celle qui privilégie (volontairement ou à son insu, peu importe), tout ce hors-texte fait des idées du traducteur sur le langage, et sur la littéra- ture, sur le possible et l’impossible (par quoi il se situe) et dont il fait le sous-

₁₉

texte qui envahit le texte à traduire.

  

Meschonic emphasizes translation as a source-oriented exercise, and

adaptation as target-oriented. As Yves Gambier argues, the division

between translation and adaptation is based, then, on the implicit idea

  20

that translation is ‘un effort littéral, une mimesis de l’original’. Gam-

bier attacks what he calls ‘une antinomie intenable’: ‘d’une part, la

traduction serait vouée à la littéralité, d’autre part, elle se changerait

₂₁ en “adaptation” dès que son souci cibliste dominerait’.

  From this point of view, Reuben Brower’s approach offers an

alternative to the traditional division between translation and adapta-

tion. Brower argues that the word ‘version’ is a better term to refer to

₂₂

the ‘scale of varying but related activities that we call “translation”’,

because it does not carry the same overtones of literalness as the word

‘translation’. He then details the range of approaches possible:

  A few of the many degrees on a scale of versions might be named here – from the most exact rendering of vocabulary and idiom to freer yet responsible translation, to full imaginative re-making (‘imitation’), to versions where no particular original is continuously referred to, to allusion, continuous or spo- radic, to radical translation, where a writer draws from a foreign writer or tra- ₂₃ dition the nucleus or donnée for a wholly independent work.

  

While Brower’s open concept of version may be too wide for the pur-

pose of the present study (allusions, for instance, will not be consi-

₁₉

dered as forms of translation), his inclusion of varying degrees of

₂₀ Palimpsestes, 3 (1990), 1-10 (p. 1).

  

Yves Gambier, ‘Adaptation: une ambiguité à interroger’, Meta, 37 (1992), 421-25,

₂₁ p. 421. ₂₂ Gambier, p. 421.

  

Reuben Brower, Mirror on Mirror, Translation, Imitation, Parody (Cambridge

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), p. 1.

  Introduction

  17

closeness to and variation from a source is very helpful as a basis for a

₂₄ study of varying forms of translation in Baudelaire’s works. ₂₅ An inclusive (or ‘totalizing’, to use George Steiner’s phrase)

definition of translation clearly brings the present study within the

framework of intertextuality, and the study of palimpsestic writing as

₂₆

explored by Gérard Genette. Genette’s analysis of the five levels of

transtextuality (transtextuality being ‘tout ce qui met [le texte] en re-

lation manifeste ou secrète avec d’autres textes’) provides indeed the

necessary theoretical framework in which to look at the relationship

between Baudelaire’s translations and his other writings, and also

between the translations and their source texts. Genette details five

types of transtextuality – the first type, ‘intertextualité’, is defined as a

‘relation de coprésence entre deux ou plusieurs textes’, as encountered

for instance in quotation, plagiarism or allusion; the second type,

‘paratextualité’, which is ‘la relation, généralement moins explicite et

plus distante, que, dans l’ensemble formé par une œuvre littéraire, le

texte proprement dit entretient avec ce que l’on ne peut guère nommer

que son paratexte’, that is to say the relationship between the text and

everything that surrounds it (for instance its title, prefaces, cover,

etc...); the third type, ‘métatextualité’, is ‘la relation (...) de commen-

taire qui unit un texte à un autre texte’; the fourth type (the most im-

portant within the context of this study), ‘hypertextualité’ describing

the relationship between a text B (‘hypertexte’) and an earlier text A

(‘hypotexte’) in a relationship which is not metatextual, but rather,

based on a creative transformation of text A by text B; and, finally,

‘architextualité’, ‘relation tout à fait muette, que n’articule, au plus,

₂₇ qu’une mention paratextuelle de pure appartenance taxinomique’. Genette’s classification has the advantage of providing a use-

ful terminology and a clear distinction between different types of rela-

tionships between texts. Underlying the analysis of the place of trans-

lation in Baudelaire’s work is the question of the status of

₂₄ George Steiner advocates a similar approach in After Babel, Aspects of Language

and Translation (London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), where

he underlines the study of ‘all meaningful exchanges of the totality of semantic

communication (including Jakobson’s intersemiotic translation or “transmutation”)’

₂₅ as the most instructive trend in translation studies (p. 279). ₂₆ Steiner, p. 279.

  

Gérard Genette, Introduction à l’architexte (Paris: Seuil, 1979); Palimpsestes, la

₂₇ littérature au second degré (Paris: Seuil, 1982).

  18 Alchemy and Amalgam

  

Baudelaire’s translations in relation to their source texts – whether or

not they can be considered as hypertexts depends on Baudelaire’s

creative input in the target text, and assessing that input will be central

to this study.

  In order to explore the importance of translation in Baude-

laire’s works, this book will start with an analysis of the corpus of

Baudelaire’s interlingual translations. It will detail the range of

Baudelaire’s approaches to the English text and aim to demonstrate

that they all represent different forms of translation. It will then re-

place these approaches within their translational context and outline

the main issues at stake in the practical and theoretical hesitations and

debates of the 19th century, before focusing on Un Mangeur d’opium

as emblematic of the link between translation and creation in Baude-

laire’s writing method, and of his ambivalence to his source text. This

study will then turn to the issues raised by the ambiguous status of

Baudelaire’s translations and adaptations in his corpus, exploring first

the questions of translation and literary property and responding to the

theory of Baudelaire’s creative incapacity as the main reason for his

interest in translation, before situating Baudelaire’s creative transla-

tions as part of a wider aesthetics. The final chapter of the book will

explore the possibility of an aesthetics based on the concept of trans-

lation. It will, therefore, look at other forms of dual writing in Baude-

laire’s works, starting with the links between translation and criticism

and then turning to intersemiotic and intralingual translations. If the

hypothesis of a common approach to all dual writings is verified, the

centrality of translation in Baudelaire’s works will have been demon-

strated. It will, consequently, shed new light on the poet’s creative

method and the means by which poetic alchemy is achieved.

  

1

‘L’AMOUR DU MÉTIER’?

BAUDELAIRE’S APPROACHES TO TRANSLATION

  Baudelaire’s approaches to English texts were far from uniform, ₁ ranging from very close translation to free adaptations. They can, however, be divided into two main strands. On the one hand, there are what could be called source-oriented, direct translations (that is to say translations in which the source text is paramount, and the translating act focuses on the faithful rendering of the original); and, on the other, there are target-oriented adaptations and transformations, in which the source text is appropriated, sometimes even hijacked, to suit Baude- laire’s aims. In the latter, the target text becomes paramount, the source text serving mainly as the bottom layer of the creative palimp- sest. As in most classifications, variations do exist within these two main strands, as will revealed in the course of this study. It is never- theless useful to examine the specific features of direct translations and adaptations separately.

  The direct translations constitute the bulk of Baudelaire’s activi- ties: this is the approach adopted with Edgar Allan Poe’s works and despite his experiments with freer approaches, Baudelaire never aban- doned the use of direct translation. Although the most remarkable of Baudelaire’s direct translations are the Poe translations, other texts follow similar approaches. His first and last translations are both direct translations: Le Jeune Enchanteur, based on an 1836 story by the ₂ Reverend Croly, was published in 1846 while ‘Le Pont des soupirs’, based on Thomas Hood’s ‘Bridge of Sighs’, was dictated to Arthur ₁ Stevens in 1865. This approach was also applied to English songs by ₂ See the chronology of Baudelaire’s translations, in Appendix A.

  

‘The Young Enchanter – From a papyrus of Herculanum’, in The Forget me not; A

(London: Ackermann Christmas, New Year’s, and Birthday Present for mdccxxxvi and CO., 1836).

  20 ₃

  Alchemy and Amalgam

  T. E. Walmisley and Doctor Cooke. These, published in Paris on 29 January 1853, were translated for Alfred Busquet, who inserted them in an account of London (Londres fantastique, published in Paris from

  16 December 1852 to 30 January 1853). In most direct translations, the source text is fully acknowledged and respected as an original to be reproduced as faithfully as possible. The situation is not always so straightforward, however, as the example of Le Jeune Enchanteur suggests a more complex relationship with the source text. Indeed, W. T. Bandy showed in 1950 that Le Jeune Enchanteur, first published in 1846 under Baudelaire’s name, is in fact an unacknowledged translation. That a relatively close translation should pass as a text by Baudelaire is remarkable and may be an early hint of the link between his translations and his other works and of the fluency of his translation. Such fluency, linked with the dissimulation of the transla- tional nature of Le Jeune Enchanteur, poses clear questions of literary property, questions which also arise from the freer translations where the source text is very infrequently acknowledged.

  The adaptations, although less numerous than the direct trans- lations, form an important part of Baudelaire’s translation corpus. As in the case of the direct translations, the free translations include work done at the request of a third party. In the same way as the English

  

Songs were translated at the request of Alfred Busquet, the unfinished

  translation of Longfellow’s ‘Hiawatha’ was ordered by Robert August in 1860, and became the occasion for experiments with the rendering of poetry and with varying levels of transformation. Edgar Allan Poe,

  

sa vie et ses ouvrages and Edgar Allan Poe, sa vie et ses œuvres, al-

  though presented by Baudelaire as his own account of Poe’s life and works, are in fact essays based on American articles which are blended with Baudelaire’s personal comments on Poe’s art. In Les

  

Fleurs du Mal, ‘Le Guignon’ is based on Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a

  Country Churchyard’ and Longfellow’s ‘A Psalm of Life’, while ‘Le Flambeau vivant’ is a loose translation of a section from Poe’s ‘To Helen’. In both cases, there is no direct recognition of the source text.

  Finally, Un Mangeur d’opium is, openly this time, both a presentation and a reflexion on Thomas De Quincey’s autobiographical Confes-

  sions of an English Opium-Eater and Suspiria De Profundis.

  Despite the wide range of approaches adopted by Baudelaire in ₃ his translations, one is struck by the fact that they stand in their own

  L’amour du métier?

  21 right, independently of their original, be it acknowledged or not. In the introduction to his Pléiade edition of Poe’s prose works, Y.-G. Le Dantec emphasizes the fact that the translations are a Baudelairean ₄ text, and that Poe’s stories are ‘magistralement transcrites’ by ₅ Baudelaire. It is revealing that, in his project to present Poe’s tales to

  French readers in the highly prestigious Pléiade edition, Le Dantec should choose to omit the stories which were not translated by Baudelaire on the grounds that Baudelaire’s text cannot be supple- mented by another translator’s versions, and that French readers are used to Baudelaire’s presentation and selection. Thus Baudelaire’s version has taken over its original and the canon established by him is ₆ eventually seen as more important than Poe’s. Claude Pichois ex- presses the same idea when he writes that:

  les traductions de Poe sont devenues la substance de Baudelaire et constituent une œuvre d’art appartenant au patrimoine français. Ce qui faisait dire à un humoriste qu’il y avait deux écrivains du même nom: un Américain, plutôt ₇ médiocre, et un Français de génie, par la grâce de Baudelaire et de Mallarmé.

  Similarly, Le Jeune Enchanteur is still classified as part of Baude- laire’s ‘essais et nouvelles’ in Claude Pichois’ Pléiade edition, whereas the translations of Poe make up a separate volume. In the same vein, W. T. Bandy’s excellent 1990 edition of Le Jeune En-

  

chanteur does not mention on its title page the fact that the text is a

  translation, and there is no reference to the source author. It is as if the critics’ last verdict on Baudelaire’s appropriation of Croly’s text was that it was successful, although of lesser importance than Baudelaire’s _{8 4} other works, because of the act of translation it involved. U n

  

‘Bien que ce volume ne fasse pas partie des Œuvres de Baudelaire éditées dans la

Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, c’est encore un texte baudelairien que nous donnons ici, en

₅ publiant une édition des œuvres d’Edgar Allan Poe’, EAP, p. 7. ₆ EAP, p. 7.

  

This common view of Baudelaire’s translations seems in contradiction with the no

less common critical tendency to see his translating activity as a sideline in the corpus

₇ of his works – a contradiction to which we shall return at a later stage.

  

Pichois, ‘Baudelaire ou la difficulté créatrice’, p. 242. ‘La substance de Baudelaire’

describes well the impregnation of Poe’s text with Baudelairean elements, and the

phrase ‘une œuvre d’art appartenant au patrimoine français’ calls to mind once more

₈ the concept of appropriation through translation already mentioned.

  

Pichois’ notes to Le Jeune Enchanteur state somewhat disappointedly that ‘cette

nouvelle n’est qu’une traduction d’un texte anglais’ (ŒCI, p. 1405, emphasis added)

  22

  Alchemy and Amalgam

Mangeur d’opium, although often presented as secondary to its origi-

  nal, is also seen as belonging fully to Baudelaire’s works. Such views imply a strong dimension of appropriation through translation, con- scious or unconscious, which will be studied at a later stage in this book. They also emphasize the strength of Baudelaire’s voice as a translator, a voice which makes itself heard not only in the free trans- lations, but also in apparently source-oriented, direct translations.

  The present chapter will present the corpus of Baudelaire’s translations from English and explore the target texts for the presence of his voice and subjectivity, starting with the direct translations be- ₉ fore turning to the free translations.

  

Le Jeune Enchanteur is a useful starting point in a study of Baude-

  laire’s direct translations. As a ‘pseudo-original’ (to use Anthony ₁₀ Pym’s terminology), that is to say a translation presented and read as an original, this text is engaged in a very specific relationship with the target culture and the target translator’s corpus. The reasons why Le

  

Jeune Enchanteur should have been believed for so long to be part of

  Baudelaire’s ‘original works’ may be found both in the paratext and in ₉ velles], celle des traductions ayant été réservée aux poésies.’ (ŒCI, p, 1404).

  

Studying such a large corpus poses methodological issues. Antoine Berman’s Pour

(pp. 64-97) provides a useful framework. une critique des traductions: John Donne

Berman’s method is complementary to polysystem approaches in so far as it insists on

the importance of target-oriented criticism, and contextual studies, and has the addi-

tional advantage of highlighting, as Lawrence Venuti does too, the fallacy of a trans-

parent translation. The main characteristic of Berman’s method is that he sees com-

parisons of source and target texts as only a step in the study of a given translation,

advocating an approach which would look at the target text as a text in its own right

before turning to the close analysis of passages revealing the foreignness of transla-

tional writing, and would take into account the translator’s translational context (the