Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 1. Poetry and its Creation
Section 4. Translation
Practice

Remarks on Some Translations [5]

If your translations are read as independent poems they are very beautiful, but they have more of the true “eclogue” than Baudelaire. To be literal (grammatically) is hardly possible in a poetic version and the style of Baudelaire is not easy to transcribe into another language. There is an effect of masculine ease and grace which is really the result of the verbal economy and restraint of which you speak and has therefore at its base a kind of strong austerity supporting the charm and apparent ease — it is very difficult to get all that in together. It is what has happened in your translation — one element has been stressed at the expense of the other. Certain elements that are not Baudelaire have got in here and there, as in the lines you point out. On the other hand at other places by departing from closeness to the original you have got near to the Baudelaire manner at its strongest, e.g.

I’ld have my eyrie hard against the sky.

20 March 1934