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05-05-2009 | #1 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
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Dark Literary Quotations
"Qui peut lecher peut mordre, et qui peut embrasser peut etouffer."
"He who can lick can bite, and he who can kiss can smother." --Alfred de Musset (1810-1857) | |||||||||||
"We work in the dark -- we do what we can -- we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."
--Henry James (1843-1916) |
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9 Thanks From: | bendk (01-24-2014), Cyril Tourneur (05-05-2009), Daisy (05-05-2009), G. S. Carnivals (05-05-2009), Harksen (05-06-2009), Jezetha (05-05-2009), Spotbowserfido2 (05-05-2009), vegetable theories (05-06-2009), Waterdweller (05-05-2009) |
05-05-2009 | #2 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Feb 2008
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Re: Dark Literary Quotations
"Les charmes de l'horreur n'enivrent que les forts."
"The charms of horror tempt only the strong." --from "Danse Macabre" by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) | |||||||||||
10 Thanks From: | Bleak&Icy (05-06-2009), Cyril Tourneur (05-05-2009), G. S. Carnivals (05-05-2009), Harksen (05-06-2009), hopfrog (05-05-2009), Jezetha (05-05-2009), Spotbowserfido2 (05-05-2009), ToALonelyPeace (01-29-2016), vegetable theories (05-06-2009), Waterdweller (05-05-2009) |
05-05-2009 | #3 | |||||||||||
Chymist
Join Date: Apr 2008
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Re: Dark Literary Quotations
"The charms of horror intoxicate only the strong"? | |||||||||||
7 Thanks From: | Daisy (05-05-2009), G. S. Carnivals (05-05-2009), Harksen (05-06-2009), hopfrog (05-05-2009), ToALonelyPeace (11-20-2017), vegetable theories (05-06-2009), Waterdweller (05-06-2009) |
05-06-2009 | #4 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Threadstarter
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Re: Dark Literary Quotations
"The dead don't die. They look on and help."
--D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) "Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light." --Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) "'Tis strange that death should sing." --William Shakespeare (1564-1616) | |||||||||||
"We work in the dark -- we do what we can -- we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."
--Henry James (1843-1916) |
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7 Thanks From: | Daisy (05-06-2009), G. S. Carnivals (05-06-2009), Harksen (05-06-2009), Jezetha (05-06-2009), Spotbowserfido2 (05-06-2009), ToALonelyPeace (01-29-2016), vegetable theories (05-06-2009) |
05-06-2009 | #5 | |||||||||||
Mannikin
Join Date: Dec 2005
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Re: Dark Literary Quotations
"Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hours upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." -Shakespeare, MACBETH. | |||||||||||
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6 Thanks From: | Daisy (05-06-2009), G. S. Carnivals (05-06-2009), hopfrog (06-21-2010), Jezetha (05-06-2009), Spotbowserfido2 (05-06-2009), vegetable theories (05-06-2009) |
05-06-2009 | #6 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: May 2007
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Re: Dark Literary Quotations
"The charms of Dread are not for everyone." Given the context in which this line appears, Howard's colloquial rendering is very astute, as it captures the bitter, ironical tone of the poet. Here, in Howard's translation, are the three stanzas leading up to that line, and the stanza following it: Will music and the flaring lights beguile a mocking nightmare you cannot escape? Is it the torrent of orgies you require to douse the hellfire kindled in your heart? Inexhaustible pit of folly and sin! Eternal alembic of the ancient pain! Threading the twisted trellis of your ribs the insatiable worm, I see, is still at work! To tell the truth, I fear your coquetry will fail to find the victims it deserves: which of these mortal hearts can take your jokes? The charms of Dread are not for everyone. What visions cloud the chasm of your eyes? Even the bravest partner joins the dance with a twinge of terror as he contemplates the eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth! In light of this I think Nicole was on the right track with "tempt." | |||||||||||
"Reality is the shadow of the word." -- Bruno Schulz
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8 Thanks From: | bendk (05-06-2009), Cyril Tourneur (05-06-2009), Daisy (05-06-2009), G. S. Carnivals (05-06-2009), gveranon (05-06-2009), hopfrog (06-21-2010), Spotbowserfido2 (05-06-2009), vegetable theories (05-06-2009) |
05-06-2009 | #7 | |||||||||||
Chymist
Join Date: Apr 2008
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Re: Dark Literary Quotations
Thanks, B&I!
I didn't know Richard Howard. I like his translation. He doesn't try to reproduce the rhymes of the original, but he does retain a metre (Alexandrine in the original, iambic pentameter in his translation). Which, I think, forces him to 'The charms of Dread are not for everyone'. But Baudelaire, to be as colloquial as Howard, says in effect (and just as ironically) 'only the strong get high on the charms of Dread'. So - neither 'tempt' nor 'are not for everyone'do justice to the word 'enivrent'. The first is wrong qua meaning and the second is too flat. All IMO, of course. | |||||||||||
8 Thanks From: | bendk (05-06-2009), Bleak&Icy (05-06-2009), Cyril Tourneur (05-06-2009), Daisy (05-06-2009), G. S. Carnivals (05-06-2009), gveranon (05-06-2009), hopfrog (06-21-2010), vegetable theories (05-06-2009) |
05-06-2009 | #8 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: May 2007
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Re: Dark Literary Quotations
Do you come to trouble with your potent grimace The festival of Life? Or does some old desire Still goading your living carcass Urge you on, credulous one, toward Pleasure's sabbath? With the flames of candles, with songs of violins, Do you hope to chase away your mocking nightmare, And do you come to ask of the flood of orgies To cool the hell set ablaze in your heart? Inexhaustible well of folly and of sins! Eternal alembic of ancient suffering! Through the curved trellis of your ribs I see, still wandering, the insatiable asp. To tell the truth, I fear your coquetry Will not find a reward worthy of its efforts; Which of these mortal hearts understands raillery? The charms of horror enrapture only the strong! The abyss of your eyes, full of horrible thoughts, Exhales vertigo, and discreet dancers Cannot look without bitter nausea At the eternal smile of your thirty-two teeth. -- William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954) Come you to trouble with your strong grimace, The feast of life? Or has some old desire Rowelled your living carcase from its place And sent you, credulous, to feed its fire? With tunes of fiddles and the flames of candles, Hope you to chase the nightmare far apart, Or with a flood of orgies, feasts, and scandals To quench the bell that's lighted in your heart? Exhaustless well of follies and of faults, Of the old woe the alembic and the urn, Around your trellised ribs, in new assaults, I see the insatiable serpent turn. I fear your coquetry's not worth the strain, The prize not worth the effort you prolong. Could mortal hearts your railleries explain? The joys of horror only charm the strong. The pits of your dark eyes dread fancies breathe, And vertigo. Among the dancers prudent, Hope not your sixteen pairs of smiling teeth Will ever find a contemplative student. -- Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952) doest come to trouble, with thy potent sneer Life's festival? or does some ancient fire — of fool! — still prick thy living carcass here making thee seek this Sabbath of Desire? dost hope, by violins and lights beguiled, to slay that mocking nightmare of unrest? art come to urge the orgy's torrent wild to quench the hell-fire blazing in thy breast? exhaustless fount of every stupid sin! alembic of our old, eternal woe! I see thy ribs, and wandering within, the sateless asp, still wriggling to and fro. but, truth to tell, I fear thy coquetry may find no guerdon for its labours long; which of these death-doomed hearts can laugh with thee? nay, horror's wine is only for the strong! those eyes, deep gulfs where ghastly secrets lurk, breathe giddiness. no prudent cavaliers can gaze unsickened on the eternal smirk that on thy two and thirty teeth appears. -- Lewis Piaget Shanks, Flowers of Evil (New York: Ives Washburn, 1931) I quite like "enrapture," yet it ignores the quintessentially Baudelairean notion of sin, of trespass. I wonder if there is an English word which connotes a rarefied intoxication availble only to those strong enough to abandon themselves to a remote and aesthetic temptation. | |||||||||||
"Reality is the shadow of the word." -- Bruno Schulz
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9 Thanks From: | bendk (05-06-2009), Cyril Tourneur (05-06-2009), Daisy (05-06-2009), G. S. Carnivals (05-06-2009), gveranon (05-06-2009), hopfrog (05-06-2009), Jezetha (05-06-2009), Spotbowserfido2 (05-06-2009), vegetable theories (05-06-2009) |
05-06-2009 | #9 | |||||||||||
Chymist
Join Date: Apr 2008
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Re: Dark Literary Quotations
I like 'enrapture' too, though I agree it is not dangerous enough. Many thanks for an excellent ripost(e)! | |||||||||||
Last edited by Jezetha; 05-06-2009 at 07:35 AM.. |
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05-06-2009 | #10 | |||||||||||
Chymist
Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 312
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Re: Dark Literary Quotations
However it's translated, the quote itself is a bit of misguided bravado. But then, any line of Baudelaire can appear facile in isolation, as his writing is richly flavoured with irony and faux-cynicism.
English Decadents who mimicked Baudelaire's vocabulary and cadences had little sense of what he was writing about: his abrupt mood swings, self-destructive gestures and calculated shifts between beauty and profanity are intended to corrode the pomposity of the poetic tradition, to shatter it from within. He has far more in common with the Beat poets than with the Decadents. When I read Baudelaire I often think of these lines from a Bob Dylan poem: the only beauty's ugly, man the crackin, shakin, breakin sounds're the only sounds I understand | |||||||||||
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