Best Rhymed Translation of Les Fleurs du Mal?

Evans

Evans

Grimscribe
Good day everyone

Would anyone care to recommend what they consider the best rhymed translation of Les Fleurs du Mal/ The Flowers of Evil? A lot of people have attempted it over the years and differing translations each have their own fans and detractors (the Oxford World Classics one seems to unanimously considered awful though - I would agree ).

The two I was thinking of were the Roy Campbell translation - I've read some of Campbell's Baudelaire in Selected Poems and they were very good, though I'm slightly concerned that his own muscular style might over power than of Baudelaire's - or R.J. Dent's which I have heard good things about. Any opinions or comments would be appreciated.

(I do not want Baudelaire reinterpreted for modern man or Baudelaire made accessible for the 21st century or anything like that. The 21st century is better described with phrases more Rimbaud than Baudelaire)
 
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The only edition I have where some of the poems are rhymed is ye Oxford World Classics translation by James McGowan. My favourite translation remains Richard Howard's, although I recently bought Keith Waldrop's and find it very fine indeed. I would be very interested in learning of a completely rhymed edition -- but I cannot suppose that such a thing can be true to the original. I am ready to be educated!

I just thought to check those by Clark Ashton Smith. Here is "Alchemy of Sorrow":

One with his fervor shall inform
The world, and one with all his sorrow;
One sees a glad, unsetting morrow,
One hears the whisper of the worm.

Hermes unknown, whose hand assists
My toil, and fills my dreams with fear,
Through thee I am the mournful peer
Of Midas, first of alchemists.

Fine gold to iron corruptible
I turn, and paradise to hell;
In winding-sheets of cloud and levin

A dear cadaver I descry;
And build upon the shores of heaven
Towering proud sarcophagi.
 
Im ( like many others here ) mad about Baudelaire,I own translations of Fleurs du Mal by Roy Campbell,William Aggeler,Walter Martin,Russell Dent and Richard Howard.In my opinion best translation by far is one by Howard (maybe if you remember also translator of books by Emil Cioran).Maybe I should just learn French and save some money !
 
Charles Baudelaire is probably the greatest lyric poet in any language; it is difficult to discern which translation is "the best" if you don't know his native tongue. Whether a translation is better rhymed or not than another really is no indication of whether it is "better" than another translation. To my mind Robert Lowell holds the crown in this regard, as his spirit was uncomfortably close to Baudelaire's and it comes through in an eerily subliminal way.
 
I'd just to like to put in a word for the maligned Oxford World Classics edition of James N McGowan. I think it's wonderful, and nor am I the only one to hold that view!
 
Campbell's translations have yet to let me down. The way he renders Baudelaire's rhythms and metaphors strikes me as very true to the spirit of the poems even when somewhat differently structured from the text. But I might defer to those with more experience with differing translations and the French language, and I do understand your concerns. But for reading purposes, I feel the point is moot given how pleasing the results are. (His translation of the second poem entitled "Le Chat" has particular resonance with me.)
 
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