I'm on a Flowers of Evil kick at the moment.
The poems become darker and darker as you read through the cycle, so I've chosen a happier one from the beginning of the collection.
There's an excellent website devoted to Charles Baudelaire and Flowers of Evil, with multiple English translations included for each poem. As the authors of the site say, Edna St. Vincent Millay's translations are, in many ways, the best. I'm quoting six lines from The Sun in St. Vincent Millay's 1936 translation. To read the poem in its wonderful entirety, please click here.
Le Soleil....
I walk alone, absorbed in my fantastic play, —
Fencing with rhymes, which, parrying nimbly, back away;
Tripping on words, as on rough paving in the street,
Or bumping into verses I long had dreamed to meet.
The sun, our nourishing father, anemia's deadly foe,
Makes poems, as if poems were roses, bud and grow;
...
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Elaine Magliaro is hosting the roundup at Blue Rose Girls. Leave her your links in the comments!
