Baudelaire & Bukowski

Richard Howard's translation of Charles Baudelaire's "The Flowers of Evil" is generally acknowledged to be among the best. I've always had an affinity for Baudelaire. I discovered him in college and have gone back to him many times over the years. Rebel, drinker, madman--his spirit spoke directly to me. I've always put him up there on the lit pedestal with the other Charles--Bukowski. Buk could be awfully crotchety about poets and I'm not certain he ever paid homage to Baudelaire, but he should have. Within differing styles, voices, epochs, they have remarkably similar views of the world. This is not Howard's, but rather Aggeler's translation of Baudelaire's The Murderer's Wine. It will suffice here, but go to Howard if you want the best lyricism.


The Murderer's Wine


My wife is dead and I am free!
Now I can drink my fill;
When I'd come home without a sou,
Her screaming would drive me crazy.


I am as happy as a king;
The air is pure, the sky superb...
We had a summer like this
When I fell in love with her!


To satisfy the awful thirst
That tortures me, I'd have to drink
All the wine it would take to fill
Her grave — that is not a little:


I threw her down a well,
And what is more, I dropped on her
All the stones of the well's rim.
I will forget her if I can!


In the name of love's vows,
From which nothing can release us,
And to become the friends we were
When we first knew passion's rapture,


I begged of her a rendezvous
At night, on a deserted road.
She came there! — mad creature!
We're all more or less mad!


She was still attractive,
Although very tired! and I,
I loved her too much! that is why
I said to her: Depart this life!


None can understand me. Did one
Among all those stupid drunkards
Ever dream in his morbid nights
Of making a shroud of wine?


That dissolute crowd, unfeeling
As an iron machine,
Never, nor summer, nor winter,
Has known what true love is,


With its black enchantments,
Its hellish cortege of alarms,
Its phials of poison, and its tears,
Its noise of chains and dead men's bones!


— Here I am free and all alone!
I'll get blind drunk tonight;
Then without fear, without remorse,
I'll lie down on the ground


And I'll sleep like a dog!
The dump-cart with its heavy wheels
Loaded with mud and rocks,
The careening wagon may well


Crush in my guilty head
Or cut my body in two;
I laugh at God, at the Devil,
And at the Holy Table as well!


— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

TS