Les Fleurs du mal

Which english translation of The Flowers of Evil do you personally think is the best?

you'd be better off learning French mate./

PS: See Uncle Monty's excellent rendition of hémisphère dans une chevelure in Withnail & I.
Hilarious because he manages that uniquely gay English feat of making a French prose poem actually rhyme.

I've got the Oxford classics version. No idea how good the translation is but the dual translation is pretty fun to read alongside the English.

Let's take the last three lines from La Mort des pauvres, and compare the different translations (those lines are a definition of death):
>C'est la gloire des Dieux, c'est le grenier mystique,
>C'est la bourse du pauvre et sa patrie antique,
>C'est le portique ouvert sur les Cieux inconnus !

If you want the exact meaning, Aggeler is spot on (it's almost word-for-word translation), but the musical enchantment in the original disappears:
>It's the glory of the gods, the mystic granary,
>It is the poor man's purse, his ancient fatherland,
>It is the portal opening on unknown Skies!

If you want a rendition of Baudelaire's harmony and music, at the expense of the original words, Roy Campbell is interesting, as he delivers a reinterpretation of his own:
>It is God's glory and the mystic grange:
>The poor man's purse and fatherland it seems,
>And door that opens Heavens vast and strange.

Cyril Scott gives a better rendition of Baudelaire's tight and solemn form, which is the most visible thing in Baudelaire's poetry, while preserving the original meaning:
>'Tis the fame of the gods, 'tis the granary blest,
>'Tis the purse of the poor, and his birth-place of rest,
>To the unknown Heavens, 'tis the wide-open door.

Personally, I prefer Cyril Scott, by far. His translation feels almost as good as the original. It just works.

>disclaimer: I compared the different translations on fleursdumal.org

Bump.

One of my personal favourite translations, though it's very hard to find, is by Lewis Piaget Shanks.

my youth was all a murky hurricane;
not oft did the suns of splendour burst the gloom;
so wild the lightning raged, so fierce the rain,
few crimson fruits my garden-close illume.

now I have touched the autumn of the mind,
I must repair and smooth the earth, to save
my little seed-plot, torn and undermined,
guttered and gaping like an open grave.

and will the flowers all my dreams implore
draw from this garden wasted like a shore
some rich mysterious power the storm imparts?
— o grief! o grief! time eats away our lives,

and the dark Enemy gnawing at our hearts
sucks from our blood the strength whereon he thrives!

Nice painting.

J'ai commancé en apprendre le français et j'ai un question. Pourquoi on utilise "en" dans cette phrase: Je n'en *** pas.

Est-ce que recommandez-vous Voyage au bout de la nuit pour on qui a jusque un anée en apprendre?

Je suis lis l'étranger sans plus problème.

"En" represents "any of it" or "some of it" ("it" being a thing alluded to before).

>Avez-vous des problèmes ? - Je n'en ai pas.
>Do you have problems? - I don't have any problem.

You can't say "je ne les ai pas" because you're not talking about "les problèmes" (the problems), but "des problèmes" (problems).

You could also answer "je n'ai pas de problèmes", but it's less elegant than just alluding to them with "en".

"Voyage au bout de la nuit" is not for beginners. It is too difficult, much harder than Camus. You have the master the language before even dreaming of "getting it". Random excerpt:

>Entre les lagunes d'alentour et dans le tréfonds forestier stagnaient quelques peuplades moisies, décimées, abruties par le tripanosome et la misère chronique ; elles fournissaient tout de même ces peuplades un petit impôt et à coups de trique, bien entendu.

Or:

>Notre galère tenait son mince sillon juste au ras des jetées, là où venait finir une eau caca, toute barbotante d'une kyrielle de petits bachots et remorqueurs avides et cornards.

What's funny is that in France, even illiterate people can "get" Céline very easily... while an educated foreigner who made a ton of efforts to read our language will struggle:

>barbotante?
>kyrielle?
>bachots?
>cornards?