• About

Modern Poetry – English 306

Modern Poetry – English 306

Tag Archives: poetic

Utterly Enthralled!

27 Monday Feb 2012

Posted by Tyler in Week 6

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Baudelaire, Darvalics, enthrall, mesmerized, poetic, translation

Greetings everyone,

I hope that you are having a great week (and I hope to see most of you tomorrow at the workshop…)!

Like Alexa, I am going to focus my discussion on Aggeler’s and Wagner’s translations of Baudelaire’s “À une passante”; more specifically, I would like to focus on the (beginning of the) eighth line:  “La douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui tue” (8).  After playing around with Google Translate, I entered the original text (for a somewhat “literal” translation… sometimes the translation isn’t spot-on); this is what Google translated into English:  “The softness that fascinates and the pleasure that kills.”  If you look at Wagner’s translation of the original line 8, there is a literal translation; however, if you take a look at Aggeler’s translation of Baudelaire’s line, it takes on a more beautiful and poetic appearance:  “The sweetness that enthralls and the pleasure that kills.”  I enjoy the more “poetic” translation—which do you prefer?  As a lover of Latin, I find it incredibly difficult to read an exact or literal translation because such translations take away so much of the power and poetic properties of the original poem—it’s so sad!  I’m in favor of Aggeler’s diction—“The sweetness that enthralls…”  The speaker is not only mesmerized by the woman’s eyes, but captivated, essentially held as a prisoner—a prisoner of her beauty; whereas the speaker in Wagner’s translation is merely “fascinate[d].”  Aggeler’s eighth line communicates on a far deeper level than Wagner’s!

See you all tomorrow at 12:00 pm in Vodra Hall Room 143!  J

Best,

Tyler Darvalics

Advertisements

Weekly Responses

  • Frank O’Hara Meet me in the Park
  • To Brooklyn Bridge by Hart Crane
  • Leda and The Swan
  • Charles Harper Modern poetry 306 Fragments by Yeats
  • Charles HarperModern poetry 306YeatsWhen You Are Old At first
  • Charles HarperModern Poetry 306Dr. GharabegianT.S EliotThe love Song
  • Charles HarperModern Poetry 306Frank O’HaraHaving a Coke with
  • Charles HarperModern Poetry 306Dr. GharabegianT.S. EliotThe Waste Land Elliot’s
  • (no title)
  • Along These Lines…PATH Trains Bringing Poetry to Commuters

Archives

  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • September 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012

Weekly Responses

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.com
Advertisements

Blog at WordPress.com.