My Former Life, by Charles Baudelaire

I'm in full hermit mode composing my dissertation now, so I won't be doing any new translations until after May the tenth. I do, however, have some old ones sitting around that I haven't posted to the blog yet, so in the spirit of daily April poems, I'll put them up. Today: La vie antérieure, by Charles Baudelaire, from Les Fleurs du Mal. The French, along with numerous other English translations, can be found HERE; the most entertaining (and oddly thought-provoking) English "translation", from the book of Baudelaire mistranslations "Flowers of Bad/Flurries of Mail" by David Cameron (not that David Cameron), can be found HERE, under the title "This Anti-Terror Life".

My Former Life

I lived for a long time under vast porticos
Which the ocean sun lit with a thousand colours,
Where the enormous, straight and majestic pillars
Made them, in the evening, like basaltic grottos.

The billows, rolling round the image of the skies,
Mingled in a fashion solemn and mystical,
The almighty harmony of their rich music all
In sunset colours reflected in my eyes.

It was there that I lived in a voluptuous calm
In splendour in between the blue skies and the waves,
And I was attended by naked, perfumed slaves,

And they refreshed and cooled my brow with fronds of palm,
And all their earthly care was solely to divine
What was the dolorous secret which made me pine.