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Unread 08-28-2007, 08:17 PM
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Peter Chipman Peter Chipman is offline
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I'm not sure I agree, Janet.

I think she's doing something very different (and more daring) in those refrain lines. Where Baudelaire presents five abstractions in parallel without distinction, Millay sets two of them in relation to the other two. "Restraint and order," in her version, are not merely two in a list of five qualities, but the two that redeem the otherwise purely earthly "luxury and voluptuousness." With those four in relation to each other, I don't think "calme" needs to be specifically mentioned. It's implicit.

You can certainly feel righteous indignation on B's behalf for M's hijacking of his poem, but I feel certain that whatever else is going on in Millay's translation of the refrain lines, it isn't simply an omission dictated by formal constraints.

-Peter
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