[Janet Kenny]

Originally posted by Peter Chipman:
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,
I'm treating the translation as a translation. I'm not talking about her own poem.

It may be because I met the Baudelaire as a song but it was set by an extraordinarily word-sensitive French composer, Henri Duparc, who destroyed nearly all of his compositions before he died and left only those he felt had succeeded. The refrain:
Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

is almost hypnotic and each word has its separate measure. The poet dwells on each of the named qualities: Luxe, calme et volupté and it seems to me to be a serious betrayal of the heart of the poem although as an English poem, if it were not presented as a "translation"--that is an attempt to unlock an unreachable experience for those to whom it was previously unobtainable--I wouldn't mind. For someone who loves the original it is a painful omission. I disagree that "calme" is implicit. In fact it is an essential colour in the poem and effects the other qualities.

As a "formal" poet I hate to see "formal constraints" used to excuse failure. I believe that the best formal poetry overcomes all such constraints.

And I do greatly admire Millay's poetry. In fact I usually defend her.
Janet




[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited August 28, 2007).]