Whenever a poet has translated another’s poem into a different language and made a poem of it, it is a collaboration. But in the case of these particular translations the word “collaboration” may be even more apropos. Although in most instances, I translated the poems literally, I did not shy away from adding an adjective, adverb or an image when I thought doing so might make a better poem or might better capture the spirit of the poet’s original for a modern ear. In certain cases, images or words that would have been exotic or shocking to a nineteenth-century ear, have lost their edge and become shopworn. In such instances, I simply replaced these with images or words that would better carry the flavor of the original to a modern reader.
It is easier to make rhymes in French than in English. There are simply more rhyming words, it seems, in French, even though in most cases those rhymes do not ring with the same sharp force as in English. It is no doubt because of this that most translations sacrifice the rhyme scheme of the French originals in order to preserve the metrical structure of the lines. I decided to do just the reverse, to preserve the rhyme as a formal element and let the lines run to a natural rhythm point. The exceptions to this general rule are the translation of Nerval’s “Artemis” and the second version of his “El Desdichado” where I thought it might be best to sacrifice the rhyme and rhythm to the dramatic development of the poem.
There are three good reasons why I chose to rely on rhyme rather than rhythmic structure as a formal discipline in these translations. First, the syllabic meter of French poetry, and therefore the music of a French line as it is expressed in rhythm, cannot be readily recaptured in English. Second, the rhymes lend a strong musical element to the verse, and since symbolist poetry seeks to create a transforming sonic atmosphere, it was clear to me that the music of these poems must take precedence even over the intellectual content. It therefore seemed appropriate to preserve, when possible, the rhyme scheme of the original poems. Third, allowing greater metrical variation and relying on rhymed rhythm points to create drama and mood conform best to my own poetic style.
The poems that resulted from these efforts are in some sense translations because they do “translate” the original meaning of the French poems into English. And yet because they are rendered in a style that blends my own with the original and because new elements have been added that would make the poems a bit more modem in sensibility, each “translation” is also a “collaboration” between two cultures, two languages, two poets, and between a great mind of the past and a living mind, all of which renders something new, something which really didn’t exist before. For this reason and perhaps somewhat presumptuously, I have subtitled this collection “Translations and Collaborations.”