Baudelaire

I hope you're all having a lovely break. I just wanted to give you a little guidance for my presentation Tuesday.

I have put two documents on hold, both of which are letters (at least in part) written by Charles Baudelaire. I will save his biography for class, but in short, he is a prominent French poet of the mid- to late-19th century. He was also a major translator of English/American works into French -- you'll notice one of the letters mentions his translations of Poe's work.

Another important point: the letters are, of course, in French. While I would love for you all to learn French in the next 8 days, I understand that's probably a lot to ask, so I've included my own translations of my transcriptions. I know the documents won't be of much use to try to transcribe or anything, but if you know French, I would love for you to try, even for a portion of the letters! Please look at the documents themselves or the images Professor Irmscher has uploaded to get a feel for Baudelaire's handwriting and the differences between the two letters aesthetically.

The first letter is written to Michel Levy, who headed the printing press that published Baudelaire's translations of Poe. The second is written to Jean Morel and is a bit more complicated, as it appears to be an early draft of a poem called "Les Sept Vieillards" (The Seven Old Men), titled in the draft "Fantomes Parisiens" (Parisian Ghosts). The poem is then literally cut off and what seems to be a letter is written on the back with Charles Baudelaire's signature curiously glued to the verso of the first page.

I'd like you all to focus on the aspect of language in archival studies as well as the age of the documents themselves. These are the first documents we've looked at that are not in English and the oldest we've studied in detail; how does that impact our understanding of their meaning and cultural context? Does a translation retain the essence of the document, or does it invariably lose something in the process? This applies to both my translation of Baudelaire and Baudelaire's translation of Poe -- while Baudelaire was undoubtedly a much more masterful translator than I am, do the same limitations apply to his attempt to convey Poe's American-rooted stories to a French audience?

Edit: I forgot to include the link to the images/translations, which is right here: https://iu.box.com/baudelaire. Thank you, Professor Irmscher, for putting them up on the site!