Sunday 20 April 2014

Symon's translation of Baudelaire's prose poem

Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually.

Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken.

And if sometimes, or the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock, of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is, and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock, will answer you: 'It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.'

2 comments:

  1. Good start for the new blog, congratulations. As of your old blog the poem of Hopkins is really interesting, with regards to Symon I heard but didn't read bu the meaning of drunkenness I did get intoxicated with several good poems. Keep posting to make your readers and self intoxicated with knowledge

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for your response Sir. Indeed, literature (or any art work) is an intoxication to a sensitive mind and a concerning heart!

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