This is a reprint of a post from March of 2008.
You are forgiven in advance if you do not recall it.
You are forgiven in advance if you do not recall it.
Matty Boy, 'splainer and arbiter of lolz and collector of French filth, has decided to add his expertise to the field of lolz poetry adaptation and translate a poem of Charles Baudelaire into lolz pictures with captions. I have chosen La Géante, which translates into English as The Giantess. It comes from Beaudelaire's most famous collection Les Fleurs du Mal, which translates into lolz as Smutty Thotz. I Gotz Dem.
Matty Boy, how did you come to choose this particular poem to translate?
Oh, please, hypothetical question asker, don't be naive.
Matty Boy, how did you come to choose this particular poem to translate?
Oh, please, hypothetical question asker, don't be naive.
La Géante
Du temps que la Nature en sa verve puissante
Concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux,
J'eusse aimé vivre auprès d'une jeune géante,
Comme aux pieds d'une reine un chat voluptueux.
Comme aux pieds d'une reine un chat voluptueux.
J'eusse aimé voir son corps fleurir avec son âme
Et grandir librement dans ses terribles jeux;
Deviner si son coeur couve une sombre flamme
Aux humides brouillards qui nagent dans ses yeux;
Parcourir à loisir ses magnifiques formes;
Ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes,
Et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains,
Lasse, la font s'étendre à travers la campagne,
Dormir nonchalamment à l'ombre de ses seins,
Comme un hameau paisible au pied d'une montagne.
4 comments:
For Mono linquists as iz i...
the Giant
Time that nature in his powerful eloquence
Conceived children every day monstrous
I would have liked to live with a young giant
As the feet of a queen voluptuous cat.
I would have liked to see her body flowering with his soul
And grow freely in its terrible game;
Guess whether his heart a dark smoldering flame
In the humid mists swimming in his eyes;
Browse at your leisure beautiful forms;
Crawling on the side of his knees huge
And sometimes in summer, when the suns unhealthy
Lasse, make it stretch across the country,
Sleeping lazily in the shade of her breasts,
As a quiet hamlet at the foot of a mountain.
(From Google Translate)
BobManDo
Google should know the feminine and masculine forms of giant, but other than that, it gives the meaning if not the rhyme.
I started over because the edits were getting ridiculous.
My favorite translation has always been by William Crosby.
The Giantess
When time was young and Nature's torrid eagerness
On every day another monstrous child begat,
I would have loved to live with a young giantess,
Luxuriating at her feet, my queen! a lazy cat.
I would have loved to watch her play her boisterous games,
To see her body bloom with life, and to surmise
If ever in her heart there brooded somber flames
Beneath the humid mists that floated in her eyes;
And leisurely along her splendid thighs I'd lope
Or slowly crawl up her enormous knees' steep slope;
Sometimes in summer, when unwholesome suns had dried
Her weary body, stretched across the fields to rest,
I'd nonchalantly snooze in shadows of a breast,
A peaceful village nestled on a mountainside.
Crosby, a hematologist by trade, honed his French just to translate Les Fleurs du Mal. He managed to preserve meaning, rhyme, and scan. My wife corresponded with his about ten years ago; she sent us the last edition of his work. They lived in Joplin, MO at the time.
Thank you for your erudition, Peregrin.
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