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Fleurs du Mal
- gregschlom 1y agoAs a husband and cat person, I can relate to this one: https://fleursdumal.org/poem/132 https://fleursdumal.org/poem/132
- baggy_trough 1y agosublime!
- cybertronic 1y agoWait. Does this has to do with the Mistral LLM?
- kccqzy 1y agoI remember in college when I took French classes the professor very highly recommended Fleurs du mal. It was a difficult read for students with just one year of French, but I remember reading some translations and liked them.
- jfengel 1y agoI'm pleased: I'm nearly through Duolingo French and I can more or less read that. I've done a fair bit of outside study, including a few (young adult) books. But it's nice to think that I could perhaps pass a college French class.
- pxc 1y agoHow long did it take to get through the DuoLingo French course?
- jfengel 1y agoUh... five years, at a desultory but continuous pace.
- shermantanktop 1y agoDay 170ish of Duolingo German here. It’s both encouraging how far I’ve come and even more daunting than when I started. Surely you used additional materials? Duolingo doesn’t teach grammar per se…
- atemerev 1y ago170 days of Duolingo is not enough. It sort of works... but yes, it takes a few years of daily focused work.
- shermantanktop 1y agoSure, of course it’s not. I’m not aiming for a cram-course. I find Duolingo’s ridiculously effective gamification keeps me engaged. I’ve augmented it with a grammar book and YouTube videos. Once I get stuck I plan to do lessons via italki or equivalent.
- watwut 1y agoIt forces you to kind of pick it up based on pattern matching. In order to understand things, you don't need great grammar, just passable one.
- jfengel 1y agoI had actually done the full Pimsleur course already. I've never tried Duolingo on a language that I had zero experience with. I might try it on Chinese at some point, just to see what it's like. Pimsleur doesn't do grammar per se either. They want you to infer it by feel, as a child does.
- shermantanktop 1y agoRight. I grew up in a German speaking house and was functional at 6 or so but lost it later on, so trying to get it back. I’m not sure whether that early exposure helps or hurts.
- coderatlarge 1y agoi’ll confess my 18-year old self viewed this type of poetry and french class itself through a rather narrow, pragmatic lens…
- pyuser583 1y agoAttracting women? My first introduction to Baudelaire was Groundhogs Day, where Bill Murray learns French to impress a woman.
- coderatlarge 1y agotouché
- johnea 1y agoI think the anime based on this is pretty widely known: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flowers_of_Evil_(manga) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flowers_of_Evil_(manga)
- The_Blade 1y agoas a Siene (and many other rivers in faraway lands) of techies everyone can understand the concept, Baudelaire felt, of being and then creating alone in a crowd to try to be together with something or someone
- ordinarily 1y agoI have a variety of early printings of this. My favorite being a 1931 edition illustrated by Major Felten, its beautiful.
- rglover 1y agoStupid but semi-related: when I lived in Chicago, I had just gotten a print copy of this and remember doing a double take when I saw a flower shop with the same name (Les Fleurs du Mal).
- tombh 1y agoI first came across this collection of poems via the secular Buddhist author Stephen Batchelor (best known for Buddhism Without Beliefs). He compared the poem Dear Reader (https://fleursdumal.org/poem/099 https://fleursdumal.org/poem/099) with a quote from the 9th century zen monk Te-Shan. The relevant lines from the poem: But among the jackals, the panthers, the bitch hounds, The apes, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents, The yelping, howling, growling, crawling monsters, In the filthy menagerie of our vices, There is one more ugly, more wicked, more filthy! Although he makes neither great gestures nor great cries, He would willingly make of the earth a shambles And, in a yawn, swallow the world; He is Ennui! — His eye watery as though with tears, He dreams of scaffolds as he smokes his hookah pipe. You know him reader, that refined monster, — Hypocritish reader, — my fellow, — my brother! The quote from the zen monk: What is known as "realising the mystery" is nothing other than breaking through to grab an ordinary person's life. The meaning I take is that the "final boss" of our journey, whether that's in meditation or programming, is confronting and integrating the non-zero possibility that we may never achieve our goals. It's not to dissuade us from even trying, it's rather to remind us where the true battle is: the immediate task at hand. Lack of focus and motivation aren't obstacles on the path, they _are_ the path, they are the final boss itself. tl;dr success is 1% inspiration 99% perspiration
- flats 1y agoThank you! It was really helpful to be reminded of this truth such an unexpected context. I am finally beginning to grab that “ordinary person’s life” & getting there has indeed been _the path_. May we all get there & be free of suffering.
- libraryofbabel 1y ago“Hypocrite lecteur, – mon semblable, – mon frère!“ It is always interesting when random touchstones from my life appear on Hacker News: books like the Aubrey-Maturin (master and commander) series, Ursula Le Guin’s works, Dante, John Le Carre’s George Smiley novels, Tolstoy... and now Charles Baudelaire, at the top of the page no less. Baudelaire was a dark misanthrope and the poetry is very bleak. His life was not happy and he died at 46. You probably need to have at least a little of the same darkness in your soul to get something out of it. It’s worth remembering too, how strange and controversial this work was when it first came out, using traditional verse forms but with a relentlessly modern subject, poetry from the gutter of the 19th-century city. Modernism in literature has had 150 years to settle but this is the raw beginnings. Some good ones: The Albatross, Invitation to the Voyage, Evening Harmony, and the Epilogue (“Le coeur content, je suis monté sur la montagne”). And many others.
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- jajko 1y agoArt is completely in the eye of the beholder, feel free to fully ignore parts you don't like. Don't need to denigrate somebody else's artistic output, world is pretty big place for all of us and our passions and desires. I for example respect much more a person who is trying to output artistically whatever inner processes drive them, rather than pushing it down and and sucking it up at some soul crushing corporate job, then coping with that emptiness via shallow fun and vices. I don't have to agree with that art nor appreciate it, but the effort is worthy and respectful.
- pegasus 1y agoAre you sure you're not subconsciously talking about something inside yourself here? Because I find your prose style equally - nay, more - annoyingly pompous than the ones you seemingly attack.
- tetrisgm 1y agoI love the book. This page is super interesting to me, because it's so focused and simple. I love the idea of an almost Wiki-like "this is some public domain thing you should know, so it has a dedicated website". Would make a lot of sense to make it easy to create and host those.
- rand0m4r 1y agoHad to study this at school a while back, it was one of the first books (after Candide by Voltaire) that I found interesting at the time, and still have in my little library.
- khatkhati 1y agoLove this book and love this website. So many favorites, but just gonna mention one (had to "remix" and edit the translations, none of them sounded good): https://fleursdumal.org/poem/109 https://fleursdumal.org/poem/109 — О grief! О grief! Time eats life. And the hidden Enemy who gnaws the heart grows on the blood we lose and thrives. — Ô douleur! ô douleur! Le Temps mange la vie, Et l'obscur Ennemi qui nous ronge le coeur Du sang que nous perdons croît et se fortifie!
- adamesque 1y agoNot to look a gift horse too much in the mouth, but I find the multiple English translations overwhelming! But at the same time, the range of interpretation and the different colors a translator can inject are truly wild. There is no true translation, all are copies, all imperfect.
- soufron 1y agoEven in French, the difficulties of reading or recitating it are multiple.
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- jbellis 1y agoCalled out by one of my favorite symphonic metal albums, featuring a Swedish band with an American singer covering French pop songs in metal covers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Fleurs_du_Mal_(Therion_album) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Fleurs_du_Mal_(Therion_a...
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- mihaitodor 1y agoI was thinking of exactly the same album when I saw this post yesterday :) By the way, while it’s not really metal, you might also like this live version of Sarah Brightman’s - Fleurs Du Mal: https://youtu.be/cOllWAhZhXY https://youtu.be/cOllWAhZhXY. It was filmed in Stephansdom Cathedral in Vienna and I went to visit it after seeing this video. It’s really impressive!
- jbellis 1y agoYou're right, I did like it. Thanks!
- mihaitodor 1y agoYou’re welcome!
- hbbio 1y agoGlad to see this trending on HN! As I was born in France, I had the pleasure to read it. Just thought the multiple translations available on the site seem like a good corpus to see if frontier models could improve the translation. Below is o3 take on "Le Chat", given as prompt the French original and all existing translations. I am not an expert in poetry and maybe not versed enough in English poetry specifically, but it looks suboptimal: It changed the structure, some verses seem overlong and I don't find the original beauty in "barbed claw's art". https://fleursdumal.org/poem/132 https://fleursdumal.org/poem/132 Le Chat Come, lovely cat, upon my ardent breast; Sheathe in your velvet paw the barbed claw’s art, And let me drown in eyes where, coalesced, Cold agate gleams within a molten heart. -- While idle fingers roam and fondly chart Your supple head and sinuous arched spine, My hand grows drunk on thrills that softly start Across your vibrant body’s living line. -- Then, in my mind, my woman’s gaze is mine: Like yours, dear beast, it pierces—deep, serene. From head to foot a perilous airs combine; A subtle scent swims round her dusk‑brown sheen.
- pierrec 1y agoI love how this site immediately confronts you with the differences between translations, which quickly reveals how much skill and creativity can be in the translations themselves. Especially for poetry, a good translation is not just an imperfect copy, it's an artistic work where the authorship is shared between the original author and the translator. I'm sure Baudelaire himself would have a few things to say on the topic. His translations of Edgar Allan Poe's works are notorious examples of art in translation. If you've got the French level, they are very much worth reading even if you've read the originals.
- contctlink 1y agoI never read it in English, gotta compare the French & English version.
- cannam 1y agoIn 1968 a British newspaper ran a competition for English translations of "Spleen - Je suis comme le roi..." The poet Nicholas Moore - motivated by a belief that translating poetry was impossible and the project futile - sent in 31 different entries, by post, under false names and with varying levels of absurdity. He didn't win. You can find them at https://www.ubu.com/ubu/pdf/moore_spleen.pdf https://www.ubu.com/ubu/pdf/moore_spleen.pdf, or in his published Selected Poems, along with an essay (written afterwards) about translation. Worth looking out. (I particularly admire the sarcastic one that begins "I'm like The Winner of The Competition / The one who wrote the strong, rewarding phrase...")
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 1y agoOkay so amazing website but then I scrolled down and saw "made by Supervert". From his own website: > Supervert is the assumed name of a writer using modernist literary techniques to explore sexual perversions > Once upon a time there was a writer. The Devil spoke to him through a computer. "You will write about perversion, madness, and lust," said Satan. "You will use modernist literary techniques to explore sexual perversions. You will be known as Supervert." Fascinating rabbit hole (huh), lots of good read. He made a website about William Burroughs too: https://realitystudio.org/ https://realitystudio.org/
- druskacik 1y agoIf someone wants to begin with Baudelaire, I would recommend his collection Le Spleen de Paris[0] - it's not poetry in its usual sense, but a collection of prose poems. I still remember picking the book randomly at our city library when I was 15 and reading the very first poem, L’ Étranger: THE STRANGER "Tell me, whom do you love the most, you enigmatic man? your father, your mother, your sister, or your brother?" "I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother." "Your friends?" "There you use a word whose meaning until now has remained to me unknown." "Your fatherland?" "I am unaware in what latitude it lies." "Beauty?" "I would willingly love her, goddess and immortal." "Gold?" "I hate it as you hate God." "So! Then what do you love, you extraordinary stranger?" "I love clouds... drifting clouds... there... over there... marvelous clouds!" The book has been with me ever since, and as I'm getting older and re-read it I always discover new things. After all, there are themes a person has to grow into. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Spleen_de_Paris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Spleen_de_Paris
- bambax 1y ago> Fleurs du mal / Flowers of Evil > Les Fleurs du mal appeared on the bookshelves of Paris in June 1857... Side note: it's not "Fleurs du Mal" but "Les Fleurs du Mal"; it's ok that the domain is shorter and doesn't include the article, but while the text appears to correctly include the article, the titles of each section or edition should too.
- hyperman1 1y agoI was thinking about translating 'mal' to 'evil', as a non-native speaker for both languages. For me, 'evil' seems to have a source and religious undertones. Evil can be stopped by adressing that source. People can avoid it. 'Flowers of evil' are probably given to you by the devil, and you've made a bad choice. 'Mal' is much more passive. It seeps into the world, slowly. It can't be avoided or adressed, only be felt, experienced. I'd translate it closer to 'badness'. The 'flowers of bad' are something you find in your room, and they'll stay there, with you, forever. I don't even know if this is right, but funny how an attempt to translate shifts the meaning so much for me.
- soufron 1y agoRight or not, it is indeed part of the just debate :)
- pavlov 1y ago« Rrose Sélavy demande si les Fleurs du Mal ont modifié les mœurs du phalle : qu’en pense Omphale ? » The next-level interpretation by Surrealist poet Robert Desnos.
- moritzwarhier 1y agoThis is the same with "schlecht" in German, but the common translation of the title is still "Die Blumen des Bösen" So "schlecht" also means both things. I think it's probably common for languages to have a word that covers both. But it seems the "evil" connotation is common or maybe even canonical in translations. So Baudelaire certainly knew the meanings of the words he was using, enjoying the ambiguity. Maybe it's even intended for the translation to remain ambiguous? Just speculation here though.
- galaxyLogic 1y agoFleur du Mal, is that the same (concept) as "Wages of Sin"?
- soufron 1y agoIn a sense, it's the opposite of "the roots of evil". It's extremely decadent as a title.
- galaxyLogic 1y agoThat's a nice connection.
- IAmBroom 1y agoLiterally, it is "The Flowers of Evil" (and "Les Fleurs du Mal", not [a] "Fleur du Mal"). The fruits of an ill-gotten gain.
- garbawarb 1y agoI'd like to buy this in book form. Can anyone recommend an english translation?