Pratik : PRATIK SPRING 2021 COVER STORY: IRISH POET PETER O’NEILL ON BAUDELAIRE 200 YEARS!

PETER O’NEILL

Baudelaire 200 Years!

During a global pandemic, when death is all around us, poetry takes on an even greater meaning than it does in normal times. When we talk of a poet and death, Baudelaire is one of the first in people’s minds.

I had contacted Christine Weld, the Assistant Director and Cultural Manager of the Alliance Française in Dublin, only some weeks before Christmas last year. I had a new book coming out in France, the first of mine to be fully translated, and I wanted to see if the Alliance would like to support me. I can’t actually remember how the festival initially was brought up, but suffice it to say that within days I already had an exquisite line up of poets and translators from all around the world and who wanted to take part. I could have thrown my net even further, but we had over three continents covered and already one full day of events taking place, and in the middle of a global pandemic.

I have started off translating Baudelaire almost ten years ago. He may not be the kind of poet you might read every day of the year, but I would regularly find myself picking up Les Fleurs du Mal at least a few times every month. And every so often I also began to feel a need to keep a trace of those readings, they became like events to me. Heaney used to say this, that writing a poem was an event, or at least should be. The same can be said, of course, for translation.

Charles Baudelaire is one of the most translated poets the world over. So, why do we need more transversions of his poems, and translations? I think that currently, during a global pandemic, when death is all around us, poetry takes on an even greater meaning than it does in normal times. When we talk of a poet and death, Baudelaire is one of the first in people’s minds. Les Fleurs du Mal is full of it. Ordinarily, we push it out of our minds. DEATH. We don’t even wish to say it. The word. And yet, I remember as a very young man I would be obsessed with it, as perhaps only the young can be. It was one of the main reasons why I wanted to both read and then write poetry.

Now that I have reached middle age, the thought of death is even more prescient of course. Once you pass thirty, you have crossed over. You can no longer fool yourself that you are a youth, any more. And now, with even more virulent strains of Covid mutating, taking young and old alike, and countless ecological catastrophes opening up before us on the horizon, not to mention unending rumours of war, what better poet could one read than the immortal Baudelaire? After all, he is not promising me any illusions of a happier life. No sir! Nor, is he going to feed me any platitudes on equality when all about me the very facts on the ground would tell me differently.

There are so many poets, writers and artists now who seem to be more interested in modality – would, should and could! I am reminded of Samantha in Sex and the City who I am paraphrasing. In a time of pandemic, which we are living in today, in a time of unending darkness and suffering, one needs to turn to a voice that is strong, and enduring. One that speaks an indomitable truth. One needs to have access to auxiliaries – BE, HAVE DO. Forget old modes of being, tired from ceaseless habit, in order to venture bravely forward into the night. Fearlessly. Just like that face that Étienne Carjat immortalised back in 1863.

The Grounding

The infinite position is the imminent peril of your emplacement,

Such should be your grounding at every encounter.

For from such a perspective can come the wholly equalling

Level of horizontality, allowing you to lie down with another,

Totally unencumbered by the impossible trappings

Of the forbidding echelons of absolute emptiness;

Doom spheres spawning vertical nausea.

Hourly calculations of liquid ice flows.

Sea changes involving continents of plastic,

Inside which swim fish with hardening anatomy.

The menu on offer will induce testicular cancer.

So, lie back with him/her and enjoy the tantalising notion

Of your sheer vulnerability; how they might kill you with but a word.

Or, for all your days, help you to finally reconstruct the world.

– Peter O’Neill

Peter O’Neill is the author of six collections of poetry, the most recent being Henry Street Arcade, a bilingual collection translated into French by the poet Yan Kouton ( 2021); a novella More Micks than Dicks ( 2017), and a volume of translation The Enemy – Transversions from Baudelaire ( 2015). He has also edited two anthologies of poetry The Gladstone Readings Anthology ( 2017) And Agamemnon Dead ( 2015) and organised and hosted a number of festivals and readings, most recently Baudelaire at 200! For the Alliance Francaise.

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