Complete Poems

Rating:
Summary: This translation is awful-NO STARS!
Review: i LOVE baudelaire but this translation is simply awful! Very bad! I feel like i wasted my money on this book! Its better to stick to translation by Louise Varese or at least stay away from this translation. the language made akward and because i know french and the french version on the opposite page-i can see his translated badly in some parts- sometimes at random-he translates word for word which makes the poem's reading too hard to bear! then other times he takes artistic license! This translator should be locked up for crime against poetry for destroying Baudelaire's work. All I can say to the translator is Shame on YOU! Please do not buy this book- i beg you- or you will not be able to enjoy Baudelaire because he is one of the greatest poets.

Rating:
Summary: Good effort at translation
Review: This is the first complete translation of Les Fleurs du Mal that I've seen which captures both Baudelaire's symbolic rhyming and his strict syllable count (10 per line in this edition vs. Baudelaire's usual 12).

Martin's translation could be improved by following Baudelaire's order of ideas and literal diction more closely, but he captures the spirit of each poem in a way that makes this volume stand out from most of the previous efforts I've seen.

If you're looking for a Baudelaire translation by a single author, this is a good one to buy.

Rating:
Summary: Evil Rhymes
Review: What I like best about this admittedly eccentric translation is the way Walter Martin renders the poems in rhyme. Baudelaire's extreme content--his embrace of putrefaction, filth, sadism and ennui as fit stuff for poetry--owes much of its impact to the tight, disciplined meter he chose for his medium. Most Baudelaire translations don't capture this classical edge in English, turning the poems into free verse or prose. While Martin has to bend the exact meaning a little (often a lot) to get the English to fit, on the whole he does an impressive job of making the verse sound exact and controlled but not too sing-songy. There's no ponderous introduction to bug you either, just a short & highly personal 'Afterthoughts' section with some intriguing insights. This isn't the only translation you'll want to read, but it recovers a side of modernity's bad boy that's hard to find anywhere else.

Rating:
Summary: Evil Rhymes
Review: What I like best about this translation is the way Walter Martin renders the poems in rhyme. Baudelaire's extreme content--his embrace of putrefaction, filth, sadism and ennui as fit stuff for poetry--owes much of its impact to the tight, disciplined verses he chose for his medium. Most Baudelaire translations don't capture this classical edge in English, turning the poems into free verse or prose. While Martin has to bend the exact meaning a little (sometimes a lot) to get the English to rhyme, on the whole he does a truly incredible job of making the verse sound exact and controlled but not sing-songy. There's no ponderous introduction to bug you either, just a short & highly personal 'Afterthoughts' section with many intriguing insights. This might not be the only translation you'll want to read, but it recovers a side of modernity's bad boy that's hard to find anywhere else.