Ann Pedone

A False Translation Of Baudelaire, Les Fenêtres

A window open
fertile
mysterious

but what we see

by candlelight (delights?) what can we see derrière une vitre deep in
that dark luminous hole (trou noir ou lumineux.) [We have to
assume here that window=l’hymen.]

This is where we find life. [Which sounds horribly
awkward in English.]

Better to re-write Baudelaire:
The body only exists in the dark.

This is a problem of illumination.
The body illuminated/illuminates desire. [We can’t escape this.]

[The poem is a sound test] [A deconstruction of the idea of sight as that
which allows us to map the boundaries of the other.] And all that
leaks through.

You can almost hear the sexual machinery humming.

[Clearly, what he is really asking is, how does language create the body. Or is
the body a creation of language.]

Across the waves of roofs a woman

Out of her face (avec son visage, [ ] avec presque rien) out of almost
nothing
I create her. She is there. Or [he asks] Does she only exist
within him.

Maybe a woman is always a half-finished sentence.

I could go on, but I think at this point it’s easier to say that what Baudelaire
really wants is to swallow her whole.