For sheer reading pleasure and fidelity to its source, this entirely new translation of Baudelaire’s magnum opus is matchless. With admirable disregard for the fashionable cliché according to which poetry is fundamentally “untranslatable,” Eric Gans works from the startling premise that the greatest French poet of the nineteenth century can indeed be rendered in English without significant loss of meaning or effect. His daring approach involves sticking as closely as possible to the French original, combining the translator’s modesty with a remarkable poetic talent, in order to showcase not his own ingenuity but Baudelaire’s distinctive vision. Poetry lovers and students of French literature alike will applaud the result.
Trevor Merrill, Lecturer in French, California Institute of Technology