Art versus artist?

Last week I posted about my introduction to Baudelaire and shared a few excerpts from Twenty Prose Poems¹. I’ve been reading Les fleur du mal; my edition 1963 edition was translated in the ’30s by George Dillon and Edna St. Vincent Millay with an introduction written by the latter.

After praising the translation in which she played a part, Millay, a poet herself, explains in detail various poetic forms. In particular the differences between traditional French poetry, which tends to be written in alexandrines, and English poetry, which uses a variety of forms (iambic pentameter, dactylic hexameter, etc.) and notes the challenges she faced in translating poetry from French into English.

She also makes the following comment:

It is impossible to make a good translation of a poet of whom one disapproves. To excuse him or to condemn him is, for the translator, equally impertinent and equally fatal. Them poem is the thing. Is it interesting? – is it beautiful? – is it sublime? Then it was written by nobody. It exists by itself. The reader of poetry who has never had the brain-dizzying experience of being seduced into stupefied, into incredulous, into dismayed, into amused, into delighted, into wild unqualified enthusiasm for a poem written by his bitterest personal enemy, or by the person whom he has for years considered to be the Most Sickening Poet on the Face of the Earth, has never known one of the few authentic paradisiacal vertigoes of life.²

In an earlier post³ we saw that Nietzsche recommended the artist not comment on hir own work as there is not sufficient distance between the creator and the created: the artist is too close to view it, and cautioned against equating the artist with hir work.

I remain unconvinced. Avoiding complete identification of an artist with hir work contains a certain sense, but dismissing in dismissing the artist from an interpretation of hir work, one is dismissing the origin of that creative output. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the artist’s life choices, it seems misguided to overlook the artist as the source of interpretive material in regards to influences.

Why is it better to pretend a good piece of work was “written by nobody”? How meaningful is it? If one admires the artist’s life – finds it inspiring even – are we still encouraged to ignore it?

As for this edition of Les fleurs du mal, it seems Dillon and Millay have given too much consideration to form, and the meaning of the poems has been obscured. Fortunately, the original French is on the facing side of the page and, with a little help from Larousse, I’m enjoying it again.

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Footnotes:

1. See “[cref 131]“. [back]
2. p. xv [back]
3. See “[cref 43]“. [back]

Related posts:

1. Nietzsche on Art
2. Enchanted by Baudelaire, and the Gamemaster
3. New book from Teitan Press by Rosaleen Norton
4. Pessoa and Crowley
5. Magick versus religion