Шарль Бодлер (Charles Baudelaire) (1821-1867)
французский поэт, критик, эссеист и переводчик

• Список стихотворений поэта

Перевод стихотворения
«Le Squelette laboureur»
на английский язык.

Skeletons Digging

 I

Among the anatomical plates
Displayed along the dusty quays,
Where many a dead book desiccates
Like an old mummy — among these

Sad diagrams to which the grave
Fantasy and ironic skill
Of some forgotten artist have
Lent a mysterious beauty still,

One sees (for thus mere nerves and bones
Were rendered life-like through his pains)
Digging like laborers, skeletons
And skinless men composed of veins.

 II

Out of that stony soil which ye
Unceasingly upturn, with all
The strength of your stripped vertebrae
And fleshless thews — funereal

Prisoners from the charnel pile! —
What do ye look for? Speak. What strange
Harvest prepare ye all this while?
What lord has bid you load his grange?

Do ye desire, O symbols clear
And frightful of a doom unguessed,
To demonstrate that even there,
In the deep grave, we have no rest —

That we can no more count as friend
Eternity than we can Time,
Death, too, being faithless in the end?
That we shall toil in dust and grime

For ever upon some field of shade,
And harry the stiff sod, and put
Over and over to the spade
A naked and ensanguined foot?

Skeleton with a Spade

 I

In the anatomical plates
That lie about on dusty quais
Where many cadaverous books
Sleep like an ancient mummy,

Engravings to which the staidness
And knowledge of some old artist
Have communicated beauty,
Although the subject is gloomy,

One sees, and it makes more complete
These mysteries full of horror,
Skinless bodies and skeletons,
Spading as if they were farmhands.

 II

From the soil that you excavate,
Resigned, macabre villagers,
From all the effort of your backs,
Or of your muscles stripped of skin,

Tell me, what singular harvest,
Convicts torn from cemeteries,
Do you reap, and of what farmer
Do you have to fill the barn?

Do you wish (clear, frightful symbol
Of too cruel a destiny!)
To show that even in the grave
None is sure of the promised sleep;

That Annihilation betrays us;
That all, even Death, lies to us,
And that forever and ever,
Alas! we shall be forced perhaps

In some unknown country
To scrape the hard and stony ground
And to push a heavy spade in
With our bare and bleeding feet?

Le Squelette laboureur

 I

Dans les planches d’anatomie
Qui traînent sur ces quais poudreux
Où maint livre cadavéreux
Dort comme une antique momie,

Dessins auxquels la gravité
Et le savoir d’un vieil artiste,
Bien que le sujet en soit triste,
Ont communiqué la Beauté,

On voit, ce qui rend plus complètes
Ces mystérieuses horreurs,
Bêchant comme des laboureurs,
Des Écorchés et des Squelettes.

 II

De ce terrain que vous fouillez,
Manants résignés et funèbres,
De tout l’effort de vos vertèbres,
Ou de vos muscles dépouillés,

Dites, quelle moisson étrange,
Forçats arrachés au charnier,
Tirez-vous, et de quel fermier
Avez-vous à remplir la grange ?

Voulez-vous (d’un destin trop dur
Épouvantable et clair emblème !)
Montrer que dans la fosse même
Le sommeil promis n’est pas sûr ;

Qu’envers nous le Néant est traître ;
Que tout, même la Mort, nous ment,
Et que sempiternellement,
Hélas ! il nous faudra peut-être

Dans quelque pays inconnu
Écorcher la terre revêche
Et pousser une lourde bêche
Sous notre pied sanglant et nu ?

Последние стихотворения