Baudelaire gets his due …

… Mirror-Man: On Aaron Poochigian’s Translation of Baudelaire. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Poochigian’s Baudelaire is evidence of an ongoing Golden Age of Translation from many languages, including Italian, German, and Russian. It’s a good time to be a reader. We obdurately monolingual Americans, of course, have much to lose, especially in the work of so musical a poet as Baudelaire. Our debt to translators like Poochigian, who are comparably sensitive to both sound and sense, is enormous. In his translation note, Poochigian tells us he has attempted to replicate “the almost magical effect of the originals and to render beautiful in English Baudelaire’s nontraditional beauties — disease, vice, intoxication, and decay.”