[581] Get Drunk!
Guest poem submitted by Suresh Ramasubramanian, <suresh@> :
Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"
-- Charles Baudelaire
|
A wonderful celebration of the fact of being alive, shot through with
excitement and exhilaration and sheer unbridled joy: it _is_ good to get off
the wagon and get drunk, all right - especially if you drink of life the way
Baudelaire does. I used to think that Keats' "the blushful Hippocrene" in
Skylark was the epitome of getting drunk poetically, but this is even better
- it's not merely a longing for joy (as Keats' poem was) but a gorgeous
expression thereof...
Suresh.
PS. Credits to Deepa Balakrishnan for suggesting this poem to me.
[thomas adds]
I wasn't able to find a completely satisfying translation of this poem on
the Web; this version is the best of a distinctly average lot. Here's the
original, for the French-speakers among you:
'Enivrez-Vous'
Il faut être toujours ivre.
Tout est là:
c'est l'unique question.
Pour ne pas sentir
l'horrible fardeau du Temps
qui brise vos épaules
et vous penche vers la terre,
il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.
Mais de quoi?
De vin, de poésie, ou de vertu, à votre guise.
Mais enivrez-vous.
Et si quelquefois,
sur les marches d'un palais,
sur l'herbe verte d'un fossé,
dans la solitude morne de votre chambre,
vous vous réveillez,
l'ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue,
demandez au vent,
à la vague,
à l'étoile,
à l'oiseau,
à l'horloge,
à tout ce qui fuit,
à tout ce qui gémit,
à tout ce qui roule,
à tout ce qui chante,
à tout ce qui parle,
demandez quelle heure il est;
et le vent,
la vague,
l'étoile,
l'oiseau,
l'horloge,
vous répondront:
"Il est l'heure de s'enivrer!
Pour n'être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps,
enivrez-vous;
enivrez-vous sans cesse!
De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise."
-- Charles Baudelaire
Another translation, with an interesting visual, is available at
http://www-as.phy.ohiou.edu/~rouzie/fall153/final_projects/final_project/absolut.html
From: Cary Tennis <tennis@>
Nice translation of Baudelaire's "Get Drunk!". is Suresh Ramasubramanian
the famed spam fighter Salon wrote about?
At any rate, I was going to link to the great Get Drunk poem and came on
this translation first, and it has a muscular, vernacular punch that I
like. Who translated it?
Best
Cary Tennis
Salon.com
ps: referring to this:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/581.html
From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <suresh@>
Cary Tennis [05/06/03 08:30 -0700]:
> Nice translation of Baudelaire's "Get Drunk!". is Suresh Ramasubramanian
> the famed spam fighter Salon wrote about?
Yes, Salon has written about me - though "famed" is not the word I'd use to
describe myself :) And I got that translation out of google somewhere.
This was two years ago, so I don't really remember any more details.
srs
From: Jeremy Adams <jasprintww@>
The translation at
http://www-as.phy.ohiou.edu/~rouzie/fall153/final_projects/final_project/absolut.html
was done by Geoffrey Grigson. It can be found in the
book _Unrespectable_Verse_, edited by Grigson.
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From: Steve Dutky <sdutky@>
"Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only
question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be
drunken continually.
Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as
you will. But be drunken.
And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green
side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you
should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped
away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star,
or of the bird, or of the clock, or whatever flies, or sighs, or
rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the wind,
wave, star, bird, clock, will answer you: 'It is the hour to be
drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of
Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with
virtue, as you will.'"
Steve Dutky