American poet and translator from the French.
Marthiel Mathews was an American poet, translator of French poetry, and academic. He and Jackson Mathews edited the 1955 edition of Charles Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil, the first complete English edition, published bilingually with the original French.
Edited by Jackson Mathews and Marthiel Mathews
In the annals of literature, few single volumes of poetry have achieved the influence and notoriety of The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67). Banned and slighted in his lifetime, the book that contains all of Baudelaire’s verses has opened up vistas to the imagination and quickened sensibilities of poets everywhere. Yet it is questionable whether a single translator can give adequate voice to Baudelaire’s full poetic range. In compiling their classic, bilingual edition of The Flowers of Evil, the late Marthiel and Jackson Mathews chose from the work of forty-one translators to create a collection that is “a commentary on the present state of the art of translation.” The Mathews’ volume is a poets’ homage to Baudelaire as well. Among the contributors: Robert Fitzgerald, Anthony Hecht, Aldous Huxley, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Lowell, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Karl Shapiro, Allen Tate, Richard Wilbur, Yvor Winters.
Translated by Christopher Mattison
Edited by Jackson Mathews and Marthiel Mathews
Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, which in successive editions contained all of his published poems, has for over a hundred years now opened new vistas for man’s imagination and quickened the sensibilities of poets everywhere. The greatest French poet of the 19th century, Baudelaire was also the first truly modern poet, and his direct and indirect influence on the literature of our time has been immeasurable.
Here in this volume are selections from _Les _Fleurs du Mal as chosen by Marthiel and Jackson Mathews from their complete bilingual edition published by New Directions in 1955 — “undoubtedly the best single collection of Baudelaire’s verse in English” (St. Louis Post Dispatch).
Flowers of Evil: A Selection contains fifty-three poems which the Mathews feel best represent the total work and which have been most successfully rendered into English. The French texts as established by Yves Gerard Le Dantec for the Pleiade edition are printed en face. Included are Baudelaire’s “Three Drafts of a Preface” and brief notes on the nineteen translators whose works is represented.
