Skip to content

Gah! What is this shit?

Gah! What is this shit? published on No Comments on Gah! What is this shit?

"The abyss, with gulfy maw, / Thirsts on unsated…"

That’s Roy Campbell, trying to translate part of Baudelaire’s Horloge and, tripping on the hurdles of redundant froufrou, failing miserably. 

The sentence in question is, "Le gouffre a toujours soif." Literally, that’s, "The pit is always thirsty." But nah…let’s go with a "translation" that basically says, "The abyss, with an abyssal abyss, abysses abysmally."

Baudelaire tends not to fare well in translation…

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1516399.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar