My Translation Method
Alongside the original French Les Fleurs du Mal, I read and collect English translations of Flowers of Evil. Two important references for me are Roy Campbell, the South African poet and translator, and William F. Anggeler, a scholar and lecturer at the University of California Santa Barbara who wrote extensively on Baudelaire.
Campbell’s method leans toward free adaptation. He prioritizes lyrical beauty and poetic effect, often drifting away from the source text, though he usually preserves the general meaning. Anggeler, by contrast, is far more precise and faithful to the original. His version is clearer and less distorted, but aesthetically the rhythm and rhyme are often left unpolished, which may make it less appealing to lovers of lyrical poetry.
If I were translating Baudelaire through a second language, Anggeler would be my obvious reference. But I translate directly from French. That leaves me with a decision. Should I follow Campbell’s aesthetic freedom or Anggeler’s textual loyalty?
Translation theory often claims that adaptation and free translation are the best methods for poetry. Campbell himself once quipped that a faithful translation is like a devoted wife who lacks charm. I respect the theory, and I believe Campbell was serious. But I refuse to adopt free adaptation as an absolute rule. Baudelaire’s voice is too distinct, too historically charged, to be casually reshaped.
For me, fidelity does not have to mean dryness. A faithful translation does not need to be stripped of rhyme, alliteration, or assonance if we know how to combine methods intelligently. Life is not a binary system with only two options. Most serious translators blend techniques. I also happen to believe that a faithful wife can be attractive, even stunning, if you know which salon suits her hair, which tailor understands her body, which care brings out her skin’s glow. It takes effort, yes, but that is the point. With the right craft, loyalty and beauty can inhabit the same body.
Working from that principle, I translate the poems of Les Fleurs du Mal with one goal in mind. Faithful, yet beautiful.
My translations are not free style. That is a conscious choice. A masterpiece should not be tampered with. Baudelaire’s work shaped entire literary movements, aestheticism, dandysme, decadent literature, symbolism, and went on to inspire surrealism and contemporary poetry. Faced with a work like that, the translator’s task is not to reinvent the monument, but to let it speak, clearly, seductively, and with its dark soul intact.
In the end, translating Les Fleurs du Mal is not about transferring words from one language to another. It is about listening to the dark whisper that moves beneath the lines, and finding a living voice for it in a new tongue. This book is born from the belief that great poetry is never tame, and that an honest translation is never neutral. It must be daring, faithful, and still capable of seduction.
If you are curious to see how these flowers bloom in Indonesian, carrying a beauty that is both intoxicating and poisonous, the answer waits inside these pages. There, Baudelaire speaks again in our language, his voice still dark, still unsettling, and still impossible to redeem.
