By Andrew Alexandre Owie An Old Russian Don River Cossack Lullaby `Kison`ka` (`Lil Cat) CAT`N`COOK
Cat is on its way from the kitchen, mew-mew
Eyes of the pussy cat are wretched, mew-mew
Why do you cry, my dear pussy, mew-mew
The cook who skimmed the cream like a rat
Put the blame on the pussy cat, mew-mew
Do not cry, my dear pussy, mew-mew
We all know why the cook`s so massive, mew-mew
He`s a miser and a rogue
He`s a pilferer`n`demagogue, mew-mew!
To console my dear feline, mew-mew
I will serve a tail of sardine, mew-mew
Help yourself to it, my cat,
I am the master of your flat, mew-mew
Tail and whiskers up, my lion, mew-mew
Straighten humpback of your spine, mew-mew
We shall catch the angry rat, mew-mew
That has skimmed the cream again
And my dear cat defamed, mew-mew
Miaow!
Mr. Willi Tokarev, one of the most prominent performers of the song whom you can heear hear. (Chat, chat, Moustacha!)
ORIGINAL RUSSIAN LYRICS:
КИСОНЬКА (сл. и муз. народные) ...Идет Кисонька из кухни, Мяу – мяу
У нее глазоньки опухли, Мяу – мяу
- О чем Кисонька ты плачешь? Мяу – мяу
- Повар пеночку слизал,
а на Кисоньку сказал. Мяу. Мяу.
- Не плачь Кисонька родная... Мяу –мяу
Я про повара всё знаю, Мяу – мяу
Он такой всегда сердитый, Мяу- Мяу
Повар тащит всё домой
Он не честный и скупой! Мяу. Мяу.
Для моей любимой Киски, Мяу – мяу
Я налью сметаны в миску, Мяу – мяу
Больше не ходи на кухню... Мяу - мяу
Кушай Кисонька моя,
Мы с тобой одна семья. Мяу. Мяу.
Выше усики и хвостик, Мяу - мяу
Распрями горбатый мостик, Мяу - мяу
Мы с тобой поймаем Мышку, Мяу - мяу
Ту, что пеночку слизал,
А на Кисоньку сказал. Мяу. Мяу.
Charles Pierre BAUDELAIRE (1821-1867)
Autograph of Baudelaire`s signatue!
LES CHATS
Les amoureux fervents et les savants austères
Aiment également, dans leur mûre saison,
Les chats puissants et doux, orgueil de la maison,
Qui comme eux sont frileux et comme eux sédentaires.
Amis de la science et de la volupté
Ils cherchent le silence et l'horreur des ténèbres ;
L'Erèbe les eût pris pour ses coursiers funèbres,
S'ils pouvaient au servage incliner leur fierté.
Ils prennent en songeant les nobles attitudes
Des grands sphinx allongés au fond des solitudes,
Qui semblent s'endormir dans un rêve sans fin ;
Leurs reins féconds sont pleins d'étincelles magiques,
Et des parcelles d'or, ainsi qu'un sable fin,
Etoilent vaguement leurs prunelles mystiques.
КОШКИ
Пылкие любовники и суровые ученые
Равно любят в свою зрелую пору
Могучих и ласковых кошек, гордость дома,
Которые, как и они, зябки и, как они, домоседы.
Друзья наук и сладострастья,
Они ищут тишину и ужас мрака;
Эреб взял бы их себе в качестве траурных лошадей,
Если бы они могли склонить свою гордыню перед рабством.
Грезя, они принимают благородные позы
Огромных сфинксов, простертых в глубине одиночеств,
Кажутся засыпающими в сне без конца;
Их плодовитые чресла полны магических искр,
И крупицы золота, как и мельчайший песок,
Туманно усыпают звездами их мистические зрачки. (Trans. Roman Yakobson)
Roman Osipovich Yakobson (1896 - 1982)
CATS
Fervent lovers and austere scholars alike,
in their fuller years, love powerful yet gentle cats,
the pride of the household,
who[,] like them[,] feel the cold and lead sedentary lives.
Friends of scholarship and sensual delight,
they search out the silence and horror of the hours of darkness;
Erebus* would have engaged them as messengers of gloom,
if they could bring themselves to lower their pride to servitude.
As they muse they take on the noble airs
of those great sphinxes stretched out in total solitude,
appearing to sleep in an endless dream;
Their fruitful loins filled with sparks of magic,
with gold dust, like the finest sand,
the pupils of their eyes flickering with the mystical light of distant stars.
*In Greek mythology, Erebus was the son of the God Chaos and the earthly personification of darkness and shadows.
THE PUBLIC OPINION VS. CHARLES PIERRE BAUDELAIRE Dieux ou démons - Clemency hearing
Portrait of Charles Baudelaire, circa 1862. By Étienne Carjat. According to Carjat, Baudelaire used to often visit his photoshop. After seeing the portrait for the fist time Baudelaire noted: "Cela [le portrait] n'est pas parfait, parce que cette perfection est impossible, mais j'ai rarement vu quelque chose d'aussi bien" (This portrait isn`t ideal, because to reach perfection is not possible, but I rarely saw something that would be so good`).
COUNCEL`S FINAL SUMMATION:
Ladies and gentlemen,
I don`t share common views regarding Сharles Baudelaire. Yes, he shocked public with his green hair. They said he had been the drug-addict. Yes, he had been, but later preferred the old good French wine. The drugs failed to expand or ruin his mind, they negatively interfered with his creative process and he gave up them despite the obtrusive habit. They told us he had been a satanist. But every real satanist, there are a lot of them in the artistic elite of France and other countries, would hardly believe it. He pretended to be, but never was. Mr. Satan refused him being well aware that the poet was just an instrumentum vocalis of his Opponent. Besides, Mr. Satan can tolerate everything exept for perfection, but Baudelaire was the very perfectness as a poet, as a translator and as a literary or music critic.
His daemonism was of pure literary origin, it was borrowed from his spiritual father and inspirer, from … Lord Byron. Once I noted that if not this great figure there would have been no Toltoyevsky, Chekhov. The so-called cursed, damned poets of France would have been more ordinary and would have hardly regarded by public mind as bad boys without shadow of Lord Byron standing behind them. They would have just been the mediocre dandies.
Byron`s works and his whimsical and eccentric behaviour and perversions provoked a great interest in human psychology. But if there hadn`t been his creative achievements, there would have been no interest in his shocking behaviour. He was a trend-setter in literature, Baudelaire was a trend-setter too. Everyone in their own time. Despite declarations and actions both were from God rather than Satan. Their heads could retrieve data right from semantic vacuum of the Universe, they were the chosen ones as poets. They were wretched sinners as men and suffered from many psychological problems.
Jacopo Bassano, Jacopo da Ponte, Giacomo da Ponte. L'Ultima Cena, 1546
Les chats, les chats, les chats … Yes, this masterpiece describes the cats as a metaphor, as a symbol of the synergetic person in the synergetic Universe. There are three poems about cats by Baudelaire, but this one is less than the latter two about cats as animals, living creatures whom Charles loved so tenderly! Cats in the poem are people, the human race, the poem is a formula of our consistency and psychology, people are mystery for people themselves.
Jan van Kessel the Elder (1626-1679). (A Singerie: Monkey Barbers Serving Cats. Обезьяны-парикмахеры, обслуживающие кошек.)
People try to know themselves, sometimes through … cats. Cats as a mirror of a mysterious human soul! This is what the poem is about. The implied duel sexuality of cats in the poem is explainable and not hidden, it is not a poem about men exclusively, it is about unity of two sexes as two divided parts of the single entirety. Every of us while reading this poem could exclaim joyfully that he or she sees themselves as in a mirror.
Rather a flattering mirror for human nature! Real Dostoyevsky in the concise form of the classical sonnet! But it is not Dostoyevsky, it`s Baudelaire. A very rationalistic, logical, very British French poet. He considered Edgar Poe to be his literary brother since the latter was very rationalistic despite irrationalistic things he wrote of. Tolstoy rejected Baudelaire, he can`t help feeling their similarity too. We shouldn`t forget that Tolstoy`s first language was French, so he must have been thinking in the French language, he felt Europe better than Russian Dostoyevsky. But Tolstoy wanted to be Russian all the way.
Jan de BEER (1475-1528). Annunciation.
Unlike him the Russian poets accepted Baudelaire without hesitation, he played in the history of so called the `Silver Age` of the Russian Poetry the same part that Lord Byron had played in that of the `Golden Age` of it. Even the Russianest of the Russian poets Sergey Yesenin (he used to jocularly call himself Sergey Duncan) was Baudelaire`s literary grandson. Akhmatova, Tsvetayeva, Zinaida Gippius, etc. were his literary granddaughters.
Jan de BEER (1520). Annunciation.
They said that he had been a poet of the moral and cultural decline! The decadence! What ridiculous staff! After his appearance the French literature experienced a peak, a culmination of creative achievements. I wish we had such a decline every decade of the century! They say that if to stick the moustache under his nose he would have been a replica of Adolf Hitler, just look at his burning daemonic eyes! He glorified Wagner and took part in the Revolution! I will answer to these silly arguments the following, if Adolf Hitler had been richer, if he had become an artist or architect, we could have known him as one of the original European artists (I saw his artistic works). As to moustache Charlot wore the same, in the `Great Dictator` we see one person, two alternatives, so the slogan `make love (write poems, etc), not war` has much more sense than it might seem.
Strictly speaking, Baudelaire was neither man-hating as a poet, nor women-hating as a man. Two permanent girlfriends at any time! He was searching for feminine ideal, but as every ideal it was unachievable in real life. He dreamt of a living marble statue, indifferent, cool. Professor Higgins? My fairy lady? Very British French poet! Could he write something like that? It woud have been a nightmare! The same could be said about his ideal of a woman, I would say, it was a kind of a cat-woman as far as he would like the lady of his heart to behave in a way a pussy cat does. Unlike dogs, cats prefer people who don`t pay attention to them and they permit people to love them.
Thomas Eakins (1844-1916). Professor Benjamin Howard Rand (1874)
Fortunately, real women are not cats, as to pussy … Sorry, I`ve lost track of my thoughts for a moment. In any case the personal problems of the author can`t be touched by us here the more so because we can`t observe his real behaviour in real life. There were many rumours, after all. If his personal and sexual problems might have somehow enriched his poetry, then as readers we only gained a lot as a result of that creative sublimation.
Faustino Bocchi (1659-1742). Nains soignant un chat. Dwarves taking care of the cat. Карлики, заботящиеся о коте.
By the way, in Les Chats cats do not behave like the real cats, they are not animals there, it is not a poem about cat-men or cat-women, Baudelaire depicts human beings` inner nature rather than a draft sript of the `Avatar` (sci-fi) or the Chinese novel Cat Country 猫城记 by Lao She 老舍 (social satire). Besides, what an exactness of words and images!
Felix Vallotton (1865 —1925). Femmes nues aux chats (1898).
Original and perfect text, not yet translated as it deserves despite many successful attempts. The Russian translation of Roman Yakobson is the best, in my humble opinion, but though highly artistic it is the word-to-word translation, having no rhymes. But it is a sonnet! Yakobson`s translation in the Russian version of the `Les Chats` de Charles Baudelaire` Par Roman Jakobson et Claude Lévi-Strauss reflects Baudelaire as a sensual and rationalistic philosopher (les transports de l'esprit est des sens), but not as an esoteric thinker. This aspect of his works is very exaggerated (the same can be said about the hermetic aspect of works by Arthur Rimbaud though alchemic terms he used in poems should be taken into account in translations).
Georges Groegaert (Жорж Грёгер) (1848 -1923). Reading the News.
Charles Baudelaire liked museums, theatres, exhibitions, libraries, he established the new and strict standards of translations from foreign languages, he was one of the most educated poets of his time. By the way, the first story by Edgar A. Poe read and translated by Baudelaire was the `Black Cat` in 1847. He adored cats. The writer Champfleury recalled: Un chat apparaissait-il à la porte d'un corridor où traversait-il la rue, Baudelaire allait à lui, l'attirait par des câlineries, le prenait dans ses bras, et le caressait, - même à rebrousse-poil.
[I]Georges Groegaert (Жорж Грёгер) (1848 -1923). The Ball of String .
As soon as a pussy cat appeared in the door to corridor or crossed the street, Baudelaire would come up to it, took in his hands and caressed it.` (Les Chats - J. Rothschild, Paris, 1869). The lines Les amoureux fervents et les savants austères - Passionate lovers and serious scholars seem to be his own portrait too. His personal portrait as the poet and the portrait of a poet, a symbol of an artiste on the whole! Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) wrote: Il aimait ces charmantes bêtes tranquilles, mystérieuses et douces, aux frissonnements électriques, dont l’attitude favorite est la pose allongée des sphinx qui semblent leur avoir transmis leurs secrets. He loved those lovely quiet and mysterious beasts ....`.
(right) Hans Baldung (called `Grien`). Frau mit Katze (Allegorie der Musik) Woman with Cat (Allegory of Musik) (1529)
Summing up, Les Chats is one of the masterpieces of the world`s literature, a portrait of the human race and a symbol of a poet through the mirror of a feline metaphor, a theo-philanthropic poem full of love of human beings and cats. From this view-point Charles Baudelaire is a humanistic author, he is entirely from God despite poet`s manner to startle and shock people. His perfect works are pure gold rather than pieces of broken crockery. Therefore, he deserves to be brought in a verdict of not guilty of poetic witchcraft or spiritual deception! I beg you to grant an absolute pardon!
Picture of Alan Shore (Actor James Spade) by Chris Breier
