![]() For readers of French, the original texts of the poems have been generously included on facing pages. ![]() Palma’s selection is far from thin, however, as it gives us a full third of the original opus. Her chief aim is to give us perfectly crafted English verse through a well-chosen échantillon of Baudelaire’s original collection (as republished in Yves Gérard Le Dantec’s authoritative edition in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade series). In this case, Helen Palma has not only translated well, she has also selected well. Selection is therefore an auxiliary art to that of translation. ![]() Selective translation, as differentiated from the comprehensive translation of an entire work or oeuvre, belongs to the poet for whom translation is an occasion for magnificent poetry offering at the same time a solid idea of the original poet’s true spirit. The first and most obvious is that of translation, but also an art rarely considered in our day, the art of selection. ![]() Two arts are beautifully displayed in Helen Palma’s Selected Poems from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (Pivot Press, New York, 2014). ![]() Read the Selected Poems from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal online. ![]()
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