Anne Pia's responses to Baudelaire's poetry is not only emotional and
intellectual but also linguistic. It comes from her profound love for
France's language and culture, particularly when it looks beyond
nationhood.
As she writes in her passionate and illuminating introduction,
"[Baudelaire] luxuriates and furiously dismisses. He rages and yet he
speaks soft words. He is tender. He yearns, aches and seductively
persuades. A creator of vivid visuals and sublimely evocative music, a
conjurer of mist, soft light and of exotic scents, a sculptor and a
weaver of tapestry and texture through a mere interplay of words and
skillful verse and stanza, Baudelaire - whether jubilant or bitter - is
never light-hearted, always honest, intense, disturbing."
The challenge Pia set herself was to recreate some of this powerful mix
in our English language, which has perhaps ceased to look for
inspiration beyond itself since it became so dominant. And she has
succeeded in this challenge quite remarkably, drawing the reader into
the intimacy of her own intellectual and artistic journey with deep
European roots.
In this volume we have published the original French poems Pia has
chosen and her poetic responses in English, along with her literal
translations of the originals. It is a bold move in a "language not of
its time", which demands our engagement.
