Towards prose: aspects of a new translation project of Petits Poèmes en prose, by Baudelaire

Abstract

The article presents, in general lines, the main guidelines that guided the work of a new translation of Petits poèmes en prose, by Baudelaire, carried out by me in partnership with Isadora Petry. I try to show, first, how the French poet’s prose poetry project took a long transition time to be understood even by specialist critics, which explains, in large part, the poetic character of the first Brazilian translations. On the other hand, the radicalization of prosaism also seems not to be able to deal with the challenge of translating these “laborious trifles”, conceived by Baudelaire as an essentially ambivalent poetical experience. Always in dialogue with Literary Criticism, our translation sought to meet this challenge of ambivalence, from which this article addresses two aspects: the encounter of prose with poetry and the ironic and meaningful appropriation of the commonplace.