poeparbaudelairefancy and imagination

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Wallaert, Ineke. Baudelaires rewriting of Poes fancy and imagination dans

dAmelio Nadia (dir.).Les traductions extraordinaires dEdgar Poe. Mons,

Belgique : Editions CIPA collection Langage et Socit, 2010. p 81-99

Baudelaires rewriting of Poes fancy and imagination

Colloque International: Les Traductions extraordinaires dEdgar Allan Poe

27-28 novembre 2009

Ineke WALLAERT

Universit de Strasbourg

Introduction: thetranslationof Poe

In this article several closely linked topics lead to a detailed examination of howBaudelaire, Poes tuteur and translator in France, translated the two concepts of

imagination and fancy as they occurred in Poes tales. Before entering the discussion, twothings need to be recalled about our current perspective on the Poe-Baudelairerelationship. As many authors have pointed out, Baudelaire can be said to have given Poea French face, i.e. of paintingPoes picture in his own image by accentuating aspects ofPoes persona which coincided with his own and which he had found in Griswoldscalumniating posthumous accounts on Poe. Then there are those (e.g. Meschonnic 1999:54-55, Berman 1995: 2) who, in spite of this knowledge, insist that Baudelaire was a greattranslator, and the term is adopted precisely because of the success of the entire processoftranslatio, which includes the prefaces in which Baudelaire created Poes French image,rather than being limited to the intrinsic quality of the translations. Both positions aretenable and useful, and the insights which they give rise to have led me to use the term

rewriting rather than simply translation for Baudelaires work on Poe, since besidesits original meaning of refraction, 1 this term implies the understanding that every act oftranslation is intertextually linked with its para-texts (prefaces, footnotes, etc.) and that inthe end, our evaluation of historical translations such as Baudelaires should definitely takeinto account the whole of these rewritings. The aim of the present article, then, is not togive a value judgement on the quality of the translations, but to describe some of thetranslators choices, to understand against the background of what is now known about

1Refractions are to be found in the obvious form of translation, or in the less obvious form of criticism, commentary , teaching, the collection of works in anthologies, the production of plays. (Lefevere1982: 4)


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the entire translation process, how these may have come about, and to evaluate the effecttheymay have on the French reading of Poes texts. I write about the effect they haveinthe present tense, because the Baudelaire translations, which are now slightly over 150years old, have never been retranslated.

The article begins with a discussion on Poes own use of the concepts ofimagination and fancy, two mental faculties which he discusses in some of his literarycriticism and essays, and whose distinctive meanings he also exploits in his tales. SincePoe explicitly mentions S.T. Coleridge as the source of this distinction, I then turn toColeridges profound and abstruse theory on the mental faculties, which I try to explain asconcisely as possible. The common ground and the differences between the authorsrespective views are then examined in a comparative passage, before turning to howBaudelaire treated the distinction between fancy and imagination in his own work ascritique dart. All these preliminary steps lead to an informed and detailed discussion onthe ways in which Baudelaire translated the terms as they featured in Poes tales. The

conclusions drawn from that discussion are reinforced by what is known aboutBaudelaires stance and project as translator of Poe.

Sublimity or strangeness?

I will begin by looking at how Poe uses the terms fancy and imagination in histales on the one hand, and in his essays and marginalia on the other. The selection of talesfrom which the occurrences of fancy and imagination are extracted is limited to those

which I consider to be entirely or partly classifiable as fantastic. As I explain in Wallaert2009, I refer with the term fantastic to those tales where Poe introduces a layer ofmeaning which echoes his own description of works of the imagination in which there areundercurrents of meaning appertaining to that class of compositions in which there

lies beneath the transparent upper current of meaning an under or suggestive one(Thompson 1984 [1840]: 341). Applying this multi-layered perspective to distinguish thefantastic mode in Poes tales, I have therefore chosen tales where Poe uses the techniqueof introducing lhsitation prouve par un tre qui ne connat que les lois naturelles ,(Todorov 1970: 29), a hesitation which is transferred from the narrator and/or othercharacters to the reader, and which makes the latter oscillate between the possibility andthe impossibility of attributing a realistic explanation to the events in the tale, leavingher/him in a state of uncertainty as to how to posit these (see Wallaert 2009: 51). Theselection of occurrences which are presented throughout this article is not exhaustive (forreasons of brevity), and is taken from the following tales: Morella,Berenice,Ligeia,The Fall of the House of Usher, The Oval Portrait,The Pit and the Pendulum,

The Premature Burial, The Black Cat, and The Tale of the Ragged Mountains.

I will begin the discussion by looking at descriptions and occurrences of eachfaculty separately, first as given in Poes literary criticism and secondly in theaforementioned tales. A first extract from Poes essay on Thomas Hood may serve tointroduce the gist of Poes ideas on the topic:

The fact seems to be that Imagination, Fancy, Fantasy, and Humor, have in common theelements, Combination, and Novelty. The Imagination is the artist of the four. From novelarrangements of old forms which present themselves to it, it selects only such as areharmoniousthe result, of course, is beautyitselfusing the term in its most extended sense,and as inclusive of the sublime. (Thompson 1984 [1845]: 278)

Furthermore, on the imagination, we also find, in a series ofSuggestions:


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That the imagination has not been unjustly ranked as supreme among the mental faculties,appears, from the intense consciousness, on the part of the imaginative man, that the faculty inquestion brings his soul often to a glimpse of things supernal and eternalto the very verge ofthe great secrets. (Thompson 1984 [1845]: 1293)

For Poe the imagination is clearly the supreme and most positive mental capacity of thepair. He describes it as a creative force in the largest sense, a faculty which allows thesubject to perceive(s) the faint perfumes, and hear(s) the melodies of a happier world,(Thompson 1984 [1845]: 1293), a mental power which allows the subject to reach towardsthe sublime or the ideal, and one which Poe links to what he terms the mystic(Thompson 1984 [1840]: 337). This last term Poe claims to employ in the sense of

Augustus Wilhelm Schlegel, and of most other German critics, as referring to that layerof a work of art (poem, prose, painting, etc.) which, again, lifts it into the ideal (ibid).Such a conception of the imagination can also be deduced from the way Poe uses theterm in his tales.

In The Fall of the House of Usher, for instance, we find confirmation of thesublimating capacity of the imagination in the following passage:

There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heartan unredeemed dreariness of thoughtwhich no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. (Mabbott 1978:397-398)

Here Poe uses the imagination as a faculty which the subject can consciously control andput to work, and which normally leads one to find in the object of contemplation anelement or echo of the sublime. That the imagination is, in comparison with fancy, thesuperior faculty, also becomes clear from the adjectives which accompany the term in thetales: all of these can be considered as positive post- or pre-modifications. Thus we find

in Ligeia a vivid imagination (Mabbott 1978: 325), in The Premature Burial adaring imagination (Mabbott 1978: 961), an imagination that is singularly vigorous andcreative in The Tale of the Ragged Mountains (Mabbott 1978: 942). or, at worst, anexcited imagination in Berenice (Mabbott 1978: 214).

For Poes use of fancy we have already seen that Poe ranks this mental capacityright behind or rather below the imagination, and on every occasion where the termsfeature in a tandem Poe indeed describes the fancy as inferior to the imagination. As, forinstance, in Fifty Suggestions:

What we feel to be Fancy will be found fanciful still, whatever the theme which engages it. Nosubject exalts it into Imagination. (Thompson 1984 [1849]: 1306).

We also find far less positive adjectival accompaniment for fancythroughout the tales: astrange fancya fancy so ridiculous and shadowy fancies grow in the mind of thenarrator of The Fall of the House of Usher (Mabbott 1978: 399, 397-398), while inLigeia, Lady Rowena hears strange sounds in the distemper of her fancy (Mabbott1978: 323) and the narrator is visited bya crowd ofunutterable fancies (Mabbott 1978:329) at the end of the tale.

Yet more significant are the descriptions of the emotional and psychological stateswhich the fancy is seen to induce: the fancy is always outside of the control of the subject,and is held responsible for periods of doubt, instability, morbidity, and, of course fear andterror. Thus fancies are felt, by the narrator of Ligeia, to be rushing hurriedly throughmy brain, having paralyzed and chilled me into stone (Mabbott 1978: 329), they


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grew in my mind uncontrollably and crowded upon the narrator of The Fall of theHouse of Usher (Mabott 1978: 399 and 398 respectively) and in the same tale hiselaborate fancy makes Roderick Usher brood over his artworkwhich grows into a

vagueness that leaves the narrator shuddering with unease (Mabbott 1978: 405), while it

grew charnal and possessed the narrator of A Premature Burial (Mabbott 1978:963). These occurrences are most pertinent for our examination of how Baudelairetranslates the term fancy, since Poe often uses the term as a signpost to stipulate thefantastic character of his tale, as it is the term fancy which frequently serves to introduceand maintain the element of doubt and hesitation. The fancy is thus found to haveconjured up images for the narrator of The Fall of the House of Usher, whom it isalso said to have deceived (Mabbott 1978: 414).

Poes red herring

When we look at Poes understanding of imagination and fancy in comparativeterms, we find that Poe introduces a sizeable red herring in some of his discussions on thesubject. There are two passages where Poe both agrees and disagrees with Coleridgestheory on fancy and imagination, which feature in his essays on Thomas Hood(Thompson 1989 [1845]: 274-288) and on Thomas Moore (Thompson 1989 [1840]: 333-341). In both passages Poe dismisses Coleridges views and then goes on to put forward aconclusion which contradicts his refutation:

The fancy, says the author of the Ancient Mariner, in his Biographia Literaria, the fancycombines, the imagination creates. And this was intended, and has been received, as adistinction. If so at all, it is one without a difference; without even a difference of degree. [...]We might make a distinction, of degree, between the fancy and the imagination, in saying thatthe latter is the former loftily employed. But experience proves this distinction to beunsatisfactory. What we feel and know to be fancy, will be found still only fanciful, whatever

be the theme which engages it. It retains its idiosyncracy under all circumstances. No subjectexalts it into the ideal. (Thompson 1984 [1840]: 334)

The issue raised by this passage is the following: Poe begins by saying that whereColeridge and others have seen a difference, there is none, not even one of degree. Poesrefusal to see a distinction is based on the idea that The Fancy as nearly creates as theimagination, and neither at all. Novel conceptions are merely unusual combinations.(Thompson 1984 [1845]: 277). Still, this refutation of Coleridges distinction is followedby a statement that What we feeland know to be fancy, will be found still onlyfanciful.Considering his statement that the imagination is supreme among the mental faculties,and brings our soul to the very verge of the great secrets, (Thompson 1984 [1845]: 1293),Poe is clearly mixing two things: the imagination and fancy as mental faculties, and theobjects or, more specifically, the kind of poetry, which they are likely to produce. In thesentence What we feeland know to be fancy ... Poe should therefore be taken as usingfancy to refer to a productof fancy, which, as he states above, retains its idiosyncracyunder all circumstances (Thompson 1984 [1840]: 334), i.e. which is clearly distinct fromall other things. So if something is fancy or fanciful, it is a product of fancyonly, andit is differentfrom products of the imagination, since No subjectexalts it into the ideal, theideal being the realm of the imagination.

What Poe thus seems to wish to put forward is that the products of the mentalfaculties are different, but that the faculties are the same in the way they operate.However, Poe never explicitly states his distinction between product and process - where

the products would be different but the processes the same. Moreover, it doesnt help that


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in his tales he does make a very obvious difference between fancy and imagination asmentalprocesses. And Poe further undermines his refusal to confirm Coleridges distinctionin other statements on the mental faculties. The herring reappears, for instance, in thefollowing passage:

[...] in general, the richness or force of the matters combined, the facility of discoveringcombinable novelties worth combining [i.e. the process] - and the absolute chemicalcombination and proportion of the completed mass [i.e. the product]are the particulars tobe regarded in our estimate of Imagination. It is this thorough harmony of an imaginative workwhich so often causes it to be under-valued by the undiscriminating, through the character ofobviousness which is super-induced. We are apt to find ourselves asking why is it that thesecombinations have never been imagined before? (Thompson 1984 [1845]: 278)

Here Poe again mixes the process and the product, though the product is clearly his mainfocus.

He continues this discussion by claiming that a new combination of existing

particulars can also be a product of fancy, with the difference that, in the case of fancy,the element of novelty or innovation is not necessarily predominant, and is strengthenednot by its obviousness, but by the unexpectedness or strangeness of the newcombination; i.e. the product:

... when in addition to the element of novelty, there is introduced the sub-element ofunexpectednesswhen, for example, matters are brought into combination which not onlyhave never been combined but whose combination strikes us as a difficulty happily overcome

the result then appertains to the fancy. (Thompson 1984 [1845]: 278)

Again, this extract is not so much a discussion on the faculties as operating psychologicalpowers as one on the objects which these faculties are apt to produce. The overall

impression we thus get from Poes discussions of the mental faculties is that he does see adistinction in their products: fancy and imagination both combine existing materials toproduce new results, but the imagination leads to results which give us dim bewildering

visions of a far more ethereal beauty beyond (Thomspon 1989 [1840]: 337), whereasfancy simply creates new and unexpected combinations that are typically less harmoniousand less beautiful. In the end, then, what Poe seems most interested in is not so much thepsychology of the mental facultieshe refutes Coleridges position on this matter withoutexplicitly arguing one of his ownbut the type of poetry, or art, which they create. We

will now see how Poes views coincide or differ from those of Coleridge.

Poes Coleridge

It is perhaps relevant at this point to remind the reader of the awe and esteem inwhich Poe held Coleridge. While on one occasion Poe laments that Coleridges mindshould have been buried in metaphysics, in the same passage he also declares:

Of Coleridge I cannot but speak with reverence. His towering intellect ! his gigantic power ! [...] In reading his poetry I tremble like one who stands upon a volcano, conscious, from thevery darkness bursting from the crater, of the fire and the light that are weltering below.(Thompson 1984 [1836]: 10)

Interestingly, Poe seems to think that Coleridges main fault lies in an excess ofprofundity: He goes wrong by reason of his very profundity (Thompson 1984 [1836]:8), like the stargazer who looks too intently at the star and is no longer conscious of all

for which the star is useful to us below its brilliancy and its beauty (ibid.). That said,


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Poe greatly appreciated the Biographia Literaria, the work where Coleridge presents hisphilosophical, theological and psychological views among details of his life and times and

which features his theory on the mental faculties. While expressing his regret that it hasnot been republished in America, Poe describes this work as perhaps, the most deeply

interesting of the prose writings of Coleridge, whose republication would be renderingan important service to the cause of psychological science in America (Thompson 1984[1836]: 188). That Poe was more than familiar with Coleridges thought on the mentalfaculties is hereby established. The following paragraphs will now show that Poe indeedchose a less psychological and more poetic treatment of the imagination and fancy thanthe one which Coleridge elaborated.

Coleridges theory of consciousness

Coleridges discussion of fancy and imagination is not limited to the famous lastpassage which ends both Chapter XIII and the first part of the Biographia Literaria.Meditations on how the mind works occupied his thoughts long before he came intocontact with the German thinkers (Schelling, Fichte, etc.) who influenced his thought onthe matter (see Wordsworth 1985: 28), and the foundations for the statements in ChapterXIII are laid from the beginning chapters of the Biographia onwards. Thus we find inChapter IV:

Repeated meditations led me to first suspect (and a more intense analysis of the humanfaculties, their appropriate marks, functions and effects, matured my conjecture into fullconviction) that fancy and imagination were two distinct and widely different faculties, insteadof being, according to the general belief, either two names with one meaning, or at the furthestthe lower and higher degree of one and the same power. (Coleridge 1956 [1817): 50)

Coleridges psychological theory is not easy to understand, as his ideas on the imagination

are in fact an attempt to describe nothing less than the nature of consciousness itself(Richards 1960: 6). Moreover, in the famous passage where Coleridge finally nails downhis theory, the imagination is split up into primary and secondary imagination, adichotomy which needs some explanation before going into further detail on thedifference he made between imagination and fancy.

Here, then, is the first part of Coleridges frequently quoted passage:

The imagination then I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary imagination Ihold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in thefinite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary I consider as anecho of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in

the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. (Coleridge1956 [1817): 167)

As Jonathan Wordsworth indicates, there seems to be an orthodoxy(which) has grownup among scholars which holds that the secondary imagination, despite the usual force ofthe words, was more important to Coleridge than the primary (Wordsworth 1985: 23).

This consensus is confirmed for instance in Richards Coleridge on Imagination,where the author states that The Primary Imagination is normal perception thatproduces the usual world of the senses (Richards 1960: 58). Richards interpretation andexplanation of the secondaryimagination is of great interest and very well-formed, but hedoes not dwell on what Coleridge understood by the primary imagination, which he

restricts in one stroke to sensual perception, and which the rest of his work more or less


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ignores. Jonathan Wordsworth, however, makes a very strong case contradicting thewidely accepted supremacyof Coleridges secondary imagination. His argument that thisinterpretation of the concepts stems from the preconceptions with which they have beenapproached, (Wordsworth 1985: 26) may here be completed by stating that it is also the

aims with which scholars have broached the subject, and the context in which theconcepts were made to function, namely poetics and literary criticism, which sustain theconsensus he refutes. The scope of this essay does not allow me to go into the details of

Wordsworths discussion of the topic, but the gist of the argument needs to be presentedhere.

As Coleridge says himself, the primary imagination is the living power and primeagent of all human perception, but it is also much more than that, it is the repetition inthe finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. (cf. supra). This means,as Wordsworth indicates, that the primary imagination is an ultimate stage of love, orconsciousness, or perception (Wordsworth 1985: 31) in the most sublime sense, a faculty

which allows the subject to merge with God: With the primary imagination manunknowlingly re-enacts Gods original and eternal creative moment (Wordsworth 1985:25). Indeed, as Wordsworth also tells us, imagination is for Coleridge an act of faith(Wordsworth 1985: 46). Besides pointing to Coleridges own unmistakable language(primary and secondary are unambiguous terms), Wordsworth also convincingly arguesthat Few people have rated the evidence of their senses lower than Coleridge, or wouldhave been less inclined to celebrate it in exalted biblical language (Wordsworth 1985: 48),

which Coleridge indeed does with the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. Moreover, Coleridge talks about ALL human perception, and there is nothing whichallows us to limit perception to the usual world of the senses, as Richards does(Richards 1960: 58). Wordsworths conclusion that for Coleridge The primary

imagination at its highest is the supreme human achievement of oneness with God; thesecondary, though limited by comparison, contains the hope that in the act of writing thepoet may attain to a similar power (Wordsworth 1985: 50) is therefore the one which isfollowed here.

As this is an article in the field of comparative literature and translation studies, itis of course the secondary imagination which will be in focus here, and which I take Poeto allude to when he mentions Coleridge. As we have seen, Poes concerns with thefaculties were limited to their products, mainly in the field of poetic composition, and didnot extend to Coleridges philosophical or psychological studies. Still, it is important topoint out that for Coleridge A man may work with two very different tools at the samemoment; each has its share in the work, but the work affected by each is distinct anddifferent (Coleridge 1956 [1817): 160). We can now continue with the second part ofColeridges theory:

It [the secondary imagination] dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or where thisprocess is rendered impossible, yet still, at all events, it struggles to idealize and to unify. It isessentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead. (Coleridge 1956[1817): 167)

Coleridges secondary imagination is thus also a creative power, a faculty of the mindwhich re-combines the materials supplied by the primary imagination, and in these newcombinations it always strives towards unity and harmony. It should therefore indeed notsurprise us, as Richards points out, that there should be a connection between poetry

and the ordering of life for Coleridge (Richards 1960: 59). Moreover, as Wordsworth


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indicates, the fact that the creative imagination could merge into the primary gives to thepoet a special position in the Ascent of Being (Wordsworth 1985: 49). Both the strugglefor unity and harmony and the special position in which this puts the subject are thoughts

which we also find in Poes treatment of the products of the imagination, as allowing the

creator or the reader of imaginative poetry to catch a glimpse of things supernal andeternal. (Thompson 1984 [1845]: 1293)

Turning our attention to Coleridges treatment of fancy, we find that thediscussion in Chapter XIII ends with:

Fancy, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with but fixities and definites. The fancyis indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space; andblended with, and modified by that empirical phaenomenon of the will which we express bythe word choice. But equally with the ordinary memory it must receive all its materials readymade from the law of association. (Coleridge 1956 [1817): 167)

Fancy, then, also recreates, though it does not modifyexisting materials, which Coleridge

calls fixities and definites. Rather, as Richards puts it,

Fancy [...] collects and re-arranges, without remaking them, units of meaning alreadyconstituted by Imagination. In Imagination the mind is growing; in Fancy it is merelyreassembling products of past creation ... (Richards 1960: 59)

Or, as Wordsworth explains, Fancy is cumulative and her works are the Daughters ofMemory: imagination modifies, and by recreating the materials of experience produces theoneness that for Coleridge [...] is ultimate truth (Wordsworth 1985: 34). Coleridge thusalso denies fancy any innovative power: it does not shape or modify, it does notdissolve(s), diffuse(s), dissipate(s), in order to re-create (cf. supra), just as Poe deniedfancy the predominance of novelty and obviousness. For Coleridge fancy obeys Hartleys

laws of association: it is the aggregative and associative power (Coleridge 1956 [1817):160) which evokes nothing and combines nothing of which the particulars are not alreadythereand this does not exclude Poes element of unexptectedness in the combination.

Creative powers compared

How then, does Poes treatment of the mental faculties compare with that ofColeridge? Firstly, it is clear that both Coleridge and Poe see the imagination as more thansimply a creative force: it is a power which brings the subject within reach of God, theideal, the sublime and the eternal. Poes indebtedness to Coleridge for his use of theimagination may be located precisely in his claim that the imagination does not create

anything at all, in the sense that he thereby echoes Coleridges more elaborate ascendanceby which all the materials which the secondary imagination uses are provided by theprimary imagination. For both authors the imagination works with materials that alreadyexist, with the nuance that for Coleridge these materials can be modified beforethe processof recombination, while for Poe it is rather the process of recombination which enacts themodification of the particulars.

The most important difference would thus lie with the authors treatment offancy. For Coleridge the two faculties are very different (though they can be operant atthe same time in the same mind), and we have seen that on this point Poes disagreement

with Coleridge is self-contradictory and is not confirmed by his own use of the terms inhis literary criticism and in his tales. Poe even repeats Coleridges associative power

when he makes fancy the locusof a process of association in The Pit and the Pendulum:


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After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminatehum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolutionperhaps from its association in fancy withthe burr of a mill-wheel. (Mabbott 1978: 681)

When adding to this example the involuntary nature of the fancies which plague Poes

narrators, and the fact that these fancies always appear when the subject is in some alteredstate of consciousness, we do see a difference with Coleridges attribution of choice tofancy, while Poes claim that fancy would be the samekind of conscious act of knowledgeas the imagination becomes difficult to follow.

To end this comparison, we may attempt to explain Poes red herring by pointingat the very different perspectives from which Poe and Coleridge studied the faculties. InChapter XII of the Biographia, Coleridge talks about the necessity of postulating acoalescence of subject and object in every act of consciousness (and, by reduction, in theimagination): All knowledge rests on the coincidence of an object with a subject, saysColeridge (Coleridge 1956 [1817): 144). The most straightforward illumination of

Coleridges statement that During the act of knowledge itself, the objective andsubjective are so instantly united that we cannot determine to which of the two thepriority belongs (Coleridge 1956 [1817): 145) is perhaps given by Coleridge himself whenhe states that Truth is correlative to Being. Knowledge without a correspondent reality isno knowledge; if we know, there must be somewhat known by us. To know is in its veryessence a verb active. (Coleridge 1956 [1817): 150), which not only confirms thecoincidence of subject and object that underlies his further discussion on the mentalfaculties, but which also brings us back to the imagination as an actof knowing and anessentially creative power.

Poes concerns with the imagination do not lead him to such heights ofpsychological and philosophical exploration. The fact that, in spite of designatingColeridge as the originator of the distinction between fancy and imagination, Poe does nottouch upon Coleridges own differentiation between primary and secondary imagination,already points towards a different aim and a different application. Could it be that Poesimply did not want to go into the metaphysical realm in which he felt Coleridge was

wasting his talents? Such a position would certainly coincide with his lamentation thatColeridge wasted his genius on such profundities, that such a mind should be buried inmetaphysics, and, like the Nycanthes, waste its perfume upon the night alone(Thomspon 1984 [1836]: 11), thus losing sight of his true object of contemplation, namelypoetry itself. In spite of his knowledge and interest in Coleridges main sources amongthe German romantic philosophers, Poes aim, then, seems simply to describe thefaculties with regard to the objects which they produce, which would also explain why hedid not make a clearer distinction between fancy as a verb or a noun, in other words,between the process and the product.

La reine des facults

I will now look at how Baudelaire dealt with the distinction between fancy andimagination. That Baudelaire had read some ofPoes discussions on the mental faculties isa known fact, since several passages of theNotes Nouvelles sur Edgar Poe(published in 1857)are unavowed translations ofPoes The Poetic Principle, in which Poe talks about thetopic - this plagiarism has been largely demonstrated by Paul Valry (1957), Arthur S.Patterson (1903), Claude Richard (1989) and other commentators on Baudelaire as

translator of Poe (see also Wallaert 2004). Very clear evidence that Baudelaire was familiar


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with the distinction between fancy and imagination when he published the HistoiresExtraordinairesin 1857 is also found in the fact that Baudelaire talks about la reine desfaculties from 1855 onwards (in his essay on Ingres, see Baudelaire 1976 [1855]: 585), aphrase which also constituted the title of one of his chapters in his Salon of 1859.

Furthermore, Baudelaires understanding of the distinction between fancy andimagination was enhanced by his reading of Catherine Crowes The Night side of Nature(1848), which had been translated into French as La Face nocturne de la nature. Baudelairecites this source in Le gouvernement de limagination of that same Salonof 1859, andhis translated quotation of Crowe concerning the imagination leaves no doubt thatBaudelaires understood and agreed with the distinction between the mental faculties asPoe had also established it:

- Par imagination, je ne veux pas seulement exprimer l'ide commune implique dans ce motdont on fait si grand abus, laquelle est simplement fantaisie, mais bien l'imagination cratrice,qui est une facult beaucoup plus leve, et qui, en tant que l'homme est fait la ressemblancede Dieu, garde un rapport loign avec cette puissance sublime par laquelle le Crateur conoit,

cre et entretient son univers. (Baudelaire 1976 [1859]: 624)

In La reine des faculties Baudelaire describes in more detail how the imagination works,and this description is also reminiscent of the creative force that uses and recombinesalready existing materials, precisely as we found it in Poe, and also in Coleridgessecondary imagination.

Elle dcompose toute la cration et, avec les matriaux amasss et disposs suivant des rglesdont on ne peut trouver l'origine que dans le plus profond de l'me, elle cre un mondenouveau, elle produit la sensation du neuf. []. L'imagination est la reine du vrai, et le possibleest une des provinces du vrai. Elle est positivement apparente avec l'infini. (Baudelaire 1976[1859]: 621)

With apparente avec linfini we find, moreover, that for Baudelaire too, theimagination is what links the subject to infinity (which in Baudelaires catholic thoughtobviously means the eternal, the divine). In his unavowed quotations and paraphrases ofPoes The Poetic Principle, some of which he repeats in his first essay on ThophileGautier, Baudelaire uses the following words to confirm this:

Cest cet admirable, cet immortel instinct du Beau qui nous fait considrer la Terre et sesspectacles comme un aperu, comme une correspondance du Ciel. []Cest la fois par laposie et travers la posie, par et travers la musique, que lme entrevoit les splendeurssitues derrire le tombeau. [] Ainsi le principe de la posie est, strictement et simplement,laspiration humaine vers une beaut suprieure, et la manifestation de ce principe est dans un

enthousiasme, un enlvement de lme. (Baudelaire 1976 [1859]: 114)2

2In The Poetic Principle we find: An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is thus, plainly, asense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the manifold forms, and sounds, andodours, and sentiments amid which he exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake [...] so is the mereoral or written repetition of these forms, and sounds, and colours, and sentiments, a duplicate source ofdelight. But this mere repetition is not poetry. [...] We still have a thirst unquenchable [...] This thirst belongsto the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is nomere appreciation of the Beauty before us but a wild effort to reach the beauty above, and Thestruggle to apprehend the supernal Lovelinessthis struggle, on the part of souls fittingly constitutedhasgiven to the world all thatwhich it (the world) has ever been enabled to understand and to feelas poetic.

(Thompson 1984 [1850]: 76-77)


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However, says Baudelaire in the same essay, this enlvement de lme should not beconfused with passion, the latter producing what he calls la posie du cur. Theelevation of the soul which he holds to produce poetry is not passion, but theimagination:

Le coeur contient la passion, le coeur contient le dvouement, le crime; lImagination seulecontient la posie. (Baudelaire 1976 [1859]: 115).

So Baudelaire did distinguish between fancy (la fantaisie) and the imagination, and he alsodiscusses fancy in a paragraph which features in another chapter of his 1859 Salon:

... la fantaisie est dautant plus dangereuse quelle est plus facile et plus ouverte; [] elleressemble lamour quinspire une prostitue et qui tombe bien vite dans la purilit ou dans labassesse, dangereuse comme toute libert absolue. Mais la fantaisie est vaste comme luniversmultipli par les tres pensant qui lhabitent. Elle est la premire chose venue, interprte par lepremier venu ; et, si celui-l na pas lme qui jette une lumire magique et surnaturelle surlobscurit naturelle des choses3, elle est une inutilit horrible, elle est la premire venue

souille par le premier venu. (Baudelaire 1976 [1859]: 645)For Baudelaire fancy thus has nothing in common with the imagination: it is unreliable,dangerous, available to all, and if it is not used by those who have imagination it leads totrashy and horrible worthlessness. Considering how clearly he saw the distinction betweenthe two terms, and considering that he knew the meaning of fancy as it was employedboth by Poe and by other Anglo-Saxon authors, it is all the more surprising to observehow Baudelaire translates fancy and imagination when these appear in the tales he gave tothe French public.

Imagination and fancy in the Baudelaire translations

We will begin by looking at how Baudelaire translated the term imagination (andthe related verb forms, imagine(d)), as this is the least problematic of the two. Most of thetime, Baudelaire translates occurrences of imagination with the equivalent terms (nounand verb) in French. Still, there are at least two occurrences where Baudelaire iscompletely off the mark. The first appears in Morella:

These- these speculative writings were, for what reasons I would not imagine, Morellas favourite and constant study, ... (Mabbott 1978 : 225226)

Ces livres, pour des raisons que je ne pouvais concevoir, faisaient son tude constante etfavorite; (Richard 1989: 139)

In Brnice we find a second and more significant occurrence, and here Baudelairetranslates imagination with the term which he himself designated as denoting fancy:

Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into thevery regions of fairy landinto a palace of imaginationinto the wild dominions of monasticthought and erudition ... (Mabbott 1978: 210)

Emergeant ainsi au milieu de la longue nuit qui semblait tre, mais qui ntait pas la non -existence, pour tomber dun coup dans un pays ferique, dans un palais de fantaisie, dans lestranges domaines de la pense et de lrudition monastiques, (Richard 1989: 132)

3Here Baudelaires choice of words echoes Catherine Crowes The Night side of Nature (La Face nocturne de la

nature).


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Baudelaire here inverts the terms fancy and imagination, for no obvious reason, and I willfor now leave these translations without further comment.

The translations of fancy are far more problematic than these two translations of

imagination, since, as we indicated earlier, Poe very often used the verb or the noun tosignal hesitation on the part of the subject and to instil doubt in the reader as to how toposit the events in the narrative, a technique which ranks these tales firmly in the fantasticmode. There are hardly any occurrences of fancy which Baudelaire translated by theequivalent which he used in his own essay (fantaisie), and some of his translations takeaway that fundamental element which characterises the tale as a fantastic, and not a gothicnarrative. So, in The Fall of the House of Usher,we find three occurrences where fancysignals the possibility that the narrator can no longer trust his own perception of things.

These occurrences are all translated in a way that partly or completely annuls thispossibility in the French version:

1. ... in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, ...(Mabbott 1978: 406)

dans le sens intrieur et mystrieux de luvre, je crus dcouvrir (Richard 1989 : 413)4

2. ... it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me) itappeared to me that, ... (Mabbott 1978: 414)... il mavait sembl, mais je conclus bien vite une illusion de mon imagination, il mavait semblque (Richard 1989 : 418)

3. ... the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragons unnaturalshriek as described by the romancer. (Mabbott 1978: 414) lexacte contrepartie du cri surnaturel du dragon dcrit par le romancier, et tel que monimagination se ltait dj figur. (Richard 1989: 419)

In the first case, Baudelaires use of crus dcouvrir, combined with otherelements in the translation of the tale (which I discuss at length in Wallaert 2009), stronglyworks to annul the fantastic mode in which The Fall of the House of Usher is cast. Thesame can be said of Baudelaires replacement of fancyby imagination in example twoand three, where, moreover, the actions of the fancy are also mistranslated: deceivedand conjured up have rather less positive connotations than the act of creating anillusion and the verb phrase stait figur have. Baudelaires use of imaginationchanges the perception of the narrator, who is not prone to uncontrollable fancies whichlead him to arbitrary associations, but who becomes a man with a perverse imagination,and these occurrences all work to pull the narrative into the gothic mode. That such a

view also coincides with the image which Baudelaire painted of Poe is, in my opinion, not

a coincidence, since such interventions can be observed throughout the Baudelairetranslations. Thus we find, in Ligeia... it is by that sweet word alone by LigeiathatI bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of her who is no more (Mabbott 1978: 311)translated as ...il me suffit de ce mot si doux, Ligeia! pour ramener devant les yeux de mapense limage de celle qui nest plus. (Richard 1989: 363), and the phrase in thedistemper of her fancy (Mabbott 1978: 323) we find translated as au drangement deses ides (Richard 1989: 370). In The Oval Portrait we again find the inversion of thedistinction, as Baudelaire twice translates fancy by imagination. Interestingly, in the first ofthese two cases it occurs in Poes text in the phrase the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe,

4Richard here gives je crus dcouvrir, whereas Le Dantecs edition features je dcouvris. Richard makes

no comment on the change.


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(Mabbott 1978: 662), which is Poes gentle way of stabbing at the gothic gloom of theEnglish author. Baudelaires translation bylimagination de mistress Radcliffe (Richard1989: 590) shows that the translator was either unfamiliar with Radcliffes pure gothic, orthat he wanted to cast Radcliffes work in a more positive light than Poe was doing, since,

as I have indicated at the beginning of this article, Baudelaire tended to associate Poesown tales, and even Poes persona, with the genre. Another significant occurrence in TheOval Portrait is where Poe associates fancy with half-sleep (a subject which intriguedPoe, and which he not only exploited in his some of his tales, but also discusses in the

Marginalia, see Thompson 1984 [1846]: 1383):

Least of all, could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its half slumber, had mistaken thehead for that of a living person. (Mabbott 1978: 664)

Encore moins devais-je croire que mon imagination, sortant dun demi -sommeil, et pris latte pour celle dune personne vivante. (Richard 1989: 591)

More cases of the inversion of fancy and imagination are found in The Pit andthe Pendulum, the first one of which, moreover, features fancy in the company ofassociation:

1. It conveyed to my soul the idea ofrevolutionperhaps from its association in fancy with the burr ofa mill-wheel. (Mabbott 1978: 681)

Ce bruit apportait dans mon me lide dune rotation, peut-tre cause que dans mon imaginationje lassociais avec une roue de moulin. (Richard 1989 : 646)

2. And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest theremust be in the grave. (Mabbott 1978: 682)

Et alors se glissa dans mon imagination, comme une riche note musicale, lide du repos dlicieux

qui nous attend dans la tombe. (Richard 1989: 647)

It is mesmerising, especially concerning the second case, to see how Baudelaire, who hashimself described the imagination as a supreme power, can translate that same faculty asbeing liable to intrusions by unwanted ideas. More such examples occur in The BlackCat, where each occurrence of fancy is translated byimagination: ... I fancied that thecat avoided my presence (Mabbott 1978: 851) is here translated by je mimaginai quele chat vitait ma prsence (Richard 1989: 684), and the more elaborate description offancy as an impressionable faculty, liable to be used and abused by anyone and anything(like the prostitute with which Baudelaire had himself compared it) in

... Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for the

startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy.(Mabbott 1978: 853)

is translated by

Quoique je satisfisse ainsi lestement ma raison, sinon tout fait ma conscience, relativement aufait surprenant que je viens de raconteur, il nen fit pas moins sur mon imagination uneimpression profonde. (Richard 1989: 696)

Baudelaire sometimes translates fancy by either esprit, as in The PrematureBurial,where For some minutes after this fancy possessed me (Mabbott 1978: 966) istranslated by Pendant quelques instants aprs que cette pense se fut empare de mon

esprit (Richard 1989: 762), a translation which, in the light of what we have seen, still


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seems rather unsatisfactory. Another example of this choice is found in The Pit and thePendulum, where Baudelaire translates in the disorder of my fancy (Mabbott 1978:685) bydans le dsordre de ma pense (Richard 1989: 650).

In order to evaluate the overall effect of these translation choices, I would beginby stating that it is particularly the translations of fancy by pense or ide whichstrongly pull the French text towards the gothic mode. Thus, instead of having a narrator

who falls prey to involuntary mental leaps (usually in some altered state of consciousness),Baudelaires narrators reason and think and by turning them into rational beings hecancels the possibility for the reader to suspend the positing of the events as eithersupernatural or conjured up in the narrators disturbed mind. I might then add that fortodays French readers of Poe, the inverted translation of fancy by imagination, thoughimpossible to account for on Baudelaires part, may work slightly less to annul thefantastic element in the tales, since in contemporary French usage the term imaginationcarries less of its former content of sublimity and beauty. Still, any French speaker will

certainly find a great difference between the terms fantaisie and imagination asdesignating mental faculties. In any case, considering that Baudelaire called theimagination la reine des facults, giving it such a role in his translations is a highlycontradictory translation strategy: he had made the distinction very clearly himself and hadread and confirmed what Poe and others had to say about the topic, which makes hisrepeated inversions an inexplicable choice.

Findings and conclusions

Baudelaire, then, though aware of the essential distinction between the mentalfaculties, seems not to have suspected and did not repeat the consistency with which Poeapplied this distinction in his tales. Such an approach to Poes work coincides with the

image which Baudelaire forged for Poe in his two biographical essays, where he presentedPoe as a degenerate and a drunk whose accidents of genius were the results of his so-called opium-abuse, rather than the creations of a skilled technician.5 This seems to me ageneral attitude on Baudelaires part which greatly influenced his translation strategies, andthe abundance of examples where Baudelaire does not translate the fundamentaldifference between the two mental faculties, of which I have only given a handful here,confirms this impression. In other words, I believe that the consistently invertedtranslation of fancy by imagination substantiates Baudelaires tendency to underestimatePoes technical skills, and I associate this attitude with Baudelaires specific project forhis author, a project of appropriation not only of Poes persona, but also of Poes work.

This appropriation of the work can obviously be located in Baudelaires plagiarisms of

Poes ideas on literary composition, and more subtly in the fact that he moulded certainaspects of Poes fiction to his own literary tastes and interests.

As far as Poes distinction between fancy and imagination is concerned, I haveshown that this is largely derived from Coleridges description, though Poe does notexplicitly acknowledge this, and though his treatment of the distinction between the

5See Baudelaire, Charles. 1852. Edgar Allan Poe: sa vie et ses ouvrages. In Le Dantec (ed.), 1951, p. 1001-1029 and Baudelaire, Charles. 1856. Edgar Poe: sa vie et ses uvres. In Le Dantec (ed.), 1951, p. 1030-1048.


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mental faculties is less concerned with the psychological questions which interestedColeridge, and more with the implications it had for our reading of poetry and ourexperience of art in general. Poe did apply the difference between fancy and imaginationas mental processes in his tales, where fancy in particular plays the role of signpost of the

fantastic mode. I have demonstrated that when Baudelaires translations do not apply thedistinction he makes in his own essays, this translation strategy can result in an annulmentof the fantastic mode and create a more gothic type of narrative. We can attribute thisstrategyto Baudelaires specific project for his translations of Poes work, and ascribe hisinversion in translation of fancy and imagination to his recurrent underrating of Poesconsistency of thought.

References

BAUDELAIRE, C., Oeuvres Compltes II, Ed. Claude Pichois, Paris: Gallimard Pliade,

1976.

BERMAN, A., La retraduction comme espace de la traduction, Palimpsestes (Retraduire),1990, n4,Paris : Publication of the Sorbonne Nouvelle - Editions Erasmus, 1-7.

BERMAN, A., Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne, Paris: Gallimard, 1995.

COLERIDGE, S.T., Biographia Literaria or Biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions.London: J.M. Dent & SonsEverymans Library, 1956 [1817].

LE DANTEC, Y. (Ed.), Edgar Allan Poe: uvres en prose, Paris: ditions Gallimard Pliade, 1951.

LEFEVERE, A., Mother Courages Cucumbers: Text, System and Refraction in a Theoryof Literature.Modern Language Studies, 1982, 12: 4, 3-20.

MABBOT, T.O. (Ed.), Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Tales and Sketches (1831-1842).Vols. 2 & 3, London: Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, 1978.

MESCHONNIC, H., Potique du traduire, Paris: Verdier, 1999.

PATTERSON, A.-S., Linfluence dEdgar Poe sur Charles Baudelaire, Grenoble: Allier Frres,1903

RICHARD, C (Ed.),Edgar Allan PoeContes, Essais, Pomes, Paris: Laffont, 1989.

RICHARDS, I.A., Coleridge on Imagination, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960.

THOMPSON, G.R. (Ed.), Edgar Allan Poe: Essays and Reviews, New York: Library ofAmerica, 1984.

TODOROV, T., Introduction la littrature fantastique, Paris : ditions du Seuil, 1970.

VALERY, P., uvres I. Paris: Gallimard - Pliade, 1957, 598-612.

WALLAERT, I., Baudelaires Rewriting of Poe: A Para-Textual Critique of the Translations -

Ph.D. thesis, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Library, 2004.


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WALLAERT, I., Du fantastique au gothique : La chute de la maison Usher de CharlesBaudelaire. Traduire, 2009, n219, 47-69.

WORDSWORTH, J. The Infinite I AM. In Gravil, R., Newlyn, L. and Roe, N.,Coleridges Imagination. Essays in memory of Pete Laver. 1985, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.22-52.

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