Sandalwood (also self-published and printed by The Auburn Journal press) contains forty-two poems and nineteen of Smith's translations from the French of Charles Baudelaire. It was limited to 250 copies, and bound in dark green wrappers.
Smith first characterized it, in a letter to George Sterling of 11 April 1922, as it being "made up entirely of love poems." On 10 July 1925, Smith wrote to Donald Wandrei, "most of the poems are not in my best style . . . 'Rêve Parisien,' one of my Baudelaires, is the best poem in the book."
The translations from Baudelaire are the highlight of the book. Smith noted, in the same letter to Wandrei quoted above, that "as far as I know, I am the only translator who has done them in their original metres. It is far harder to write good alexandrines in English than in French."
Donald Wandrei paid half the cost of the printing ($50), and about six months after publication Smith wrote to George Sterling that his own stock had dwindled to about thirty.
I quote here not one of Smith's Baudelaire's, but a poem from the main portion of Sandalwood that kind of introduces the Baudelaires. In Sandalwood it is titled "On Reading Baudelaire"--it was later retitled "On Re-Reading Baudelaire"
Forgetting still what holier lilies bloom
Secure within the garden of lost years,
We water with the fitfulness of tears
Wan myrtles with an acrid sick perfume;
Lethean lotus, laurels of our doom,
Dark amarant with tall unswaying spears,
Await funereal autumn and its fears
In this grey land that sullen suns illume.
Ivy and rose and hellebore we twine.
Voluptuous as love, or keen as grief,
Some fleeing fragrance lures us in the gloom
To Paphian dells or vales of Proserpine. . . .
But all the flowers, with dark or pallid leaf,
Become at last a garland for the tomb.
Sandalwood can be celebrated as the first gathering of some of Smith's translations of Baudelaire.
Thanks for informing us of this centenary. Indeed an occasion to celebrate!
ReplyDelete-- Jaojao
Ashton Smith was probably the only pulp writer who was highly regarded in the literary world before he was published in the pulps. He turned to fiction just too late - a few years earlier and his style and themes would have fit in with the popularity of James Branch Cabell during the early/mid-1920s, and he could have had story collections in hardback. I wish his poetry was easier (cheaper) to obtain, and better-known. For anyone wondering, Sterling is very much worth a look, too - I only knew of him through Smith, and having got around to reading his poetry was surprised that this was the case . . .
ReplyDeleteAnd it's all too easy to forget that CAS had no formal education and hence his French would have been self-taught, which makes this particular book a double proof of his talent (double shadow?).