Monday, September 10, 2012
A Joke
Enid Starkie, Baudelaire (Norfolk: New Directions, 1958), p. 215 (end note on p. 590), discussing Baudelaire's study of Edgar Allan Poe:
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He was for a time so absorbed in this work that one of his less reverent friends once asked him flippantly: 'Is it true that you are still on the Poe?'9Wallon's letter is dated January 31, 1854. Here is the relevant sentence from Eugène Crépet, Baudelaire: Étude Biographique (Paris: Éditions Messein, 1907), p. 453:
9 Champfleury, quoted by Crépet in his Baudelaire, p. 453, letter from Wallon to Baudelaire.
Il n'est pas possible que vous soyez toujours et constamment sur le Poe (cette fredaine est de Champfleury) et que vous ne visitiez jamais l'île Saint-Louis.My translation:
It isn't possible that you are always and constantly on the Poe (this jest is Champfleury's) and that you never visit the Île Saint-Louis.In French, Poe sounds like pot, i.e. pot de chambre, or chamber pot. Ian Jackson tells me: "I note that the Grand Robert quotes such phrases as Mettre un enfant sur son pot and aller au pot — so the de chambre is understood."
Labels: noctes scatologicae
