R.J. Dent's Blog, page 8
January 13, 2023
Capital of Pain by Paul Éluard
Translated from the French into English by R J Dent
Capital of Pain (Capitale de la douleur) is a book of poems by French surrealist poet Paul Éluard.
When Paul Éluard’s Capital of Pain was published it in 1926, it caused a sensation. Generally considered to be Éluard’s most powerful poetry collection, one critic wrote: ‘In Capital of Pain, Éluard writes poetry that is pure, spontaneous and intense.’
True to the tenets of surrealism, Paul Éluard’s poems in Capital of Pain contain details of his controversial and complicated personal life. As the collection’s name suggests, Capital of Pain is a document of the poet’s private anguish and personal agony made public. Consequently, the poetry in Capital of Pain crackles with the immense power of autobiography viewed through the lens of surrealism .
Today Paul Éluard is considered to be the most gifted of the French surrealist poets and Capital of Pain his surrealist masterpiece.
In his 1965 film, Alphaville, Jean-Luc Godard had his main characters, Lemmy Caution and Natacha von Braun, both reading Eluard’s book at various times.
In a promotional photo for Alphaville, Anna Karina, who played Natacha von Braun, can be seen holding a copy of Capitole de la douleur.
Alphaville promo photo: Anna Karina holding a copy of Capital of Pain.Capital of Pain by Paul Éluard, translated into modern English by R J Dent, was published by Black Scat Books on February 16th, 2023.
Book details:
Title: Capital of Pain
Author: Paul Ėluard
Translator: R J Dent
Publisher: Black Scat Books
Publication Date: February 16th, 2023
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 132
ISBN-13: 979-8986922485
Item Weight: 7 ounces (198.447 grams)
Dimensions: 5.06 inches x 0.33 inches x 7.81 inches (12.85 cm x 0.84 cm x 19.84 cm)
Book details by the publisher: https://blackscatbooks.com/2023/02/16/surreal-deal/
Purchase link (US): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BVT3QXGD/
Purchase link (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BVT3QXGD/
Purchase link (Aus) https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0BVT3QXGD/
Translator’s website: www.rjdent.com
Capital of Pain by Paul Eluard
Translated from the French into modern English by R J Dent
Capital of Pain (Capitale de la douleur) is a book of poems by French surrealist poet Paul Eluard. The collection was first published in 1926.
In 1965, Jean-Luc Godard adapted several of the concepts in Éluard’s book in his film Alphaville and quoted from it throughout. The main character, Lemmy Caution, can be seen to be reading the book.
In a promotional still, Anna Karina, who played Natacha von Braun, can be seen holding a copy of Capitole de la douleur.
Anna Karina (as Natacha von Braun) promoting Capital of Pain.Capital of Pain by Paul Eluard, translated into modern English by R J Dent, will be published in 2023 by Black Scat Books.
Book details: https://blackscatbooks.com/forthcoming-4/
Her Three Daughters by Pierre Louÿs
Translated into modern English by R J Dent
Her Three Daughters by Pierre Louÿs, translated from the French into modern English by R J Dent, is now available from New Urge.
Synopsis: A young man moves into a new apartment and receives an advanced education in the permutations of sex from a mother and her three—surprisingly well-educated—daughters. Part memoir, part confession, Her Three Daughters is Pierre Louÿs at his erotic best.
“Louÿs’s jolly saga of sexual insatiability…is one of the handful of erotic works that achieve true literary status.” — Susan Sontag
“Among all Pierre Louÿs’s books, this is undoubtedly my favourite, the most moving, most uplifting and sometimes the most terrifying, the purest, the least artificial and the most modern. A masterpiece.” —André Pieyre de Mandiargues
“Amazing! It’s erotica, but high-quality erotica!” — Jean d’Ormesson
“One of the most moving books ever written on the fatality of desires.” —Annie Le Brun
“Here, without question, is Pierre Louÿs’ erotic masterpiece. The strength of the novel does not come from its eventual biographical value, but from the constant transgression that manifests itself within it—containing all the erotic themes dear to the writer, elevated to a singular power. We also find here the key qualities of Louÿs’ style: the liveliness of the dialogue, the precision of the language, the irony, the relentlessness with which certain obscene words are constantly repeated. This scandalous book constitutes a total profanation and derision of the bourgeois universe to which the author belonged.” —Jean-Paul Goujon
Book details:
Title: Her Three Daughters
Author: Pierre Louÿs
Translator: R J Dent
Language: English
Publisher: New Urge
Publication Date: February 13, 2023
ISBN: 979-8986922478
Format: Paperback
Pages: 340
Dimensions: 12.85 cm x 2.16 cm x 19.84 cm (5.06 inches x 0.85 inches x 7.81 inches)
Weight: 15.5 ounces (439.41 grams)
Publisher’s book details: https://blackscatbooks.com/2023/02/26/all-in-the-family/
Purchase link (UK): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BW2GGCQP
Purchase link (US): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BW2GGCQP
Purchase link (Aus): https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0BW2GGCQP
Translator’s website: www.rjdent.com
Her Three Daughters by Pierre Louys
Translated into modern English by R J Dent
Her Three Daughters by Pierre Louys, translated from the French into modern English by R J Dent, will be published in 2023 by Black Scat Books.
Synopsis: A young man moves into a new apartment. Before long, he meets his neighbors – a woman aged forty and her three daughters. One by one, all four women begin to give the young man a comprehensive sexual education.
Her Three Daughters has been described by Annie Le Brun as ‘one of the most moving books ever written on the fatality of desires.’
Pierre Louys wrote Trois Filles de leur mère in around 1910, although it was first published, posthumously, in 1926.
Book details: https://blackscatbooks.com/forthcoming-4//
December 31, 2022
R J Dent reads from The Songs of Maldoror
Book launch of The Songs of Maldoror
Infinity Land Press’ Unnatural Encounters multi-media event
The book launch of R J Dent’s English translation of The Songs of Maldoror, published on 1st October 2022 by Infinity Land Press was filmed and photographed.
The video of R J Dent reading extracts from The Songs of Maldoror is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zawc6DlFcn4&t=1shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zawc6DlFcn4&t=1s
The details of the book; dimensions, weight, pages, illustrations, etc, are available here: http://www.rjdent.com/the-songs-of-maldoror-2/
and here: https://www.infinitylandpress.com/the-songs-of-maldoror
December 23, 2022
A Judge Deceived by the Marquis de Sade
Translated into modern English by R J Dent
Published by New Urge Editions
A Judge Deceived is a novella written by the Marquis de Sade and published in 1926 in his short story collection, Stories, Tales and Fables.
According to Sade’s footnote, A Judge Deceived ‘was completed on July 16, 1787, at 10 o’clock in
the evening’.
A Judge Deceived is now available in R J Dent’s modern English translation.
It is published by New Urge Editions as #24 in the Pocket Erotica series.
ISBN 13: 979-8-9869224-3-0
Pages: 174
Language: English
Format: Paperback
October 23, 2022
The Songs of Maldoror Book Launch – 1st Oct 2022
Infinity Land Press launched R J Dent’s modern English translation of Le Comte de Lautréamont’s subterranean classic, The Songs of Maldoror on 1st October 2022.
The Songs of Maldoror is now available as a hardback, illustrated edition with 37 full colour illustrations throughout. The illustrations were created by Karolina Urbaniak and they capture the dark undercurrents and savage beauty of Lautréamont’s deeply disturbing poetic novel of a man’s obsession with death, mutilation, murder and mayhem. The book includes a Foreword by Audrey Szasz and an Afterword by Jeremy Reed.
At the launch, R J Dent read a short extract from each canto. The readings were accompanied by soundscapes and projected illustrations from The Songs of Maldoror. Images and soundscapes were created by Karolina Urbaniak.
The event and the launch of The Songs of Maldoror was photographed and filmed. Audio recording were also made of all of the readings.
R J Dent’s modern English translation of Le Comte de Lautréamont’s The Songs of Maldoror is now available from Infinity Land Press.
Book details:
Title: The Songs of Maldoror
Author: Le Comte de Lautréamont
Translator: R J Dent
Illustrator: Karolina Urbaniak
Foreword: Audrey Szasz
Afterword: Jeremy Reed
Publisher: Infinity Land Press
ISBN: 978-1-8382803-7-6
Format: Hardback
Dimensions: 210mm (8¼“) x 148mm (5¾”)
Weight: 672 grams (1.48 lbs)
Pages: 288
Language: English
The Songs of Maldoror in R J Dent’s modern English translation is available from Infinity Land Press here: https://www.infinitylandpress.com/the-songs-of-maldoror
Book details on http://www.rjdent.com are available here: http://www.rjdent.com/the-songs-of-maldoror-2/
John Wiseniewski’s interview with R J Dent, discussing, the Marquis de Sade, Alfred Jarry and The Songs of Maldoror can be read here: https://www.greatweatherformedia.com/greatweatherformediacom/2022/9/27/an-interview-with-rj-dent
Photo credits:
Book photos: Karolina Urbaniak
Event photos: http://www.tommophoto.com/
October 4, 2022
Le Comte de Lautréamont’s The Songs of Maldoror
Translated into modern English by R J Dent
Published by Infinity Land Press
‘The Songs of Maldoror‘ written and published between 1868 and 1869 by Le Comte de Lautréamont – the nom de plume of the Uruguayan-born French writer Isidore Lucien Ducasse – is a dazzlingly macabre novel consisting of six superlative cantos. Overflowing with lucid poetic imagery and saturated with sublime malevolence, it channels the ominous dynamism of the most exquisite nightmares and perfidious fantasies.
A jewel in the crown of literary cruelty, this visionary masterpiece of prose-poetry was rediscovered by the Surrealists in the early 20th century, an arcane text emerging from obscurity to be hailed as a dark progenitor of their movement.
‘Lautréamont’s The Songs of Maldoror [is] the black bible… almost the basic dream text of surrealism.’ J.G. Ballard
‘The Songs of Maldoror is an enigma of redoubtable power.’ Jacques Derrida
‘The Songs of Maldoror is the expression of a revelation so complete it seems to exceed human potential.’ André Breton
Translated into modern English by R J Dent
Illustrated by Karolina Urbaniak With essays by Audrey Szasz and Jeremy Reed
Book details here: https://www.infinitylandpress.com/the-songs-of-maldoror
[image error]September 29, 2022
Brushing The Soil Away: An Interview With R J Dent
September 29, 2022
R J DENT IN CONVERSATION WITH JOHN WISNIEWSKI
To honor National Translation Month, we are pleased to present an interview with the poet, novelist, translator, essayist and short-story writer, R J Dent.
Created with GIMPJohn Wisniewski: R J, could you tell us about your new translation of Le Comte de Lautréamont’s The Songs of Maldoror? What was it like translating this classic?
R J Dent: I was a bit apprehensive when I started because Maldoror had such an impact on me when I first read it. A few years ago, someone said: “Once you’ve read Maldoror, you’ll never forget reading it – and you’ll never recover from reading it.” Having read it several times, and having now translated it, I agree with that.
Translating it was something of a tightrope-walking act; there were four English versions of Maldoror when I started translating it: Rodker’s (1924), Wernham’s (1943), Lykiard’s (1970) and Knight’s (1978). I had to thread my way between all four, using my own vocabulary and not their vocabularies, which wasn’t particularly difficult, as they all used quite old-fashioned language. Although Knight’s was the most recent translation, it was the one I liked the least, mostly because there was so much of Lautréamont’s actual text missing. When I translated The Songs of Maldoror, I tried to stay as close to Lautréamont’s original text as I could, but I also tried to translate the text so that it became the English text that Lautréamont might have written if he had written Maldoror in twenty-first century English.
John Wisniewski: Are there any particular authors that you like?
R J Dent: Yes. I tend to gravitate to French authors – Pascale Petit, Philippe Djian, Gustave Flaubert, Jean Genet, Georges Bataille – they seem to be able to write about sex and death in a way that the English can’t. French fiction has a psychological depth that’s absent from many English stories. There are exceptions, and there are English authors whose works I enjoy reading: Angela Carter, J.G. Ballard and Anthony Burgess spring to mind. I also enjoy reading Jeremy Reed’s poetry and prose. He has a way of writing that’s totally different to how anyone else writes. I like some American authors too: William S. Burroughs and Cormac McCarthy particularly.
John Wisniewski: When did you begin writing?
R J Dent: I started writing when I was twelve years old. I wrote my first poem then. Then, after spending a few years learning to write properly, I started writing seriously and publishing in 1998 – poems and short stories to start with, and a few essays. In 2005, I had seventy poems and fifteen short stories published and knew I was on the cusp of a career. Then I wrote a novel, Myth, published in 2006. After that I started translating. The Flowers of Evil was my first full-length translation of a French classic. It was only a matter of time before I attempted translating The Songs of Maldoror.
John Wisniewski: What was the experience of translating Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil like?
R J Dent: My own translation of The Flowers of Evil came out of my frustration with one particular English translation. I was studying Baudelaire at university and the set text was a bilingual edition of The Flowers of Evil. I soon realised that the English “versions” were not even close to the French originals. So I started to translate a few of the poems myself, just to see if I could get a sense of what Baudelaire was actually saying. If I may use an analogy, the translation process was a bit like a facet of archaeology, in that I had a valuable artefact, buried in the soil, and my job, as a translator was to gently brush the soil away until the object was totally uncovered, and could stand there, in another era, pristine and perfect.
To use another analogy, the process involved a form of time travel – I would go back to nineteenth century Paris, and absorb the sights, sounds, smells and textures of whatever was being described. I would then bring that French description back into the present day, having transformed it into twenty-first century English. Those analogies both apply to the process of translating The Songs of Maldoror too. I imaginatively visited the places described so vividly by Lautréamont, and then I brought them back from nineteenth-century France and described them in modern English.
John Wisniewski: Could you tell us about your horror novel, Myth . What inspired you to write it?
R J Dent: As well as French fiction, I love Greek stories, tales, myths, dramas and the few Greek novels that were written years ago – Daphnis and Chloe by Longus being a particular favourite. After I read Robert Graves’ comment about Greek myths having regional variations throughout Greece, I wrote a novel in which English tourists encounter an aspect of a dangerous Greek myth. The myth manifests itself in a way the protagonists had not considered and, as with all myths, it has a devastating and destructive impact. I knew that all myths were metaphors for things that had actually happened, so the novel’s mantra was: every myth is based on a terrible truth, which became the tagline of the promotional poster. Essentially, I rewrote the Bellerophon and chimera myth, setting it on a Greek island in the twenty-first century. Myth is a horror/fantasy novel, and although there’s a lot of graphic violence and sex in it, it was a great deal of fun to write. Ultimately, it prepared me for the horrors I encountered in The Songs of Maldoror.
John Wisniewski: You have also translated the writing of Alfred Jarry. What was that like?
R J Dent: I translated Alfred Jarry’s Speculations into English for the editor of Black Scat Books at his request. He’s a huge Jarry fan and was quite persuasive, so I accepted the job. I’m very pleased with the resulting book. Jarry’s not easy to translate because of the surrealism of his humour – it’s tricky to catch his tone and convey it accurately. However, I’ve had quite a bit of positive feedback, so I think I succeeded.
John Wisniewski: You have also translated the writings of Marquis de Sade. What was the experience like?
R J Dent: Again, he was an author that interested me as a translator. I started with his Last Will and Testament because it’s an important historical document. That was published by Philosophy Now. I then translated a few of Sade’s stories, including Retaliation and The Self-Made Cuckold, both published by New Urge Editions. After that, I translated Sade’s book-length essay, Some Thoughts on the Novel for Oneiros Books. Every so often, I go back to Sade and translate something else. He’s a very interesting writer. A moralist too, surprisingly.
John Wisniewski: How do you choose the written works you will translate?
R J Dent: I only take on translation projects that interest me, by which I mean either authors or books that interest me. That’s it. So far, I’ve translated some very interesting and important authors, including Alfred Jarry, Alcaeus, Charles Baudelaire, the Marquis de Sade, Antonin Artaud, Arthur Rimbaud, Louis Aragon, Georges Bataille, and obviously, Le Comte de Lautréamont.
John Wisniewski: R J, I’d like to talk a little more about your translation of The Songs of Maldoror. It’s published by Infinity Land Press and due out on 1st October, this year. Could you tell us what is different about your translation of The Songs of Maldoror to any other version of it?
R J Dent: The main difference between my translation of Lautréamont’s classic and other versions is the language I use. I’ve brought The Songs of Maldoror into the twenty-first century for English readers. As for the book itself, that is very different to every preceding edition of Maldoror. Infinity Land Press has made it into something far beyond my expectations. For a start, it’s an illustrated hardback edition, with full colour illustrations created by photographer Karolina Urbaniak. Her illustrations are very dark and very confrontational and they complement Lautréamont’s transgressive text perfectly. There are 37 illustrations throughout, including the cover, which gives an indication of the type of image you’ll see inside the book. Also, the avant-garde writer, Audrey Szasz has written a thought-provoking Foreword to the book, and the poet Jeremy Reed has written an Afterword that is an in-depth look at Lautréamont’s life and death. So The Songs of Maldoror that Infinity Land Press is publishing and launching on 1st October this year is a multi-media artefact, a hardback, illustrated, subterranean literary classic, bookended by two insightful essays written by two of today’s most relevant and exciting writers.
John Wisniewski: Any future plans and projects, R J ?
R J Dent: Yes, there are lots of projects; some completed, some with publishers, some just started, some waiting to be started. But unfortunately, I’m not going to talk about any of them. I don’t like to talk about them while I bring them to completion, as I feel it dissipates their energy. However, I’m very happy to discuss projects once they’re in book form because then people can see and read what I’m talking about.
The online version of this interview, published in Great Weather for Media is available here:
https://www.greatweatherformedia.com/greatweatherformediacom/2022/9/27/an-interview-with-rj-dent
Posted 8 minutes ago
September 10, 2022
The Songs of Maldoror
Translated into English by R J Dent
Written between 1868 and 1869 by Le Comte de Lautréamont, the pseudonym of Isidore Ducasse, The Songs of Maldoror was discovered by the Surrealists and hailed as a dark progenitor of their movement.
This new version of Lautréamont’s influential masterpiece is translated into modern English by R J Dent and is published by Infinity Land Press on 1st October 2022.
The Songs of Maldoror is illustrated throughout with Karolina Urbaniak’s savagely beautiful illustrations. It has a Foreword by Audrey Szasz and an Afterword by Jeremy Reed.
Title: The Songs of Maldoror
Author: Le Comte de Lautréamont
Translator: R J Dent
Illustrator: Karolina Urbaniak
Foreword: Audrey Szasz
Afterword: Jeremy Reed
Publisher: Infinity Land Press
ISBN: 978-1-8382803-7-6
Format: Hardback
Pages: 294
Language: English
R J Dent: http://www.rjdent.com/
Infinity Land Press: https://www.infinitylandpress.com/
