sincerity in, say, religious utterances--in Handel's Hallelujah chorus, for example, the thrilling "For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth" becomes in French the oily, sycophantic language of the court: "Pour le règne de Dieu tout-puissant seigneur". But English can turn Verlaine's lightly brushed-in atmospherics into an earthbound plod. The subtle, shifting music of "L'or des cheveux, l'azur des yeux, la fleur des chairs" becomes the brassy "Blonde hair, blue eyes, the flesh in flower". And the poker-faced subtle satire of "Il est juste-milieu, botaniste et pansu" becomes the pedestrian "A young man of means, a botanist, potbellied".from The Times Literary Supplement: Verlaine, Rimbaud--and John Ashbery
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