R.J. Dent is a renowned translator of French literature, whose published significant works include The Songs of Maldoror(Infinity Land Press), The Flowers of Evil (Incunabula), Speculations(Black Scat Books) and The Dead Man(Incunabula), amongst many others. He is also a poet, novelist and essayist. He recently published a non-fiction true crime account of the Blanche Monnier case; Screaming at the Window(Kernpunkt Press).  I sat down with him on Zoom to speak about his many projects, including his recent translation of Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Eviland neglected novella Fanfarlo, as well as his keen interest in the erotic and its complexities, as explored in French literature. Afterwards, we conducted the following questions over email.

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Walter Benjamin writes, “It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another.” You have translated and worked extensively on some of the titans of French decadent and surrealist literature: Lautréamont, André Breton, Alfred Jarry, Bataille, Pierre Louys, Paul Éluard, Sade, Baudelaire. Firstly, what motivated you to translate these texts?

There are several reasons I’ve translated books: it might be because they’ve not been translated into English before, or because the existing English translation is dated or is perhaps flawed in some way. Sometime I translate a book that I like, or a book that I’ve been asked to translate by a publisher. That’s happened several times; I translated Alfred Jarry’s Speculations into English because the publisher asked me to; the same for Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s The Future’s Eve.

Secondly, can you describe your process of translation and how you attempt to release language in your own from the spell of another?

No. Sorry. Those answers would give away my techniques and methods. They’re career secrets.

Translating these complex and dreamlike worlds must be quite an immersive experience. Can you describe, on a phenomenological level, how it feels to enter a poem or story?

I can do that by analogy. Entering a text to translate it is finding a word or phrase that acts as a key opening a door into the world that the text describes. I use that door to enter that world. The actual process involves me changing the language of that world without really seeing the words; it’s more that I’m seeing the scene and then I describe that scene using the English words that are replacements for the French words that are there.

You recently published a translation of Baudelaire’s seminal The Flowers of Evil, which, for many of us, remains a pivotal catalyst of the poetic imagination. His poem “A Carcass” depicts the beautiful corruption of a corpse rotting; it’s a slow marriage of eroticism and death. Can you speak about your attraction to the French Decadent movement and its key ideas?

Most of the fiction that I love, French fiction in particular, is the type of fiction which deals with sex and death in a profound, mature, and often explicit way. English culture tends to shy away from both of those subjects, but the French, especially in their fiction, embrace them, examine them, and depict them quite graphically, explicitly. It’s not really surprising that Edgar Allan Poe’s stories were so popular in France. Sade could only have been French.

You have also recently translated Baudelaire’s neglected novella Fanfarlo. Can you describe this work?

Yes. Fanfarlo is Baudelaire’s only novella, written ten years before he published The Flowers of Evil. It’s a semi-autobiographical story about a poet and art critic who gets involved with an erotic dancer. It’s based on Baudelaire’s relationship with Jeanne Duval. Fanfarlo and The Flowers of Evil are both published by Incunabula.

I have read Bataille’s The Dead Man previously but found your translation extremely moving and that helped me reconsider the text as one of Bataille’s most emotionally profound works. What did you find in this harrowing story?

I’m afraid you’re going to find me giving the same answer over and over again. In The Dead Man, Bataille combines and entwines sex and death in a way I hadn’t encountered before in fiction. Bataille skilfully describes Maria’s descent from a woman who tries desperately to fulfil her lover’s dying wish, and the associated anguish and guilt she feels at failing to grant it, into the naked, drunk woman intent on physically degrading herself as a form of existential punishment, and it was for me a deeply profound meditation on the destructive power of guilt. For me, it’s one of Bataille’s most powerful stories. I translated it because I felt it was undeservedly neglected.

Your translation of Lautréamont’s The Songs of Maldoror features a striking foreword and afterword from Audrey Szasz and Jeremy Reed, respectively. It also includes the extraordinary visual artwork of Karolina Urbaniak documenting bandaged dolls, octopi, bloodied organs clamped to machines in perverse autopsies. Can you speak about the creation of this beautiful object with Infinity Land Press?

Yes. My translation of The Songs of Maldoror needed a publisher. I approached Infinity Land Press and they were very interested in the project. Karolina suggested that she illustrate it with photographs that focused on the dark themes and subjects that permeate Lautréamont’s text. Hence that series of incredible photos that look like paintings.

I asked Jeremy to provide an afterword and Infinity Land Press asked Audrey to write the introduction. Both agreed and that’s how Maldoror became work that was then bookended by two essays by two very talented writers, and illustrated by an incredible photographer. I was, obviously, very happy with the finished item. As you say, it’s a very beautiful object.

We’ve just finished work on a companion volume which is a collection my translations of all of Lautréamont’s other written work. It includes everything he wrote before and after Maldoror: the draft of the First Canto of Maldoror, Poésies, his letters and various fragments. We’ve called it Lautréamont’s Apocrypha.

There are passages of Maldoror that I still remember encountering in my early twenties: a crab entering the narrator’s anus, dragging his fingernails down a howling boy’s back. Terrible moments of humour suddenly bubble up out of the visceral horror like someone laughing with a mouthful of blood. Can you describe your own connection with Lautréamont’s text?

I originally started translating Maldoror immediately after finishing my translation of The Flowers of Evil. The publisher asked me what else I’d got. When I mentioned Maldoror, the publisher got very interested and encouraged me to finish it. I’d read an English translation of Maldoror published by Penguin Books and had found the book interesting, but not a fully satisfying read; it was as though I’d been reading it through smoky glass – a translation needs to be clear for the reader, and I found it difficult to read, which was one of the reasons I decided to translate it myself. Also, the translation used by Penguin was over forty years old, and it was only after I’d started translating Maldoror myself that I realised that there were a significant number of paragraphs missing from the Penguin edition. As to Maldoror itself, I realised, as I translated it, what a powerful and unique book it was. That realisation meant I suddenly had an immense responsibility to get it absolutely right. The book was too unique to have mistakes in it. I feel that I succeeded, because my English translation of Maldoror is another of my books that I’m particularly proud of.

In your recent publication, Screaming at the Window: The Tragic Story of Blanche Monnier, the Prisoner of Poitiers, you play detective in this true crime story. What was your process in researching and constructing a work of non-fiction about this horrifying case?

Screaming at the Window came about because I agreed to translate Alfred Jarry’s Speculations for Black Scat Books. One of Jarry’s absurdist essays, ‘Kidnapping’, mentioned la Séquestrée de Poitiers and I wondered what that was a reference to, as I had never heard of Blanche Monnier. I did some research and was horrified by what I read about her situation. I thought that her story shouldn’t be forgotten, that it should be told to twenty-first century readers. So, once I’d completed Speculations, I decided to write the Blanche Monnier’s story. I was lucky in that I found online newspapers from the time that detailed the case. Several newspapers and journals had actual trial transcripts, so rather than fictionalise it, I decided to write the case as a work of non-fiction true crime. Kernpunkt Press got behind the project and published it. It was my first full-length non-fiction work and I’m very proud of it. I was stuck for a title and then I remembered the first line of an Ozzy Osbourne song – and it fitted the book, so I used it.

Alongside translation, you create your own work, such as your novels Revelation and Myth, as well as a poetry collection Moonstone Silhouettes. You also write essays on a wide breadth of art and literature. Can you speak about juggling these different avenues of exploration?

I just write. I love writing. I always have. And, as with my reading, when it comes to writing, I make no distinctions with regards to form or genre. I read secular, sacred and profane texts; I write and translate secular and profane texts. I have no problem writing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or translating a text into English. It’s all writing.

In Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, a young Scottish woman tends to her paralysed husband before engaging in a series of increasingly dangerous sexual encounters as an act of spiritual devotion, ultimately ending with her death. Your work often appears invested in stories that explore the various complexities of the erotic and what is at stake. Are they any films that speak to this or ones you return to?

It sounds like part of the plot of Bataille’s The Dead Man. I enjoy many of Lars von Trier’s films, with personal favourites being Dogville, Dancer in the Dark, The Idiots and Melancholia. Other films? Angel Heart is one I go back to frequently, as is The Wicker Man and A Scanner Darkly. My favourite film is Betty Blue, or to give it its proper (French) title, 37°2 le matin. I absolutely love that film, particularly the first thirty-five minutes, which are filmed in Plage des Chalets, in Gruissan. I recently visited the place and stayed for a week. It’s exactly the same as it was in the film. It felt very magical.

The cover of your books can feature haunting imagery: such as paintings from Edvard Munch or Goya’s Witches’ Flight for your de Sade collection Stories, Tales, and Fables. Are there any other works of art that linger in your imagination?

I’ve been very lucky with my book covers. Some have quite distinctive works of art on the covers, some have been very well designed. There aren’t any I don’t like. I’ve had covers featuring the art of Odilon Redon, Salvadore Dali, Ernst Haeckel, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Francis Picabia, Max Ernst, Edvard Munch, and Francisco Goya, amongst others. Sometimes the publisher designs the cover themselves and the results can be stunning, as is the case with my novel, Revelation, my translation of Paul Éluard’s Capital of Pain and my translations of Tarjei Vesaas’ The Seed and The Bridges.

My top five favourite works of art are Crocodile Eating Ballerina by Helmut Newton, Guernica by Pablo Picasso, Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, The Scream by Edvard Munch, and Black Iris by Georgia O’Keefe.

I mentioned the inclusion of work from Audrey Szasz and Jeremy Reed in your translation of The Songs of Maldoror. What contemporary writers and presses do you read and admire?

There are several contemporary writers I admire: Jeremy Reed, Thomas Moore, Steve Finbow, Stephen Barber, Pascale Petit, and Philippe Djian.

Obviously the publishers I work with are wonderful. In alphabetical order they are: Black Scat Books, Contra Mundum Press, Incunabula, Infinity Land Press, and Kernpunkt Press. However, there are other publishers whose books I like very much. Two publishers that spring to mind are Amphetamine Sulphate and Sagging Meniscus Press, both of which publish some really great books.

Jacques Derrida once wrote, “Translation is another name for the impossible.” How do you view its endless task?

I think translating work is difficult but rewarding. It comes with incredible responsibility too. My method is an amalgamation of literal and dynamic translation. It’s a vast enterprise. I try not to think of its enormity – I just commence work on the current project until it’s complete. To do otherwise, for me, would be too daunting.

Every generation should have its own translators; every era should have its own translations. Some translations live beyond their era. Chapman’s Homer, Robert Graves’ The Golden Ass, T. E. Lawrence’s The Odyssey, Pound’s Cathay, Anthony Burgess’ Cyrano de Bergerac, and Edith Grossman’s Don Quixote, are great translations that work really well and step out of their era. In fact, Grossman’s Don Quixote reads like a modern novel. But that type of translation is rare.

Lastly, if you could translate one more book before you die, what would you choose?

I’d love to translate Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, but I never will – G.H. McWilliam’s 1972 translation is so smooth, so without fault that I doubt I could ever translate it so perfectly. The same with Ilse Aichinger’s The Bound Man – Eric Mosbacher’s translation is smooth and flawless, so much so I doubt I could get close to it.

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R J Dent is a poet, novelist, translator and short story writer. As a renowned translator of European literature, he has published modern English translations of The Songs of Maldoror (Le Comte de Lautréamont); Speculations (Alfred Jarry); Capital of Pain (Paul Ėluard); Her Three Daughters (Pierre Louӱs); The Surrealist Manifesto and Soluble Fish (André Breton); The Dead Man (Georges Bataille); Stories, Tales, and Fables (Marquis de Sade); The Flowers of Evil and Fanfarlo
(Charles Baudelaire); Scattered Leaves (Rene Crevel); Poems & Fragments (Alcaeus); The Seed and The Bridges (Tarjei Vesaas) and major works by Louis Aragon, Maurice Rollinat and Antonin Artaud. As a poet and novelist, R J Dent is the author of a poetry collection, Moonstone Silhouettes; two novels, Revelation and Myth; a short story collection, Gothiques and Fantastiques; and two non-fiction books: Emily Dickinson’s Sexual Personae and Screaming at the Window, a true crime biography of Blanche Monnier: the Prisoner of Poitiers. His official website is www.rjdent.com.

Matthew Kinlin lives and writes in Glasgow. His published works include Teenage Hallucination (Orbis Tertius Press, 2021); Curse Red, Curse Blue, Curse Green (Sweat Drenched Press, 2021); The Glass Abattoir (D.F.L. Lit, 2023); Songs of Xanthina (Broken Sleep Books, 2023); Psycho Viridian (Broken Sleep Books, 2024) and So Tender a Killer (Filthy Loot, 2025). Instagram: @obscene_mirror