This item is taken from PN Review 287, Volume 52 Number 3, January - February 2026.
Letters to the Editor
From memory
Chris Miller writes: Philip Terry (From What Is Poetry?, PNR 285) is puzzled that ‘frais de’duits’ in Baudelaire’s ‘A une mendiante rousse’ doesn’t appear in James McGowan’s translation. He should not be. It doesn’t appear in Baudelaire either. The text is ‘E’pieraient pour le déduit / Ton frais réduit’. The annotations in Antoine Compagnon’s edition for Seuil indicate that ‘de’duit’ refers to ‘jeux amoureux’ and that ‘frais réduit’ is ‘sens érotique’. No ‘deduction of expenses’! McGowan hits the mark. Yours, Chris Miller.
Philip Terry replies: Chris Miller is right, there is no ‘frais déduit’ – that’s a slight misquote done from memory. My text (Pléiade 2024) has ‘frais réduit’ – I agree the sense is erotic, there’s no question about that, but it does still as far as I can see refer to ‘reduced expense’ (the literal translation), as in a lowering of price (with allusion as far as I can see to prostitution). So I don’t think we really disagree.
A propos of passim: remembering remembering Wittgenstein
Miles Burrows writes: We dropped his name as soon as we could pronounce it. He would know how to discard riddles no one was asking.
His name irritated philosophy tutors because students would bring it up only to drop it. The mysterious Notebooks were not available, except to Miss Anscombe, who was spotted in the street, and once by the squash courts, like a wild bird, furtively carrying under one arm a book we suspected. We would catch her eye. He rhymed with Gertrude Stein, and with Gildenstern. He dealt in nonsense. He was the Edward Lear of our time.
But hadn’t Gildenstern been drowned already? At least once? With Rosenkrantz? To reappear in Act III? Not drowned at all? Not even wet? And then there was the rugby club subscription. But at school we played soccer. Life was so difficult in one’s first term.
Chris Miller writes: Philip Terry (From What Is Poetry?, PNR 285) is puzzled that ‘frais de’duits’ in Baudelaire’s ‘A une mendiante rousse’ doesn’t appear in James McGowan’s translation. He should not be. It doesn’t appear in Baudelaire either. The text is ‘E’pieraient pour le déduit / Ton frais réduit’. The annotations in Antoine Compagnon’s edition for Seuil indicate that ‘de’duit’ refers to ‘jeux amoureux’ and that ‘frais réduit’ is ‘sens érotique’. No ‘deduction of expenses’! McGowan hits the mark. Yours, Chris Miller.
Philip Terry replies: Chris Miller is right, there is no ‘frais déduit’ – that’s a slight misquote done from memory. My text (Pléiade 2024) has ‘frais réduit’ – I agree the sense is erotic, there’s no question about that, but it does still as far as I can see refer to ‘reduced expense’ (the literal translation), as in a lowering of price (with allusion as far as I can see to prostitution). So I don’t think we really disagree.
A propos of passim: remembering remembering Wittgenstein
Miles Burrows writes: We dropped his name as soon as we could pronounce it. He would know how to discard riddles no one was asking.
His name irritated philosophy tutors because students would bring it up only to drop it. The mysterious Notebooks were not available, except to Miss Anscombe, who was spotted in the street, and once by the squash courts, like a wild bird, furtively carrying under one arm a book we suspected. We would catch her eye. He rhymed with Gertrude Stein, and with Gildenstern. He dealt in nonsense. He was the Edward Lear of our time.
But hadn’t Gildenstern been drowned already? At least once? With Rosenkrantz? To reappear in Act III? Not drowned at all? Not even wet? And then there was the rugby club subscription. But at school we played soccer. Life was so difficult in one’s first term.
This item is taken from PN Review 287, Volume 52 Number 3, January - February 2026.