French Symbolism

[stlukesguild]

Repeatedly Romanticism... especially English Romanticism as represented by the 6 "greats" (Blake, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge) make their appearance on the poetry boards. Not to undermine their worth, but certainly there are other "movements" or "periods" of poetic achievement that are of equal merit and worthy of examination. My love... obsession with poetry was profoundly marked by my personal discovery of the French "Symbolists" (certainly a term as inaccurate in its suggestion of a commonality of vision and voice as "Romanticism"). I probably first came across mention of these poets in the writings and paintings of late 19th century French painters (Impressionists, etc...). Among these poets one might include Theophile Gautier, Gerard Nerval, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stephan Mallarme, Paul Valery, Jose Maria De Heredia, Armand Sully Prudhomme, Maurice Rollinat, etc... Certainly these poets figured large in the history of literature... and especially poetry... and yet I seldom see any of them make an appearance here. As I've recently begun to reread some of these old favorites... in a number of instances in new translations... I thought I might start a thread to explore the works... or just post some favorite bits... of these poets.

Arthur Rimbaud was the true enfant terrible and one of the greatest prodigies in the history of art. He was writing fully mature masterworks at age 16 or 17 and had completely reshaped the history of French literature and poetry by the age of 21... when he abandoned poetry. His Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) is perhaps his most known work... but I have long admired his Illuminations... equally masterful "prose poems":

After the Deluge

As soon as the idea of the Deluge had subsided, A hare stopped in the clover and swaying flower-bells, and said a prayer to the rainbow, through the spider's web.

Oh! the precious stones that began to hide,- and the flowers that already looked around.

In the dirty main street, stalls were set up and boats were hauled toward the sea, high tiered as in old prints.

Blood flowed at Blue Beard's- through slaughter-houses, in circuses where the windows were blanched by God's seal. Blood and Milk flowed.

Beavers built. "Mazagrans" smoked in the little bars.

In the big glass house, still dripping, children in mourning looked at the marvelous pictures.

A door banged, and in the village square the little boy waved his arms, understood by weather vanes and cocks on steeples everywhere, in the bursting shower.

Madame *** installed a piano in the Alps. Mass and first communions were celebrated at the hundred-thousand altars of the cathedral.

Caravans set out. And Hotel Splendid was built in the chaos of ice and of the polar night...

excerpt from After the Deluge from Illuminations
translated by Louise Varèse

I haven't looked completely through this but it appears as if Varèse's complete translations of both the Illuminations and The Season in Hell published by New Directions can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=20761105721

[quasimodo1]

THE CYDNUS
Translation by Eli Siegel

A wide, triumphant blue, a dazzling sun:
The silver trireme pales the river's flow:
And incense rises as the rowers row,
And flutes are heard as silken shivers run.

By pompous prow the fair and hawklike One
Leans out from royal place to see and know.
This Cleopatra proud, in evening show,
Seems like a mighty bird, with hunt begun.

In Tarsus waits a soldier's quiet face.
And ancient Egypt's queen, in eager space
Spreads out her amber arms—in purple, bright.
She has not seen, as sign of asking fate,
The godlike children whirl in subtle light:
Desire, Death. They play; they won't be late.

[March Hare]

The flesh is sad, alas! and all the books are read.
Flight, only flight! I feel that birds are wild to tread
The floor of unknown foam, and to attain the skies!
Nought, neither ancient gardens mirrored in the eyes,
Shall hold this heart that bathes in waters its delight,
O nights! nor yet my waking lamp, whose lonely light
Shadows the vacant paper, whiteness profits best,
Nor the young wife who rocks her baby on her breast.
I will depart! O steamer, swaying rope and spar,
Lift anchor for exotic lands that lie afar!
A weariness, outworn by cruel hopes, still clings
To the last farewell handkerchief's last beckonings!
And are not these, the masts inviting storms, not these
That an awakening wind bends over wrecking seas,
Lost, not a sail, a sail, a flowering isle, ere long?
But, O my heart, hear thou, hear thou, the sailors' song!

I read Mallarme a while back and liked him. My interest in the FS has been recently rekindled and I picked up a bilingual collection of the usual FS suspects. For kicks, I translated the first poem myself and liked my version better. So now I don't trust this collection's English versions and haven't the will to translate the French. Poetry translation is a mug's game in general and exacerbated, I think, with the FS because of the deliberate ambiguity.

St. Luke, any of the translations you've read strike you as better than another?

[quasimodo1]

{ http://www.thepoetrysearcher.com/poems/nerval/fantasy.html }

FANTASY
Gerard de Nerval (1808 - 1855)

There is a melody for which I would surrender
All Rossini, all Mozart, all Weber,
An ancient, langorous, funereal tune,
With hidden charms for me alone.

And every time I hear that air,
Suddenly I grow two centuries younger,
I live in the reign of Louis the Thirteenth.
A green slope yellowed by the sunset,

Then a brick castle with stone corners,
Its panes of glass stained by ruddy colors,
Encircled by great parks, and a river
Bathing its feet, flowing between flowers.

Then I see a fair-haired, dark-eyed lady
In old-fashioned costume, at a tall window,
Whom perhaps I have already seen somewhere
In another life. .. and whom I remember!

Tr. Geoffrey Wagner

[LitNetIsGreat]

I remember being stunned by Baudelaire's Fleurs de Mal when I read it a couple of years ago. Even just the odd line here or there seemed to stay with me for ages, but for some reason I have not gone back to it.

It is true that the books I have to study have taken up a lot of my time, especially this year, but I am somewhat disappointed that I have not found the time to develop me knowledge in this area further. Must do better.

Part of the reason is also that I want to build a strong base in fewer books/areas instead of branching out and diluting my retention. Which is why I am finding myself at the moment reading less and less in terms of specific areas, but hopefully developing a good solid base as compensation. I can then branch out further and tackle other exciting areas of literature and the arts at a later stage. This is the eventual plan anyway, I'm not being too systematic about it mind, but I do have a dissertation to think about over the summer too.

[stlukesguild]

José-Maria de Heredia was a Cuban-born French poet. In the 1860s he and a loose group of other poets including Edouard Joachim Coppée, René François Armand Sully-Prudhomme, Paul Verlaine, Charles Leconte de Lisle, and Stephane Mallarmé formed a movement known as Parnassianism named after the poet's journal, Le Parnasse contemporain. The Parnassians were profoundly influenced by Oscar Wilde and Theophile Gautier's doctrine of art pour l'art (art for art's sake). They rejected many aspects of Romanticism including the looser poetic forms, the excessive display of emotion, sentiment, and feeling, and the notion of any utilitarian purpose to art including social and political activism. Instead, the Parnassians built their poetry upon exotic and classical themes and strove to achieve an exact and faultless perfection of workmanship. José-Maria de Heredia was a modern master of the sonnet. A direct descendant of a Spanish nobleman who figured prominently in the Spanish exploration and colonization of the "New World", not surprisingly any number of his poems deal with historical personages related to these events.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3341/3593103481_3368921302_o.jpg

Youth

Juan Ponce de Leon, by Satan sorely tried,
Well on in years, and steeped in ancient classic lore,
On seeing age turn white his short, unruly hair,
Sailed off to seek the source, the Fountainhead of youth.

Aboard his handsome fleet, obsessed by that vain dream,
He spent three years exploring glaucous empty seas;
Then finally, out from behind Bermuda's mists,
His Florida appeared, beneath enchanted skies.

And the Conquistador, his madness having blesst,
Debarked to plant his pennon with feeble hand
Upon the dazzling land where soon would yawn his tomb...

excerpt translated by Kendall Lappin

[quasimodo1]

THE SHIPWRECK



With breeze astern and skies all cloudless

he,

Just as Arcturus shows his rising sphere,
Sees the receding Pharos disappear.
Proud of his brass-lined ship's rapidity.

But Alexandria's mole no more he'll see:
In waste of sand no kid could pasture near
The tempest's hand has scooped his

sepulchre,
Where now the wind makes whirling

revelry.

In fold the deepest of the shifting dune,

In dawnless night where shines nor star nor

moon,
As last the navigator quiet owns.

O Earth, O Sea, pity his anxious Shade!
And on the Hellenic shore where rest his

bones
Thy tread be light, thy voice be silent made.

[jinjang]

I like very much FANTASY. It made me smile.

[JBI]

I wonder if we can get the mods to put Arthur Symons's The Symbolist Movement in Literature as an e-text for this forum. That's the first major work that really approaches symbolism for an English audience, and actually coined the term (and it is public domain). I posted for it before, but it didn't get any hits.

His introduction, is, according to one of my professors, the greatest introduction to 19th century French poetry, and the greatest treatise on the power of symbols.

My personal preference is for Mallarmé, but I can't find a good public domain English translation to clip from. Generally though, I find him almost Hart Crane dense, and certainly a perfectionist - there is very little air there - his work is always intense, and always symbolic, and really takes some serious cutting to begin to understand.

[mono]

Though, other than Baudelaire, perhaps the most popular among your list, Arthur Rimbaud always had an amazing effect on me, plus I always have a weakness for those classic poets who suffer for the sake of art and often die young - D.H. Lawrence belongs in that category, too, I think. I have explored a bit of Paul Verlaine, and have procrastinated some on reading more of his work; perhaps that time has just about arrived, while speaking on this subject. As to Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal owns a warm nest in my heart.
One of my favorites by Rimbaud (translated by Oliver Bernard):

Ophélie

I

On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping
White Ophelia floats like a great lily ;
Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils…
- In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort.

For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia
Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.
For more than a thousand years her sweet madness
Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze.

The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath
Her great veils rising and falling with the waters ;
The shivering willows weep on her shoulder,
The rushes lean over her wide, dreaming brow.

The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her ;
At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder,
Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings ;
- A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars.

II

O pale Ophelia ! beautiful as snow !
Yes child, you died, carried off by a river !
- It was the winds descending from the great mountains of Norway
That spoke to you in low voices of better freedom.

It was a breath of wind, that, twisting your great hair,
Brought strange rumors to your dreaming mind ;
It was your heart listening to the song of Nature
In the groans of the tree and the sighs of the nights ;

It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar,
That shattered your child's heart, too human and too soft ;
It was a handsome pale knight, a poor madman
Who one April morning sate mute at your knees !

Heaven ! Love ! Freedom ! What a dream, oh poor crazed Girl !
You melted to him as snow does to a fire ;
Your great visions strangled your words
- And fearful Infinity terrified your blue eye !

III

- And the poet says that by starlight
You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked
And that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils
White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.

[quasimodo1]

THE AFTERNOON OF A FAUN

***************



Translation from French by Roger Fry



***************


These nymphs I would perpetuate.

So clear

Their light carnation, that it floats in the air

Heavy with tufted slumbers.


Was it a dream I loved?

My doubt, a heap of ancient night, is finishing

In many a subtle branch, which, left the true

Wood itself, proves, alas! that all alone I gave

Myself for triumph the ideal sin of roses.

[stlukesguild]

I have read some of Symons in the past and having started The Symbolist Movement in Literature as an online e-text I do find it quite promising. I have always been fascinated with the dichotomy between the "Realist" urge and that of the "Symbolist". In literature we might define Flaubert, Zola, and Balzac as representative of the Realist urge (while admitting that nothing is ever so easy or clear-cut in art) and Nerval, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Mallarme, etc... as representative of the Symbolist endeavors to suggest... allude... represent... without resorting to an attempt at reproduction or imitation. In the visual arts we find the same dichotomy. On the one hand we have the "Realists" and the "Impressionists" (Courbet, Millet, Manet, Degas, Monet, etc...)... and it should be recognized for all their allusiveness and suggestiveness, the Impressionists were creating an art rooted in visual reality. On the other hand we find the Symbolists including Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Moreau, Arnold Bocklin, James Ensor, Edvard Munch, the Pre-Raphaelites, Gauguin, and even the very young Picasso. The realist strain through the Impressionists were long seen as the most avant gard of movements in art of the late 19th century... and certainly the innovation and sheer quality of the work of Manet, Monet, and Degas especially is nearly unrivaled... still the artists working more in a Symbolists vein have with time been recognized as equally important in the eventual development of Modernism. Figures like Munch and Klimt can now nearly rival the reputation of the Impressionists... even within the current art market where it is a painting by Gustav Klimt that currently holds the record as the most expensive painting ever sold at auction (in the realm of $135,000,000 US).

While I am personally a great admirer of Klimt and Munch, among others, I would put forth the far less-well-known figure of Odilon Redon as perhaps the quintessential Symbolist artist. Redon began his career studying printmaking with the obscure and eccentric figure of Adolphe Bresdin who was known for his small, dense, and detailed prints of nightmare-like imagery:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3350/3594556014_c21ff8f5cb_o.jpg

Redon's built upon the mood of Bresdin... but his style was simpler and more fantastic... rooted equally in the late works of Goya. His early works were primarily executed in charcoal or lithography. He often referred to these works as his "noirs" not merely because of their color but also as a result of the brooding, phantasmagorical images:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3414/3594556042_2f318b34f2_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3601/3594556154_6d42e2efcf_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3414/3594556042_2f318b34f2_o.jpg

Unlike the Impressionists who drew inspiration from direct observation of nature, Redon's work was often rooted in literature... especially in the writings of figures such as Poe, Baudelaire, and Gautier:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3330/3594556082_511d408a76_o.jpg

The debt was repaid when Redon first began to gain recognition in the late 1870s. In J.K. Huysmans' novel, À rebours (Against Nature), the decadent aristocrat, Des Esseintes, collects prints and drawings by Redon.

In the 1890s, Redon began to employ oil paint and most importantly: pastel. Redon is perhaps second only to Degas in his use of pastel. For a great many years Redon struggled to survive as an artist often turning to marketable portraits and still life:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3373/3593748413_a203efa6d0_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3358/3593748321_6a59d57e9d_o.jpg

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http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3629/3594556178_9b3e804949_o.jpg

In spite of the danger of the insipidness of such subject matter, Redon's paintings always convey a magical, dream-like quality. This was even more apparent in his fantastic works... paintings based upon literature:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3389/3593748275_1801ab51e3_o.jpg
-Ophelia

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3301/3593748161_5d63fb064c_o.jpg
-Ophelia

... classical mythology:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3396/3593748113_cf29d220fc_o.jpg
-Orpheus

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3316/3593748457_ba712ccb2c_o.jpg
-Apollo's Chariot

... music:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3564/3594556504_d1cea0f1b8_o.jpg
-Parsifal

... and even religious/spiritual themes:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3326/3593815439_cfa955ca12_o.jpg
-Saint John

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3303/3593748195_750f091c6a_o.jpg
-Buddha

Redon is incredibly inventive and free with his pastel. His colors are magical and evocative. He often strips the themes or narratives down to the absolute essentials (the head of Ophelia, the water, flowers) and allows colors to dance and shimmer across the surface with little concern for realistic appearances. The freedom of Redon's pastels can be seen as precursors to Matisse's audacious use of color and to the swirling abstractions of Kandinsky... and even the early Abstract Expressionist, Arshile Gorky. To my mind, Redon has always evoked much of what is suggested in the poetry of Mallarme, Verlaine, Baudelaire, etc...

[stlukesguild]

I.

On calm, black waters filled with sleeping stars
White Ophelia floats like a lily,
Floating so slowly, bedded in white veils...
-Hunting horns rise from the distant forest.

A thousand years without sad Ophelia,
A white ghost on the long black river;
A thousand years of her sweet madness,
Murmuring its ballad in the evening breeze.

The wind kisses her breasts, arranges her veils
In a wreath softly cradled by waters;
Shivering willows weep at her shoulder,
Reeds bend over her broad dreaming brow.

Rumpled water lilies sigh around her;
And up in a sleeping alder she sometimes stirs,
A nest from which a tiny shiver of wings escapes:
- A mysterious song falls from golden stars.
excerpt-Ophelia, tr. Wyatt Mason

[quasimodo1]

"The fundamental grey which differentiates the masters, expresses them and is the soul of all colour."

"My drawings inspire and are not to be defined. They determine nothing. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous

world of the undetermined. They are a kind of metaphor."

"It is precisely from the regret left by the imperfect work that the next one can be born." --- Three quotes by

Odilon Redon --- http://www.artinthepicture.com/artists/Odilon_Redon/Quotes/

[quasimodo1]

The Young Fools (Les Ingénus)
by Paul Verlaine
Translated by Louis Simpson


High-heels were struggling with a full-length dress
So that, between the wind and the terrain,
At times a shining stocking would be seen,
And gone too soon. We liked that foolishness.

Also, at times a jealous insect's dart
Bothered out beauties. Suddenly a white
Nape flashed beneath the branches, and this sight
Was a delicate feast for a young fool's heart.

Evening fell, equivocal, dissembling,
The women who hung dreaming on our arms
Spoke in low voices, words that had such charms
That ever since our stunned soul has been trembling.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Les Ingénus

Les hauts talons luttaient avec les longues jupes,
En sorte que, selon le terrain et le vent,
Parfois luisaient des bas de jambes, trop souvent
Interceptés--et nous aimions ce jeu de dupes.

Parfois aussi le dard d'un insecte jaloux
Inquiétait le col des belles sous les branches,
Et c'était des éclairs soudains de nuques blanches,
Et ce régal comblait nos jeunes yeux de fous.

Le soir tombait, un soir équivoque d'automne:
Les belles, se pendant rêveuses à nos bras,
Dirent alors des mots si spécieux, tout bas,
Que notre âme depuis ce temps tremble et s'étonne.

[stlukesguild]

LIVES

II.

I am an inventor more deserving far than all those who have preceded me; a musician, moreover, who has discovered something like the key of love. At present, a country gentleman of a bleak land with a sober sky, I try to rouse myself with the memory of my beggar childhood, my apprenticeship, or my arrival in wooden shoes... the sober air of this bleak countryside feeds vigorously my dreadful skepticism. But since this skepticism cannot, henceforth, be put to use, and since, moreover, i am dedicated to a new torment,- I expect to become a very vicious madman.

III.

In a loft, where I was shut in when I was twelve, I got to know the world; I illustrated the human comedy. I learned history in a wine cellar. In a northern city, at some nocturnal level, I met all the women of the old masters. In an old arcade in Paris I was taught the classical sciences. In a magnificent dwelling, encircled by the entire Orient, I accomplished my prodigious work and spent my illustrious retreat...

Arthur Rimbaud,fragment of Lives excerpted from Illuminations, trans. Louise Varese

[stlukesguild]

The Future Phenomenon

A pallid sky, above the world which is dying of its own decrepitude, may possibly be departing with the clouds: shreds of worn-out purple sunsets are fading within a river that sleeps on a horizon steeped in water and light-rays. The trees are bored and ill at ease, and the tent of the Showman of Past Things rises beneath their whitened leaves... Many a streetlamp is waiting for the twilight and reviving the faces of a wretched crowd, crushed by immortal sickness and immemorial sin- men along side of their sickly accomplices, who are pregnant with the miserable fruits that will destroy the earth. In the troubled silence of all the eyes entreating the far-away sun, which plunges beneath the water with a despairing cry, here is his basic sales-pitch: 'No sign treats you to the show within, because no present day painter could supply even a sorry shadow of it. I am bringing you alive (and preserved throughout the ages by the supreme power of science) a Woman of ancient times. Some primordial innocent madness, some ecstasy of gold; I don't know what it is! which she calls her hair, curves down with silken grace and falls about a face lit up by the bloodstained nakedness of her lips. Instead of a vain apparel, she has a body, and though her eyes are like precious gems, they cannot match the gaze that comes from her blissful flesh: from breast upraised as if they were full of everlasting milk, their nipples toward the sky, to glistening legs still salty from the primeval sea. The husbands recalling their poor wives, bald, morbid, and filled with horror, surge forward... The poets of those days feeling their lifeless eyes reillumined, will make their way back toward their lamps, their brains fleetingly rapt with a hint of glory, haunted by Rhythm and oblivious that they exist in an age that has outlived beauty.

-excerpt, trans. by E.H. and A.M. Blackmore from Anecdotes or Poems

[quasimodo1]

Other writers of the French symbolist movement... Prosper Merimee', Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Jules Laforgue, Leon Claudel and Edmund and Jules de Goncourt.

[quasimodo1]

APOTHESOSIS by Jules Laforgue (1860-1887)


In every sense, forever, Silence swarms

With knots of golden stars mixed swirling.

They speak of gardens sanded with diamonds,

But each one’s solitary, sadly, sparkling.



Now, down here, in this unknown angle,

A glimmering furrow of melancholy ruby,

A sweetly twinkling sun-spark trembles:

A patriarchal guide leads his family.



His family: a mass of dense coloured globes.

And on one, that’s Earth, a yellow dot, Paris,

Where hangs, a light, a poor ageing fool:



In the frail universal order, unique miracle.

He’s the mirror of a day, and knows it.

He dreams a while then makes a sonnet.

[stlukesguild]

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) was one of the most interesting figures of the French Symbolists. Just as with the case of Vincent Van Gogh I half suspect that part of the popularity of figures like the English Romantic poets and Edgar Allen Poe lies with their biography. In spite of the Symbolists rejection of the Romanticist's focus upon personal "feeling" and experience, they themselves had some of the most outrageous biographies as well... Paul Verlaine certainly not the least of these.

Paul Verlaine was almost a "schizophrenic" personality. One moment he yearned for a peaceful family life while the next he was an abusive drunkard who assailed his wife and mother. He could be the most humble believer in God and the most foul-mouthed blasphemer. He was known as the poet with the most exquisite and delicate touch... and yet he was also the writer of the most vulgar and aggressive pornographic verse.

Verlaine was a participant of the Parnassian movement which included poets such as Mallarme, Le Conte L'Isle, De Heredia, Valery, etc... The term was taken from the 1866 publication of the poetry journal Le Parnasse contemporain. The Parnassian's embraced Wilde, Pater, and Theophile Gautier's notion of l'art pour l'art, and rejected the excess of emotions and personal "self-expression" that typified Romanticism. Their poetry was marked by a mastery of craftsmanship and themes drawn from classical and exotic mythology. Verlaine's first collection, Poèms saturniens, was published the same year. This debut already revealed him to be a poet with an original voice and exhibited many of his strengths: sensuality, delicacy, musicality, originality of poetic form.

His second book, Fétes galantes (1869) is perhaps my favorite. It includes many of his most (rightfully) famous poems (including Clair de lune). The work is perhaps the strongest in terms of thematic unity: characters from the commedia dell' art flit in and out of pastoral scenes of love, flirtation, seduction, and melancholia in a manner that suggests the marvelous Rococo paintings of Watteau:

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The closest thing to these poems... and to much of Verlaine... at least to my mind... are the equally delicate poems of Robert Herrick.

Verlaine's split personality could already be seen at this early time. While preparing these refined poems for publication his collection of pornographic lesbian poems was being banned by the courts and he was himself engaged in unbridled orgies of alcohol, sex, and violence... in spite of his recent engagement to the bourgeois Mathilde Mauté.

His next collection of poetry, La bonne chanson (1870), is a paean to love and domestic bliss and may have been written in part to assure Mme. Mauté of his good intentions. Whatever his intentions may have been, Verlaine was unable to follow through on them. He had repeated violent outbursts toward his mother and his new wife, and in 1871 he began his outrageous homosexual affair with the poetic enfant terrible, Arthur Rimbaud. This affair would end in 1873 infamously and tragically in Brussels when Rimbaud announces that he is leaving Verlaine, and the older poet responds by shooting and slightly wounding him. Verlaine was sentenced to 18 months in prison. A further result of this affair gone wrong was the publication of Rimbaud's Une saison en enfer which alluded to many of the biographical details of their affair and outraged the Paris literary world and scandalized Verlaine's family. Mathilde would gain a legal separation from the poet in 1874.

While still in prison, Verlaine would compose what many consider his greatest collection of poetry, Romances sans paroles (1874) in which the poet would return to the most delicate, sensual poems full of art and artifice. The poems are full of a musicality... and a marvelous visual element... painting landscapes and interiors with great attention to color and atmosphere.

From this point on, the general consensus is that Verlaine's poetry slipped into a long, slow decline. His next volume, Sagesse, was full of contrite apologies and a conversion to Catholicism, although there are a number of truly touching poems. Many critics dismiss his bleating confessions as saccharine and false... especially when one considers how rapidly Verlaine himself was willing to abandon these beliefs during his final meeting with Rimbaud in Stuttgart in 1875. His last collection of any lasting merit would be Parallelément published in 1889 in which the poet returned to the theme of his greatest achievements: sensual pleasure.

Verlaine's poetry is recognized for its sensuality, delicacy, musicality, suggestiveness or allusiveness, and formal originality. The delicacy of the work is such that it has long been imagined as "untranslatable". Indeed, there has never been a translation of the whole of Verlaine as opposed to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and even Mallarme. Only recently have Martin Sorrell and Norman Shapiro offered decent translations of a goodly portion of Verlaine's poetic oeuvre.

Verlaine's innovation in form is something I've just recently become aware of through reading of various bios and critical analysis. French poetry prior to Verlaine (to say nothing of the iconoclast, Rimbaud) was largely quite conservative in terms of form. Even poets of the status of Victor Hugo and Baudelaire tended to follow (or merely invert) traditional formal structures. Verlaine began to employ a broad variety of formal structures and meters... and even began to challenge the dominance of rhyme... often employing half-rhymes or assonance.

The musicality of Verlaine's work is certainly in keeping step with the Symbolist's belief in the perfection of musical form, the art toward which "all art aspired", (according to Walter Pater), in being able to speak deeply and perfectly about the human heart and spirit and to yield profound truths about the human experience in the most allusive manner... without the need for mimesis or imitation. This allusiveness echoed many of the efforts being explored by the Impressionist painters and when one considers the "painterly" visual suggestiveness of many of Verlaine's poems, it is no wonder he was a favorite of many of the artists. Verlaine is ever fluent and melodious. His poems ever rooted in song. It is not surprising that his works were highly popular with French composers of chanson (the French "art song") such as Debussy, Ravel, and Faure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zgJRVLIE4o&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mjy3Fw5GJY&feature=related

Claire de Lune

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

Moonlight

Your soul is like a landscape fantasy,
Where masks and Bergamasks, in charming wise,
Strum lutes and dance, just a bit sad to be
Hidden beneath their fanciful disguise.

Singing in minor mode of life's largesse
And all-victorious love, they yet seem quite
Reluctant to believe their happiness,
And their song mingles with the pale moonlight,

The calm, pale moonlight, whose sad beauty, beaming,
Sets the birds softly dreaming in the trees...

excerpted from Norman Shapiro's translation:

Translations (including Clair de lune) by Norman Shapiro: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/853446.html

Fantoches

Scaramouche et Pulcinella,
Qu'un mauvais dessein rassembla,
Gesticulent noirs sous la lune,

Cependant l'excellent docteur Bolonais
Cueille avec lenteur des simples
Parmi l'herbe brune.

Lors sa fille, piquant minois,
Sous la charmille, en tapinois,
Se glisse demi-nue,

En quête de son beau pirate espagnol,
Dont un langoureux rossignol
Clame la détresse à tue-tête.


Scaramouche and Pulchinella
Making evil plans together
wave their arms, moon silhouettes.

But the excellent Bolognese
Doctor's picking some of these
Special herbs among the grass.

His daughter with the pretty eyes,
In the arbor, on the sly's
Looking- semi-naked- for

Her handsome Spanish buccaneer
Whose sad affliction she can hear...

excerpted from Martin Sorrell translation


Cortège

Un singe en veste de brocart

Trotte et gambade devant elle

Qui froisse un mouchoir de dentelle

Dans sa main gantée avec art,

***

tandis qu'un négrillon tout rouge

Maintient à tour de bras les pans

De sa lourde robe en suspens,

Attentif à tout pli qui bouge ;

***

Le singe ne perd pas des yeux

La gorge blanche de la dame,

Opulent trésor que réclame

le torse nu de l'un des dieux ;

***

Le négrillon parfois soulève

Plus haut qu'il ne faut, l'aigrefin,

Son fardeau somptueux, afin

De voir ce dont la nuit il rêve ;

***

Elle va par les escaliers

Et ne paraît pas davantage

Sensible à l'insolent suffrage

De ses animaux familiers.

In its tiny brocade coat
A monkey twists and turn in front of her.
She holds a crumpled handkerchief
In a carefully gloved hand.

Her black page, a lad all dressed in red,
Holds high the lady's heavy train.
He moves the weight from arm to arm,
His eye on every shifting fold.

The monkey keeps its gaze fixed on
The lady's throat, displaying wealth
And opulence just meant to grace
The naked splendor of a god.

Sometimes the scheming page lifts up
A good deal higher than he should
His rich responsibility
To spy what in his dreams he sees...

excerpted from Martin Sorrell translation

Les Ingénus

Les hauts talons luttaient avec les longues jupes,
En sorte que, selon le terrain et le vent,
Parfois luisaient des bas de jambes, trop souvent
Interceptés--et nous aimions ce jeu de dupes.

Parfois aussi le dard d'un insecte jaloux
Inquiétait le col des belles sous les branches,
Et c'était des éclairs soudains de nuques blanches,
Et ce régal comblait nos jeunes yeux de fous.

Le soir tombait, un soir équivoque d'automne:
Les belles, se pendant rêveuses à nos bras,
Dirent alors des mots si spécieux, tout bas,
Que notre âme depuis ce temps tremble et s'étonne.

High-heels were struggling with a full-length dress
So that, between the wind and the terrain,
At times a shining stocking would be seen,
And gone too soon. We liked that foolishness.

Also, at times a jealous insect's dart
Bothered out beauties. Suddenly a white
Nape flashed beneath the branches, and this sight
Was a delicate feast for a young fool's heart.

Evening fell, equivocal, dissembling,
The women who hung dreaming on our arms
Spoke in low voices...

Translated by Louis Simpson:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15621

L’ALLÉE

Fardée et peinte comme au temps des bergeries ,
Frêle parmi les nœuds énormes de rubans,
Elle passe, sous les ramures assombries,
Dans l'allée où verdit la mousse des vieux bancs,
Avec mille façons et mille affèteries
Qu'on garde d'ordinaire aux perruches chéries.
Sa longue robe à queue est bleue, et l'éventail
Qu'elle froisse en ses doigts fluets aux larges bagues
S'égaie en des sujets érotiques, si vagues
Qu'elle sourit, tout en rêvant, à maint détail.
Blonde, en somme. Le nez mignon avec la bouche
Incarnadine, grasse et divine d'orgueil
Inconscient. - D'ailleurs, plus fine que la mouche
Qui ravive l'éclat un peu niais de l'œil.

Face painted, powdered, as in olden day's
Pastoral revelries; frail in her masses
Of ribbons, giant bows, beneath the maze
Of shaded boughs, that line the lane; she passes
Among old green-mossed benches, and displays
Her myriad posturings and mannered ways...

Her trailing gown is blue, her long ringed fingers
Rumple a fan as, musing, her smile lingers
Over its vaguely bawdy curlicues...

excerpted from Norman Shapiro's translation:

Check also C.F. MacIntyre's translations:

http://books.google.com/books?id=jHqXDfeOztsC&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=Cortege+Verlaine&source=bl&ots=EI7Fr9n1ZV&sig=ySYksDSKaz52MAiRqiTADkRWaeo&hl=en&ei=5boqSqDOCtOntgfbrJC_CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#PPP1,M1

[Jozanny]

I am not a polished listener of classical music luke, but Debussy's Claire de lune is the kind of work that makes orgasmic blushes to my face; I had no idea his composition was adapted from Verlaine.

[stlukesguild]

A lush, sensual Impressionism. I am not as well versed in the period as with the late German Romanticism that runs parallel to it (Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner, Zemlinsky, Brahms, etc...) but there is certainly some marvelous music here. I love Hector Belioz' La mort d'Ophelia... of course Cecilia Bartoli has much to do with that. She is unquestionably one of the best living classical singers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vspUL0LfBSc

Long, long let me breathe the fragrance of your hair. Let me plunge my face into it like a thirsty man into the water of a spring, and let me wave it like a scented handkerchief to stir memories in the air.

If you only knew all that I see! all that I feel! all that I hear in your hair! My soul voyages on its perfume as other men's souls on music.

You hair holds a whole dream of masts and sails; it holds seas whose monsoons waft me toward lovely climes where space is bluer and more profound, where fruits and leaves and human skin perfume the air.

In the ocean of your hair I see a harbor teeming with melancholic songs...

On the burning heart of your hair I breathe the fragrance of tobacco tinged with opium and sugar; in the night of you hair I see the sheen of the tropic's blue infinity; on the shores of your hair I get drunk with the smell of musk and tar and the oil of coconuts.

Long, long let me bite your black and heavy tresses...

excerpeted from Paris Spleen, Baudelaire's "prose poems" trans. Louise Varèse

[jinjang]

My favorite part is "You hair holds a whole dream of masts and sails; it holds seas whose monsoons waft me toward lovely climes where space is bluer and more profound, where fruits and leaves and human skin perfume the air."



Claire de Lune

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

Moonlight

Your soul is like a landscape fantasy,
Where masks and Bergamasks, in charming wise,
Strum lutes and dance, just a bit sad to be
Hidden beneath their fanciful disguise.

Singing in minor mode of life's largesse
And all-victorious love, they yet seem quite
Reluctant to believe their happiness,
And their song mingles with the pale moonlight,

The calm, pale moonlight, whose sad beauty, beaming,
Sets the birds softly dreaming in the trees...


I think March Hare who seems to know French well should touch up on this translation.
This translation does not seem quite right in my humble opinion. Certain changes made in translation seem rather unnecessary. For example, the first line: "Votre âme est un paysage choisi" should be "Your soul is a chosen landscape."
I wonder why add "pale" to the moonlight?

I enjoyed very much reading the complete thread and it is very informative and I think I will dig up some peotry books I neglected. Ophelia is my favorite so far.

[stlukesguild]

While some may known the language in question in a given translation that in no way means that they might be able to translate it well. Translation involves taking a poem of some beauty in one language and turning it into a poem of beauty in another language while maintaining as close as possible the "poetry" of the original... if not the literal "meaning". Norman Shapiro is more than well respected for his poetic translations from French of not only Verlaine, but also Baudelaire, and La Fontaine. Considering that the sound or "music" of Verlaine is as essential if not more-so than the literal "meaning" I'll assume that Shapiro chose the word "fantasy" not merely to rhyme with "sad to be" but also to capture some suggestion of the fantastic aspect of the scene portrayed which Verlaine paints with the word "fanatstique". There have been any number of postings of quite literal translations posted here (the Chinese thread, for example) in which the resulting "poem" leaves you thinking "What's all the fuss?" Again I agree with Dante Rossetti's notion of translation which argues that the first rule is that a good poem in one language should not be turned into a bad poem in another.

[March Hare]

I think March Hare who seems to know French well should touch up on this translation.


Unfortunately, I don't know French well. That's why I wanted to find the translator. Here are two translations of the first stanza of "Angoisse."

I do not come to make your flesh less proud tonight, O beast
In whom the sins of a race take root, nor to stir up
In the hive of your hair a sorrowful storm
By the incurable ennui which my kiss pours out:
--
I do not come tonight to conquer your flesh,
O beast with the sins of the race, nor in your impure
hair to stir up a melancholy tempest
by the fatal ennui that my kisses pour:

I like the first by Widershein better than the second by MacIntyre.
But the second seems truer to the original and keeps a semblance of the rhyme scheme. So, unless the first conveys somehow the spirit of the poem in a better way, I prefer the inferior translation. So maybe I'm a fan of Widershein rather than Mallarme. One can enjoy Chapman's Iliad on it's own merits but should never think it is a very good translation of Homer. But this is probably fodder for a different thread.

On with poems..

[mortalterror]

Norman Shapiro is more than well respected for his poetic translations from French of not only Verlaine, but also Baudelaire, and La Fontaine.

Honestly StLukes, I didn't want to say anything but I'm in agreement with Jinjang. I know enough French so I was able to read the first poem unassisted, and when I scrolled down I thought, "Well...that's a pretty lame translation."

[jinjang]

Considering that the sound or "music" of Verlaine is as essential if not more-so than the literal "meaning" I'll assume that Shapiro chose the word "fantasy" not merely to rhyme with "sad to be" but also to capture some suggestion of the fantastic aspect of the scene portrayed which Verlaine paints with the word "fanatstique".
I am grateful for your explanation. Being naturally deaf to the music of English poems, I read MOONLIHGT several times to see if I can hear the music. I think the poem in translation is beautiful and I would have appreciated it if I did not know the original and if I did not focus too much on the meanings. When it comes to different translations, it may depend on our personal tastes as March Hare gave an example and as mortalterror expressed above. Here is why: I would have preferred the mix of the two translations of the first stanza of "Angoisse" as below:


Je ne viens pas ce soir vaincre ton corps, ô bête
En qui vont les péchés d’un peuple, ni creuser
Dans tes cheveux impurs une triste tempête
Sous l’incurable ennui que verse mon baiser:


I do not come tonight to conquer your flesh, O beast
In whom the sins of a race take root, not to stir up
in your impure hair a melancholy tempest
By the incurable ennui that my kiss pours out:

What do you think?

I appreciated especially Stlukesguild's association of art with poetry.

[JosphTheGodless]

Baudelaire and Rimbaud are two of my favorites.




The Albatross by Charles Baudelaire (translated by Richard Wilbur):


Often, for pastime, mariners will ensnare
The albatross, that vast sea-bird who sweeps
On high companionable pinion where
Their vessel glides upon the bitter deeps.

Torn from his native space, this captive king
Flounders upon the deck in stricken pride,
And pitiably lets his great white wing
Drag like a heavy paddle at his side.

This rider of winds, how awkward he is, and weak!
How droll he seems, who lately was all grace!
A sailor pokes a pipestem into his beak;
Another, hobbling, mocks his trammeled pace.

The poet is like this monarch of the clouds,
Familiar of storms, of stars, and of all high things;
Exiled on earth amidst its hooting crowds,
He cannot walk, borne down by his giant wings.




The Sleeper in the Valley by Arthur Rimbaud (translated by Wallace Fowlie):


It is a green hollow where a river sings
Madly catching on the grasses
Silver rags; where the sun shines from the proud mountain:
It is a small valley which bubbles over with rays.

A young soldier, his mouth open, his head bare,
And the nape of his neck bathing in the cool blue watercress,
Sleeps; he is stretched out on the grass, under clouds,
Pale on his green bed where the light rains down.

His feet in the gladiolas, he sleeps. Smiling as
A sick child would smile, he is taking a nap:
Nature, cradle him warmly: he is cold.

Odors do not make his nostrils quiver.
He sleeps in the sun, his hand on his breast,
Quieted. There are two red holes in his right side.

[stlukesguild]

"Long, long let me breathe the fragrance of your hair. Let me plunge my face into it like a thirsty man into the water of a spring, and let me wave it like a scented handkerchief to stir memories in the air.

If you only knew all that I see! all that I feel! all that I hear in your hair! My soul voyages on its perfume as other men's souls on music.

You hair holds a whole dream of masts and sails; it holds seas whose monsoons waft me toward lovely climes where space is bluer and more profound, where fruits and leaves and human skin perfume the air.

In the ocean of your hair I see a harbor teeming with melancholic songs...

On the burning heart of your hair I breathe the fragrance of tobacco tinged with opium and sugar; in the night of you hair I see the sheen of the tropic's blue infinity; on the shores of your hair I get drunk with the smell of musk and tar and the oil of coconuts.

Long, long let me bite your black and heavy tresses..."

excerpeted from Paris Spleen, Baudelaire's "prose poems" trans. Louise Varèse


The Head of Hair

Ecstatic fleece that ripples to your nape
and reeks of negligence in every curl!
To people my dim cubicle tonight
with memories shrouded in that head of hair,
I'd have it flutter like a handkerchief.

For torpid Asia, torrid Africa
-the wilderness I thought a world away-
survive at the heart of this dark continent...
As other souls set sail to music, mine,
O my love! embarks on your redolent hair.

... a harbor where my soul can slake its thirst
for color, sound, and smell- where ships that glide
among the seas of golden silk throw wide
there yardarms to embrace a glorious sky
palpitating in eternal heat.

Drunk, and in love with drunkenness, I'll dive
into this ocean where the other lurks,
and solaced by these waves, my restlessness
will find a fruitful lethargy at last,
rocking forever at aromatic ease.

Blue hair, vault of shadows, be for me
the canopy of overarching sky;
here at the downy roots of every strand
I stupefy myself in mingled scent
of musk and tar and coconut oil for hours...

For hours? Forever! Into that splendid mane
let me braid rubies, ropes of pearls to bind
you indissolubly to my desire-
you- the oasis where I dream- the gourd
from which I gulp the wine of memory.

excerpted from the translation of Baudelaire, from Les Fleurs du Mal by Richard Howard

[Nick Capozzoli]

Helen, The Sad Queen, translated by Janet Lewis:

Azure, 'tis I, come from Elysian shores,
To hear the waves break on sonorous steps,
And see again the sunrise full of ships,
Rising from darkness upon golden oars.

My solitary arms call on the kings
Whose salty beards amused my silver hands.
I wept. They sang of triumphs in far lands,
And gulfs fled backwards upon watery wings.

I hear the trumpet and the martial horn
That wield the rhythm of the beating blade,
The song of rowers binding the tumult.

And the gods! exalting on the prow with scorn
Their ancient smile that the slow waves insult,
Hold out their sculptured arms to my sad shade.

[Nick Capozzoli]

This is a superb translation. I just wanted to call attention to the 9th line:

[
I hear the trumpet and the martial horn.

Compare this to the original:
J'entends les conches profondes et les clairons
Militaires...

Note how Lewis captures in her translation the haunting sound of the original. This is really masterful.

[Nick Capozzoli]

Below is a translation I made about 15 years ago of Baudelaire's Au Lecteur. Any comments?

Folly, error, greed, and lust
Besiege the spirit. The body wastes;
Meanwhile we dine remorseful tastes
As beggars feed their dogs, with crust.

Sin is fat, repentance, lean.
To shrive us we demand a fee;
On the spattered road we wander free
With tainted tears to keep us clean.

On the bed where Satan Trismagy
Chants into our spellbound thought,
Will's alloy, soon overwrought
Distills away through alchemy.

The Devil tugs our guiding strings.
We're charmed by that which is not well,
Descend each day a step towards Hell,
Unmoved by blinding stench that stings.

Gigolos, we connive to suck
Martyred tits of antique whores,
Steal pleasure's fruit from grocery stores,
And mouth the orange that turns to muck.

Then swarming like a million worms
A crowd of vermin infests our brains.
Invisble filth within us reigns,
Breathes and fills our lungs with storms.

If boozing, pistols, arson, and rape
Have yet to stitch their tapestry,
The sheet we call our destiny,
Alas, we're cowards who can only gape.

Among the jackals, panthers, scorpions,
Baboons, *****es, all kinds of snakes,
All yelping forms a monster takes
Within the zoo of our affections,

Is one most mealy, wicked, foul!
A one who neither stirs nor roars;
Who sneers at the world through meaty jaws
And swallows it in a yawning howl.
Boredom, by name! How his eyes smother.
Dreaming of gallows, he smokes on his stool.
Reader, you know him, that cultured ghoul.
You, hypocrite reader, my double, my brother!

[stlukesguild]

Charles Baudelaire is undoubtedly the writer who turned me on to poetry. I had read what we were required to read in school... but I couldn't really grasp the purpose of poetry until I discovered Baudelaire... initially in the marvelous translation by Richard Howard. As a visual artist I think I'm inherently attracted as much (if not more) to the suggestion of a mood or an atmosphere than I am (perhaps) to long drawn-out narratives and character development. Certainly this is what had drawn me to the writing of Poe as a teen. With Baudelaire I was drawn to his powerful evocation of mood... often dark... sultry... foreboding... certainly erotic. I was more than intrigued with his suggestion of the senses beyond the visual: the evocation of scent, touch, and sound... even the blurring of the senses so that he might suggest a color having a certain feeling of warmth or sound while a scent might be described in terms that suggest touch or color. For me, Baudelaire evoked something of that which I perceived in certain paintings by Titian...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3389/3642207363_4ec7a3d45f_o.jpg

Rubens...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3546/3643011078_6783ed656f_o.jpg

Delacroix...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3358/3642204281_99fa168f0b_o.jpg

Goya...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3546/3643011176_93fd59bc0d_o.jpg

even certain "darker" works by Degas...

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2425/3642204403_9bc2f996cd_o.jpg

and some of his followers...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3386/3642204467_5acfec0fc9_o.jpg

Such paintings convey such a sense of atmosphere... humidity... and touch... as well as a dark, "decadent" sensuality... a fecundity or over-ripeness verging on the rotten.

Here are but a few favorites which I will expand upon with time:

The Ideal

My heart is closed to belles in curlicues,
those worshipped beauties of a shopworn age...

I leave to Gavarni, anemia's laureate,
his twittering flock of insubstantial girls-
in all those sallow blossoms who could find
one rose to reconcile my red ideal?

This heart is cavernous and it requires
Lady MacBeth and an aptitude for crime,
some Aeschylean flower of the South,

or Michelangelo's great daughter, Night
who slumberously contorts the marble charms
he carved to satiate a titan's mouth.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3371/3643036790_a22aa06d1e_o.jpg

Jewels

My darling was naked, or nearly, for knowing my heart
she had left on her jewels, the bangles and chains
whose jingling music gave her the conquering air
of a Moorish slave on days her master is pleased.

Whenever I hear such insolent harmonies,
that scintillating world of metal and stone
beguiles me altogether, and I am enthalled
by objects whose sound is a synonym for light.

For there she lay on the couch, allowing herself
to be adored, a secret smile indulging
the deep and tenacious currents of my love
which rose against her body like a tide.

Eyes fixed on mine with the speculative glare
of a half-tamed tiger, she kept altering poses,
and the incorporation of candor into lust
gave new charms to her metamorphoses;

calmly I watched, with a certain detachment at first,
as the swanlike arms uncoiled, and then the legs,
the sleek thighs shifting, shiny as oil,
the belly, the breasts- that fruit on my vine-

clustered more tempting than wicked cherubim,
to undermine what peace I had achieved...

And then, the lamp having given up the ghost,
the dying coals made the only light in the room:
each time they heaved another flamboyant sigh,
they flushed that amber-colored flesh with blood!

both excerpted from Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal, translated by Richard Howard

[Nick Capozzoli]

or Michelangelo's great daughter, Night
who slumberously contorts the marble charms
he carved to satiate a titan's mouth...[/SIZE]

That marble gal by Michaelangelo looks like a male torso with female tits attached.:)

[stlukesguild]

ART

Yes, artwork is better
When the means used rebel:
Meter,
Marble, onyx, enamel.

Not for crippling fashion,
Muse, but straighter walk,
Put on
High heels, a "learned sock".

In rhythm I despise
The kind like an old shoe,
The size
Every foot goes into!

Sculptor, do no succumb
To easiness, the clay
The thumb
Works when the mind's away;

Struggle with Carrara's
Hardness, Paro's rare
Quarries
Where the pure contours are;

From Syracuse you get
Bronze where a fugitive
Proud trait
Solidly seems to live;

With skill that's delicate
Unerringly follow
The agate
Profile of Apollo.

Painter, shun aquarelle.
If you find your color
Too frail,
See the enameller...

excerpt for Theophile Gautier
tr. Louis Simpson

[JCamilo]

Are you familiar with Baudelaire non-poetry, his essays?

[stlukesguild]

I have read some of his art critical essays... quite a few years back while still in art school.

[Barbarous]

more Baudelaire. Take a wild guess where the first line reappears, heh.

Les Sept vieillards

À Victor Hugo

Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,
Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant!
Les mystères partout coulent comme des sèves
Dans les canaux étroits du colosse puissant.

Un matin, cependant que dans la triste rue
Les maisons, dont la brume allongeait la hauteur,
Simulaient les deux quais d'une rivière accrue,
Et que, décor semblable à l'âme de l'acteur,

Un brouillard sale et jaune inondait tout l'espace,
Je suivais, roidissant mes nerfs comme un héros
Et discutant avec mon âme déjà lasse,
Le faubourg secoué par les lourds tombereaux.

Tout à coup, un vieillard dont les guenilles jaunes
Imitaient la couleur de ce ciel pluvieux,
Et dont l'aspect aurait fait pleuvoir les aumônes,
Sans la méchanceté qui luisait dans ses yeux,

M'apparut. On eût dit sa prunelle trempée
Dans le fiel; son regard aiguisait les frimas,
Et sa barbe à longs poils, roide comme une épée,
Se projetait, pareille à celle de Judas.

II n'était pas voûté, mais cassé, son échine
Faisant avec sa jambe un parfait angle droit,
Si bien que son bâton, parachevant sa mine,
Lui donnait la tournure et le pas maladroit

D'un quadrupède infirme ou d'un juif à trois pattes.
Dans la neige et la boue il allait s'empêtrant,
Comme s'il écrasait des morts sous ses savates,
Hostile à l'univers plutôt qu'indifférent.

Son pareil le suivait: barbe, oeil, dos, bâton, loques,
Nul trait ne distinguait, du même enfer venu,
Ce jumeau centenaire, et ces spectres baroques
Marchaient du même pas vers un but inconnu.

À quel complot infâme étais-je donc en butte,
Ou quel méchant hasard ainsi m'humiliait?
Car je comptai sept fois, de minute en minute,
Ce sinistre vieillard qui se multipliait!

Que celui-là qui rit de mon inquiétude
Et qui n'est pas saisi d'un frisson fraternel
Songe bien que malgré tant de décrépitude
Ces sept monstres hideux avaient l'air éternel!

Aurais-je, sans mourir, contemplé le huitième,
Sosie inexorable, ironique et fatal
Dégoûtant Phénix, fils et père de lui-même?
— Mais je tournai le dos au cortège infernal.

Exaspéré comme un ivrogne qui voit double,
Je rentrai, je fermai ma porte, épouvanté,
Malade et morfondu, l'esprit fiévreux et trouble,
Blessé par le mystère et par l'absurdité!

Vainement ma raison voulait prendre la barre;
La tempête en jouant déroutait ses efforts,
Et mon âme dansait, dansait, vieille gabarre
Sans mâts, sur une mer monstrueuse et sans bords!

-------------------------------------------------

The Seven Old Men

To Victor Hugo

Teeming, swarming city, city full of dreams,
Where specters in broad day accost the passer-by!
Everywhere mysteries flow like the sap in a tree
Through the narrow canals of the mighty giant.

One morning, while in a gloomy street the houses,
Whose height was increased by the mist, simulated
The quais of a swollen river, and while
— A setting that was like the actor's soul —

A dirty yellow fog inundated all space,
I was following, steeling my nerves like a hero,
Arid arguing with my already weary soul,
A squalid street shaken by the heavy dump-carts.

Suddenly an old man whose tattered yellow clothes
Were of the same color as the rainy heavens,
And whose aspect would have brought him showers of alms
If his eyes had not gleamed with so much wickedness,

Appeared to me. One would have said his eyes were drenched
With gall; his look sharpened the winter's chill,
And his long shaggy beard, like that of Judas,
Projected from his chin as stiffly as a sword.

He was not bent over, but broken; his back-bone
Made with his legs a perfect right angle,
So that his stick, completing the picture,
Gave him the appearance and clumsy gait

Of a lame quadruped or a three-legged Jew.
He went hobbling along in the snow and the mud
As if he were crushing the dead under his shoes;
Hostile, rather than indifferent to the world,

His likeness followed him: beard, eye, back, stick, tatters,
No mark distinguished this centenarian twin,
Who came from the same hell, and these baroque specters
Were walking with the same gait toward an unknown goal.

Of what infamous plot was I then the object,
Or what evil chance humiliated me thus?
For I counted seven times in as many minutes
That sinister old man who multiplied himself!

Let him who laughs at my disquietude,
And who is not seized with a fraternal shudder,
Realize that in spite of such decrepitude
Those hideous monsters had an eternal look!

Could I, without dying, have regarded the eighth,
Unrelenting Sosia, ironic and fatal,
Disgusting Phoenix, son and father of himself?
— But I turned my back on that hellish procession.

Exasperated like a drunk who sees double,
I went home; I locked the door, terrified,
Chilled to the bone and ill, my mind fevered, confused,
Hurt by that mysterious and absurd happening!

Vainly my reason tried to take the helm;
The frolicsome tempest baffled all its efforts,
And my soul, old sailing barge without masts,
Kept dancing, dancing, on a monstrous, shoreless sea!

[LitNetIsGreat]

Love the Baudelaire, exquisitely decadent. :thumbs_up

[Barbarous]

Certainly so, though there was a point in my life, when I first picked up Baudelaire, where I thought his verse to be bland and meandering. Recently I have begun to hold him in the highest esteem and find myself turning frequently to a number of poems in Les Fleurs Du Mal. I find him to be a poet to experience, not of course, in the sense that you need to see a rotting corpse of a 'whore' on a daily June walk, no, but the experience of a realization, which for any of us, can come in a different sort.

With that said, I am currently learning the French language and M. Baudelaire himself is more or less my teacher. For those who are interested, visit this site: http://fleursdumal.org/ for tons of poems and mp3 of others reading the poems of Baudelaire in the original French.

This is a great thread, as I am also in the interest of Verlaine, and Rimbaud, though the latter is a lesser interest to me now, and shall revisit it for any information of one of my favorite moments in poetry.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Brilliant. I have come across that site before and it is indeed excellent.

I have always wanted to learn French, and funnily enough, have used the duel edition of "Fleurs De Mal" in the past to try to pick up a few words too, though I am not particularly good at picking up languages it seems. What better way to learn French than through poetry though?

I've got my mind set on picking up Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant tomorrow, though I may just see what I can find of the French Symbolists as well.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Picked up an edition of Fleurs du Mal today, Oxford World Classics, trans by James McGowan. I've only looked at "Au Lecteur" which I have been reading quite a bit and the translation varies a lot from the one on the website translated by Roy Campbell. As ever with translations I tend to compare them and favour bits from each, not in terms of matching the original because I am only a beginner in French, but from the point of view of the translated lines themselves, what seems to sound right, and what seems to sound wrong, in isolation from the original.

Anyway, here are the first few stanzas in case anyone is interested (not sure if I'm allowed to copy more).

To the Reader

Folly and error, stinginess and sin
Possess our spirits and fatigue our flesh.
And like a pet we feed our tame remorse
As beggars take to nourishing their lice.

Our sins are stubborn, our contrition lazy;
We offer lavishly our vows of faith
And turn back gladly to the path of filth,
Thinking mean tears will wash away our stains.

On evil's pillow lies the alchemist
Satan Thrice-Great, who lulls our captive soul.
And all the richest metal of our will
Is vaporized by his hermetic arts.

Truly the Devil pulls on all our strings!
In most repugnant objects we find charms;
Each day we're one step further into Hell,
Content to move across the sticking pit.


To the Reader (trans by Roy Campbell)

Folly and error, avarice and vice,
Employ our souls and waste our bodies' force.
As mangey beggars incubate their lice,
We nourish our innocuous remorse.

Our sins are stubborn, craven our repentance.
For our weak vows we ask excessive prices.
Trusting our tears will wash away the sentence,
We sneak off where the muddy road entices.

Cradled in evil, that Thrice-Great Magician,
The Devil, rocks our souls, that can't resist;
And the rich metal of our own volition
Is vaporised by that sage alchemist.

The Devil pulls the strings by which we're worked:
By all revolting objects lured, we slink
Hellwards; each day down one more step we're jerked
Feeling no horror, through the shades that stink.

(Original)
Au Lecteur

La sottise, l'erreur, le péché, la lésine,
Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps,
Et nous alimentons nos aimables remords,
Comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine.

Nos péchés sont têtus, nos repentirs sont lâches;
Nous nous faisons payer grassement nos aveux,
Et nous rentrons gaiement dans le chemin bourbeux,
Croyant par de vils pleurs laver toutes nos taches.

Sur l'oreiller du mal c'est Satan Trismégiste
Qui berce longuement notre esprit enchanté,
Et le riche métal de notre volonté
Est tout vaporisé par ce savant chimiste.

C'est le Diable qui tient les fils qui nous remuent!
Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas;
Chaque jour vers l'Enfer nous descendons d'un pas,
Sans horreur, à travers des ténèbres qui puent.


Now briefly, from the first line in my edition "stinginess" feels a bit weak in comparison to "avarice" but apart from that I prefer the rest of the stanza. "Possess our spirits and fatigue our flesh" sounds better than "Employ our souls and waste our bodies' force" though I haven't a clue which is closer in meaning to the original.

Again at the start of the next stanza mine reads "Our sins are stubborn, our contrition lazy/We offer lavishly our vows of faith" in comparison to "Our sins are stubborn, craven our repentance/ For our weak vows we ask excessive prices", which also sounds a bit weaker to me. However there are lines in the Campbell translation which I prefer to McGowan's, so it is odds and ends.

The main objective for me is to get a feel for the poem by comparing each translation, and at the same time reading the original and trying to pick up a few things. Reading this way does have its advantages I think, not to mention the fact that it forces you to read the poem slowly, line by line. The mp3 downloads on the site mentioned above are also very good because I can also listen to the original to get a feel for the sound of the poem, and the correct pronunciation.

I must say this poem has really gotten under my skin, its been a few years since I read Baudelaire's poetry, but it is the same feeling I had back then. I can't describe it but its something quite gripping, dark but intoxicating, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, doesn't anybody know anything about this translation, it's general reputation or anything of interest? It was the only duel copy available so I just bought it.

[stlukesguild]

I can't speak to that specific translation. If possible I would recommend you seek out the New Directions edition of The Flowers of Evil in which the editors did an outstanding job at selecting what they felt were the strongest versions of each individual poem. Personally I am a great lover of Baudelaire... considering especially the fact that I can almost credit his work with having first turned me onto poetry... and I will say that I find the translations particularly strong. I will also restate something suggested by the editors themselves... and that is that the variety of translations offers a closer view of the true Baudelaire in that different translators are better at suggesting this or that particular characteristic of his poetry. Beyond that... my absolute favorite translation of the complete Les Fleurs du Mal (with the original French) is that of Richard Howard. Again... this is the translation I first came to Baudelaire with and as such it IS Baudelaire to me... much as John Ciardi IS Dante. Howard is a marvelous poet himself and does a beautiful job at capturing the sensuality and the sense-laden atmosphere of Baudelaire... although he admittedly avoids the poet's "classicism" or formalism... his perfect rhyme and meter that he contrasts so effectively with the ugliness or the lewdness of his subject matter.

[mortalterror]

Personally I am a great lover of Baudelaire... considering especially the fact that I can almost credit his work with having first turned me onto poetry... and I will say that I find the translations particularly strong.
"Whom shall I set so great a man to face?
Or whom oppose? Who's equal to the place?"
-Aeschylus

Do you think that Baudelaire(1821-1867) is better than Walt Whitman(1819-1892)? Both poets are contemporary late bloomers known mostly for one book which they produced about the age of 36, Flowers of Evil(1857) and Leaves of Grass(1855) respectively. Personally, I think Flowers of Evil the better work. I'm just curious what other people think.

[Nick Capozzoli]

Barbarous,

Was that your translation of Les Sept Vieillards, A Victor Hugo? If so, I am in awe, for it is extremely fine. I tried a rhyming version, but vouldn't get it right. The English version you posted is, I think, quite close to what Baudelaire would have written were he writing in English. :thumbs_up

Nick

[JBI]

"Whom shall I set so great a man to face?
Or whom oppose? Who's equal to the place?"
-Aeschylus

Do you think that Baudelaire(1821-1867) is better than Walt Whitman(1819-1892)? Both poets are contemporary late bloomers known mostly for one book which they produced about the age of 36, Flowers of Evil(1857) and Leaves of Grass(1855) respectively. Personally, I think Flowers of Evil the better work. I'm just curious what other people think.

In a sense, though I think the Lilacs Elegy and Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking to be better than anything by Baudelaire (I've read his complete works). Personally, I yield toward Mallarme, and don't particularly care for that sort of cowboyish tone of Song of Myself, or that sort of decadent symbolist tone of The Cat, or The Albatross.

[stlukesguild]

Do you think that Baudelaire(1821-1867) is better than Walt Whitman(1819-1892)? Both poets are contemporary late bloomers known mostly for one book which they produced about the age of 36, Flowers of Evil(1857) and Leaves of Grass(1855) respectively. Personally, I think Flowers of Evil the better work. I'm just curious what other people think.

The difficulty there... for me at least... is in comparing Whitman in the original with Baudelaire in translation. They are indeed a study in contrasts in spite of their similarities. Whitman is almost certainly THE great American poet and his volume is one of the most influential works in Europe and abroad. Baudelaire is arguably THE great French poet, and his work is equally influential... But what a contrast... even in the very titles: Leaves of Grass vs Flowers of Evil... the positive American "naif" vs the sophisticated, jaded, urban Parisian. I must say I love both of these poets, but I probably would need to go with Baudelaire. My own tastes lean more toward the formal perfection of the Frenchman as opposed to the sprawling grandeur of the American. Perhaps I must also admit that as a long-time city dweller I find Baudelaire's grasp on the horrors and the splendors of the urban environment speaks more to me. I'm also admittedly enamored of his sensual and sense-laden atmosphere. I could argue that Whitman is the more audacious poet in terms of formal invention... but then French art and literature is far more rigidly formal than that of Anglo-America: Baudelaire's inverted sonnets were a challenge... and Rimbaud's prose-poems were completely unheard of... while English poetry had Traherne and Blake and Wordsworth and any number of far earlier poets who had torn open the conventions of poetic form. Certainly a comparison of these two could make for an interesting discussion...

[stlukesguild]

JBI... true to yourself as always. Its almost goes without saying that you would go with the most rigorously abstract of the poets.:lol: Of course there always comes a time when you recognize that labyrinthine cognizant difficulties do not always result in artistic profundities. Don't get me wrong... I quite admire Mallarme myself. However he resonates with me somewhat like Analytical Cubism; he speaks clearly to me on a purely intellectual basis... as perfect... crystalline... works of art... but he never engages the emotions... the passions. He struggles to express the ineffable... but seemingly falls short of addressing the thoughts and feelings that are more common to us all.

[mortalterror]

JBI... true to yourself as always. Its almost goes without saying that you would go with the most rigorously abstract of the poets.:lol: Of course there always comes a time when you recognize that labyrinthine cognizant difficulties do not always result in artistic profundities. Don't get me wrong... I quite admire Mallarme myself. However he resonates with me somewhat like Analytical Cubism; he speaks clearly to me on a purely intellectual basis... as perfect... crystalline... works of art... but he never engages the emotions... the passions. He struggles to express the ineffable... but seemingly falls short of addressing the thoughts and feelings that are more common to us all.
"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." -Faulkner about Hemingway

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" -Hemingway about Faulkner

[Madame X]

Anyway, doesn't anybody know anything about this translation, it's general reputation or anything of interest? It was the only duel copy available so I just bought it.

Nothing of real interest here; just my opinion, I'm afraid. :D Comparing the two I’d say Campbell’s translation comes closer to the original French, although I’d agree it’s not always the more seamless for it; As mangy beggars incubate their lice/We nourish our innocuous remorse sounds a bit too clinical, thus awkwardly un-Baudelaireian (although McGowan’s pet-simile is, admittedly, the greater travesty there :rolleyes:). He takes a liberty or two to preserve the rhyme scheme as well, but overall he appears the more adept in his art. McGowan’s translation is somehow too terse to exude even a fraction of Baudelaire’s structured sumptuousness and comes across as rather juvenile sounding as a result. He translates “sur l’oreiller du mal”, quite literally, to “on a pillow of evil”, which I’m sure must be both a terrifying and potent image for those who are capable of envisioning such a thing, but those of us with slightly more limited imaginations unfortunately require something a bit more, shall we say, comprehensible. ;) Simply put, the phrase means, “in a bed of evil”, as in, enveloped by it, which Campbell better renders with the word, “cradled”. If you compare the final stanza as well, I’d say Campbell does a more effective job in evoking the resplendent morbidity of the piece and in finer form to boot, not so? :thumbs_up

[stlukesguild]

I might note that there are more than a few Campbell translations in the New Directions editions of The Flowers of Evil. And like most New Directions books, it is rather inexpensive.

[Barbarous]

Picked up an edition of Fleurs du Mal today, Oxford World Classics, trans by James McGowan.

I'm almost certain that my copy is of that translation seeing how it is also an Oxford World Classic. Enjoy your read!


Barbarous,

Was that your translation of Les Sept Vieillards, A Victor Hugo? If so, I am in awe, for it is extremely fine. I tried a rhyming version, but vouldn't get it right. The English version you posted is, I think, quite close to what Baudelaire would have written were he writing in English. :thumbs_up

Nick

Ah, I wish! The present translation that I provided was off of the website fleursdumal.org. They have, what I want to say is, very up-to-date translations!


"Whom shall I set so great a man to face?
Or whom oppose? Who's equal to the place?"
-Aeschylus

Do you think that Baudelaire(1821-1867) is better than Walt Whitman(1819-1892)? Both poets are contemporary late bloomers known mostly for one book which they produced about the age of 36, Flowers of Evil(1857) and Leaves of Grass(1855) respectively. Personally, I think Flowers of Evil the better work. I'm just curious what other people think.

This is a relatively tough question to wrestle with, but one I have not heard before. As an American student, Whitman was introduced to me early on in my 'literary' career, and I hold a place in my heart for him. Baudelaire on the other hand is on his own and is the man the sun has turned away from, essentially ignoring him. Now I can certainly agree and am affable to Baudelaire 'situation' where as Whitman is a harder figure to connect. So I just weaseled around the question present and obviously you can come to the conclusion that I like Baudelaire more. I'll go the length to say though, that Whitman is probably the better poet. But again, it is hard, as a user has previously stated, to compare the original french of Baudelaire, which conveys simply the most astonishing and awesome language, is a bit tedious seeing how I am in the process of learning broken French.

[weltanschauung]

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3414/3594556042_2f318b34f2_o.jpg



thanks for this, you have no idea how far it has traveled to find me!
http://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/3.gif

[LitNetIsGreat]

I'm almost certain that my copy is of that translation seeing how it is also an Oxford World Classic. Enjoy your read!


Thanks. I think I'll just take one poem or so per night and read it in the method I mentioned previously. Fleurs de Mal has been something I have been meaning to pick up again for a long time.


Nothing of real interest here; just my opinion, I'm afraid. Comparing the two I’d say Campbell’s translation comes closer to the original French, although I’d agree it’s not always the more seamless for it...


If you compare the final stanza as well, I’d say Campbell does a more effective job in evoking the resplendent morbidity of the piece and in finer form to boot, not so?

No that is quite interesting (I don't know what I meant by using that phrase) though I am a little surprised that you preferred Campbell to McGowan in the end. Of course we are only looking at four tiny stanzas here.


I can't speak to that specific translation. If possible I would recommend you seek out the New Directions edition of The Flowers of Evil in which the editors did an outstanding job at selecting what they felt were the strongest versions of each individual poem.

Yes I think that is a very good system and something I think I'll look out for in the long run, though for now I'm quite happy with looking at the Oxford and online version.


Personally I am a great lover of Baudelaire... considering especially the fact that I can almost credit his work with having first turned me onto poetry... and I will say that I find the translations particularly strong. I will also restate something suggested by the editors themselves... and that is that the variety of translations offers a closer view of the true Baudelaire in that different translators are better at suggesting this or that particular characteristic of his poetry. Beyond that... my absolute favorite translation of the complete Les Fleurs du Mal (with the original French) is that of Richard Howard. Again... this is the translation I first came to Baudelaire with and as such it IS Baudelaire to me... much as John Ciardi IS Dante. Howard is a marvelous poet himself and does a beautiful job at capturing the sensuality and the sense-laden atmosphere of Baudelaire... although he admittedly avoids the poet's "classicism" or formalism... his perfect rhyme and meter that he contrasts so effectively with the ugliness or the lewdness of his subject matter.

That's also an interesting thought. So Baudelaire was the first one to corrupt you then eh?

[Barbarous]

some Verlaine, guess where the last line of the poem reappears! (Hint: the same place where Baudelaire's Fourmillante cité appears, it's easy!).

Parsifal

Parsifal a vaincu les Filles, leur gentil
Babil et la luxure amusante - et sa pente
Vers la Chair de garçon vierge que cela tente
D'aimer les seins légers et ce gentil babil;

Il vaincu la Femme belle, au cœur subtil,
Étalant ses bras frais et sa gorge excitante;
Il a vaincu l'Enfer et rentre sous sa tente
Avec un lourd trophée à son bras puéril,

Avec la lance qui perça le Flanc suprême!
Il a guéri le roi, le voici roi lui-même,
Et prêtre du très saint Trésor essentiel.

En robe d'or il adore, gloire et symbole,
Le vase pur où resplendit le Sang réel.
- Et, ô ces voix d'enfants chantant dans la coupole!
--------------------------------------------------

Parsifal

Parsifal has conquered the Maidens, their sweet
Talk, their seductions. He's sidestepped
Flesh, soft murmur and high breasts,
Traps for virgin boys.

He's turned away from subtle beautiful Woman,
Open-armed and thrilling-breasted.
He's seen off the Devil. The young man returns
To his tent, in hid arms a heavy prize-------

The lance which pierced the supreme body's side.
He's cured the King, now he himself is king,
Priest of the holiest of Holy Treasures.

He venerates in golden robes that symbol,
That glory, that pure vessel where real Blood gleams.
---And then, those children's voices singing in the dome!

*The English translation is from Selected Poems translated by Martin Sorrell, put out by Oxford World Classics.

[jinjang]

Without meaning to ignore recent posters, I am turning over to the previous page because today I happened to read and translate the poem AU LECTEUR Neely posted in the previous page.

I totally agree with you, Neely, that reading poems line by line several times absorbing their deliverance as close as we can is a simple pleasure like a math problem.


To the Reader

Folly and error, stinginess and sin
Possess our spirits and fatigue our flesh.
And like a pet we feed our tame remorse
As beggars take to nourishing their lice.

Our sins are stubborn, our contrition lazy;
We offer lavishly our vows of faith
And turn back gladly to the path of filth,
Thinking mean tears will wash away our stains.

On evil's pillow lies the alchemist
Satan Thrice-Great, who lulls our captive soul.
And all the richest metal of our will
Is vaporized by his hermetic arts.

Truly the Devil pulls on all our strings!
In most repugnant objects we find charms;
Each day we're one step further into Hell,
Content to move across the sticking pit.

I prefer this translation to the other one you posted because, I think, it is closer to the original. Even though it used “content" for “sans horreur,” it kept “gladly” for “gaiment” while the other skipped it. “La lésine” means “stinginess” and “avarice” would be too strong.

Instead of “Each day we're one step further into Hell,” I would have put the sentence to “Each day we descend one more step toward Hell.” Instead of “mean tears,” I would use “cheap tears” and the last line to be "without horror, through stinking darkness."

The following stanzas are more challenging to translate and I like the line best: "Serré, fourmillant, comme un million d'helminthes" (squeezed, swarming, like a million worms).

I was thinking today it would be nice to translate French poems with some Lit Net people. Indeed, what a pleasant way to learn French!

I missed one line you questioned: "travaillent nos corps" literally means "work our bodies" which matches well with "fatigue our flesh."

[Nick Capozzoli]

Jinjang,

I've read several imitations (I prefer this Robert Lowell term to "translations") of Au Lecteur. I'm obviously biased, but I like my own imitation, which I posted earlier on this thread, better than other published versions. I wrote it about 15 years ago. :redface:

[jinjang]

I've read several imitations

I did the same: I went out and read Howard's translation of the poem AU LECTEUR. I have read four translations including yours so far. Although we may favor one over the other, I agree with you that a translation remains at best as an imitation.

I now have a pretty good "imitation" of the poem. What do you think of the poem? Does the poem apply to an ordinary person? What do you think of the ending of the poem? Is boredom worse vice than our folly or error or selfishness? Do you think each animal a metaphor for a vice?

How about "imitating" French poems together?

[stlukesguild]

A Venetian Lady's Last Will

The serene ceremony of the moon
Seals the bliss of the rest.
Goethe, Faust PartII

The day I die, haste to my gondola,
Fill it with pinks, roses, and jasmine,
Lay me on the flowers, fold my pale hands,
Leave my eyes open like an idol's eyes...

Lay on my brow pure white as milk
A green diadem of leaves interwoven,
Seal with a kiss my frozen lips,
And cover my body with a violet crepe.

When you have finished with this weary task,
Oh, gaze at how white I am among the flowers...
Gaze, gaze... then, without sighs or tears,
Launch me out to sea on an evening of full moon.

...Away the gondola goes... away among the waves...

Adieu! I make my way cold and dead on the wave.
The water lulls me and the moon silvers my beauty.
The gondola advances until immensity
Slowly enfolds me, profound and ever more blue.

-Paul Valéry, Uncollected Poems
tr. David Paul

[JCamilo]

"Whom shall I set so great a man to face?
Or whom oppose? Who's equal to the place?"
-Aeschylus

Do you think that Baudelaire(1821-1867) is better than Walt Whitman(1819-1892)? Both poets are contemporary late bloomers known mostly for one book which they produced about the age of 36, Flowers of Evil(1857) and Leaves of Grass(1855) respectively. Personally, I think Flowers of Evil the better work. I'm just curious what other people think.

I prefer Baudelaire. Maybe just because his critical nature, pessimistic appeals more to me. But maybe because I have read more than Flowers of Evil, and I find his essays to be among the best critical essays written, his Prose Poems to be almost as good as his formal poetry and his work as translator of Poe, astounishing.
And because I have read Fernando Pessoa, Whitman's bastard son.

Now, the description of Mallarme just seemed fitting for Borges too :D

[David R]

Hey,

I lapped up Baudlaire and Rimbaud in my late teens and early twenties.

Rimbaud - prodigy and punk. My favourites were A Season in Hell and the famous letter he wrote about the poet as seer. Fascinating life.

Baudlaire - our man of the flowers. Major influence on T.S. Eliot. Steeped in Christianity ( his satanism and immorality) not unlike Blake in this.

These two poets will bring great satisfaction to anyone interested in Romanticism. I would love to be able to read them in the original French. Just to read them is a good enough incentive to learn the language.

I hope I never grow out of reading them and their Romantic cousins.

[stlukesguild]

I thought perhaps it was time to revive some discussions of actual poetry (as opposed... shall we say... to lyrics from pop songs:goof:)... so I bumped this and a few others back up from oblivion.

[wlz]

Stlukesguild, you'll have to try and find a way to forgive me for this but the very mention of French Poetry gets me going like a red-rag to a bull. (Blast... that simile came out all wrong!) I love the Symbolist Period but I am a reader of the older texts mostly: Guillaume De Poitiers, Marcabrun, Bernard De Ventadour, Arnaut Daniel, Marie De France, The Vidame De Chartres, Jean Froissart, Charles D'Orleans all very enjoyable, brilliant and interesting reads. Have you read through the Medieval Norman Songs? Anyway, here is a piece by Jean Froissart:

'Rondel'

Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine?
Naught see I fixed or sure in thee!
I do not know thee, nor what deeds are thine:
Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine?
Naught see I fixed or sure in thee!

Shall I be mute, or vows with prayers combine?
Ye who are blessed in loving, tell it me:
Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine?
Naught see I permanent or sure in thee!


'Rondel' by Francois Villon

Goodbye, the tears are in my eyes;
Farewell, farewell, my prettiest;
Farewell, of women born the best;
Goodbye, the saddest of good-byes.

Farewell, with many vows and sighs
My sad heart leaves you to your rest;
Farewell, the tears are in my eyes;
Farewell, from you my miseries
Are more than now may be confessed,
And most by thee have I been blessed,
Yea, and for thee have wasted sighs;
Good-bye, the last of my good-byes.

Beautiful forms...? I also love the work of Mellin De Saint-Gelais. The poet of a wonderfully structured sonnet called, 'The Sonnet of the Mountain' which is worth a read. Again, apologies for not keeping in the period of French Symbolist Poetry, ('le Paradoxe de Temps' - lol!) Did you read Clement Marot, Jacques Tahureau, or Jean Passerat?

[JBI]

Stlukesguild, you'll have to try and find a way to forgive me for this but the very mention of French Poetry gets me going like a red-rag to a bull. (Blast... that simile came out all wrong!) I love the Symbolist Period but I am a reader of the older texts mostly: Guillaume De Poitiers, Marcabrun, Bernard De Ventadour, Arnaut Daniel, Marie De France, The Vidame De Chartres, Jean Froissart, Charles D'Orleans all very enjoyable, brilliant and interesting reads. Have you read through the Medieval Norman Songs? Anyway, here is a piece by Jean Froissart:

'Rondel'

Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine?
Naught see I fixed or sure in thee!
I do not know thee, nor what deeds are thine:
Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine?
Naught see I fixed or sure in thee!

Shall I be mute, or vows with prayers combine?
Ye who are blessed in loving, tell it me:
Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine?
Naught see I permanent or sure in thee!


'Rondel' by Francois Villon

Goodbye, the tears are in my eyes;
Farewell, farewell, my prettiest;
Farewell, of women born the best;
Goodbye, the saddest of good-byes.

Farewell, with many vows and sighs
My sad heart leaves you to your rest;
Farewell, the tears are in my eyes;
Farewell, from you my miseries
Are more than now may be confessed,
And most by thee have I been blessed,
Yea, and for thee have wasted sighs;
Good-bye, the last of my good-byes.

Beautiful forms...? I also love the work of Mellin De Saint-Gelais. The poet of a wonderfully structured sonnet called, 'The Sonnet of the Mountain' which is worth a read. Again, apologies for not keeping in the period of French Symbolist Poetry, ('le Paradoxe de Temps' - lol!) Did you read Clement Marot, Jacques Tahureau, or Jean Passerat?

Mind linking to the original if you can find it?

Never mind, found it.

VIII. RONDEL.

Adieu vous dy la lerme à l'oeil;
Adieu, ma très gente mignonne,
Adieu, sur toutes la plus bonne,
Adieu vous dy, qui m'est grand dueil.

Adieu, adieu, m'amour, mon vueil;
Mon povre cueur vous laisse et donne.
Adieu vous dy la lerme à l'oeil.

Adieu, par qui du mal recueil
Mille fois plus que mot ne sonne;
Adieu, du monde la personne
Dont plus me loue et plus me dueil.
Adieu vous dy la lerme à l'oeil.


From Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12246/12246-h/12246-h.htm


I think it interesting how this poem works, albeit not a symbolist one. Symbolism is far more charge - to me the original of this one reads even simpler than the English translation of it - it's more of a song than a poem to me, given the form.

Symbolism to me though is far more charged - it compacts more, and works better, to my eyes, as a written form, which is charged with compact image and concept - this one is like a nice lyric, similar to something like Ben Jonson's Song[s] to Celia. It is interesting to note how the form transferred.

I feel almost obligated to flip through Symons again, as his concept of the emergence of the symbolist language seems relevant. The emergence of symbol seems preoccupied with a changing landscape, and is an interesting contrast against, for instance, the simplification of verse (in terms of compactness of meaning, in the sense of accessibility or metonymic and metaphoric distance in English around the Rosetti's, or Swinburne).

I think that really is the charge of Baudelaire - the shifting landscape of urban Paris, and what political scientists would call "modernization" seems to necessitate a different form of language and address, where the simple, even lyric language of Villon seems unable to grasp the concept.

Compare the above to the charged language of Baudelaire for instance:

Mon enfant, ma soeur,
Songe à la douceur
D'aller là-bas vivre ensemble!
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir
Au pays qui te ressemble!
Les soleils mouillés
De ces ciels brouillés
Pour mon esprit ont les charmes
Si mystérieux
De tes traîtres yeux,
Brillant à travers leurs larmes.

Imagine, ma petite,
Dear sister mine, how sweet
Were we to go and take our pleasure
Leisurely, you and I—
To lie, to love, to die
Off in that land made to your measure!
A land whose suns' moist rays,
Through the skies' misty haze,
Hold quite the same dark charms for me
As do your scheming eyes
When they, in their like wise,
Shine through your tears, perfidiously.

Source: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/039250.html

The shift of setting seems to speak of the voice of displacement and destruction, echoing the images of Symbolist painters, and anticipating the voice of Eliot and other modernists (the US at this point seems to have been, temporally in terms of modernity if such a thing can be measured, slightly behind at this point).

[wlz]

'Art Poetique',
(From Jadis et Naguere)

Music first and foremost of all!
Choose your measure of odd not even,
Let it melt in the ir of heaven,
Pose not, poise not, but rise and fall.

Choose your words, but think not whether
Each to other of old belong:
What so dear as the dim grey song
Where clear and vague are joined together?

'Tis veils of beauty for beautiful eyes,
'Tis the trembling light of the naked noon,
'Tis a medley of blue and gold, the moon
And stars in the cool of autumn skies.

Let every shape of its shade be born;
Colour, away! come to me, shade!
Only of shade can the marriage be made
Of dream with dream and of flute with horn.

Shun the Point, lest death with it come,
Unholy laughter and cruel wit
(For the eyes of the angels weep at it)
And all the garbage of scullery-scum.

Take Eloquence, and wring the neck of him!
You had better, by force, from time to time,
Put a little sense in the head Rhyme:
If you watch him not, you will be at the beck of
him.

O, who shall tell us wrongs of Rhyme?
What a witless savage or what deaf boy
Has made for us this twopenny toy
Whose bells ring hollow and out of time?

Music will always and music still!
Let your verse be the wandering thing
That flutters in the light from a soul on the wing
Towards other skies at a new new whim's will.

Let your verse be the luck of the lure
Afloat on the winds that at mornin hint
Of the odours of thyme and the savour of mint...
And all the rest is literature.

trans, Arthur Symons.

I understand your point of Symbolist/Decadent (?) Poetry being more "charged" and more challenging to read in reflecting a changing philosophical and political climate than texts more lyrical in nature dating from several centuries earlier. However, I do enjoy reading earlier texts for their lyrical quality and simplicity. It can be nice to shed away the clustering tropes piled tower high and return to something a little more banal - sometimes.
"The emergence of symbol seems preoccupied with a changing landscape [...]" - I guess in the face of Comte's Positivistic philosophy and Darwinism it is not difficult to imagine the poets making a leap for the morbid Schopenhauer and his ideas on Will and representation.

[stlukesguild]

I thought I'd bump this post up with the current discussion of Rimbaud.

[stlukesguild]

*bump*

[laymonite]

"Je suis de mon coeur le vampire." - Baudelaire

[Jozanny]

During a fall kindle downloading spree, I added Baudelaire, though my French is so amputated I can't really judge the translation.

[Alexander III]

One of my favorites by Rimbaud

Childhood


I

That idol, black eyes and yellow mop, without parents or court, nobler than Mexican and Flemish fables; his domain, insolent azure and verdure, runs over beaches called by the shipless waves, names ferociously Greek, Slav, Celt.

At the border of the forest - dream flowers tinkle, flash, and flare, - the girl with orange lips, knees crossed in the clear flood that gushes from the fields, nakedness shaded, traversed, dressed by rainbow, flora, sea.

Ladies who stroll on terraces adjacent to the sea; baby girls and giantesses, superb blacks in the verdigris moss, jewels upright on the rich ground of groves and little thawed gardens, - young mothers and big sisters with eyes full of pilgrimages, sultanas, princesses tyrannical of costume and carriage, little foreign misses and young ladies gently unhappy.

What boredom, the hour of the "dear body" and "dear heart."

II

It is she, the little girl, dead behind the rosebushes.

- The young mamma, deceased, comes down the stoop. - The cousin's carriage creaks on the sand. - The little brother (he is in India!) there, before the western sky in the meadow of pinks. The old men who have been buried upright in the rampart overgrown with gillyflowers.

Swarms of golden leaves surround the general's house. They are in the south. - You follow the red road to reach the empty inn. The chateau is for sale; the shutters are coming off. The priest must have taken away the key of the church. Around the park the keepers' cottages are uninhabited. The enclosures are so high that nothing can be seen but the rustling tree tops. Besides, there is nothing to be seen within.

The meadows go up to the hamlets without anvils or cocks. The sluice gate is open. O the Calvaries and the windmills of the desert, the islands and the haystacks!

Magic flowers droned. The slopes cradled him. Beasts of a fabulous elegance moved about. The clouds gathered over the high sea, formed of an eternity of hot tears.

III

In the woods there is a bird; his song stops you and makes you blush.

There is a clock that never strikes.

There is a hollow with a nest of white beasts.

There is a cathedral that goes down and a lake that goes up.

There is a little carriage abandoned in the copse or that goes running down the road beribboned.

There is a troupe of little actors in costume, glimpsed on the road through the border of the woods.

And then, when you are hungry and thirsty, there is someone who drives you away.

IV

I am the saint at prayer on the terrace like the peaceful beasts that graze down to the sea of Palestine.

I am the scholar of the dark armchair. Branches and rain hurl themselves at the windows of my library.

I am the pedestrian of the highroad by way of the dwarf woods; the roar of the sluices drowns my steps. I can see for a long time the melancholy wash of the setting sun.

I might well be the child abandoned on the jetty on its way to the high seas, the little farm boy following the lane, its forehead touching the sky.

The paths are rough. The hillocks are covered with broom. The air is motionless. How far away are the birds and the springs! It can only be the end of the world ahead.

V

Let them rent me this whitewashed tomb, at last, with cement lines in relief, - far down under ground.

I lean my elbows on the table, the lamp shines brightly on these newspapers I am fool enough to read again, these stupid books.

An enormous distance above my subterranean parlor, houses take root, fogs gather. The mud is red or black. Monstrous city, night without end!

Less high are the sewers. At the sides, nothing but the thickness of the globe. Chasms of azure, wells of fire perhaps. Perhaps it is on these levels that moons and comets meet, fables and seas.

In hours of bitterness, I imagine balls of sapphire, of metal. I am master of silence. Why should the semblance of an opening pale under one corner of the vault?

[laymonite]

During a fall kindle downloading spree, I added Baudelaire, though my French is so amputated I can't really judge the translation.
stlukesguild highly recommends the New Directions edition, and, though I'm not exactly fluent (yet!) in French, I agree that this edition has great translations. It is a collaborative effort amongst many poets/translators/scholars.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0811211177/ref=oss_product

[B. Laumness]

As for any poet, the original version is ten times better; and, when it comes to Baudelaire, I doubt that a translation can reproduce all the art contained in his poetry. I’ve made a short comparative study between the original poem, “L’Ennemi”, and an adaptation by Robert Lowell, called “The Ruined Garden”. The change in the title already shows that the translator gives an interpretation and won’t be really faithful.



Ma jeunesse ne fut qu'un ténébreux orage,
Traversé çà et là par de brillants soleils ;
Le tonnerre et la pluie ont fait un tel ravage,
Qu'il reste en mon jardin bien peu de fruits vermeils.

Voilà que j'ai touché l'automne des idées,
Et qu'il faut employer la pelle et les râteaux
Pour rassembler à neuf les terres inondées,
Où l'eau creuse des trous grands comme des tombeaux.

Et qui sait si les fleurs nouvelles que je rêve
Trouveront dans ce sol lavé comme une grève
Le mystique aliment qui ferait leur vigueur ?

— Ô douleur ! ô douleur ! Le Temps mange la vie,
Et l'obscur Ennemi qui nous ronge le cœur
Du sang que nous perdons croît et se fortifie !




My childhood was only a menacing shower,
cut now and ten by hours of brilliant heat.
All the top soil was killed by rain and sleet,
my garden hardly bore a standing flower.

From now on, my mind's autumn! I must take
the field and dress my beds with spade and rake
and restore order to my flooded grounds.
There the rain raised mountains like burial mounds.

I throw fresh seeds out. Who knows what survives?
What elements will give us life and food?
This soil is irrigated by the tides.

Time and nature sluice away our lives.
A virus eats the heart out of our sides,
digs in and multiplies on our lost blood.


Stanza 1:
- “orage” means storm, “shower” is maybe too soft and also too polysemic
- “ténébreux” means gloomy, dark; it introduces the double meaning, the physical darkness and the moral darkness, since “ténèbres” is also a metaphor of Evil; “menacing” has a slightly different meaning
- with “cut” the image is sharp, whereas “traversé” is rather neutral and even positive, more appropriate to the idea of illumination by rays of sun
- “brillants soleils” = brilliant suns; the plural is poetic
- “hours” is added probably to insist on the main theme, which is time
- the idea of heat is not in the original text
- note that the word “temps” (time) in French has two meanings: the time and the weather, and this poem is build in that way: the landscape is in correspondence with the interior time
- “sleet” is not strong enough, “tonnerre” means thunder, “tonnerre and pluie” suggest two feelings, anger and sadness
- with Baudelaire, each word is important, and the place of each word is not without reason; you see that the translation of this verse 3 is very free; Baudelaire doesn’t use the explicit verb “to kill”; literally, it means “Thunder and rain (have) made such ravages”, and this “un tel” (such) tells not only the intensity of the ravages, but also announces grammatically the next verse, and indeed the storm has effects in the present day
- where is the present tense “reste”? Lowell uses the preterit “bore”, although the use of the tenses is meaningful: Baud. uses three verbs “fut” (passé simple), “ont fait” (passé composé, closer to the present, whereas the passé simple is used for the past definitely over) and “reste”, and thus there is a temporal progression
- “a standing flower” for “fruits vermeils”… be attentive when Baud. uses “flower”, it’s never innocent, and the word in French appears later in the text; here, “fruits vermeils” = vermillion fruits, classical metaphor of passion and life, and the evocation of this color along with “brilliant suns” reinforces the opposition with the grey and the black of the storm

Stanza 2:
- verse 5 more elliptic in English, why not, although you have not to forget Baud. is very classical formally speaking
- Baud. would not have made the reject “I must take”: the effect would have been poor
- Lowell needs two expressions “take the field” and “dress my beds” when Baud. needs only one word “employer”, which means to use, to work; appreciate the economy of means for a better effect
- “restore order” is good
- verse 8, the image is different, Baud. literally writes “Where water digs holes large like tombs”; the poem begins with “jeunesse”, the second stanza ends with “tombeaux”, it becomes obvious that the text has for theme the time of the life

Stanza 3:
- one sentence for Baud., four for the translator
- Lowell interprets “fleurs” by “fresh seeds”, but I think it would be better to keep “flowers” in reference to the title of the work, considering that the word often refers to poems
- the syntax and the vocabulary, and therefore the meaning, are so different that I have to propose a more faithful translation:

And who knows whether the new flowers I dream of
Will find in this soil washed like a shore
The mystic aliment that would give them vigor?

- the image is perhaps problematic: source of energy, of inspiration? You’ll note that the combination of an abstract word (“mystique”) and a concrete word (“aliment”) reveals one more time the poetic correspondences between spiritual life and nature

Stanza 4:
- after the hope of the stanza 3, now the despair, and you can see the breaking with the dash (even the punctuation makes sense)
- the cry of despair is obvious with the repetition, the exclamation and the “ô” that is generally used to emphasize lyricism
- “Temps” and “Ennemi” associated by the use of the capital letter, Time is personified, Time and Enemy accomplish destruction, and their acts are almost similar: “mange la vie”, “ronge le coeur”, except “mange” (eats) is for humans and “ronge” (gnaws) for animals, so that Time is perceived as a predator
- as I said, the syntax is important and meaningful; a sentence is ordinarily build in that way:

subject + verb + attribute or complement

In French, and surely in other languages, the inversion of the grammatical elements, which is not always possible and may even seem odd and horrible, can produce beautiful effects. For that, it’s obvious that you have to know what is conventional; otherwise you are insensible to that stylistic aspect. The following sentence is ordinary:

Les prés sont verts. The meadows are green.

But if you say: Verts sont les prés, you obtain a poetic effect.

Back to Baud. and to the last verses:

Et l’obscur Ennemi qui nous ronge le coeur
Du sang que nous perdons croît et se fortifie !

Subject: “l’obscur Ennemi”
(clause: “qui nous ronge le coeur”)
Verbs: “croît et se fortifie”
Complement (and clause): “du sang (que nous perdons)”

So, the prosaic disposition would be:

Et l’obscur Ennemi qui nous ronge le coeur
Croît et se fortifie du sang que nous perdons !

Why did Baud. make that inversion? That’s precisely one of the stylistic tools amongst many others that he uses to produce poetic effects, which are not easily reproducible in translation. It’s probable that the final position of the two verbs means that Time is the ultimate victor in the end. That victory is even reinforced by the use of two verbs whose meaning is close: “croît” means grows and “se fortifie” means grows stronger, strengthens.

[laymonite]

I certainly agree. In some cases, the words have to change to preserve the metre, especially in Verlaine's poetry.

For example, there is a line in one of his poems that includes the word "vieillard," meaning "old man." Well, to keep the 3 beats of the original word, the translator chose pensioner. Not sure if pensioner is common British English for an old man, but it certainly isn't for we Americans, and it creates another poetic abstraction that Verlaine did not intend.

Erratum:
Spoke with a British colleague here at work, and he confirmed that pensioner is indeed used and familiar there. * Sigh *

[laymonite]

And, by the way, thanks for that, B. Laumness! I am currently learning French with a tutor and your examination was both interesting and helpful.

[stlukesguild]

I've long been an admirer of Theophile Gautier... who seems far too ignored among the great French Symbolists. Gautier is the writer who coined the term "art pour l'art" and was admired by both Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire, who dedicated his Fleurs du mal to the elder poet.

Recently I stumbled again across this poem:

Coquetterie posthume

Quand je mourrai, que l'on me mette,
Avant de clouer mon cercueil,
Un peu de rouge à la pommette,
Un peu de noir au bord de l'oeil.

Car je veux dans ma bière close,
Comme le soir de son aveu,
Rester éternellement rose
Avec du kh'ol sous mon oeil bleu.

Pas de suaire en toile fine,
Mais drapez-moi dans les plis blancs
De ma robe de mousseline,
De ma robe à treize volants.

C'est ma parure préférée ;
Je la portais quand je lui plus.
Son premier regard l'a sacrée,
Et depuis je ne la mis plus.

Posez-moi, sans jaune immortelle,
Sans coussin de larmes brodé,
Sur mon oreiller de dentelle
De ma chevelure inondé.

Cet oreiller, dans les nuits folles,
A vu dormir nos fronts unis,
Et sous le drap noir des gondoles
Compté nos baisers infinis.

Entre mes mains de cire pâle,
Que la prière réunit,
Tournez ce chapelet d'opale,
Par le pape à Rome bénit :

Je l'égrènerai dans la couche
D'où nul encor ne s'est levé ;
Sa bouche en a dit sur ma bouche
Chaque Pater et chaque Ave.


When in the coffin dead I lie,
Before they nail it, let them spread
A bit of black about my eye,
About my cheek, a bit of red.

For in the bier, I wish to be
forever rouged, as I was then,
the night he swore his love to me,
my blue eye rimmed with kohl again.

For me no shroud of fabric fine!
Wrap me in a robe of muslin, rather:
that white and pleated robe of mine,
that white one, all a-flounce, a-gather.

Of all my gowns the favorite.
I wore it when my beauty shone,
Pleasing him, holy relic, it
Remained too scared to put on!

No cushioned tomb's tear-woven grace,
Gold immortelles strewn here and there;
Lay me out on my pillow's lace,
drowned in my flood of flowing hair.

The pillow that, each frenzied night,
saw our brows joined in gentle slumber;
and draped in gondolas' dark light
counted our kisses, past all number.

Betwixt my wax pale palms, clasped in
a silent prayer, together pressed,
Twist round this chaplet opaline
that once, in Rome, the Pope had blessed...
tr. excerpted from Norman Shapiro's Theophile Gautier: Selected Lyrics

This poem immediately drew to mind a poem by the later Post-Symbolist/Parnassian/Modernist, Paul Valery (I cannot find the original French online):

A Venetian Lady's Last Will

The day I die, haste to my gondola,
Fill it with pinks, roses, and jasmine,
Lay me on the flowers, fold my pale hands,
Leave my eyes open, like an idol's eyes...

Lay on my brow, pure white as milk
A green diadem of leaves interwound,
Seal with a kiss my frozen lips,
And cover my body with a violet crepe.

When you have finished this weary task,
Oh, gaze at how white I am among the flowers...
Gaze, gaze... then without sighs or tears,
Launch me out to sea on an evening of a full moon.

...Away the gondola goes... away among the waves.
Sing, yonder, sing! I can hear you still...

Adieu! I make my way cold and dead upon the wave
The Water lull me and the moon silvers my beauty.
The gondola advances until immensity
Slowly enfolds me, profound, and ever more blue.
tr. excerpted from James R. Lawler from Vol. I The Collected Works of Paul Valery

As a visual artist, I was immediately struck by the blurring of the senses common to the poetry of the Symbolists... the visual, tactile, auditory, etc... Of course we find an interest in the whole of the arts among these poets. Gautier was initially a painter... and as such made continual use of visual imagery... building upon colors, visual textures, etc... Valery wrote some marvelous art criticism, including the classic Degas, danse, dessin.

Both of these poems strike me with the expression of the concern for the aesthetic even unto... and after death.

Music had long employed a dominant key and compositions were often named after said key: Mass in B-minor, Symphony in G-Major. The visual arts had also long made use of a dominant color 'key'. With the Symbolist/art pour l'art movement, artists such as the American painter, James Whistler, drew attention to the dominance of the abstract formal elements of his paintings by titling them... like music... after the major color schemes:

Symphony in White, no. 1:

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5133/5432902246_7282b92611_b.jpg

Harmony in Rose and Grey (also known as Nocturne in Pink and Gray):

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4135/5432292701_8e6d887e71_b.jpg

Theophile Gautier was undoubtedly the inspiration for such a formalist/abstract approach to art. Gautier employs a similar dominant visual key in some of his poems:

Symphonie en blanc majeur

De leur col blanc courbant les lignes,
On voit dans les contes du Nord,
Sur le vieux Rhin, des femmes-cygnes
Nager en chantant près du bord,

Ou, suspendant à quelque branche
Le plumage qui les revêt,
Faire luire leur peau plus blanche
Que la neige de leur duvet.

De ces femmes il en est une,
Qui chez nous descend quelquefois,
Blanche comme le clair de lune
Sur les glaciers dans les cieux froids ;

Conviant la vue enivrée
De sa boréale fraîcheur
A des régals de chair nacrée,
A des débauches de blancheur !

Son sein, neige moulée en globe,
Contre les camélias blancs
Et le blanc satin de sa robe
Soutient des combats insolents.

Dans ces grandes batailles blanches,
Satins et fleurs ont le dessous,
Et, sans demander leurs revanches,
Jaunissent comme des jaloux.

Sur les blancheurs de son épaule,
Paros au grain éblouissant,
Comme dans une nuit du pôle,
Un givre invisible descend.

De quel mica de neige vierge,
De quelle moelle de roseau,
De quelle hostie et de quel cierge
A-t-on fait le blanc de sa peau ?

A-t-on pris la goutte lactée
Tachant l'azur du ciel d'hiver,
Le lis à la pulpe argentée,
La blanche écume de la mer ;

Le marbre blanc, chair froide et pâle,
Où vivent les divinités ;
L'argent mat, la laiteuse opale
Qu'irisent de vagues clartés ;

L'ivoire, où ses mains ont des ailes,
Et, comme des papillons blancs,
Sur la pointe des notes frêles
Suspendent leurs baisers tremblants ;

L'hermine vierge de souillure,
Qui pour abriter leurs frissons,
Ouate de sa blanche fourrure
Les épaules et les blasons ;

Le vif-argent aux fleurs fantasques
Dont les vitraux sont ramagés ;
Les blanches dentelles des vasques,
Pleurs de l'ondine en l'air figés ;

L'aubépine de mai qui plie
Sous les blancs frimas de ses fleurs ;
L'albâtre où la mélancolie
Aime à retrouver ses pâleurs ;

Le duvet blanc de la colombe,
Neigeant sur les toits du manoir,
Et la stalactite qui tombe,
Larme blanche de l'antre noir ?

Des Groenlands et des Norvèges
Vient-elle avec Séraphita ?
Est-ce la Madone des neiges,
Un sphinx blanc que l'hiver sculpta,

Sphinx enterré par l'avalanche,
Gardien des glaciers étoilés,
Et qui, sous sa poitrine blanche,
Cache de blancs secrets gelés ?

Sous la glace où calme il repose,
Oh ! qui pourra fondre ce coeur !
Oh ! qui pourra mettre un ton rose
Dans cette implacable blancheur !


Symphony in White Major

In the Northern tales of eld,
From the Rhine's escarpments high
Swan-women radiant were beheld,
Singing and floating by,

Or, leaving their plumage bright
On a bough that was bending low,
Displaying skin more gleaming white
Than the white of their down of snow.

At times one comes our way,--
Of all she is pallidest,
White as the moonbeam's shivering ray
On a glacier's icy crest.

Her boreal bloom doth win
Our eyes to feasting rare
On rich delight of nacreous skin,
And a wealth of whiteness fair.

Her rounded breasts, pale globes
Of snow, wage insolent war
With her camellias and her robes
Of whiteness nebular.

In such white wars supreme
She wins, and weft and flower
Leave their revenge's right, and seem
Yellowed with envy's hour.

On the white of her shoulder bare,
Whose marble Paros lends,
As through the Polar twilight fair,
Invisible frost descends.

What beaming virgin snow,
What pith a reed within,
What Host, what taper, did bestow
The white of her matchless skin?

Was she made of a milky drop
On the blue of a winter heaven?
The lily-blow on the stem's green top?
The foam of the sea at even?

Of the marble still and cold,
Wherein the great gods dwell?
Of creamy opal gems that hold
Faint fires of mystic spell?

Or the organ's ivory keys?
Her winged fingers oft
Like butterflies flit over these,
With kisses pending soft.

Of the ermine's stainless fold,
Whose white, warm touches fall
On shivering shoulders and on bold,
Bright shields armorial?

Of the phantom flowers of frost
Enscrolled on the window clear?
Of the fountain drop in the chill air lost,
An Undine's frozen tear?

Of May bent low with the sweets
Of her bountiful white-thorn bloom?
Of alabaster that repeats
The pallor of grief and gloom?

Of the feathers of doves that slip
And snow on the gable steep?
Of slow stalactite's tear-white drip
In cavernous places deep?

Came she from Greenland floes
With Seraphita forth?
Is she Madonna of the Snows?
A sphinx of the icy North,

Sphinx buried by avalanche,
The glacier's guardian ghost,
Whose frozen secrets hide and blanch
In her white heart innermost?

What magic of what far name
Shall this pale soul ignite?
Ah! who shall flush with rose's flame
This cold, implacable white?
tr. Agnes Lee, Enamels and Cameos, 1906

[Jozanny]

lukes, when I can spare myself some leisure, I'll see if I can download your post and create a two page column. I really regret that my five years of studying French amounts to nothing. I had no one to study with and no texts in French, so it is gone but for a few phrases, and it is all I can do to retain Italian and Spanish, easier given my family.

[laymonite]

Can anyone recommend a good place (particular title/volume/etc.) to start with Théophile Gautier? After reading the post that contained his poem entitled "Art," and noticing the dedication of Les Fleurs du Mal, I am eager to spend some time in his work.

Thanks!

[stlukesguild]

Enamels and Cameos (Émaux et Camées)

[Jozanny]

Enamels and Cameos (Émaux et Camées)

Luke, this was a kindle freebie, to my surprise, so I downloaded it to my poetry file, if you want to lead a discussion, my issues with poetry and lack of a better frames format should not be an issue, as I can view the French onscreen and the English on the k, though I ask for mercy on my physical constraints. That mummy's foot of Gautier's must be an influence :nopity:

[stlukesguild]

JoZ... I have this older translation of Gautier's Enamels and Cameos downloaded from Gutenberg but I recently bought a newer translation by Norman Shapiro. I'll throw a few poems up from both. I'm feeling an obsession with him coming on. Perhaps this is due to reading up on the real Mme. de Maupin in a book on the history of opera which became the subject of his most famous tale. Anyway... I'll try to contribute a few poems over the next week or so. Perhaps this weekend (I have a 4 day vacation of sorts).

[Jozanny]

Sometimes I don't have the words luke, and have to let my work speak in place of my analytic ability, but I regret that I've mucked up the poetry discussions. It has something to do with the fact that I am still a publishing poet, and not a novelist, and I don't see the art as you and quasi Petrarch do; it doesn't make sense, I know, but I am still too much *in the game*.

However, the Frenchies don't quite ignite my impatience to knock all the knick knacks on the floor, so maybe I can redeem myself, though be it more slowly. I need to get a handle on the left side of my rib cage business if for no other reason than to tell my treating physicians that they too, are inadequate idiots.

Ask me what I do like and see how long that silence lasts. :D :lol:

[laymonite]

http://www.paintingall.com/images/P/Edouard-Manet-Le-Bon-Bock-Study-of-emile-Bellot-Oil-Painting.jpg
Manet, "Le Bon Bock"


Oraison du soir

Je vis assis, tel qu'un ange aux mains d'un barbier,
Empoignant une chope à fortes cannelures,
L'hypogastre et le col cambrés, une Gambier
Aux dents, sous l'air gonflé d'impalpables voilures.

Tels que les excréments chauds d'un vieux colombier,
Mille Rêves en moi font de douces brûlures :
Puis par instants mon coeur triste est comme un aubier
Qu'ensanglante l'or jeune et sombre des coulures.

Puis, quand j'ai ravalé mes rêves avec soin,
Je me tourne, ayant bu trente ou quarante chopes,
Et me recueille, pour lâcher l'âcre besoin :

Doux comme le Seigneur du cèdre et des hysopes,
Je pisse vers les cieux bruns, très haut et très loin,
Avec l'assentiment des grands héliotropes.

Evening Prayer (trans. Wallace Fowlie)

I live seated, like an angel in the hands of a barber,
In my fist a strongly fluted mug,
My stomach and neck curved, a Gambier pipe
In my teeth, under the air swollen with impalpable veils of smoke.

Like the warm excrement of an old pigeonhouse,
A Thousand Dreams gently burn inside me:
And at moments my sad heart is like sap-wood
Which the young dark gold of its sweating covers with blood.

Then, when I have carefully swallowed my dreams,
I turn, having drunk thirty or forty mugs,
And collect myself, to relieve the bitter need:

Sweetly as the Lord of the cedar and of hyssops,
I piss toward the dark skies very high and very far,
With the consent of the large heliotropes.

Reading this poem, I can feel the heavy ennui and the romantic tug vying with one another. Rimbaud's typical atmospheric (e.g. the weight of the tobacco smoke) and bathetic devices (excrement, pissing upwards, etc.) with pinholes of romantic sadness (the young poets stifled dreams and aspirations) give me the feeling of being both trapped and exhausted. At the end of the poem, reality (i.e. the need to urinate) cuts in on the dreams. But, then again, is Rimbaud arguing in favor of indolence? The first line ("I live seated...") could indicate a positive argument for ennui, an emotional state which the Symbolists were indeed in favor of; but other areas in the poem express longing to do something. Of course the two can be the same: viz. the poet at work! In any case, I think the poem definitely expresses an array of complex and conflicting emotions that the artist battles with in the face of reality. Perhaps, in the exhaustion of trying to "understand" or "cope" with reality, we end up just getting three sheets to and urinating in the wind!