This.Originally Posted by mortalterror
This.
Leopardi
Lorca
Browning
Gautier
Neruda
Quite happy to read any of these really, but my order would probably be:
Leopardi
Neruda
Gautier
Browning
Lorca
If I had to choose to discover a French poet, I’d rather read Du Bellay, Ronsard, Hugo, Vigny or Heredia, whose poetry does not seem well known by the Enghish readers. Although Baudelaire considered Gautier as his master, the works of this latter are not as modern and powerful as les Fleurs du Mal. In Émaux et Camées, which is his best collection, at least his most original, he refuses the intrusion of morality and politics in poetry and rejects the sentimental effusions of the Romantics. He tries to attain a purety in his verse, an aesthetic perfection. He often uses the metaphor of the sculptor to show how carefully and meticulously the artist endeavours to elaborate, chisel and polish his material. Some may dislike a kind of impersonality of the result and a lack of emotions.
Baudelaire relates his first meeting with him in these terms :
“ Il me demanda ensuite, avec un œil curieusement méfiant, et comme pour m’éprouver, si j’aimais à lire des dictionnaires. Il me dit cela d’ailleurs comme il dit toute chose, fort tranquillement, et du ton qu’aurait pris un autre pour s’informer si je préférais la lecture des voyages à celle des romans. Par bonheur, j’avais été pris très jeune de lexicomanie, et je vis que ma réponse me gagnait de l’estime. Ce fut justement à propos des dictionnaires qu’il ajouta « que l’écrivain qui ne savait pas tout dire, celui qu’une idée si étrange, si subtile qu’on la supposât, si imprévue, tombant comme une pierre de la lune, prenait au dépourvu et sans matériel pour lui donner corps, n’était pas un écrivain ». ”
I don’t think this interesting essay has ever been translated. I’m going to try to translate this small part despite my approximate English :
“ Then he asked me with curiously suspicious eyes, as if to test me, if I liked to read dictionaries. He said that besides as he says every thing, very quietly, in the tone which another would have taken in order to inquire whether I’d rather read travel narratives or novels. Fortunalety I had been seized by lexicomania when I was very young and I saw that my reply won his esteem. He added about the dictionaries ‘that the writer who could not tell anything, the one that an idea, strange and subtle as it might be, unforeseen and falling like a stone from the moon, caught off his guard without material to give shape to it, was not a writer’. ”
It’s curious to see that Flaubert wrote in a letter (7-27-1852) that he found Émaux et Camées pitiable, recherché and old-fashioned. – By the way his correspondance is a treasure, a must-read for anyone interested in the creation of a novel. I was disappointed the first time I read Madame Bovary, actually I had not even read it till the end, but after having perused these letters and Salammbô I highly revalued this author and understood why he may be considered as one of the most important novelists of the century.
L’ART
Oui, l'oeuvre sort plus belle
D'une forme au travail
Rebelle,
Vers, marbre, onyx, émail.
Point de contraintes fausses !
Mais que pour marcher droit
Tu chausses,
Muse, un cothurne étroit.
Fi du rhythme commode,
Comme un soulier trop grand,
Du mode
Que tout pied quitte et prend !
Statuaire, repousse
L'argile que pétrit
Le pouce
Quand flotte ailleurs l'esprit :
Lutte avec le carrare,
Avec le paros dur
Et rare,
Gardiens du contour pur ;
Emprunte à Syracuse
Son bronze où fermement
S'accuse
Le trait fier et charmant ;
D'une main délicate
Poursuis dans un filon
D'agate
Le profil d'Apollon.
Peintre, fuis l'aquarelle,
Et fixe la couleur
Trop frêle
Au four de l'émailleur.
Fais les sirènes bleues,
Tordant de cent façons
Leurs queues,
Les monstres des blasons ;
Dans son nimbe trilobe
La Vierge et son Jésus,
Le globe
Avec la croix dessus.
Tout passe. - L'art robuste
Seul a l'éternité.
Le buste
Survit à la cité.
Et la médaille austère
Que trouve un laboureur
Sous terre
Révèle un empereur.
Les dieux eux-mêmes meurent,
Mais les vers souverains
Demeurent
Plus forts que les airains.
Sculpte, lime, cisèle ;
Que ton rêve flottant
Se scelle
Dans le bloc résistant !
ART
More fair the work, more strong,
Stamped in resistance long,
Enamel, marble, song.
Poet, no shackles bear,
Yet bid thy Muse to wear
The buskin bound with care.
A fashion loose forsake,
A shoe of sloven make,
That any foot may take.
Sculptor, the clay withstand,
That yieldeth to the hand,
Though listless heart command.
Contend till thou have wrought,
Till the hard stone have caught
The beauty of thy thought.
With Paros match thy might,
And with Carrara bright,
That guard the line of light.
Borrow from Syracuse
The bronze's stubborn use,
Wherein thy form to choose.
And with a delicate grace
In the veined onyx trace
Apollo's perfect face.
Painter, put thou aside
The transient. Be thy pride
The colour furnace-tried.
Limn thou, fantastic, free
Blue sirens of the sea,
And beasts of heraldry.
Before a nimbus gold
Transcendently uphold
The Child, the Cross foretold.
Things perish. Gods have passed.
But song sublimely cast
Shall citadels outlast.
And the forgotten seal
Turned by the plowman's steel
An emperor may reveal.
For Art alone is great:
The bust survives the state,
The crown the potentate.
Carve, burnish, build thy theme,
But fix thy wavering dream
In the stern rock supreme.
I’ve just read again some pieces and I have to admit I agree with Flaubert : none is great even if a few passages are good. Du Bellay and Ronsard, who also aim to an ideal beauty, are far better : because of its contraints, the sonnet is probably a more appropriate mould to express the formal achievement, the mastery in the construction, and to convey more intensely emotions and thoughts. Baudelaire said : ‘Because the form is more constrained, the idea springs up more intensely.’
I found on Amazon books of the poets mentioned above:
- Du Bellay, but it's quite expensive, otherwise there is this version of his main collection, les Regrets
- from Ronsard, it appears you have only these selected poems, but this should be a good introduction
- Vigny does not exist...
- selected poems of Victor Hugo, who was known mostly as a great poet in the 19th century and whose poetic works are immense in the two meanings of the term
- the Trophies of Heredia, but this edition is not bilingual
The best is still to learn French so that you will have access to a larger body of texts and you will more appreciate the qualities of these authors. That's why I'm learning English: to be able to fully understand and really love another culture.
HUGO, CLAIR DE LUNE
La lune était sereine et jouait sur les flots. –
La fenêtre enfin libre est ouverte à la brise,
La sultane regarde, et la mer qui se brise,
Là-bas, d'un flot d'argent brode les noirs îlots.
De ses doigts en vibrant s'échappe la guitare.
Elle écoute... Un bruit sourd frappe les sourds échos.
Est-ce un lourd vaisseau turc qui vient des eaux de Cos,
Battant l'archipel grec de sa rame tartare ?
Sont-ce des cormorans qui plongent tour à tour,
Et coupent l'eau, qui roule en perles sur leur aile ?
Est-ce un djinn qui là-haut siffle d'une voix grêle,
Et jette dans la mer les créneaux de la tour ?
Qui trouble ainsi les flots près du sérail des femmes ?
Ni le noir cormoran, sur la vague bercé,
Ni les pierres du mur, ni le bruit cadencé
Du lourd vaisseau, rampant sur l'onde avec des rames.
Ce sont des sacs pesants, d'où partent des sanglots.
On verrait, en sondant la mer qui les promène,
Se mouvoir dans leurs flancs comme une forme humaine... –
La lune était sereine et jouait sur les flots.
MOONLIGHT
The moon was calm, and flecked the ocean streams.
The casement opens freely to the breeze;
While the sultana watches, breaking seas
Weave the black isles below with silver seams.
The lute slips from her fingers as she plays.
She listens:…echoes, dull, from some dull sound.
Is it a Turkish ship, full, homeward bound,
Whose Tartar oars beat the Greek waterways?
Are cormorants plunging successively,
Cleaving the waves, whose pearls roll from their wings?
Perhaps a djinn, with reedy whispers, flings
The tower's battlements into the sea?
Who is thus troubling the seraglio's shores?—
Neither the cormorant cradled on the flow,
Nor the wall's capstones, nor the to-and-fro
Of heavy vessels with their dipping oars.
Merely full sacks emitting muffled screams;
And as they sink, there might perhaps be spied
Something like human forms moving inside.…
The moon was calm, and flecked the ocean streams.
Last edited by B. Laumness; 02-24-2010 at 11:53 AM.
I make that:
1) Leopardi with -2344455 = 27
2) Gautier with - 4515123 = 21
3) Neruda with - 3151514 = 20
4) Browning with - 1433332 = 19
5) Lorca with - 5222241 = 18
By ranked order so far.
Does anyone else need to vote? Leopardi is a clear winner so far, and can't be overtaken with one more vote.
Thanks Paul. I think Quasimodo and Virgil are yet to re-vote?
Regardless of if Leopardi does come first or not, I have tried to get hold of a hard copy of him today from the biggest book stores, central library and university libraries in Sheffield and it is impossible! There is only one copy which is locked in the basement of one of the uni libraries available, though the people, for some reason, need notice to bring up from the basement for me to lend it out. I mean come on! The entire Sheffield library (consisting of about 20 branches) does not even own a single copy, neither do the biggest Waterstones or the best second-hand stores in the City – I mean is this chap totally unheard of or what? Seriously, I have blisters on my feet trying to get a copy of his poetry today and could not do so despite willing to part with cash or having a uni card or being very good looking. Really, does this person even exist?
No probs, I can read online or print it off at work at their cost, but it does make one wonder, that this chap is supposed to be up there with the best of the Italian poets behind Dante, and he is all but totally impossible to get hold of, what is really going on? Quite sad.
Last edited by LitNetIsGreat; 02-24-2010 at 08:54 PM.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Canti-Onewor...7059785&sr=8-1
That should help you - there are several more translations available.
I personally have an original Italian copy with good footnotes, so if we do decide on a single translation, and Leopardi does win, I probably will just use the translation as a gloss.
How important is it, do you all think, that we all have the same translation?
“Oh crap”
-- Hellboy
This is the edition I own, JBI.
This edition is bilingual - a plus - however, it does not have a table of contents, thereby making it rather tedious to look through. Either way, unless its of tremendous importance, this will be the edition I will be using if Leopardi does win.
Since we are closing in on the distinct possibility of Leopardi being our poet of choice I've put in the order for the Eamon Grennan translation which I have heard much good about. Beyond this I have several other older translations to draw from.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
If I had to choose to discover a French poet, I’d rather read Du Bellay, Ronsard, Hugo, Vigny or Heredia, whose poetry does not seem well known by the Enghish readers.
OK. To hell with Gautier, Neruda, Garcia-Lorca, and Leopardi. We'll just rush out and buy something by Ronsard, Du Bellay, Hugo, or Heredia at the behest of our first-time poster who finds Gautier to be trifling.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
So Leopardi won. Hey that's good. I've wanted to read him. Have we settled on a particular book?
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
No... we still have a few who have yet voted. Another deadline? Tomorrow at 6:00 PM...?
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
Leopardi's lyrics are arranged in the Canti, which covers the developmental of his poetry.
Yes, thanks I'll just have to order it from Amazon, it is not a big problem though I just wanted it there and then. Is this the best copy/translation do you think or what about the one Stlukes mentioned? I'd quite like a duel language edition if possible (though I would be happy to find any).
How important is it, do you all think, that we all have the same translation?
Well personally I don't this it is that much of an issue really as long it is a recommended translation - I always think that different translations can help to bring new elements to the reading.
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