Poems That Sing by French Masters
Fifteen Great French Poets and Their Verses of Life, Love, and Loss
Original Texts with English Translations by Leon Schwartz
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2008 by Leon Schwartz
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DEDICATION
I dedicate this book to my daughter Claire, who teaches French; to my son Eric, who lives and works in France; and to my five granddaughters: Rachel, Laura, Mira, Julia and Lucie, and step-granddaughter, Charlotte, all of whom are bilingual in English and French
CONTENTS
Foreword
Charles d'Orléans, «Le Printemps» (Rondeaux)
François Villon, «Ballade des dames du temps jadis» (Le Grand Testament)
Louise Labé, «Je vis, je meurs» (Vingt-trois sonnets)
Pierre de Ronsard, «Ode à Cassandre» (Odes), «Quand vous serez bien vieille» (Sonnets pour Hélène)
Joachim du Bellay, «Sonnet XXXI, Heureux qui comme Ulysse» (Regrets)
Jean de La Fontaine, «Le Corbeau et le Renard» and «La Cigale et la Fourmi» (Fables)
André Chénier, «La Jeune Captive» (Œuvres)
Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, «Point d'adieu» and «Les Roses de Saadi» (Poésies)
Victor Hugo, «Demain dès l'aube» (l,es Contemplations)
Charles Baudelaire, «La Vie antérieure» and «Correspondances» (Les Fleurs du mal)
Paul Verlaine, «Mon Rêve familier» (Poèmes saturniens,)
Arthur Rimbaud, «Le Dormeur du val» and «Ma Bohème» (Poésies)
Guillaume Apollinaire, «Le Pont Mirabeau» (Alcools)
Louis Aragon, «Les Lilas et les Roses» (le Crève-coeur)
Jacques Prévert, «Paris at Night» and «Le Jardin» (Paroles)
*****
FOREWORD
In conformity with the principle that lyric poetry should be lyrical, i.e. musical, and delight not only by its imagery and language but by its sounds and rhythms, a principle advocated and illustrated by Edgar Allan Poe, and, after him, especially such great 19th-century French poets as Baudelaire and Verlaine, it is my strong belief that the translation of a lyric poem should attempt to be as musical as the original, adhering to its rime scheme, rhythm, and play of sounds. I therefore take issue with the common practice of translating the twelve syllable French alexandrine, the classical French verse form, into ten syllable iambic pentameter, which happens to be the classical verse form in English but alters the poem's rhythmic effect, thereby altering the feeling conveyed by the poem. Even worse, as far as I am concerned, is a translator ignoring the rime, or rhythm, or sound play of the poem altogether and turning the lyric poem into something that sounds more like prose.
In this collection, for better or worse, I have applied the Poe principle of musicality to all the translations, remaining as faithful as I could to the particular schemes of rime and meter, as well as the sound play, imagery, and meaning of each poem.
I have chosen these fifteen poets as representative of their times and their stature in French poetry. I have selected poems that I especially enjoy reading, irrespective of their themes, but, as it happened, three themes stand out in them: the themes of life's beauties; the emotions of love, paternal or romantic; and the pain of loss. There are also in these poems a variety of parallel or subthemes, as, for example, aging in Ronsard and Desbordes Valmore, patriotism in Du Bellay, exoticism and “correspondences” in Baudelaire, and war in Rimbaud and Aragon.
Most of the poems in this collection were taken from Henri Clouard and Robert Leggewie's Anthologie de la littérature française, 2 vols. (Oxford University Press: 1975). The rest were taken from collections of the works of the individual poets.
In conclusion, I should like to acknowledge the help of my wife Jeanne and my daughter Claire and her family, especially my granddaughter Rachel, who, like her mother, contributed her precious time to transcribing my scribbles into readable form, and to my son in law Curtis Menyuk who provided me with a collection of Marceline Desbordes Valmore's poetry from the library of the University of Maryland while I was a guest in his and my daughter's home.
Leon Schwartz May 2008
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CHARLES D'ORLÉANS (1394 1469)
A duke and father of French King Louis XII, Charles fought in the Hundred Years' War, was taken prisoner by the English, and held captive in England for twenty five years. To occupy himself during his long internment he dedicated himself to writing poetry in popular poetic forms of 15th-century France, such as the rondeau, the ballade, and the complainte. Two of his major themes were nature and longing for France. The poem “Springtime” is a rondeau.
Le Printemps
Le temps a laissé son manteau
De vent, de froidure et de pluie,
El s'est vestu de broderie
De soleil luyant, cler et beau.
Il n'y a beste ne oyseau
Qu'en son jargon ne chante ou crie:
«Le temps a laissé son manteau
De vent, de froidure et de pluie.»
Rivière, fontaine et ruisseau
Portent en livrée jolie
Gouttes d'argent d'orfavrerie:
Chascun s'habille de nouveau.
Le temps a laissé son manteau
De vent, de froidure et de pluie,
Et s'est vestu de broderie
De soleil luyant, cler et beau.
Springtime
Of wind and frost and rain
The land her cloak now sheds.
She puts on sunny reds
And primps like ladies vain.
All nature's creatures' heads
Are full of song again.
Of wind and frost and rain
The land her cloak now sheds.
The fountains and streambeds,
Bejeweled like queens of Spain,
Glitter with silv'ry threads
Flow like a queenly train.
Of wind and frost and rain
The land her cloak now sheds.
She puts on sunny reds
And primps like ladies vain.
*****
FRANÇOIS VILLON (1431 1463?)
François de Montcorbier or Des Loges, who took his uncle's name of Villon, lived an adventurous but tragic life in a period of rampant lawlessness following the Hundred Years' War. Originally a promising student at the Sorbonne in Paris, he fell in with thugs and thieves, killed a man in a brawl, was sentenced to death several times, then exiled from Paris, after which all trace of him was lost. In spite of his criminal associations and irresponsible actions, he was a sensitive man with a great poetic talent, one of the greatest of French poets, who wrote poetry of profound pathos as he viewed the dark spectacle of life in late medieval France, poetry ironically inspired by his troubled life. If Charles Baudelaire could write his Les Fleurs du mal (usually translated as The Flowers of Evil) four hundred years later, Villon's “flowers” were hardly less melancholy and beautiful. His favorite poetic form was the ballade and his major themes were mortality and the hope of absolution.
Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis
Dictes moy ou, n'en quel pays,
Est Flora, la belle Rommaine,
Archipiada, ne Thaïs,
Qui fut sa cousine germaine;
Echo, parlant quand bruyt on maine
Dessus rivière ou sus estan,
Qui beaulté ot trop plus qu'humaine?
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
Ou est la tres sage Helloïs,
Pour qui fut chastré, puis moyne
Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis?
Pour son amour ot cest essoyne.
Semblablement ou est la royne
Qui commanda que Buridan
Fust gecté en ung sac en Saine?
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
La royne blanche comme lis,
Qui chantoit a voix de seraine;
Berte au grant pié, Biétris, Alis;
Haremburgis qui tint le Maine,
Et Jehanne, la bonne Lorraine,
Qu 'Englois brulerent a Rouan;
Ou sont ilz, ou, Vierge souvraine?
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
Prince, n'enquerez de sepmaine
Ou elles sont, ne de cest an,
Que ce refrain ne vous remaine:
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
Ballade of the Ladies of Yore
In what place can you tell me, please,
Is Flora the lovely Roman,
Alcibiada* or Thaïs,
Bound by their family nomen;
Echo, who speaks when sounds are near
Above the river, on the mere
Whose beauty had no mortal peer,
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
Where is the learned Héloïse
For whom was unsexed, then a monk,
Pierre Abélard at St. Denis?
For his love his career was sunk.
Similarly, where is the queen
Who made Buridan disappear,
Tossed in the Seine and never seen;
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
Lovely Queen Blanche, as white as fleece,
Whose song was as pure as the rain;
Bertha Big-foot, Beatrice, Alis;
Haremburgis who held her Maine;
And Joan the Martyr of Lorraine,
Whom the English burned out of fear.
Where are they now, Holy Sovereign?
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
Prince, ask me not where they may be,
Not now nor in a future near.
Let this refrain suffice to thee.
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
*Alcibiades was thought to be a woman. The name is feminized here as in Villon.
*****
LOUISE LABÉ (1520 1566)
The most renowned woman poet of the French Renaissance, Louise wrote passionate love sonnets influenced by her contemporary Maurice Scève, the founder of a distinguished group of poets in the city of Lyons who made the sonnet, recently imported from Italy, a popular French poetic form. Louise was a member of that group, called “The School of Lyons.” She also wrote moving elegies. The daughter of a rope maker, she was dubbed “La Belle Cordière” (“The Beautiful Rope maker”).
Je Vis, Je Meurs
Je vis, je meurs, je me brûle et me noie.
J'ai chaud extrême en endurant froidure:
La vie m'est et trop molle et trop dure.
J'ai grands ennuis entremêlés de joie:
Tout à un coup je ris et je larmoie,
Et en plaisir maints griefs tourments j'endure:
Mon bien s'en va, et à jamais il dure:
Tout en un coup je sèche et je verdoie.
Ainsi Amour inconstamment me mène:
Et quand je pense avoir plus de douleur,
Sans y penser je me trouve hors de peine.
Puis quand je crois ma joie être certaine,
Et être au haut de mon désiré heur,
It me remet en mon premier malheur!
I Live, I Die
I burn, I drown, I live, I die;
I'm oh so hot — my blood goes cold;
My life's just fine — I'm feeling old;
I suffer much, yet get so high.
At once I laugh, at once I cry —
In many pleasures have much grief.
As well being wanes I feel relief,
I shrivel, then revivify.
Thus does love lead me here and there.
Just when I think my pain has grown,
Improbably the pain has fled,
And Love, I think, does joy repair,
And joy does soar to heights unknown —
Then gloom descends. I'm back to dread!