The Penguin Book of French Poetry Read online

  Sans écho, sans soupir, sans un pli qui le ride,

  Semble un miroir tout fait pour les pâles ennuis.

  Mais ne sentez-vous pas, Madame, à son silence,

  A ses flots transparents de lui-même oubliés,

  A sa calme étendue où rien ne se balance,

  Le bonheur qu’il éprouve à se taire à vos pieds

  A réfléchir en paix le bien-aimé rivage,

  A le peindre plus pur en ne s’y mêlant pas,

  A ne rien perdre en soi de la divine image

  De Celle dont sans bruit il recueille les pas?

  My soul is this very lake…

  My soul is this very lake over which the setting sun, on a lovely autumn evening, sends a dying glow: the waters scarcely quiver and no white wing nor distant oar plays skimming on its surface.

  All sleeps, all is calm, and the limpid crystal, cooling in the icy air of night, with no echo, no sigh, nor any ripple to crease it, seems a perfect mirror for pale melancholy.

  But do you not sense, Madame, in its silence, in its transparent waters which it has itself forgotten, in its placid expanse where nothing rocks, the happiness it feels in its silence at your feet,

  In reflecting peacefully the beloved shore, painting it more pure by not intruding itself, losing nothing in itself of the heavenly image of Her whose steps it soundlessly records?

  Gérard de Nerval

  (1808–55)

  Nerval was a popular if unstable and tormented member of the Romantic group. His exotic behaviour (walking a lobster on a blue silk lead, for example, in the Palais Royal gardens) later deepened into insanity and culminated in his suicide, hanged from a Paris streetlamp. His replacement of his real surname, Labrunie, by the name of a country property he had known and loved in childhood was characteristic of a man who sought to give all his experience the value of myth.

  His fame rests chiefly on a short but highly influential series of densely allusive sonnets, published in 1853 as Les Chimères. Before this volume, he had written more recognizably Romantic verse (represented by the first two examples here), and had translated Heine, Hoffmann and Goethe.

  In Les Chimères this traveller and scholar of the occult, of pagan metaphysics, of mythology and anthropology, condensed his erudition into sonnets of unusually compressed emotional power. They are endowed with a subjective and mystical unity that escapes rational formulation, even though most of the individual allusions can be decoded (to do so here would require a vast number of footnotes, and exegeses of Nerval exist in plenty).

  Obsessed with reincarnation and the Tarot pack, Nerval lived a life in which reality and dream were fused in a mythical world. The present is here inhabited by talismanic images from the past, many of them connected with an unrequited love. He stands on the threshold of an ancient Golden Age, awaiting its imminent rebirth.

  The Alexandrine sonnet as Nerval exploits it produces a fascinating tension between classicism of form and visionary originality of content. Each poem, with its echoing musicality and its evocative proper names in combinations following dream-logic, is an infinite hallucination contained within a jewel. It is easy to understand why he is often seen as a source of Surrealism, a poet far ahead of his time. Some caution is needed here, however, for his composition was formal and lucid rather than ‘automatic’, and another school of thought places him firmly in his own time as a Romantic.

  Major works: Les Odelettes 1852, Les Chimères 1853.

  Fantaisie

  Il est un air pour qui je donnerais

  Tout Rossini, tout Mozart et tout Weber,

  Un air très vieux, languissant et funèbre,

  Qui pour moi seul a des charmes secrets.

  Or, chaque fois que je viens à l’entendre,

  De deux cents ans mon âme rajeunit:

  C’est sous Louis-Treize… – et je crois voir s’étendre

  Un coteau vert que le couchant jaunit;

  Puis un château de brique à coins de pierre,

  Aux vitraux teints de rougeâtres couleurs,

  Ceint de grands parcs, avec une rivière

  Baignant ses pieds, qui coule entre des fleurs.

  Puis une dame, à sa haute fenêtre,

  Blonde aux yeux noirs, en ses habits anciens…

  Que, dans une autre existence, peut-être,

  J’ai déjà vue – et dont je me souviens!

  Dream Memory

  There is a melody for which I’d give all Rossini, all Mozart and all Weber, an ancient, listless and funereal tune, which for me alone holds secret charms.

  Now, each time I chance to hear it, my soul grows younger by two hundred years: in the time of Louis the Thirteenth… – and I seem to see the expanse of a green hillside tinged yellow by the sunset;

  Then a brick mansion with stone corners, with reddish-tinted stained glass windows, girded with broad parklands, with a river that bathes its feet and flows amidst flowers.

  Then a lady, at her high window, with flaxen hair and dark eyes, in her ancient garments… whom in another existence perhaps I have already seen – and I remember her!

  Vers dorés

  Eh quoi! tout est sensible!

  PYTHAGORE

  Homme, libre penseur! te crois-tu seul pensant

  Dans ce monde où la vie éclate en toute chose?

  Des forces que tu tiens ta liberté dispose,

  Mais de tous tes conseils l’univers est absent.

  Respecte dans la bête un esprit agissant:

  Chaque fleur est une âme à la nature éclose;

  Un mystère d’amour dans le métal repose;

  ‘Tout est sensible!’ Et tout sur ton être est puissant.

  Gilded Verses

  What! All is sentient!

  Pythagoras1

  Man, free thinker! do you imagine you think alone in this world where life bursts forth in all things? Your freedom has at its servength which you possess, but the universe is absent from all your councils.2

  Respect in the animal an active spirit: each flower is a soul opened up to Nature; a mystery of love is at rest within metal; ‘All in sentient!’ And everything has power over your being.

  Crains, dans le mur aveugle, un regard qui t’épie:

  A la matière même un verbe est attaché…

  Ne la fais pas servir à quelque usage impie!

  Souvent dans l’être obscur habite un Dieu caché;

  Et comme un œil naissant couvert par ses paupières,

  Un pur esprit s’accroît sous l’écorce des pierres!

  Fear in the unseeing wall a watchful gaze: to matter itself a word is linked… Do not make it serve some blasphemous purpose!

  Often in the shadowy being there lies a hidden God; and, like a newborn eye covered by its lids, a pure spirit grows beneath the husk of stones!

  El Desdichado

  Je suis le ténébreux, – le veuf, – l’inconsolé,

  Le prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie:

  Ma seule étoile est morte, – et mon luth constellé

  Porte le Soleil noir de la Mélancolie.

  El Desdichado1

  I am the shadow-man, the widower, the unconsoled, the Prince of Aquitaine dispossessed of his tower: my only star is dead, – and my star-decked lute bears the black Sun of Melancholy.

  Dans la nuit du tombeau, toi qui m’as consolé,

  Rends-moi le Pausilippe et la mer d’Italie,

  La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon cœur désolé,

  Et la treille où la pampre à la rose s’allie.

  Suis-je Amour ou Phébus?… Lusignan ou Biron?

  Mon front est rouge encor du baiser de la reine;

  J’ai rêvé dans la grotte où nage la syrène…

  Et j’ai deux fois vainqueur traversé l’Achéron:

  Modulant tour à tour sur la lyre d’Orphée

  Les soupirs de la sainte et les cris de la fée.

  In the darkness of the tomb, you who consoled me, restore to me Posilipo and the Italia
n sea, the flower that so pleased my stricken heart, and the arbour where the vine joins with the rose.

  Am I Eros or Apollo?… Lusignan or Biron? My forehead is still red from the kiss of the queen; I have dreamed in the cave where the siren swims…

  And twice victorious I have crossed Acheron: rendering in turn on Orpheus’ lyre the sighs of the saint and the fairy’s cries.

  Myrtho

  Je pense à toi, Myrtho, divine enchanteresse,

  Au Pausilippe altier, de mille feux brillant,

  A ton front inondé des clartés d’Orient,

  Aux raisins noirs mêlés avec l’or de ta tresse.

  C’est dans ta coupe aussi que j’avais bu l’ivresse,

  Et dans l’éclair furtif de ton œil souriant,

  Quand aux pieds d’Iacchus on me voyait priant,

  Car la Muse m’a fait l’un des fils de la Grèce.

  Je sais pourquoi là-bas le volcan s’est rouvert…

  C’est qu’hier tu l’avais touché d’un pied agile,

  Et de cendres soudain l’horizon s’est couvert.

  Myrtho

  I think of you, Myrtho, divine enchantress, of proud Posilipo shining with a thousand fires, of your brow flooded with the brightness of the East, of the black grapes mingled with the gold of your plait.

  It was in your cup too that I had drunk intoxication, and in the surreptitious gleam of your smiling eye, when I was seen praying at the feet of Bacchus, for the Muse has made me one of the sons of Greece.

  I know why yonder volcano opened once again… for yesterday you had touched it with a nimble foot, and suddenly the horizon was enveloped in ashes.

  Depuis qu’un duc normand brisa tes dieux d’argile,

  Toujours, sous les rameaux du laurier de Virgile,

  Le pâle Hortensia s’unit au Myrthe vert!

  Since a Norman duke smashed your gods of clay, beneath the boughs of Virgil’s laurel the pale Hydrangea has always entwined with the green Myrtle!

  Antéros

  Tu demandes pourquoi j’ai tant de rage au cœur

  Et sur un col flexible une tête indomptée;

  C’est que je suis issu de la race d’Antée,

  Je retourne les dards contre le dieu vainqueur.

  Oui, je suis de ceux-là qu’inspire le Vengeur,

  Il m’a marqué le front de sa lèvre irritée,

  Sous la pâleur d’Abel, hélas! ensanglantée,

  J’ai parfois de Caïn l’implacable rougeur!

  Anteros

  You ask why I have so much fury in my heart and above a pliant neck an unconquered head; it is that I am descended from the race of Antaeus, I turn back the arrows against the victorious god.

  Yes, I am of those whom the Avenger inspires, he has marked my brow with his angry lip, beneath Abel’s pallor, alas! stained with blood, I have sometimes the implacable crimson of Cain!

  Jéhovah! le dernier, vaincu par ton génie,

  Qui, du fond des enfers, criait: “O tyrannie!”

  C’est mon aïeul Bélus ou mon père Dagon…

  Ils m’ont plongé trois fois dans les eaux du Cocyte,

  Et protégeant tout seul ma mère Amalécyte,

  Je ressème à ses pieds les dents du vieux dragon.

  Jehovah! the last one, conquered by your genius, who from the depths of hell cried ‘O tyranny!’ was my grandfather Baal or my father Dagon…

  They immersed me three times in the waters of Cocytus, and, sole protector of my Amalekite mother, I sow once more at her feet the old dragon’s teeth.

  Delfica

  La connais-tu, Dafné, cette ancienne romance,

  Au pied du sycomore, ou sous les lauriers blancs,

  Sous l’olivier, le myrthe ou les saules tremblants,

  Cette chanson d’amour…qui toujours recommence!

  Delfica

  Daphne, do you know this old ballad, at the foot of the sycamore or beneath the white laurels, under the olive tree, the myrtle or the quivering willows, this song of love… which always begins anew!

  Reconnais-tu le TEMPLE, au péristyle immense,

  Et les citrons amers où s’imprimaient tes dents?

  Et la grotte, fatale aux hôtes imprudents,

  Où du dragon vaincu dort l’antique semence.

  Ils reviendront ces dieux que tu pleures toujours!

  Le temps va ramener l’ordre des anciens jours;

  La terre a tressailli d’un souffle prophétique…

  Cependant la sibylle au visage latin

  Est endormie encor sous l’arc de Constantin:

  – Et rien n’a dérangé la sévère portique.

  Do you recognize the TEMPLE with the vast peristyle, and the bitter lemons which bore the marks of your teeth? And the cave, fatal to rash visitors, where sleeps the ancient seed of the defeated dragon.

  They will return, those gods for whom you still weep! Time will bring back the ancient order; the earth has shuddered with a prophetic breath…

  And yet the sibyl with the Latin face still sleeps beneath the arch of Constantine: – and nothing has disturbed the austere portico.

  Artémis

  La Treizième revient… C’est encor la première;

  Et c’est toujours la Seule, – ou c’est le seul moment:

  Car es-tu Reine, ô toi! la première ou dernière?

  Es-tu Roi, toi le seul ou le dernier amant?…

  Aimez qui vous aima du berceau dans la bière;

  Celle que j’aimai seul m’aime encor tendrement:

  C’est la Mort – ou la Morte… O délice! ô tourment!

  La rose qu’elle tient, c’est la Rose trémière.

  Sainte napolitaine aux mains pleines de feux,

  Rose au cœur violet, fleur de sainte Gudule:

  As-tu trouvé ta Croix dans le désert des cieux?

  Artemis

  The Thirteenth returns… and yet also the first; and still the Only One, – or it is the only moment: for art thou Queen, o thou! the first or last? Art thou King, thou the only or the last lover?…

  Love the one who loved you from the cradle to the grave; she whom I alone loved still loves me tenderly: she is Death – or the Dead Woman… O delight! O torment! the rose she holds is the hollyhock.

  Neapolitan saint with your hands full of fires, rose with the violet heart, Saint Gudula’s flower: have you found your Cross in the desert of the heavens?

  Roses blanches, tombez! vous insultez nos dieux,

  Tombez, fantômes blancs, de votre ciel qui brÛle;

  – La Sainte de l’abîme est plus sainte à mes yeux!

  White roses, fall! you insult our gods; fall, white spectres, from your burning sky; the saint of the abyss, she is holier in my sight!

  Alfred de Musset

  (1810–57)

  Seen in his time as a rather Byronic figure, Musset has perhaps lost status in recent critical evaluations (and indeed since he was execrated by Rimbaud), though his plays have enjoyed some resurgent interest. He remains, nevertheless, a significant if ambiguous poet of the Romantic era. His verse blends lyrical pathos with a relaxed colloquial touch and a strong vein of irony, within an essentially classical frame.

  After abortive law and medical studies, he came under Hugo’s influence at the ‘Cénacle’, and published Contes d’Espagne et d’Italie in 1830. The most emotionally turbulent and artistically productive period of his life, the mid-1830s, carried him first as great lover and then as misogynist through and beyond a stormy affair with the novelist George Sand (Aurore Dupin, Mme Dudevant), into a prolonged oscillation between bitterness and recognition of the personal and artistic value of the experience, in which love, if only crystallized as a memory, gives form and meaning to life. Always in fragile health aggravated by alcoholic and sexual excess, he died at the age of 47.

  Like his life, Musset’s work is a restless and perplexing blend of emotion and analysis, despair and wit, spontaneity and irony. Artistically insecure and wryly aware of his thematic limitation
s, masochistic in his need for emotional crisis, a self-indulgent dandy burning himself out in a remorseful search for purity, he has a schizoid quality which takes strikingly objectified form in the ‘Nuits’ poems. These are a series of dialogues between the poet and his Muse, set on a nerve-strand of precarious creativity.

  His work was published in a piecemeal way, but a definitive version of his Premières Poésies and Poésies Nouvelles appeared in 1852. Later groupings included Poésies Complémentaires and Poésies Posthumes.

  Une Soirée perdue

  J’étais seul, l’autre soir, au Théâtre-Français,

  Ou presque seul; l’auteur n’avait pas grand succès.

  Ce n’était que Molière, et nous savons de reste

  Que ce grand maladroit, qui fit un jour Alceste,

  Ignora le bel art de chatouiller l’esprit

  Et de servir à point un dénoÛment bien cuit.

  Grâce à Dieu, nos auteurs ont changé de méthode,

  Et nous aimons bien mieux quelque drame à la mode

  Où l’intrigue, enlacée et roulée en feston,

  Tourne comme un rébus autour d’un mirliton.

  A Wasted Evening

  I was alone the other evening at the Comédie Française, or almost alone; the author wasn’t having much success. It was only Molière, and we know only too well that that great bungler, who one day created Alceste, knew nothing of the fine art of titillating the mind and of serving up a well-cooked ending done to a turn. God be thanked, our authors have changed their methods, and we prefer by far some fashionable play whose plot, entwined and rolled up in festoons, spins like a punning conundrum around some doggerel verse.