The Penguin Book of French Poetry Read online

  Nous voulons, tant ce feu nous brÛle le cerveau,

  Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu’importe?

  Au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!

  We guess the name of the spectre from the familiar tone of voice; our Pylades yonder stretch out their arms to us. ‘To refresh your heart swim towards your Electra!’ says she whose knees we once kissed.

  VIII

  O Death, old Captain, it’s time! let’s raise anchor! This land bores us, O Death! Let’s get under way! If the sky and sea are as black as ink, our hearts, which you know, are filled with rays of light!

  Pour into us your poison that it may comfort us! This fire blazes so hot in our brains that we want to plunge to the bottom of the chasm, Hell or Heaven, what does it matter? to the depths of the Unknown to find something new.

  Recueillement

  Sois sage, ô ma Douleur, et tiens-toi plus tranquille.

  Tu réclamais le Soir; il descend; le voici:

  Une atmosphère obscure enveloppe la ville,

  Aux uns portant la paix, aux autres le souci.

  Pendant que des mortels la multitude vile,

  Sous le fouet du Plaisir, ce bourreau sans merci,

  Va cueillir des remords dans la fête servile,

  Ma Douleur, donne-moi la maìn; viens par ici,

  Loin d’eux. Vois se pencher les défuntes Années,

  Sur les balcons du ciel, en robes surannées;

  Surgir du fond des eaux le Regret souriant;

  Le Soleil moribond s’endormir sous une arche,

  Et, comme un long linceul traînant à l’Orient,

  Entends, ma chère, entends la douce Nuit qui marche.

  Meditation

  Be discreet, O my Suffering, and be more placid. You craved the Evening; it comes down; here it is: a dusky atmosphere cloaks the city, bringing peace to some, anxiety to others.

  While the vile multitude of mortals, under the whip of Pleasure, that pitiless torturer, goes gathering remorse in servile celebration, my Suffering, give me your hand; come this way.

  Far from them. See the departed years leaning over the balconies of the sky, in old-fashioned gowns; smiling Regret welling up from the waters’ depths;

  The moribund sun-going to sleep beneath an arch, and, like a long shroud trailing away into the East, hear, my beloved, hear the tread of gentle Night.

  The Parnassian Movement

  The name chosen by this group of poets derives from the 1867 verse anthology Le Parnasse Contemporain, and reflects their aspiration to a noble form of poetry, cleansed of emotionalism and the vulgar effusions of the Self. Their ideas constitute, in modern terms, a ‘backlash’ against Romanticism, and have much in common with those of Gautier, who published poems in that anthology along with Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Cros, de Banville and many others. This very diversity counsels caution in applying the term ‘movement’ to the new spirit, but an identifiable group (including none of the above) did subsequently emerge and continue regular gatherings around the abrasive, patrician figure of Leconte de Lisle. The group would have preferred leadership by Gautier (which would have been appropriate) or by Baudelaire (certainly inappropriate), but both refused the role.

  ‘Passion is not an excuse for writing bad verse…’ they argue, in their quest for formal perfection of metre and rhyme. Wilfully and consciously elitist, despising the rabble, Parnassianism brings the spirit and patience of the sculptor and the precision of the scientist to verse composition, with a meticulous pursuit of objectivity and ennoblement of the subject as its aesthetic imperatives. Descriptive imagery emerges as their forte, enhanced by expressive sound patterns and by complementary rhythms that reinforce a sense of concrete three-dimensionality. Still working principally with the Alexandrine, they give it further internal flexibility with enjambements and mobile caesurae, exploiting ground prepared by Hugo, whom they continued to venerate in his exile.

  Among their favourite subjects are impressive animals and scenes from classical antiquity. Often the subjects are placed in exotic environments and demonstrate physical power and speed, elemental violence, and superiority to ordinary human beings. Often there are morally uplifting implications in the images, which in the best poetry of this type are constructed very consciously and with great descriptive flair, plasticity and dynamism.

  Art itself is elevated by this group to the top of the scale of values, withdrawn from the broad public courted so successfully by the Romantics, and removed from its temporal and social context into the rarefied sphere of Art for Art’s Sake. But apart from Leconte de Lisle, possibly Dierx and Prudhomme, and certainly Heredia, they have not stood the test of time. Their limitations have been exposed by the achievements of their more expansive contemporaries, but the movement deserves consideration as a significant element in the literary climate in which those greater poets flourished.

  Parnassians not featured here but of interest to students of the movement include Louis Bouilhet, Louis Ménard, Sully Prudhomme, Léon Dierx, Catulle Mendès, François Coppée, Albert Glatigny, Pierre Louys.

  Leconte de Lisle

  (1818–94)

  An idealistic republican in his youth, Leconte de Lisle turned away from politics and the people after the disillusionment of 1848, and devoted himself to poetry and philosophy. Rejecting contemporary society and personal lyricism (‘une vanité et une profanation gratuites’) as unfit and decadent subjects for art, he sought in the scientific study of past and distant civilizations models of less debased, materialistic and philistine societies, particularly societies in which art was a sacred activity and where artists were granted élite status. He also studied evolutionary science, and like Vigny cultivated a stoical and self-sufficient response to suffering and to man’s apparent abandonment by God. As he grew older he grew increasingly pessimistic and disillusioned even with science, bitter about public rejection of his work, and confused by public hostility to his acceptance of an imperial pension.

  Despite his Parnassian goal of impersonality, his frustration and arrogance are visible in his poetry, together with nostalgia for his childhood on the island of Réunion. Nevertheless, his verse exemplifies Parnassian principles such as rigorous perfection in versification, logical coherence of content and structure, clarity and plasticity of image, admiration for classical models, and the avoidance of both sentimental intimacy and overt moralizing (though there are exceptions) through concentration on the object of perception and on the intelligent creation of Beauty as an end in itself. He is at his best as a vividly descriptive poet, rather than as a pessimistic philosopher of humanity’s decline and necessary extinction.

  Major works: Poèmes antiques 1852, Poèmes barbares 1862, Poèmes tragiques 1884, Derniers Poèmes (posthumous).

  Les Montreurs

  Tel qu’un morne animal, meurtri, plein de poussière,

  La chaîne au cou, hurlant au chaud soleil d’été,

  Promène qui voudra son coeur ensanglanté

  Sur ton pavé cynique, ô plèbe carnassière!

  Pour mettre un feu stérile en ton oeil hébété,

  Pour mendier ton rire ou ta pitié grossière,

  Déchire qui voudra la robe de lumière

  De la pudeur divine et de la volupté.

  Dans mon orgueil muet, dans ma tombe sans gloire,

  Dussè-je m’engloutir pour l’éternité noire,

  Je ne te vendrai pas mon ivresse ou mon mal,

  Je ne livrerai pas ma vie à tes huées,

  Je ne danserai pas sur ton tréteau banal

  Avec tes histrions et tes prostituées.

  Exhibitionists

  Like a wretched animal, bruised and dusty, chained at the neck, howling at the hot summer sun, let him who wishes parade his bleeding heart on your shameless streets, O carnivorous rabble!

  To kindle a sterile light in your vacant eye, to beg for your laughter or your vulgar pity, let him who wishes tear the robe of light of divine modesty and the pl
easure of the senses.

  In my silent pride, in my grave without renown, even if compelled to live entombed for black eternity, I will not sell you my rapture or my pain,

  I will not surrender my life to your jeering, I will not dance on your commonplace stage with your mountebanks and whores.

  Midi

  Midi, roi des étés, épandu sur la plaine,

  Tombe en nappes d’argent des hauteurs du ciel bleu.

  Tout se tait. L’air flamboie et brÛle sans haleine;

  La terre est assoupie en sa robe de feu.

  L’étendue est immense, et les champs n’ont point d’ombre,

  Et la source est tarie où buvaient les troupeaux;

  La lointaine forêt, dont la lisière est sombre,

  Dort là-bas, immobile, en un pesant repos.

  Seuls, les grands blés mÛris, tels qu’une mer dorée,

  Se déroulent au loin, dédaigneux du sommeil;

  Pacifiques enfants de la terre sacrée,

  Ils épuisent sans peur la coupe du soleil.

  Parfois, comme un soupir de leur âme brÛlante

  Du sein des épis lourds qui murmurent entre eux,

  Une ondulation majestueuse et lente

  S’éveille, et va mourir à l’horizon poudreux.

  Noon

  Noon, king of summers, radiating over the plain, falls in silver sheets from the heights of the blue sky. All is silent. The air flames and burns breathlessly; the earth lies drowsy in its fiery robe.

  The expanse is vast, and the fields have no shade, and the spring where the herds drank has run dry; the distant dark-edged forest sleeps yonder, motionless, in a heavy torpor.

  Only the great ripe cornfields, like a gilded sea, unfold into the distance, disdaining sleep; peaceful children of the holy earth, they drain without fear the cup of sunlight.

  Sometimes, like a sigh from their burning soul, from the heart of the heavy murmuring ears of corn, a slow majestic undulation awakes, and rolls away to the on the dusty horizon.

  Non loin, quelques bœufs blancs, couchés parmi les herbes,

  Bavent avec lenteur sur leurs fanons épais,

  Et suivent de leurs yeux languissants et superbes

  Le songe intérieur qu’ils n’achèvent jamais.

  Homme, si, le coeur plein de joie ou d’amertume,

  Tu passais vers midi dans les champs radieux,

  Fuis! la nature est vide et le soleil consume:

  Rien n’est vivant ici, rien n’est triste ou joyeux.

  Mais si, désabusé des larmes et du rire,

  Altéré de l’oubli de ce monde agité,

  Tu veux, ne sachant plus pardonner ou maudire,

  GoÛter une suprême et morne volupté,

  Viens! Le soleil te parle en paroles sublimes;

  Dans sa flamme implacable absorbe-toi sans fin;

  Et retourne à pas lents vers les cités infimes,

  Le coeur trempé sept fois dans le néant divin.

  Not far away a few white oxen, lying in the grass, dribble slowly on their weighty dewlaps, and follow with their proud and languid eyes the inner dream they never finish.

  Man, if, with your heart full of joy or bitterness, you were moving towards noon into the radiant fields, flee! nature is empty and the sun devours: nothing is living here, nothing is sad or joyful.

  But if, disillusioned with tears or with laughter, thirsting for forgetfulness of this restless world, no longer able to pardon or to curse, you wish to taste an ultimate and bleak pleasure.

  Come! The sun speaks to you in sublime words: be absorbed without end in its relentless flame; and return with slow steps towards the abject cities, your heart steeped seven times in die divine void.

  Le Coeur de Hialmar

  Une nuit claire, un vent glacé. La neige est rouge.

  Mille braves sont là qui dorment sans tombeaux,

  L’épée au poing, les yeux hagards. Pas un ne bouge.

  Au-dessus tourne et crie un vol de noirs corbeaux.

  La lune froide verse au loin sa pâle flamme.

  Hialmar se soulève entre les morts sanglants,

  Appuyé des deux mains au tronçon de sa lame;

  La pourpre du combat ruisselle de ses flancs.

  – “Holà! Quelqu’un a-t-il encore un peu d’haleine,

  Parmi tant de joyeux et robustes garçons

  Qui, ce matin, riaient et chantaient à voix pleine

  Comme des merles dans l’épaisseur des buissons!

  The Heart of Hialmar

  A clear night, an icy wind. The snow is red. A thousand brave men are there, sleeping without tombs, sword in hand, wild-eyed. Not one moves. A flight of black crows wheels and shrieks above.

  In the distance the cold moon sheds its pallid gleam. Hialmar raises himself amongst the bleeding dead, leaning with both hands on the stump of his sword. The crimson of battle runs dripping from his sides.

  ‘Ho there! Has anyone still a little breath among so many merry, sturdy lads who this morning laughed and sang with full voice like blackbirds in the heart of the bushes?

  “Tous sont muets. Mon casque est rompu, mon armure

  Est trouée, et la hache a fait sauter ses clous.

  Mes yeux saignent. J’entends un immense murmure

  Pareil aux hurlements de la mer ou des loups.

  “Viens par ici, corbeau, mon brave mangeur d’hommes;

  Ouvre-moi la poitrine avec ton bec de fer.

  Tu nous retrouveras demain tels que nous sommes.

  Porte mon cœur tout chaud à la fille d’Ylmer.

  “Dans Upsal, où les Jarls boivent la bonne bière,

  Et chantent, en heurtant les cruches d’or, en chœur,

  A tire-d’aile vole, ô rôdeur de bruyère!

  Cherche ma fiancée et porte-lui mon cœur.

  “Au sommet de la tour que hantent les corneilles

  Tu la verras debout, blanche, aux longs cheveux noirs;

  Deux anneaux d’argent fin lui pendent aux oreilles,

  Et ses yeux sont plus clairs que l’astre des beaux soirs.

  All are dumb. My helmet is smashed, my armour pierced, and the axe has burst its nails. My eyes are bleeding. I hear a vast murmuring like the howling of the sea or the wolves.

  Come this way, Crow, my fine eater of men, open up my breast with your iron beak. Tomorrow you will find us again just as we are. Carry my heart, still warm, to the daughter of Ylmer.

  In Uppsala, where the Jarls drink good beer and sing in chorus, clinking golden pitchers, fly at your fastest, O heathland prowler! Seek out my betrothed and take her my heart.

  At the top of the rook-haunted tower you will see her standing, white, with long black hair. Two rings of fine silver hang from her ears, and her eyes are brighter than the fair evening star.

  “Va, sombre messager, dis-lui bien que je l’aime,

  Et que voici mon coeur. Elle reconnaîtra

  Qu’il est rouge et solide, et non tremblant et blême,

  Et la fille d’Ylmer, corbeau, te sourira!

  “Moi, je meurs. Mon esprit coule par vingt blessures.

  J’ai fait mon temps. Buvez, ô loups, mon sang vermeil.

  Jeune, brave, riant, libre et sans flétrissures,

  Ja vais m’asseoir parmi les Dieux, dans le soleil.”

  Go, dark messenger, be sure to tell her that I love her, and that here is my heart. She will acknowledge that it is red and firm, not trembling and pale; and the daughter of Ylmer, crow, will smile on you!

  As for me, I am dying. My spirit flows away through twenty wounds. I have had my time. Drink, O wolves, my rose-red blood. Young, brave, laughing, free and untarnished, I go to sit among the Gods, in the sun!’

  Le Rêve du jaguar

  Sous les noirs acajous, les lianes en fleur,

  Dans l’air lourd, immobile et saturé de mouches,

  Pendent, et, s’enroulant en bas parmi les souches,

  Bercent le perroquet splendide et querelleur,

&nb
sp; L’araignée au dos jaune et les singes farouches.

  C’est là que le tueur de boeufs et de chevaux,

  Le long des vieux troncs morts à l’écorce moussue,

  Sinistre et fatigué, revient à pas égaux.

  Il va, frottant ses reins musculeux qu’il bossue;

  Et, du mufle béant par la soif alourdi,

  Un souffle rauque et bref, d’une brusque secousse,

  Trouble les grands lézards, chauds des feux de midi,

  Dont la fuite étincelle à travers l’herbe rousse.

  En un creux du bois sombre interdit au soleil

  Il s’affaisse, allongé sur quelque roche plate;

  D’un large coup de langue il se lustre la patte;

  The Jaguar’s Dream

  Beneath the black mahogany trees, the flowering creepers hang in the heavy, motionless, fly-soaked air, and, coiling downwards among the tree stumps, they cradle the gorgeous bickering parrot, the yellow-backed spider and the wild and timid monkeys.1 It is there that the killer of oxen and horses, sinister and weary, returns with measured steps along the old dead trunks with their mossy bark. He goes, rubbing and hunching his muscular loins; and from his gaping muzzle, heavy with thirst, a short rasping breath abruptly stirs and disturbs the great lizards, hot from the fires of noon, whose flight glitters through the russet grass. In a hollow of the dark wood forbidden to the sun he sinks down, stretched out on some flat rock; with a broad stroke of his tongue he polishes his paw; he blinks his golden, sleep-dulled eyes; and, in the illusion of his dormant power, moving his tail, with quivering flanks, he dreams that in the heart of green groves with one bound he is plunging his dripping claws into the flesh of startled, bellowing bulls.