Poems That Sing

Poems That Sing
by French Masters
Fifteen Great French Poets and
Their Verses of Life, Love, and Loss
C
Original Texts
with English Translations
by
Leon Schwartz
N E W
Y O R K
Copyright © 2008 by Leon Schwartz
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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 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ix
Charles d’Orléans, «Le Printemps» (Rondeaux) · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 1
François Villon, «Ballade des dames du temps jadis»
(Le Grand Testament)· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 5
Louise Labé, «Je vis, je meurs» (Vingt-trois sonnets) · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 9
Pierre de Ronsard, «Ode à Cassandre» (Odes), «Quand
vous serez bien vieille» (Sonnets pour Hélène) · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 13
Joachim du Bellay, «Sonnet XXXI, Heureux qui
comme Ulysse» (Regrets)· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 19
Jean de La Fontaine, «Le Corbeau et le Renard» and
«La Cigale et la Fourmi» (Fables) · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 23
André Chénier, «La Jeune Captive» (Œuvres)
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 29
Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, «Point d’adieu» and
«Les Roses de Saadi» (Poésies) · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 35
Victor Hugo, «Demain dès l’aube» (l,es Contemplations) · · · · · · · · · 41
Charles Baudelaire, «La Vie antérieure» and
«Correspondances» (Les Fleurs du mal) · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 45
Paul Verlaine, «Mon Rêve familier» (Poèmes saturniens,) · · · · · · · · · 51
Arthur Rimbaud, «Le Dormeur du val» and
«Ma Bohème» (Poésies) · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 55
Guillaume Apollinaire, «Le Pont Mirabeau» (Alcools) · · · · · · · · · · · 61
Louis Aragon, «Les Lilas et les Roses» (le Crève-coeur)
· · · · · · · · · · · 65
Jacques Prévert, «Paris at Night» and «Le Jardin» (Paroles) · · · · · · · 69
FOREWORD
I
n 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.
P OE M S T H AT SI NG BY F R E NC H M A S T ER S
t
IX
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
X
t
P O E M S T H AT S I N G B Y F R E N C H M A S T E R S
3 CH A R LE S D’OR LÉ A NS 4
www.gallica,bnf.fr
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.
3 CH A R LE S D’OR LÉ A NS 4
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.
2t
P O E M S T H AT S I N G B Y F R E N C H M A S T E R S
3 CH A R LE S D’OR LÉ A NS 4
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.
P OE M S T H AT SI NG BY F R E NC H M A S T ER S
t 3
LEON SCHWARTZ
Silver Spring, MD, and
Altadena, CA
May 2008
LEON SCHWARTZ
Leon Schwartz was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1922
and grew up in Bronx, New York, and Providence, Rhode
Island, where he became interested in French literature. After
World War II, in which he served for three years as an Army
Air Force B-17 navigator flying with the 8th Air Force in the
European Theater of Operations, he completed a B.A. in
French at UCLA, spent a year in France with six months at
the Sorbonne, and earned an M.A. and Ph. D. in French at
the University of Southern California with minors in English
and Spanish. He taught languages in public schools for eight
years, before becoming a professor of French at California State
University, Los Angeles.
His teaching career at CSULA extended from 1959
to 2003, during which time he specialized in the writers of
the French Enlightenment and French poetry in general.
Besides his master’s thesis on the translations of the poetry
of Arthur Rimbaud and doctoral dissertation on the French
writings of Frederick Melchior Grimm, he has published a
book on the great French philosopher, encyclopedist, novelist,
dramatist, and art critic Denis Diderot, and numerous articles
in professional journals on pedagogical issues, the ideas and
literary techniques of various 18th century social philosophers,
early French feminists, and the 19th-century Romantic poet
Gérard de Nerval.
Professor Schwartz is married and has two adult
children, one a high school French teacher and the other a
noted international lawyer and arbitrator in the Paris office of
an American law firm.
P OE M S T H AT SI NG BY F R E NC H M A S T ER S
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