Paul Verlaine
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In floods of tears?
Tell me what you have done
With your young life?
Paul-Marie Verlaine (March 30 1844 – January 8 1896) was a French Symbolist poet. He is often characterized as a poète maudit and an example of fin-de-siècle decadence in literature.
Quotes
[edit]Is not to understand
Why without love or hate
My heart's full of pain.
- Translations and page-numbers are from Martin Sorrell (trans.) Selected Poems (Oxford University Press, 1999)
In strict dictionaries for pinpoint
Definitions. Better the subtle
And heady Songs of Imprecision.
- Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon cœur
D'une langueur
Monotone.- The long sobs of
The violins
Of autumn
Lay waste my heart
With monotones
Of boredom. - "Chanson d'automne", line 1, from Poèmes saturniens (1866); Sorrell p. 24
- The long sobs of
- Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.- And so I leave
On cruel winds
Squalling
And gusting me
Like a dead leaf
Falling. - "Chanson d'automne", line 13, from Poèmes saturniens (1866); Sorrell p. 27
- And so I leave
- La lune blanche
Luit dans les bois;
De chaque branche
Part une voix
Sous la ramée.- White moon gleaming
Among trees,
From every branch
Sound rising into
Canopies. - "La lune blanche", line 1, from La Bonne Chanson (1872); Sorrell p. 57
- White moon gleaming
- Il pleure dans mon cœur
Comme il pleut sur la ville.
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon cœur?- Falling tears in my heart,
Falling rain on the town.
Why this long ache,
A knife in my heart. - "Il pleur dans mon cœur" line 1, from Romances sans paroles (1874); Sorrell p. 69
- Falling tears in my heart,
- C'est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi
Sans amour et sans haine
Mon cœur a tant de peine!- By far the worst pain
Is not to understand
Why without love or hate
My heart's full of pain. - "Il pleur dans mon cœur" line 13, from Romances sans paroles (1874); Sorrell p. 71
- By far the worst pain
- Qu'as-tu fait, ô toi que voilà
Pleurant sans cesse,
Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voilà
De ta jeunesse?- What have you done, you standing there
In floods of tears?
Tell me what you have done
With your young life? - "Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit", line 13, from Sagesse (1880); Sorrell p. 111
- What have you done, you standing there
"Art poétique", from Jadis et naguère (1884)
[edit]- De la musique avant toute chose,
Et pour cela préfère l'Impair
Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air
Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose.
Il faut aussi que tu n'ailles point
Choisir tes mots sans quelque méprise:
Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise
Où l'Indécis au Précis se joint.- Let's hear the music first and foremost,
And that means no more one-two-one-twos…
Something more vague instead, something lighter
Dissolving in air, weightless as air.
When you choose your words, no need to search
In strict dictionaries for pinpoint
Definitions. Better the subtle
And heady Songs of Imprecision. - Line 1; Sorrell p. 123
- Let's hear the music first and foremost,
- Pas la Couleur, rien que la nuance!
- Colour's forbidden, only Nuance!
- Line 14; Sorrell p. 125
- Prends l'éloquence et tords-lui son cou!
Tu feras bien, en train d'énergie,
Du rendre un peu la Rime assagie.
Si l'on n’y veille, elle ira jusqu’où?
Ô qui dira les torts de la Rime!
Quel enfant sourd ou quel nègre fou
Nous a forgé ce bijou d'un sou
Qui sonne creux et faux sous la lime?- Grip eloquence by the throat and squeeze
It to death. And while you're about it
You might corral that runaway, Rhyme,
Or you'll get Rhyme Without End, Amen.
Who will denounce that criminal, Rhyme?
Tone-deaf children or crazed foreigners
No doubt fashioned its paste jewellery,
Tinplate on top, hollow underneath. - Line 21; Sorrell p. 125
- Grip eloquence by the throat and squeeze
- Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure
Éparse au vent crispé du matin
Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym…
Et tout le reste est littérature.- You must let your poems ride their luck
On the back of the sharp morning air
Touched with the fragrance of mint and thyme…
And everything else is LIT-RIT-CHER. - Line 33, Sorrell p. 125
- You must let your poems ride their luck
Quotes about Verlaine
[edit]- Anna Margolin was greatly influenced by Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud; among the Germans, by Else Lasker-Schüler and Rainer Maria Rilke; and among the Yiddish poets, by Itsik Manger and Avrom Sutzkever.
- Drunk from the Bitter Truth: The Poems of Anna Margolin by Shirley Kumove (2005)
- That time, that excitement, I will always remember,/like a song without words, like a poem by Verlaine.
- Anna Margolin "The Song of a Girl" poem in Drunk from the Bitter Truth, translated from Yiddish
- Two of the most perfect lives I have come across in my own experience are the lives of Verlaine and of Prince Kropotkin: both of them men who have passed years in prison: the first, the one Christian poet since Dante; the other, a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ which seems coming out of Russia.
- Oscar Wilde, in De Profundis (1897)