The Pogues did a musical setting of this (translation and music by Jem Finer).

Here's a link to a video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvOhI8iMrg8


And here are the lyrics:

PONT MIRABEAU

Below the Pont Mirabeau
Slow flows the Seine
And all our love's together
Must I recall again
Joy would always follow
After pain

Hands holding hands
Let us stand face to face
While underneath the bridge
Of our arms entwined slow race
Eternal gazes flowing
At waves pace

Let night fall, let the hours go by
The days pass on and here stand I

Love runs away
Like running water flows
Love flows away
But oh, how slow life goes
How violent is hope
Love only knows

Let night fall, let the hours go by
The days pass on and here stand I

The days flow ever on
The weeks pass by in vain
Time never will return
Nor our loves burn again
Below the Pont Mirabeau
Slow flows the Seine

Let night fall, let the hours go by
The days pass on and here stand I

Good to have your thoughts on those, John. And Simon, thanks for the Pogues version, which I would probably not otherwise have encountered.

I've added a correction and a caveat to my Mirabeau pontifications at Post #20, above.

Hi Julie,

There is certainly a French tradition of reference to the Angelus in painting (Millet, say) and literature (Madame Bovary). In that, you make an excellent case. But of course, every hour sounds in a whole bunch of churches - it did for me growing up in Canterbury and Cambridge, it did just this week in Barcelona as I admired the cathedral.
To support your argument, he does say “Vienne la nuit.” But I find the French less specific than Wilbur’s English is.

Cheers,
John

Update: thanks also Simon for the reminder that The Pogues are always worth a listen. I see they avoided deciding about the possible Angelus reference, FWIW.

LOL, John!

I still think that in this poem, "sonne l'heure" right after "Vienne la nuit" strongly implies a special ringing of bells to mark the end of the day, not just the end of an hour like any other.

The curfew bell at the beginning of Gray's Elegy has a similar day-ending concept:

And guess what! Gray's "curfew bell" actually seems to be an Angelus bell in disguise, too:

Did either Apollinaire or Gray know, or care, about the history of specific religious associations with that special ringing of the bells at the end of the day? Probably not--especially given Apollinaire's lifelong lack of religiosity. But I still think that Wilbur's "bells end the day" translation in the repetend is spot-on.

Anyway, thanks for humoring me while I've yammered on.

Well, this is tantalizing. I found a Google Books version of correspondence between Richard Wilbur and the editor who commissioned his translation of this poem. Some of the drafts and the logic behind various decisions are presented and discussed by the two, in almost a line-by-line fashion. Not all of the pages are accessible, but those that are fascinate me.

[Edited to remove the URL I provided, since Google Books seems to reduce the number of pages that one can see each time you visit the same resource, and I think that the very long URL must have some coded info in it that will count how many times it's been accessed in that way. You'll have better results if you just search for "correspondence between paul auster and richard wilbur," which is a phrase from the first line of the article. This article has been republished in other translation-related monographs several times, so you may be able to find a fuller presentation of the text in another version.]

And now I've got to focus on my weekend obligations.

There are good/excellent and bad/horrific elements in all the translations posted. If I had to chose one over the rest, it would be the Wilbur translation.

Hi Julie,

I've finally got to the correspondence you pointed to. I agree, it is tantalizing. Nice to see the origins of this version, and the thought that Wilbur brought to each line. He doesn't, in these extracts, reflect much on the Angelus controversy, if I may call it that, and seems to have gone for close of day from the outset, pretty much. My gut tells me that on balance, the Angelus is inescapable enough within the French tradition that Apollinaire would have trouble being unaware of it. He does, after all, put Catholic imagery elsewhere in his art. Now I continue to maintain that his ambiguity - "sonne l'heure" - avoids explicit narrowing to that focus, and Wilbur's choice to narrow that focus is mistaken. But we can agree to disagree, and I think fine points can be made counter to my opinion, as you've indeed done. It's kind of fun to see how one word can generate so much context in translating a simple poem such as this.
I tend to think Gray's curfew bell is a curfew bell. As the French put it, there seems to me no need to "chercher midi a quatorze heures." But I do think your research adds resonance to the line, and not just for Catholics. It's good to know something of the history of bell-ringing in Europe here. I do also like the Irish line about the bell-ringer who's been drinking, the reaction seems apt and true.
And of course, Apollinaire couldn't write his line without Verlaine in mind, at least in my opinion. That poem became a success quite quickly.

Cheers,
John

Double-posted. As seems fitting, since I've also double-downed.

Ha! I am forever looking for noon at fourteen o'clock, and forever boring people with things that are not of general interest, and you'll never reform me, John--I'm a lost cause on both counts.

For example, I found this tidbit on the New York Stock Exchange's webpage that describes the history of the bell used to indicate the opening and closing of the stock market:

Wait, nine times at a brisk tempo? Like, say, the second half of the Angelus bell pattern?

SOMEONE CALL DAN BROWN!

But the NYSE opening and closing bell is now rung for much longer than nine peals, or "just over 3 seconds." It now sounds for "approximately ten seconds." The number of peals I counted in a few videos of NYSE closing bells ranged from 53 to 55. It doesn't go as long as an English curfew bell (here's audio from the Curfew Tower at Windsor Castle, which goes on for more than five minutes), but it's still a whole lotta noise.

Apparently, back when the curfew was actually enforced, the curfew might be rung continuously for fifteen minutes, to give people time to get the fire-covering task done before the enforcers made their rounds.

But unless there is civil unrest that the authorities are trying to manage, sunset seems an awfully early time to force people who need to use every minute of natural light for their labors (e.g., ploughmen) to put out their home fires and go to bed. Very bad for productivity, as a general rule. Since the ploughman in Gray's Elegy isn't even home yet, the poor fellow, I think the curfew bell in the poem is a curfew bell only in the sense of Definition #6 here.

Further evidence that this so-called "curfew bell" is actually just an evening bell: in the tear-jerker "Curfew Must Not Ring To-night" by Rose Hartwick Thorpe, the sexton has this to say about the timing of his duties:

Anyway, the point of all this blather has been to say that I think the concept of the curfew and Angelus and New York Stock Exchange bells is exactly the same.

I.e., this isn't simply the tolling of an ordinary hour. It's a great avalanche of noise, marking the end of the day, however that day is defined: the workday (in the case of the Angelus and NYSE bells), or activity (in the case of curfew bell).

TL;DR: The notion of a prolonged racket marking the end of each day has been a part of life for centuries, and it seems possible that this significant "time's up" bell is what both Verlaine and Apollinaire had in mind, rather than the marking of the end of an ordinary hour.

But I wholeheartedly agree that no matter how vigorously I've speculated, all this remains mere speculation.

Hi Julie,

I think you could also push this line - "with such bell as of old time hath been accustomed" - to suggest that of old time means "back when England was Catholic." I like your point that the curfew at sunset is a weird time for a literal curfew. Surely the fire would be being lit then, not extinguished?
The NYSE is tolling the start of the day, not its ending, as I take it.

Cheers,
John