So, Mark, what happened to your detestation of all things French? ;) Pretty tough job making a coherent sonnet out of such a rambling piece, but when the going gets tough...


IN COUNTRY ROOMS

As in exotic lands the sea or air
gleams or is musked with swarming life unknown,
such atmospheric country rooms these were
as captivate us with the scents they own,
a thousand odours which exhale a whiff
of field and wood and weather, yet transpire
also with virtues, with an unseen life,
wisdom, habit, a secret store entire;
odours made homey — now a fine preserve
larders the orchard fruits from all the year,
now hoarfrost’s nip and fresh warm bread converse,
all lazy in a peace admixed with fear,
now all this prosiness is charged anew
to stir the poet who but passes through.


(I haven’t attempted particularly “modern dress”.)

Henry

A rip-snorter, Henry.

Now, did you enjoy that?

I really do believe that making sonnets out of prose like this is a great way to "prime the pump", as engineers would say. Not having to invent the ideas, argument or imagery, gives you a freedom to concentrate on the other aspects of the sonnet, such as rhythm, phrasing and rhyme. And when you do them often enough, that experience may be applied to your own material. Or so it seems to me.

And, as I say, it may also lead to an interesting poem in the process.

Re the apparent contradiction of my Francophobia, I make three exceptions: Montaigne, Proust and Flaubert.

You can keep ALL the rest.

Keep Pascal, Voltaire, Hugo, Dumas, Balzac? Keep Pasteur, Curie, Cousteau? Keep Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rousseau, Molière, Renoir, Monet? Keep Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Fauré? Keep Tati, Grapelli, Piaf, the Moulin Rouge, Gérard Depardieu? (Well, OK, keep HIM!) Keep pissoirs, escargots and 600 types of cheese? ;) Keep Bardot, de Gaulle, and the delightful Henri Leconte?

Seriously, would that Proust passage have appeal to someone without appreciation of the French provincial ambience?

Brilliant thread.
Compliments to the participants.
I aspire to your talent.
David

Dear Proust

My rooms are not your rooms, nor is my air
perfumed, enchanted, secret, sweet, or fresh.
I breathe quite differently from you, mon frere.
It’s super-clear our styles will never mesh.


Sorry, Mark. Not my cuppa.

Mary

Mary--

We all
can scrawl
a bit
of wit
to still
the spill
of words
that girds
this Proust,
seduced
to frame
and tame
his flow,
and sow
his spew
anew.

But you
eschew
his whine
just fine,
and make
his ache,
his drone,
your own.
I say:
Touché!

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif LOL, Jan! I like your pencil-thin poem.

Thanks,
Mary

Thank you, David, on behalf of the four Proustian Sonneteers.

And thank you Mary and Jan for your contributions.

Well, it looks like this might be an exercise with limited appeal.

For my part, at present I am trying to work out which of the three attempts I posted works the best. Or whether to cannibalize the three to make one good one.

One advantage of using the English form here, is that I now have 12 interchangeable modules which can be shuffled around to make one optimum sonnet. Because the passage is oversized, there is no chance that any one sonnet will entirely capture all the elements in the passage, so it comes down to which arrangement might make the best attempt.

If anyone else would like to play cut & paste to make a suggestion, please feel free.

Q 1

Like certain tracts of air or ocean fired
and scented by the breaths of minute lives,
the odours in these rooms remain inspired
by an atmosphere of habit which survives.

Like certain lands where protozoa light
or scent the air and yet remain unseen,
such rooms convey a similar delight
where smells of secret lives imprint the scene.

Some provincial rooms are like the ocean
or like the sky in certain countries, where
tiny lives in protozoic motion
perfume the air, as human lives do here;


============

Q 2

Wisdom, virtues, plentiful and moral,
held in suspension inter-blend those airs
with smells not merely seasonal and floral:
a limpid jelly of fruit and human cares.

Some natural and coloured by the weather,
similar to the neighboring countryside;
some homey, humid, blended all together:
a jelly of cares and fruit the fields provide.

enchanted by enriching scents of wisdom,
of virtues, habits, a secret hidden life
we find enwrapped in country smells, and seldom
a single smell unbound in peaceful strife:

==========

Q 3


Smells that vary with the moving seasons,
offsetting hoarfrost with the sweet warm bread;
morning smells, or linen, some with reasons,
and some which smell of blind faith instead.

Here piquancy of hoarfrost is corrected
sweetly with the smell of home-baked bread;
where lazy smells are punctually directed
and pious smells compete with smells of bed.

here bitter hoarfrost sugars in the sweetness
of the window-fogging, freshly-baked bread;
untidy smells compete with smells of neatness
as pious smells correct the fug of bed.


Couplets

These happy rooms where peace increased unease
store poetry for one who, passing, sees.

These rooms smell of a prosiness which gives
a visitor the poetry that lives.

Prosaic rooms imbued with living smells
may be, for those who pass, poetic wells.

This poem's neither yours nor mine--
I hope it's not a Frankenstein http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif


Like certain tracts of air or ocean fired
and scented by the breaths of minute lives,
the odours in these rooms remain inspired
by an atmosphere of habit which survives.
Some natural and coloured by the weather,
similar to the neighboring countryside;
some homey, humid, blended all together:
a jelly of cares and fruit the fields provide.
Here piquancy of hoarfrost is corrected
sweetly with the smell of home-baked bread;
where lazy smells are punctually directed
and pious smells compete with smells of bed.
Prosaic rooms imbued with living smells
may be, for those who pass, poetic wells.


[This message has been edited by Alan S Evans (edited September 01, 2006).]

Thank you, Alan.

Well, who knows who owns any of these things.

But I must say, I don't really care. Poetry does not "belong" to anyone. And when it comes, in whatever form, why should we reject it solely on the basis of its provenance?

Yes, that seems like a fair blending of the modules to me.

Let that one stand as my poem on the passage.

Thank you again for finding it, Alan.

==================

Edited back to say that with Q1 now matched with Q2 of another version, perhaps "habit" needs now to be "habits" to match the first line of Q2 - "Some ...

[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited September 01, 2006).]