[Andrew Frisardi]

Golden Verses
“Well then! All is aware!” —Pythagoras

Free-thinking man! do you feel you alone
Think, in a world where life bursts out in all?
Your freedom has your powers to use at will,
But from your councils the universe is gone.
Honor an acting mind in animals.
Each flower is a soul in Nature blooming;
A mystery of love lies still in metals;
“All is aware!” and presses on your being.

Beware, in the blind wall, an eye that sees you:
To very matter is attached a word . . .
Don’t let it serve some sacrilegious use!
Dark being often holds a hidden God;
And like a nascent eye behind its lids,
Beneath the bark of stones pure spirit spreads!


Revisions:

line 1: believe > feel
line 2: comma added after first word; this world > a world; bursts out > bursts forth > bursts out
line 3: at its disposal >to use at will
line 4: counsels > councils
line 7: is latent > lies still
line 12: Often, in dark being, dwells > Dark being often holds
line 13: beneath > behind
line 14: Below > Beneath and bark > skin > rind > bark





Vers Dorés
“Eh quoi! tout est sensible!” —Pythagore

Homme, libre penseur! te crois-tu seul pensant
Dans ce monde où la vie éclate en toute chose?
Des forces que tu tiens ta liberté dispose,
Mais de tous tes conseils l’univers est absent.
Respecte dans la bête un esprit agissant:
Chaque fleur est une âme à la Nature éclose;
Un mystère d’amour dans le métal repose;
“Tout est sensible!” Et tout sur ton être est puissant.

Crains, dans le mur aveugle, un regard qui t’épie:
À la matière même un verbe est attaché . . .
Ne le fais pas servir à quelque usage impie!
Souvent dans l’être obscur habite un Dieu caché;
Et comme un œil naissant couvert par ses paupières,
Un pur esprit s’accroît sous l’écorce des pierres!

—Gérard de Nerval (1854)


prose crib

Man, free thinker! Do you believe you alone think in this world where life bursts out in all things? Your freedom disposes of the forces that you hold, but from all your counsels the universe is absent. Respect in the beast an acting spirit. Each flower is a soul blossomed in Nature. A mystery of love rests in metal. “All is aware”! And all things have power over your being.

Fear, in the blind wall, a look that observes you: to matter itself a word is attached . . . Don’t let it serve some impious use! Often in dark being dwells a hidden God; and like a nascent eye covered by its lids, a pure spirit grows beneath the bark of stones!

[Carl Copeland]

Thank you for this door to Nerval, Andrew. I’ve heard a lot about him, but read little. I really appreciate the care you’ve put into making this translation both accurate and enjoyable. A few thoughts:

I’m still working on loosening up my expectations of meter and rhyme, so I should probably wait a few years to comment, but the off-stress rhymes are still too dissonant for my taste:

• I find “all/disposal” jarring, especially in adjacent lines and especially because it tells me to say “dispose-all,” which is what we used to call the machine under the kitchen sink that grinds up food waste. One alternative that came to mind was “Your freedom has powers at its beck and call.”

• “Animals/metals” works better because the rhyme is off-stress in both words, but it would work still better, I think (not sure why), if you regularized L7 to something like “A mystery of love inheres/resides in metals.”

• “Sees you/use” doesn’t even jar; combined with the slantiness of you/use, it doesn’t register as a rhyme for me at all. Maybe another year or two on the Sphere, and I’ll be able to hear it.

L2: “Bursts forth” would sound more poetic to me.

L4: “Gone” implies a little more than “absent,” but that’s not enough of a deviation to worry about.

L5: I want “the acting mind,” but articles are a slippery matter that I won’t debate.

L10 is a little awkward and/or archaic. Could you do something like “Matter itself is coupled with a word” or “Matter itself is pregnant with a word”? There must be other possibilities.

L12 is hexameter for me, but there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. “Oft” would make a clear pent line, but such mild archaisms aren’t much in favor.

L14: Is “l’écorce des pierres” as odd in French as “bark of stones” is in English, or does it sound more like crust? (I see that écorce can refer to the Earth’s crust.)

That’s all I have for now. Good to have some company over here, Andrew.

[mignon ledgard]

Hello, A. Frisardi,

Lovingly translated. The only thing that jumps at me at first read are the last couple
of lines.

Bark usually refers to trees.
Larousse: l'écorce terrestre — the earth's crust.

Also, both singular, eye and spirit. And it seems more natural for the eye to hide behind its eyelids, than beneath.

Perhaps:
And like a nascent eye behind its eyelids,
A pure spirit grows beneath the crust of stones.

*It's good to see you on the board.
~mignon

[Andrew Frisardi]

Thanks for your feedback, Carl and Mignon. I’ve posted a few revisions based on your comments.

Carl, nice to meet you here. I see you’ve been translating Mandelstam, and I look forward to learning from your posts and seeing if I have anything useful to say.

As for the Nerval poem, for line 7, you were absolutely right to point out the metrical bump. I knew it was there but was gliding over it. I’ve tweaked the phrasing to keep the sense of “repose,” which I think is used in the sense of latency or sleep, like nature reposing in winter.

At least for now, I don’t mind the very rough suggestion of rhyme in “all/disposal,” since I always read poems pronouncing words as they are spoken. The meter doesn’t get me to pronounce them differently. It’s a rough suggestion of a rhyme more than a rhyme, but I like some of that in a poem. I like “beck and call” but can’t see how I could get it in there without distorting the sense of line.

I feel similarly about the “you/use” pair, it’s a rough or jagged match, only faintly audible.

I’ve gone with your suggestion of “bursts forth,” which seems more accurate or precise than my “bursts out.”

Line 10’s slightly archaic or formal feel strikes me as consistent with the oracular character of the poem.

Line 12 is indeed a hexameter. It would probably be better in pentameter but I haven’t figured out how to do that without messing up the sense. "Oft" would work but, yes, it's too archaic.

For “l’écorce des pierres” at the poem’s end, I’m trying out an alternative: “skin of stones,” as a compromise between “bark” and “crust” in the sense of surface. “écorce” can mean the skin of a fruit, too, and maybe that’s what Nerval had in mind. “Skin of stones” is at least jarring as an image, which I think it should be in Nerval (considered a forerunner of the French surrealists). “Crust of stones” could be just some dirt caked on the stones’ surface, which is too mundane or naturalistic here.

Thanks again for your thoughtful comments, Carl.


Hello, Mignon, it’s good to see you after so long. Thanks for your critique. Your point about the eyelids or lid is well-taken, and I’ve changed the prepositions.

See my comment above about “l’écorce des pierres.” I hope “skin” works better for you than “bark.”


Many thanks again to you both.

Andrew

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Andrew Frisardi

I always read poems pronouncing words as they are spoken. The meter doesn’t get me to pronounce them differently.

Yeah, I know. That’s how I was always told to read verse, but I’ve never had the discipline. As soon as I sense a metrical tide, I start surfing it, and that gets me into all kinds of trouble in the rough waters of today’s poetry. I’m also too much influenced by Russian verse, which is generally chanted and written to be chantable. I am loosening up, though, and enjoying the change.

Originally Posted by Andrew Frisardi

I like “beck and call” but can’t see how I could get it in there without distorting the sense of line.

If you de-stress “has” (natural enough if you know to do it) and give “powers” two syllables, then “Your freedom has powers at its beck and call” is a pent line with an anapestic variation—like several other lines in the translation. But if it doesn’t read naturally to you and you like the “rough suggestion of a rhyme,” fine. I may eventually see the light and thank you for the revelation.

[Andrew Frisardi]

Thanks for coming back to this, Carl.

Originally Posted by Carl Copeland

As soon as I sense a metrical tide, I start surfing it

Oh, for sure, reading poetry is surfing the waves of it. And part of that is the swirls and riptides created by the tugs between artifice and everyday speech.

If you de-stress “has” (natural enough if you know to do it) and give “powers” two syllables, then “Your freedom has powers at its beck and call” is a pent line with an anapestic variation—like several other lines in the translation. But if it doesn’t read naturally to you and you like the “rough suggestion of a rhyme,” fine. I may eventually see the light and thank you for the revelation.

I just can't go there. "Beck and call" changes the sense too much, since it implies servile obedience or responsiveness, which isn't how human powers respond to free will. So despite liking the exact rhyme on "call," I'm going to stick with the hiccuping rhyme of "disposal."

[Julie Steiner]

Hi, Andrew! Lovely to see you here again.

In the translation of a poem about human and non-human sentience, the distinction between "man" as an individual who happens to be male and "man" as Homo sapiens—itself a reference to thinking—might be helpful to clarify somehow from the get-go. Would you consider capitalizing "Man"? Since "Homme" occurs at the beginning of the line in the original, it might not be so clear that it's meant to be contrasted with the capitalized "Nature" later; but since you've moved it deeper into the line in the translation, you've got the option of highlighting "man" with capitalization, so I would encourage you to use it.

A comma after "Think" in L2 would be very helpful in emphasizing the wordplay and oxymorons between "libre penseur" (free thinker) and "te crois-tu seul pensant" (do you believe yourself the sole [entity that is] thinking) in L1, along with "liberté" (freedom) in L3. The original gives "pensant" the emphasis of a line-end, so a comma would restore some of the emphasis lost through enjambment in your translation.

The comma might also help readers navigate the trochaic substitution in the first foot of L2, especially if "this world" were downplayed to simply "a world" as well:

     Think, in a world where life bursts forth in all?

Critics of atheism often claim that its adherents hold to their lack of received and unexamined belief as a kind of received and unexamined belief. And indeed, my grandmother, a stone-cold atheist, proudly pronounced herself and centuries of generations before her as Freethinkers—a term that she always capitalized as a compound word, to give it the weight and legitimacy of a religion rather than an absence or nothingness.

So I would probably do something like this in LL1-2:

     Freethinker, Man! Such faith that you alone
     Think, in a world where life erupts in all?

The iambic "erupts" and "explodes" came to mind for "éclate" after I checked its entry in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française.

[Edited to say: On second thought, I like "Freethinking" or "Free-Thinking" better than "Freethinker".]

[Andrew Frisardi]

Hey Julie, good to see you after so long! Thanks for the critique.

I've added the comma after "Think" in line 2. Good idea, for restoring the emphasis on that word. It's interesting that the line is enjambed in a new place, for the sake of the translation. As you know, at times where we lose something in translation we gain something else, a surprise. I was happy to enjamb after "alone," with the sudden "Think" following it up, since the poem is partly about human isolation from nature and from life at large because of one-sided rationalism. "Alone" hangs at the end of the line like a thought without a world.

I also followed your suggestion of changing "this" to "a" in line 2, to help with the trochaic switch.

I'm glad you got me to think more about "Homme," but I am going to leave it lower-case since it's ambiguous in French, as "uomo" is in Italian and "man" in English. He might have a specific person in mind, even, someone whose rationalism he was especially exasperated with at the moment. So I like leaving open that possibility.

I prefer my wording for lines 1-2, perhaps mostly because it's closer to how I would actually say it. "Free-thinking" of course can be a good thing, and Nerval himself, though he was a wildly imaginative visionary, probably wasn't against free-thinking per se. More the logical positivist's exaggerated belief in its epistemological claims.

Andrew

[mignon ledgard]

Hello, Andrew,

How about 'grit' - the grit of stones? Skin is soft. When speaking of fruits, they are not called skin when the outer layer is thicker or harder.

I lost the link for you to see for yourself just how fitting it is.

~mignon

[Andrew Frisardi]

Thanks for coming back to this, Mignon. I agree that "skin" isn't a good solution,and have been vaguely annoyed every time I saw that word in the poem.

But I don't like "grit" because that's not a word for an outer covering, which is certainly what Nerval is getting at.

So I am trying out "rind" as a solution. Do you like that word there?

Andrew