"Clair de lune"
Dan Clore
Verlaine's classic poem "Clair de lune" and these four
translations of it. I think that Clark Ashton Smith's
translation does the best job of conveying the sense of
Verlaine's poem in an equivalent versified form. Don't
forget to listen to Debussy's musical interpretation, "Clair
de lune" from Suite Bergamasque, while reading them.
Three of the translators change the poem's central metaphor
into a simile. Verlaine leaves it implicit that the
landscape described is a painting; O'Shaughnessy and
MacIntyre both make this explicit, O'Shaughnessy going to
the point of renaming the poem "A Pastel" and naming
Watteau, the painter Verlaine presumably had in mind. All
but Smith give up the wordplay of "masques et bergamasques".
A Bergamask dance is a clownish rustic dance like that of
the folk of Bergamo, Venice. The OED gives this as the
proper spelling, though the one citation noted (William
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream) gives only the
variants Bergomask and Burgomaske.
Clark Ashton Smith's use of "antical" to translate
"fantasque" (fantastic) does not match the OED's definition
of the word ("fronting external objects, and thus remote
from the axis"), but he obviously intends it as a variant of
"antic".
Clair de lune
by Paul Verlaine
Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmants masques et bergamasques,
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.
Tout en chantant sur le monde mineur
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,
Au calme clair de lune trist et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.
A Pastel
translated by Arthur O'Shaughnessy
Your soul is like a landscape choice and fair,
Joyous with dancing, lutes, and masquerade,
Wherein the folk, though gay garb they wear,
Look almost sad throughout the long parade.
All singing in the minor of love's kisses,
And life the willing slave of love the strong,
They seem as though they doubted of their blisses,
And dreamy moonlight mingles with their song:
The dreamy moonlight of a Watteau painting,
That silences the birds, and where one sees
The sobbing fountains all like figures fainting,
Tall, slim, amid the statues and the trees.
Moonlight
translated by John Gray
How like a well-kept garden is your soul,
With bergomask and solemn minuet!
Playing upon the lute! the dancers seem
But sad, beneath their strange habilements.
While, in the minor key, their songs extol
The victor Love, and life's sweet blandishments,
Their looks belie the burden of their lays,
The songs that mingle with the still moonbeams.
So strange, so beautiful, the pallid rays;
Making the birds among the branches dream,
And sob with ecstasy the slender jets,
The fountains tall that leap upon the lawns
Amid the garden gods, the marble fauns.
Moonlight
Translated by C.F. MacIntyre
Your soul is like a painter's landscape where
charming masks in shepherd mummeries
are playing lutes and dancing with an air
of being sad in their fantastic guise.
Even while they sing, all in a minor key,
of love triumphant and life's careless boon,
they seem in doubt of their felicity,
their songs melts in the calm light of the moon,
the lovely melancholy light that sets
the little birds to dreaming in the tree
and among the statues makes the jets
of slender fountains sob with ecstasy.
Moonlight
translated by Clark Ashton Smith
Your soul, it is a garden set apart,
Where masques and bergamasques go mummer-wise
And dance and strum the cithern, though at heart
Half-sad beneath their antical disguise.
Singing in minor mode, to muted string
Of love triumphant and life opportune,
They scarce believe the happy theme they sing,
And their songs pass and mingle with the moon,
The fair, the mournful moon, so silently
Making the birds to dream in coverts lone,
And the slim founts to sob with ecstasy
Among the tranquil statues bowed in stone.
--
Dan Clore
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