The Top Six Gems of French Poetry
De Gaulle famously asked, How can you get a country with 246 cheeses to agree on anything? However, according to one survey, these are the six most popular poems in French.
……… Le Cancre by Jacques Prévert
……… Demain dès l’Aube by Victor Hugo
……… Mai by Guilleaume Apollinaire
…….. Chanson d’Automne by Paul Verlaine
…….. Le Dormeur du Val by Arthur Rimbaud
…….. Barbara by Jacques Prévert
Obviously no two poetry enthusiasts would agree.
Jacques Prévert
was a surrealist poet and screenwriter born in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1900. He wrote the script and the dialogue of a number of prestigious French films of the pre-war years, the best-known being perhaps the amazing “Les Enfants du Paradis”, which critics believe is one of the ten best films ever made. It certainly shines by its dialogue, which is pure Prévert poetry. He saw the horrors of the first world war and of the Indochina campaign, and used his experiences in his poetry. In Barbara, for instance, four street words when used in the right context, quelle connerie, la guerre, have all the impact of Shakespeare. He was not one who respected or confined himself to strict literary norms. When he felt like it he used rhymes, but often he wrote free verse, sometimes in the same poem. Many of his poems have been made into songs, often put to music by Joseph Kosma, and sung by people like Serge Reggiani and Juliette Gréco.
Le Cancre/ The Clot
The Clot
(Translated by San Cassimally)
With his head he says nay
but in his heart says tis so
to what he loves he says o.k.
and to sir he says f.o.
he’s now on the spot
sir’s questioning the clot
suddenly he’s in hysterics
and rubs out the lot
numbers, letters the whole mix
dates, names, the whole box of tricks
and threats of sir notwithstanding
nor the class’s loud taunting
to the wretched blackboard takes a walk
with lots of coloured chalk
and he draws a smiley clown
before sir takes him down.
Le Cancre
Il dit non avec la tête
mais il dit oui avec le coeur
il dit oui à qui il aime
il dit non au professeur
il est debout
on le questionne
et tous les problèmes sont posés
soudain le fou rire le prend et il efface tout
les chiffres et les mots
les dates et les noms
les phrases et les pièges
et malgré les menaces du maître
sous les huées des enfants prodiges
avec des craies de toutes les couleurs
sur le tableau du malheur
il dessine le visage du bonheur
Barbara
Rappelle-toi Barbara
Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest ce jour-là
Et tu marchais souriante
Épanouie ravie ruisselante
Sous la pluie
Rappelle-toi Barbara
Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest
Et je t’ai croisée rue de Siam
Tu souriais
Et moi je souriais de même
Rappelle-toi Barbara
Toi que je ne connaissais pas
Toi qui ne me connaissais pas
Rappelle-toi
Rappelle-toi quand même ce jour-là
N’oublie pas
Un homme sous un porche s’abritait
Et il a crié ton nom
Barbara
Et tu as couru vers lui sous la pluie
Ruisselante ravie épanouie
Et tu t’es jetée dans ses bras
Rappelle-toi cela Barbara
Et ne m’en veux pas si je te tutoie
Je dis tu à tous ceux que j’aime
Même si je ne les ai vus qu’une seule fois
Je dis tu à tous ceux qui s’aiment
Même si je ne les connais pas
Rappelle-toi Barbara
N’oublie pas
Cette pluie sage et heureuse
Sur ton visage heureux
Sur cette ville heureuse
Cette pluie sur la mer
Sur l’arsenal
Sur le bateau d’Ouessant
Oh Barbara
Quelle connerie la guerre
Qu’es-tu devenue maintenant
Sous cette pluie de fer
De feu d’acier de sang
Et celui qui te serrait dans ses bras
Amoureusement
Est-il mort disparu ou bien encore vivant
Oh Barbara Il pleut sans cesse sur Brest
Comme il pleuvait avant
Mais ce n’est plus pareil et tout est abimé
C’est une pluie de deuil terrible et désolée
Ce n’est même plus l’orage
De fer d’acier de sang
Tout simplement des nuages
Qui crèvent comme des chiens
Des chiens qui disparaissent
Au fil de l’eau sur Brest
Et vont pourrir au loin
Au loin très loin de Brest
Dont il ne reste rien.
Barbara
(translated by San Cassimally)
Oh Barbara, thou surely rememberest
It was pouring cats and dogs on Brest
And thou wert walking in the rain, smiling
Dripping wet but ravishing and glowing.
Rain droplets kept coming down in buckets
Oh Barbara, thou surely rememberest
It was pouring cats and dogs on Brest
And in rue de Siam our paths cross’d
You smiled like a little girl lost
And I smiled as well, like one does to a belle
Remember Barbara, remember it well
I didn’t know who you could be
And you too wondered, who the hell is he?
Thou dost remember then
Do remember that day
You can’t have forgotten
A man was sheltering under a doorway
And he called ou your name in the rain
Barbara
And you ran towards him all the same
Dripping wet but ravishing and blossoming.
And you threw yourself in his arms glowing
That I call you thou you must allow
I say thou to those I love and cherish
Please grant me this innocent wish
I say thou to people who’ve plighted their troth
Even when I don’t know either or both
Oh Barbara you must remember
You’ve surely not forgotten
These torrents wise and merry
Falling on your blissful visage
On this radiant city
The rain falling on the sea
On the arsenal
On the Ouessant ferry
Oh Barbara War’s such an insanity
Where are you now are you unharmed
When iron and steel’s coming down like a flood
When it’s raining shells and smoke and blood
And the man who held you in his arms
So endearingly
Is he dead and gone or lives he still
Oh Barbara did they his blood spill?
The rain on Brest takes no rest
It rains like before, unendingly
But it’s not the same rain, it’s tainted
With the like of which we’re unacquainted
It’s not the same thunder of yore
It’s one of steel death and gore
Just dark clouds, invoking shrouds
Which like sick dogs perish
When dogs go away and vanish
In the waters pouring down on Brest
And go far to rot away and decay
Very very far from Brest
Which is now rubble and dismay
Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo is to the French what Shakespeare is to the English. He was often called the conscience of France. He was venerated for the themes of compassion in his work, and for his liberal political stance. He publicly called the emperor Napoléon Le Petit, for which he incurred his enmity. He was feted like a hero when he returned from self-imposed exile in Guernsey after the debacle of the Franco-Prussian war. He has left an impressive literary canon which includes, among others, the iconic Les Misérables. He was also a prolific poet and a playwright. His greatness is not contested, but he was far from being a saint. He was unfaithful to both his wife and his mistress Juliette Drouet, and had many affairs, including with Sarah Bernhardt, and his own daughter-in-law. Like Dickens, he too was accused of disdain towards non- Europeans.
The poem was a tribute to his much-loved daughter Léopoldine who drowned in a canoe accident aged nine.
Demain dès l’aube
Demain, dès l’aube, à l’heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m’attends.
J’irai par la forêt, j’irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.
Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.
Je ne regarderai ni l’or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j’arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.
At first light tomorrow
Tomorrow just as first light turns the landscape white
I will set out. You see I don’ want to make you wait
I will go through woods, up and down the hill
I don’t want to be even one minute late.
.I will proceed my vacant eyes on the ground
Blind to everything, deaf to every sound
Back bent, arms crossed, Oh pitiful sight
Distraught, day might as well have been night
The golden sunset I will ignore.
As I will the sailing ships Harfleur bound
And when I reach you, I will place on your tomb
A bunch of sweet holly and some briar in bloom
Guilleaume Apollinaire
Apollinaire was an innovative poet, trying to break from the conventions of his time. He was born in Rome of a Polish mother. His friend Picasso used to joke about his father being the pope, but he grew up and lived in Paris. He was an important figure in the development of Futurism, Cubism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. His poem 1909 is an important illustration of his style. Set during the belle époque, it deals with the poet’s ambivalence about his times, with one foot in pessimism and the other in optimism. On the one hand the symbolic woman has a face like the French tricolor, with blue eyes, white teeth and very red lips. The poet is attracted to her, but is in awe of her too. He survived the Great War, but died shortly after in the Spanish Flu epidemic. His poem Sous Le Pont Mirabeau is considered his masterpiece although apparently Mai is more widely read.
Le mai le joli mai en barque sur le Rhin
Des dames regardaient du haut de la montagne
Vous êtes si jolies mais la barque s’éloigne
Qui donc a fait pleurer les saules riverains
Or des vergers fleuris se figeaient en arrière
Les pétales tombés des cerisiers de mai
Sont les ongles de celle que j’ai tant aimée
Les pétales flétris sont comme ses paupières
Sur le chemin du bord du fleuve lentement
Un ours un singe un chien menés par des tziganes
Suivaient une roulotte traînée par un âne
Tandis que s’éloignait dans les vignes rhénanes
Sur un fifre lointain un air de régiment
Le mai le joli mai a paré les ruines
De lierre de vigne vierge et de rosiers
Le vent du Rhin secoue sur le bord les osiers
Et les roseaux jaseurs et les fleurs nues des vignes
May
(trans. by S.C)
Boating on the Rhine in the marvellous month of May
ladies watching us from the top of the hill
so lovely, but our boat is fast drifting away
Who made the river willows so much tears to spill?
Behind, the flowering orchards fairly freeze
the petals falling off the May cherry trees
are the fingernails of my dearly beloved
while the withered petals her eyelid.
On the way to the riverside some Zingaro
lead a monkey, a dog and a bear in tow
a caravan drawn by a donkey behind
to the melody of a fife military
as they move away from the vines of the Rhine
May, this splendid month has bedecked the desolation
with twigs of fresh vine leaves and carnations
the Rhine wind shakes the border of the wickers
the groaning reeds and the vine’s bare flowers
Verlaine and Rimbaud
The enfants terribles of French poetry
Paul Verlaine was born in Metz in 1844, but grew up in Paris. He gets married, and is reconciled to living a sham uneventful life of a petit bourgeois, until he meets Rimbaud, when the lid blows off. He leaves wife and child and runs away with the younger poet. After shooting Rimbaud, he spends time in prison, and would later move to London. His poetry is lyrical and melancholic, and does not usually reflect the tumultuous conflicts in his mind.
Rimbaud wrote what is probably his best poem, Le dormeur du val at 16, and a bit later the stunning Le Bateau Ivre, and stopped writing at 20. He was dead at 37. He probably deserved the appellation of Le poète maudit more than Baudelaire. He took great delight in flouting the conventions of the age. He was openly homosexual when that could have earned him a long prison sentence. The older Verlaine befriended him, and was besotted with him, leaving his wife, and embarking on a torrid affair with the younger man. This ended when in a drunken frenzy Verlaine shot Rimbaud. He gave up poetry at 20, travelled round the world, lived for a few years in Harar, Ethiopia and was engaged in business deals, many of them shady. He died in Marseille.
Chanson d’automne
Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon coeur
D’une langueur monotone
Et tout suffocant
Et blême quand
Sonne l’heure
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure
Et je m’en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m’emporte
De ça de là
Pareil à la
Feuille morte
In this translation, I opted for rhythm over rhyme
Song of autumn
The violin strains
Of autumn
Rip my heart apart
With monotonous
Languor
Leaving me ashen
When toll the bells
Reminding me
Of days gone by
Leaving me
Choked in tears
And I drift
In the ill wind
That blows me
Now here now there
Like a dead leaf
Le dormeur du val
by Arthur Rimbaud
C’est un trou de verdure où chante une rivière
Accrochant follement aux herbes des haillons
D’argent ; où le soleil de la montagne fière,
Luit : C’est un petit val qui mousse de rayons.
Un soldat jeune, bouche ouverte, tête nue,
Et la nuque baignant dans le frais cresson bleu,
Dort ; il est étendu dans l’herbe, sous la nue,
Pâle dans son lit vert où la lumière pleut.
Les pieds dans les glaïeuls, il dort. Souriant comme
Sourirait un enfant malade, il fait un somme :
Nature, berce-le chaudement : il a froid.
Les parfums ne font pas frissonner sa narine ;
Il dort dans le soleil, la main sur sa poitrine
Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit.
Finally at rest
trans, by San Cassimally
In a green hollow where hums a river
Clinging desperately to rags of silver
Where from the splendid mountain glows
There’s a vale out of which sunlight blows.
A young soldier, bare-headed, mouth agape
His neck half-hid in the fresh blue cress
Under the skies he lies, on the ground, he rests
Pallid on his green couch which light invades
His feet in the gladioli, he slumbers smiling,
Like a sick child would smile, dozing
Mother nature rock him gently, he’s freezing
The fragrance leaves his nostrils unimpressed
He’s sleeping in the sun, his hand on his chest,
With two red holes on his right side, he’s now at rest
