CHARLES BEAUDELAIRE
LE JET D'EAU
three translations
Le Jet d'eau
Tes beaux yeux sont las, pauvre amante!
Reste longtemps, sans les rouvrir,
Dans cette pose nonchalante
Où t'a surprise le plaisir.
Dans la cour le jet d'eau qui jase,
Et ne se tait ni nuit ni jour,
Entretient doucement l'extase
Où ce soir m'a plongé l'amour.
La gerbe épanouie
En mille fleurs,
Où Phoebé réjouie
Met ses couleurs,
Tombe comme une pluie
De larges pleurs.
Ainsi ton âme qu'incendie
L'éclair brûlant des voluptés
S'élance, rapide et hardie,
Vers les vastes cieux enchantés.
Puis elle s'épanche, mourante,
En un flot de triste langueur,
Qui par une invisible pente
Descend jusqu'au fond de mon coeur.
La gerbe épanouie
En mille fleurs,
Où Phoebé réjouie
Met ses couleurs,
Tombe comme une pluie
De larges pleurs.
Ô toi, que la nuit rend si belle,
Qu'il m'est doux, penché vers tes seins,
D'écouter la plainte éternelle
Qui sanglote dans les bassins!
Lune, eau sonore, nuit bénie,
Arbres qui frissonnez autour,
Votre pure mélancolie
Est le miroir de mon amour.
La gerbe épanouie
En mille fleurs,
Où Phoebé réjouie
Met ses couleurs,
Tombe comme une pluie
De larges pleurs.
— Charles Baudelaire
The Fountain
My poor mistress! your lovely eyes
Are tired, leave them closed and keep
For long the nonchalant pose
In which pleasure surprised you.
In the court the bubbling fountain
That's never silent night or day
Sweetly sustains the ecstasy
Into which love plunged me tonight.
The sheaf unfolds into
Countless flowers
In which joyful Phoebe
Puts her colors:
It drops like a shower
Of heavy tears.
Thus your soul which is set ablaze
By the burning flash of pleasure
Springs heavenward, fearless and swift,
Toward the boundless, enchanted skies.
And then it overflows, dying
In a wave of languid sadness
That by an invisible slope
Descends to the depths of my heart.
The sheaf unfolds into
Countless flowers
In which joyful Phoebe
Puts her colors:
It drops like a shower
Of heavy tears.
Oh you whom the night makes so fair,
How sweet, bending over your breast,
To listen to the endless plaint
Of the sobbing of the fountains!
Moon, singing water, blessed night,
Trees that quiver round about us,
Your innocent melancholy
Is the mirror of my love.
The sheaf unfolds into
Countless flowers
In which joyful Phoebe
Puts her colors:
It drops like a shower
Of heavy tears.
William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)
The Fountain
My darling of a sweetheart, close,
For a long time, your great, tired eyes,
Keeping them in that languid pose
Where pleasure took them by surprise.
Out in the court the fountain chatters
And does not cease by day or night.
The swoon of ecstasy it flatters
In which love plunges me tonight.
Its sheaf uprears
A myriad flowers,
While Phoebe sheers
Through pearl-flushed hours,
To rain down tears
In glittering showers.
So does your flashing soul ignite
In lightnings of voluptuous bliss
And rushes reckless up the height
As though the enchanted sky to kiss;
Then it relaxes, grows more fine,
And in sad languor falls apart
Down an invisible incline
Into the deep well of my heart.
Its sheaf uprears
A myriad flowers,
While Phoebe sheers
Through pearl-flushed hours,
To rain down tears
In glittering showers.
O you whom night so beautifies
How sweet unto your breast to bend
And hear the water as it sighs
Into the ponds without an end
Moon, singing water, blessed night
And trees that tremble up above —
Your melancholy charms my sprite
And is the mirror of my love.
Its sheaf uprears
A myriad flowers,
While Phoebe sheers
Through pearl-flushed hours,
To rain down tears
In glittering showers.
— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)
The Fountain
Thine eyes are heavy. Let them close.
Lie without opening them. Lie
Still in the lovely thoughtless pose
Where pleasure found thee. The long cry
Of moonlit waters that caress
The evening, languorous as thou art,
Lives on: So does the tenderness
Love has awakened in my heart.
The fountain leaps and flowers
In many roses,
Whereon the moonlight flares.
Their crystal petals, falling,
Falling for ever,
Are changèd to bright tears.
Even thus thy spirit, briefly ht
With the strange lightnings of desire,
Once more into the infinite
Flings up its pure forgetful fire,
As if the dusty earth to flee —
And blossoms there, and breaks apart,
And falls, and flows invisibly
Into the deep night of my heart.
The fountain leaps and flowers
In many roses,
Whereon the moonlight flares.
Their crystal petals, falling,
Falling for ever,
Are changèd to bright tears.
O thou, so fair and so forlorn,
How sweet, my lips upon thy breast,
To hear within its marble urn
The water sobbing without rest.
O moon, loud water, lovely night,
O leaves where the soft winds upstart,
O wild and melancholy light,
Ye are the image of my heart.
The fountain leaps and flowers
In many roses,
Whereon the moonlight flares.
Their crystal petals, falling,
Falling for ever,
Are changèd to bright tears.
— George Dillon, Flowers of Evil (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936)
PAUL VALERY
FRAGMENTS FROM NARCISSUS
Narcissus Speaks
To placate the shades of Narcissa.
0 brothers, mournful lilies, I am dying of beauty
For having desired myself in your nakedness,
And, Nymph, it is to you, 0 Nymph of the fountains, I come offering vain tears to this utter silence.
A great calm listens to me, where I listen to hope.
The voice of the springs changes, and speaks to me of evening; I hear the silvery grass growing in the holy shade,
And the traitorous moon lifts up her mirror
Even into the secrets ofthe exhausted fountain.
And I! Flinging me down bodily in these reeds, I am dying, 0 sapphire, of my own sad beauty!
I can love nothing now but the bewitching water
Where I forgot laughter and the rose of former times.
How I rue your pure and fatal glitter, Fountain so softly surrounded by me,
Where my eyes drank in, from a mortal azure, My own image crowned with moistened flowers!
Ah, that image is vain, and tears are eternal!
Through the blue of the woods and their fraternal arms
A tender gleam of time ambiguous exists,
Where from an ember of day is fashioned a betrothed
Naked, on the pale space where the water draws me.... Delicious demon, desirable and icy!
Here in the water is my body of moon and dew, Form compliant still opposed to my gaze!
Here are my silvery arms of purest gestures....
My slow hands weary in the adorable gilding
Of luring that captive bound among the leaves,
And I shout the names of unknown gods to the echoes!..
Farewell, lost image on the enclosed, calm pool, Narcissus... the very name is a tender perfume
To the soothed heart. To the shades of the departed, Shed on this empty tomb the funereal rose.
Be my lip the rose shedding a kiss's petals Bringing a gradual peace to a shade beloved, For night speaks in a whisper, far and near,
To the flower-cups filled with shadows and light slumbers.
But the moon trifles among the lengthening myrtles.
I worship you, under those myrtles, oh uncertain Flesh, sadly offering your flower to solitude, Wondering at yourself in the sleeping forest's mirror. In vain I unbind myself from your sweet presence,
The deceitful hour is kind to limbs stretched on the moss.
It fills the deep wind with a solenm bliss.
Farewell, Narcissus....Die! Twilight is here, At the heart's sighing my image undulates,
The flute, against the entombed azure, warbles Longings of the sounding herds as they go their way. But on the mortal chill where a star is lit,
Before the mist forms a gradual tomb,
Accept this kiss breaking the water's fatal calm!
Hope alone can avail to cleave this crystal.
Let the ripple ravish me on the breath that banishes And may my breath inspire some slender flute-song Whose carefree player thinks of me kindly!...
Faint away, vanish, troubled divinity!
And pour out to the moon, humble and lonely flute
Our silvery tears in your diversity.