Guy Tiphane
Zoe Ullman
EN 214 (Lyric)
December 2, 2003
Paul Éluard’s Poetry: An Exercise in Translation
I became interested in the issue of translating poetry after learning of
the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize of the Evansville Review (
About the problem of translating French surrealist poets, G.D. Martin wrote: “even the English speaker who read French is, I suspect, not seeing the original French poem, but an anglicized shadow of it cast by his own Anglo-Saxon mind” (Martin, 3). Therefore in the act of translation we bring an additional shadow cast by the translator’s mind as well. To illustrate this problem, let’s look at Martin’s own translation of the first two lines of Anne Hébert’s “Il y a certainement quelqu’un”:
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Il y a
certainement quelqu’un Qui m’a
tuée |
Someone certainly has Killed me |
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In the French original language, the speaker says that there is, certainly, someone who killed her. The translation says that someone certainly killed the speaker. In addition to the fact that the gender of the speaker could readily be made available to the French reader, the emphasis of the certainty seems to have shifted from “someone” to the fact that she has been killed. Someone uttering the sentence in French to a French audience would scan the room as if in search for the guilty. The English version would seem to refer to someone not in the room. An almost imperceptible difference, but one that shows the potential difficulty of translating while maintaining the true sense of a poem.
With that in
mind, I undertook to translate two poems by Paul Éluard a French surrealist poet who wrote
between and during the two world wars in which he was involved either as a
soldier or as a member of the French resistance. Éluard’s language is very crisp, with an economy of words that
leave several ambiguities. The poems
seemed to call for a duplication of this economy to allow a similar effect,
what Martin called “the curious and characteristically Eluardian effect at once
of great ambiguity and suggestiveness, and of great apparent clarity and
purity” (4).
I first chose
Paul Éluard’s “Liberté” (“
I stumbled on several grammatical details, but more specifically on word order. While the placement of adjectives in French occurs generally after the nouns they qualify, it is generally the reverse in English with loose exceptions. For example I used the two word orders on lines 5 and 6 (“pages read” and “blank pages”), sacrificing the effect of the repetition (“On all the pages”) that could have resulted if both adjectives could have been used at the end. The word order used in possessive clauses can also vary as in “On the warriors’ arms” (line 10) instead of “On the arms of the warrior.” While in lines 10 and 11 I used the possessive, I reverted to the form “of the” in most other instances for two reasons: one being that they do not designate people, and the other that “of the” seems to work well with the repetition of “on the” in other lines (e.g. lines 3, 14, 30).
The more problematic lines contained unexpected combinations of words. Line 51, “Sur mon lit coquille vide,” may be saying that an empty shell is on my bed or that the bed is like an empty shell. The absence of punctuation throughout the poem accentuates that issue of how combinations of words form a clause one way or another, most likely what Eluard wanted. In line 7, “Stone blood paper or ash” is a combination of words that was better left as is, translated word by word without the help of an interpretation.
Finally, there may be images that pertain to the language of the period. White bread (line 18) may simply represent a difficult type of bread to find during the war or could be related to an expression meaning “good beginnings.” Lamps may switch on and off in modern, practical times, but are most likely to come alight and die out in earlier days and in the underground, and in poems.
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1 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 |
Liberté Sur mes
cahiers d’écolier Sur mon
pupitre et les arbres Sur le
sable sur la neige J’écris
ton nom Sur
toutes les pages lues Sur
toutes les pages blanches Pierre
sang papier ou cendre J’écris
ton nom Sur les
images dorées Sur les
armes des guerriers Sur la
couronne des rois J’écris
ton nom Sur la
jungle et le désert Sur les
nids sur les genêts Sur
l’écho de mon enfance J’écris
ton nom Sur les
merveilles des nuits Sur le
pain blanc des journées Sur les
saisons fiancées J’écris
ton nom Sur tous
mes chiffons d’azur Sur
l’étang soleil moisi Sur le
lac lune vivante J’écris
ton nom Sur les
champs sur l’horizon Sur les
ailes des oiseaux Et sur le
moulin des ombres J’écris
ton nom Sur
chaque bouffée d’aurore Sur la
mer sur les bateaux Sur la
montagne démente J’écris
ton nom Sur la
mousse des nuages Sur les
sueurs de l’orage Sur la
pluie épaisse et fade J’écris
ton nom Sur les formes
scintillantes Sur les
cloches des couleurs Sur la
vérité physique J’écris
ton nom Sur les
sentiers éveillés Sur les
routes déployées Sur les
places qui débordent J’écris
ton nom Sur la
lampe qui s’allume Sur la
lampe qui s’éteint Sur mes
maisons réunies J’écris
ton nom Sur le
fruit coupé en deux Du miroir
et de ma chambre Sur mon
lit coquille vide J’écris
ton nom Sur mon
chien gourmand et tendre Sur ses
oreilles dressées Sur sa
patte maladroite J’écris
ton nom Sur le
tremplin de ma porte Sur les
objets familiers Sur le
flot du feu béni J’écris
ton nom Sur toute
chair accordée Sur le
front de mes amis Sur
chaque main qui se tend J’écris
ton nom Sur la
vitre des surprises Sur les
lèvres attentives Bien
au-dessus du silence J’écris
ton nom Sur mes
refuges détruits Sur mes
phares écroulés Sur le
murs de mon ennui J’écris
ton nom Sur
l’absence sans désir Sur la
solitude nue Sur les
marches de la mort J’écris
ton nom Sur la
santé revenue Sur le
risque disparu Sur
l’espoir sans souvenir J’écris
ton nom Et par le
pouvoir d’un mot Je
recommence ma vie Je suis
né pour te connaître Pour te
nommer Liberté. |
On my school notebooks On my school desk and the trees On the sand on the snow I write your name On all the pages read On all the blank pages Stone blood paper or ash I write your name On the golden images On the warriors’ arms On the kings’ crown I write your name On the jungle and the desert On the nests on the brooms[1] On the echo of my childhood I write your name On the wonders of the nights On the white bread of the days On the seasons engaged[2] I write your name On all my rags[3] of azure On the pond mildewed sun On the lake live moon I write your name On the fields on the horizon On the wings of the birds And on the mill of the shadows I write your name On every puff of dawn On the sea on the boats On the mad mountain I write your name On the foam of the clouds On the sweat of the storm On the thick and dull rain I write your name On the scintillating figure On the bells[4] of the colors On the physical truth I write your name On the paths awake On the roads unfurled On the squares overflowing I write your name On the lamp that comes alight[5] On the lamp that dies out[6] On my houses combined I write your name On the fruit cut in halves Of the mirror and of my room On my empty shell bed[7] I write your name On my gourmand and tender dog On his pricked up ears On his clumsy paw I write your name On the springboard of my door On the familiar objects On the flood of the blessed fire I write your name On any[8] granted flesh On my friends’ brow On every hand held out I write your name On the window of the surprises On the attentive lips Well above the silence I write your name On my destroyed shelters On my crumbled beacons On the walls of my boredom I write your name On the absence without desire On the bare solitude On the steps of death I write your name On the health returned On the risk disappeared On hope without remembrance I write your name And by the power of a word I start my life again I was born to know you To name you |
This poem is made of longer lines than Liberté with more definite sentences, giving the translator a different challenge with preserving the poet’s voice. In what would seem to be Éluard’s style there is no punctuation but each line calls for its own imagery, as if the words were closer together. For example, in the first line “the depth the immensity” produces a stronger effect than the same words separated by a comma or a conjunction, an effect that is continued with a similar repetition in the next line (“without contact without echo”). Notice the deep feeling of nothingness left by line 13 (“Nothing ahead nothing behind nothing entirely”).
Once again, the translation required as many revisions as one would put into an original poem. I found myself letting it rest for a day, as I do for creative writing. However, a translator must keep with the poet’s intention by searching for alternatives that would work in the new language and try to reproduce the effect of the original words. I tried to imagine the poet reading the translation himself, which may have given it a French twist. But as the revisions and the search for alternatives went, I felt more confident in the choice of every single word and sentence, as if I had appropriated the poem.
There were, of
course, a few problematic lines. When I
saw the word “vendange” in line 35 I knew there would not be an appropriate
English word for the annual harvesting of grapes that do not grow in
All things
considered, I found that poetic translation is more difficult than writing
original poetry because of the need to absorb the original poem and poet, as an
actor trying to imitate an actual person.
It is not up to the translator to be original, but at the same time he
has to be poetic in the style of the poet.
I often found myself doubting my own version of the words, oscillating
between two choices at every revision.
But at the end, I was so satisfied by “Death Love Life” that I sent it
to
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1 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 |
La Mort L’Amour La Vie J’ai cru
pouvoir briser la profondeur l’immensité Par mon
chagrin tout nu sans contact sans écho Je me
suis étendu dans ma prison aux portes vierges Comme un
mort raisonnable qui a su mourir Un mort
non couronné sinon de son néant Je me
suis étendu sur les vagues absurdes Du poison
absorbé par amour de la cendre La
solitude m’a semblé plus vive que le sang Je
voulais désunir la vie Je
voulais partager la mort avec la mort Rendre
mon cœur au vide et le vide à la vie Tout
effacer qu’il n’y ait rien ni vitre ni buée Ni rien
devant ni rien derrière rien entier J’avais
éliminé le glaçon des mains jointes J’avais
éliminé l’hivernale ossature Du vœu de
vivre qui s’annule Tu es
venue le feu s’est alors ranimé L’ombre a
cédé le froid d’en bas s’est étoilé Et la
terre s’est recouverte De ta
chair claire et je me suis senti léger Tu es
venue la solitude était vaincue J’avais
un guide sur la terre je savais Me
diriger je me savais démesuré J’avançais
je gagnais de l’espace et du temps J’allais
vers toi j’allais sans fin vers la lumière La vie
avait un corps l’espoir tendait sa voile Le
sommeil ruisselait de rêves et la nuit Promettait
à l’aurore des regards confiants Les
rayons de tes bras entr’ouvraient le brouillard Ta bouche
était mouillée des premières rosées Le repos
ébloui remplaçait la fatigue Et
j’adorais l’amour comme à mes premiers jours Les
champs sont labourés les usines rayonnent Et le blé
fait son nid dans une houle énorme La
moisson la vendange ont des témoins sans nombre Rien
n’est simple ni singulier La mer
est dans les yeux du ciel ou de la nuit La forêt
donne aux arbres la sécurité Et les
murs des maisons ont une peau commune Et les
routes toujours se croisent Les
hommes sont faits pour s’entendre Pour se
comprendre pour s’aimer Ont des
enfants qui deviendront pères des hommes Ont des
enfants sans feu ni lieu Qui
réinventeront les hommes Et la
nature et leur patrie Celle de
tous les hommes Celle de
tous les temps. |
Death Love Life I believed I could break the depth the immensity By my grief naked without contact without echo I lay in my prison with virgin doors Like a sensible dead man who was able to die A dead man uncrowned but of his nothingness I lay on the absurd waves Of the poison absorbed for the love of ashes Solitude seemed more alive than blood I wanted to break up life I wanted to share death with death Surrender my heart to the void and the void to life Erase everything to leave nothing neither window nor steam Nothing ahead nothing behind nothing entirely I had eliminated the icicle from the joined hands I had eliminated the wintery bone structure Of the vow to live that cancels itself You came the fire then rekindled itself The shadow yielded the cold below frosted And the earth covered itself With your fair flesh and I felt light You came solitude was defeated I had a guide on earth I knew To direct myself I knew I was immoderate I moved forward I gained space and time I went towards you I went without end towards the light Life had a body hope spread out its sail Sleep streamed with dreams and the night Promised the dawn trusting eyes The rays of your arms parted the fog Your mouth was wet with the early dew The dazzled rest replaced the fatigue And I adored love as in my first days The fields are ploughed the factories radiate And the wheat nests in an enormous swell The harvest the grape harvest have innumerable witnesses Nothing is simple nor singular The sea is in the eyes of the sky or of the night The forest gives the trees their safety And the walls of the houses have a common skin And the roads always cross each other People are made to get along To understand each other to love each other Have children who will become parents of mankind Have children with neither hearth nor home Who will reinvent mankind And nature and their homeland That of all mankind That of all times. |
Martin, G.D., ed., trans.,
Anthology of Contemporary French Poetry,
Eluard, P., Poèmes d’Amour et de Liberté, J. Gaucheron, ed.,
Evansville Review, The
Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, http://english.evansville.edu/Barnstone.htm