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THE
ART OF POETRY
From
the French of Paul Verlaine
To
Charles Morice
Music
before everything; and for that
Prefer
what is odd, the more frail,
More
diffuse in the air, not a note
That
is likely to pull or impale.
You
must also take care not to choose
Words
that may not be read differently twice:
Nothing
more precious than the distant song
Where
Precision meets with the Imprecise.
It
is fine eyes under a veil;
It
is the full day at quivering noon;
It
is the blue tangle of bright stars
In
the autumn, and the warm moon.1
For
we want Nuance again, not
Colour,
only Nuance! O scorn
The
rest, only Nuance can shade
Dream
into dream, flute into horn.
Fly
from these murderous Conceits,
The
Wit that’s cruel and the Laugh that’s crude:
They
make the very eyes of Heaven weep;
Fly
them, and this gravy in scullery food.
Take
Rhetoric and wring its neck;
You
will do well, when you treat it so,
To
tame Rhyme too; if you don’t take care,
There
is no saying how far it will go.
O
who will tell of the faults of Rhyme?
What
wild child, mad black man shapes
This
tuppenny-ha’penny trinket for us
Sounding
hollow and false as his file scrapes!
Music
now and forever! Let your
line
Be
something that flits in the blue above
Which
one feels to escape from the soul
To
another sky and another love.
Translated
by Alan Marshfield
1
I’ve added: ‘and the warm moon’.
Such additions, and the different rhyme-scheme, make this as an
imitation rather than a translation.
Long before Lowell’s Imitations had been written I must
have favoured licences like this (and so had most other translators).
The originality of Lowell’s approach was that he took some
poems off into completely new realms, using originals as springboards.
Generally, he translated at one moment with acute accuracy and
then would shoot off into something twisted and perversely (or boldly,
take your pick) different, even personal. (back)
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