Chanson d'automne - Poesie de Vendredi

Chers Amis,
Et bonjour, c'est vendredi. Welcome to another poetry Friday au moulin. Last week was Old English and Beowulf. Voila, un peu de francais this time for my francophone, poetry loving friends.

While I find October and early fall invigorating with the slight chill and the vibrant leaves adorning the trees and ornamenting the still green grass, late fall is quite another season. It can be mournful when darkness seems to dominate the landscape, empty and hollow and once gold and scarlet foliage has dulled and dried to a quiet brown blanketing the earth. This is the mournful fall that poet Paul Verlaine puts almost to music in this classic nineteenth century poem entitled "The Song of Autum" or "Autumn's Song". It is also the tale of the fall in a life full of regret. "Oh, thanks, Marjorie, just what I need to hear today," you think. Bear with me, really, it is a lovely simple structure with poignent images and tones. I love the language even if the poet was wistful or regretful for times past. The poem ends with the image of being swept away with the ill wind like a fallen leaf. For me it is a reminder that, yes, the wind, life and time do carry us along, but that same wind separates the chaff from the wheat and every day is a new day, clean and freshly swept by the eternal wind.

Click on the title and you will be taken to an audio recording of the poem. Poetry, like music, was written to be heard not read. I have included two different translations (not by me!!!) of this piece, one literal and one attempting to capture some of the original music. Both come from an article at www.textect.com that show the difficulty in translating from one language to another.
Enjoy!

--Marjorie

Chanson d'automne
Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone.

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
Deçà, delà
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.

Paul VERLAINE, Poèmes saturniens (1866)


A Literal Translation

In autumn
The long sobs
Of the violins
Wound my heart,
A languorous,
Monotone.

Suffocating,
Pale when
The hour strikes
I remember
Past days
And weep

And go away
In the ill wind
Carried off
Hither and ever
Like a
Dead leaf.


Song of Autum (translated by Herbert Lomas)

The long moan
Of the violins
Of autumn
Rends my heart
With a languorous
Monotone.

Suffocating, pale,
As the hour
Grows near
And strikes, I recall
Former days,
With a tear;

And I'm borne off
On the bad wind
Of grief
That tosses me
Here, there, like any
Dead leaf.