Two Translations of Mallarme's Soupir

[rejectomorph]

Since I don't read any languages other than English and (with some difficulty) Spanish, I read a great deal of poetry in translation. Whenever possible, I like to read multiple translations of a work, to give me a better idea of the poet's intent. One of my favorite poets is the French symbolist Stephane Mallarme. (In addition to not reading French, I have no idea how to make the diacritical marks used in French, with this font-deficient computer, so please excuse their absence from the poet's name. There should be an accent over the first "e" in Stephane, and over the "e" at the end of Mallarme.) Here are two translations of his poem, "Soupir."

SIGH

by Stephane Mallarme


Towards your brow where an autumn dreams
freckled with russet scatterings,
calm sister, and towards the sky,
wandering, of your angelic eye
my soul ascends: thus, white and true,
within some melancholy garden
a fountain sighs towards the Blue!
—Towards October's softened Blue
that pure and pale in the great pools
mirrors its endless lassitude
and, on dead water where leaves
wind-strayed in tawny anguish cleave
cold furrows, lets the yellow sun
in one long lingering ray crawl on.

—translated by Frederick Morgan

A SIGH

by Stephane Mallarme


Calm sister, toward your quiet brow where dreams
Roan autumn, towards the questing heaven of
Your eye, my soul mounts steadily; it seems
A jet of water sighing faithfully
Toward heaven in some worn garden; and, above,
October's blue is tender, pale, and pure,
And looks into the fountain with its sure
And infinite languor; in tawn agony
The leaves go with the wind and mark a dun
Hard furrow near a long cold line of sun.

—translated by Yvor Winters



Again, further apologies for not including the original French text, but it is just loaded with diacritical marks of all sorts, and I fear that leaving them out would make a dog's breakfast of the poem. (Perhaps if someone reading has a copy of the French text, and knows how to make the marks, they could put it in a comment?)

I'd just like to say (now that you've seen both translations) that I myself prefer that by Winters, not merely because it was the one I read first, or because Winters is himself one of my favorite poets, but because it seems to better capture the symbolist spirit, as I understand it. Morgan's translation seems a bit more self-consciously "poetic" to my ear, which I think departs from the sensibility of Mallarme. I would love to read more translations of Mallarme by Winters but, alas, as far as I know, this is the only one he ever did.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

let's see if this comes through:

"Soupir" from Poesies, 1887

Mon âme vers ton front où rêve, ô calme soeur,
Un automne jonché de taches de rousseur,
Et vers le ciel errant de ton oeil angélique
Monte, comme dans un jardin mélancolique,
Fidèle, un blanc jet d'eau soupire vers l'Azur!
- Vers l'Azur attendri d'Octobre pâle et pur
Qui mire aux grands bassins sa langueur infinie
Et laisse, sur l'eau morte où la fauve agonie
Des feuilles erre au vent et creuse un froid sillon,
Se traîner le soleil jaune d'un long rayon.

[rejectomorph]

Excellent. Thanks.