L’oeuvre pure implique la disparition élocutoire du poète, qui cède l’initiative aux mots.... (“The pure work implies the disappearance of the poet as speaker, yielding his initiative to words....”)
—Mallarmé, “Crise de vers” (1886-1896)
he great French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) is one of the most fascinating, complex figure in French literature. Influenced by Charles Baudelaire, he went on to influence such diverse figures as Paul Valéry and André Gide. In an 1891 interview, Mallarmé told journalist Jules Huret, “I believe there must only be allusion. The contemplation of objects, the images that soar from the reveries they have induced, constitute the song...To name an object is to suppress three quarters of the enjoyment of the poem, which derives from the pleasure of step-by-step discovery; to suggest, that is the dream. It is the perfect use of...mystery that constitutes the symbol...There must always be enigma in poetry.”
After reading Mallarmé’s extraordinary and extremely experimental late poem, “Un Coup de Dés” (published in 1897), Paul Valéry remarked, “‘He has undertaken,’ I thought, ‘finally to raise a printed page to the power of the midnight sky.’”
The work of a poet like Mallarmé necessarily resists translation, but his productions are so fascinating that many writers, including myself, have made the attempt. Recently, a friend asked me to comment on Richard Wilbur’s translation of an early, relatively straightforward poem of Mallarmé’s, “Brise Marine” (“Sea Breeze”), written in 1865. Here is the original poem:
BRISE MARINE
La chair est triste, hélas! et j’ai lu tous les livres.
Fuir! là-bas fuir! Je sens que des oiseaux sont ivres
D’être parmi l’écume inconnue et les cieux!
Rien, ni les vieux jardins reflétés par les yeux
Ne retiendra ce coeur qui dans la mer se trempe
Ô nuits! ni la clarté déserte de ma lampe
Sur le vide papier que la blancheur défend,
Et ni la jeune femme allaitant son enfant.
Je partirai! Steamer balancant ta mâture,
Lève l’ancre pour une exotique nature!
Un Ennui, désolé par les cruels espoirs,
Croit encore à l’adieu suprême des mouchoirs!
Et, peut-être, les mâts, invitant les orages
Sont-ils de ceux qu’un vent penche sur les naufrages
Perdus, sans mâts, sans mâts, ni fertiles îlots...
Mais, ô mon coeur, entends le chant des matelots!
Here is Richard Wilbur’s translation, originally published in The New Yorker in 1999:
The flesh grows weary. And books, I’ve read them all.
Off, then, to where I glimpse through spray and squall
Strange birds delighting in their unknown skies!
No antique gardens mirrored in my eyes
Can stay my sea-changed spirit, nor the light
Of my abstracted lamp which shines (O Night!)
On the guardian whiteness of the empty sheet,
Nor the young wife who gives the babe her teat.
Come, ship whose masts now gently rock and sway,
Raise anchor for a stranger world! Away!
How strange that Boredom, all its hopes run dry,
Still dreams of handkerchiefs that wave good-bye!
Those gale-inviting masts might creak and bend
In seas where many a craft has met its end,
Dismasted, lost, with no green island near it...
But hear the sailors singing, O my spirit!
This is a blank verse version of the poem by Peter and Mary Ann Caws. It was published in Stéphane Mallarmé: Selected Poetry and Prose (1982), edited by Mary Ann Caws.
How sad the flesh! and there’s no more to read.
Escape, far off! I feel that somewhere birds
Are drunk to be amid strange spray and skies!
Nothing, not those old gardens eyes reflect
Can now restrain this heart steeped in the sea
Oh nights! Nor the lone brightness of my lamp
On the blank paper which its whiteness shields
Nor the young wife, her baby at her breast.
I shall depart! Steamer with swaying masts,
Raise anchor for exotic wilderness!
Tedium, desolated by cruel hope,
Has faith still in great fluttering farewells!
And, it may be, the masts, inviting storms
Are of the sort that wind inclines to wrecks
Lost, with no mast, no mast, or verdant isle...
But listen, oh my heart, the sailors sing!
Richard Wilbur is a fine poet and does a good job with the form; his poem is genuinely graceful. I think it’s better than the Caws’ version—though Wilbur has to resort to “teats” rather than “breasts” (for rhyme) and though his concluding line, “But hear the sailors singing, O my spirit!,” contains an ambiguity which is not in the original: in his version it is possible that the sailors are singing, “O my spirit!” In addition, he changes “heart” (“coeur”) to “spirit”—again for the rhyme.
The translation of the opening line in both the Wilbur and Caws versions seems to me a far cry from the compelling—even astonishing—statement with which Mallarmé opens his poem: “La chair est triste, hélas! et j’ai lu tous les livres.” Better a straight literal translation, “The flesh is sad, alas! and I’ve read all the books.” In the version of the poem I produced, I italicized “all”—as I italicized “down there,” a resonant phrase in French literature. Oddly, the word “strange” keeps coming back in Wilbur’s version though it does not in Mallarmé: “Strange birds,” “a stranger world,” and “How strange that Boredom.” Mallarmé states that he thinks all birds—birds in general, not just “strange birds”—are drunk, intoxicated (“ivres”); they want to be in unknown foam and skies. The word “drunk” is somewhat different from Wilbur’s “delighting in”; the original suggests that Mallarmé is deliberately recalling some of Baudelaire’s reflections on the charms of drunkenness, as in “Enivrez-Vous” (“Get Drunk”): “Il faut être toujours ivre,” “One must always be drunk.” Wilbur’s “a stranger world” is also somewhat different from the original: “une exotique nature” (“exotic wilderness” in Caws). And “How strange that Boredom” is in Mallarmé simply “Un Ennui”—Boredom, “Tedium” in Caws. There’s no equivalent in Mallarmé to “How strange.” (“Ennui” is of course an important word in Baudelaire’s work.)
I think that the main problem with both versions of Mallarmé’s poem is that they fail to catch the genuine poignancy of the penultimate line, “Perdus, sans mâts, sans mâts, ni fertiles îlots....” (Note that the line is only eleven syllables: it breaks off. The “...” is the twelfth syllable.) Wilbur’s “Dismasted, lost” is certainly no match for Mallarmé’s plaintive “Perdus, sans mâts, sans mâts....” (Mallarmé deliberately repeats the phrase “sans mâts”; and nothing in his poem is as harsh, even ugly as Wilbur’s word “dismasted.”) The Caws version is better than Wilbur’s because it’s more literal: “Lost, with no mast, no mast, or verdant isle...” But the English here is rather clumsy: in the French, Mallarmé’s line is a genuine cri de coeur: everything is perdu, lost. In effect, the poem ends at that moment: the poet has absolutely nothing left.
Then, out of nowhere, there occurs a new movement: “Mais, ô mon coeur, entends le chant des matelots!”
As far as I know, none of Mallarmé’s many commentators has noticed the extraordinary pun in the concluding line. In the penultimate line, everything is lost (“perdus”): there are no masts (“mâts”) and no isles (“îlots”). Yet in a sense the concluding word gives the poet back the very things he has lost: the sound of “matelot” contains “mâts” + “îlots.” The “lost” masts and isles are not restored to the poet as entities, only as names, echoing words. But that is all they were to begin with. In a way, the proper translation of the concluding line is, “But, oh my heart, listen to the song of ‘mâts’ + ‘îlots.’” One can sense in this early poem—written when the author was in his twenties—an extraordinary shift from a focus on “things” to a focus on “words.” If, from one point of view, the poet’s fear of action propels him towards language—forces him to take refuge in the qualities of words—from another point of view the poem enunciates a new mode of beauty. Mallarmé’s “mâts-îlots” / “matelot,” is obvious once you point it out, but, amazingly, as far as I know, it has never been pointed out. Why? Perhaps because to notice it, one must move away, as Mallarmé does, from the referential quality of “matelot” and must “cède l’initiative aux mots,” “yield the initiative to words.”
Nothing in the Wilbur or Caws translations suggests that the authors have noticed the pun; they make no attempt to reproduce it. In addition, Wilbur’s version is oddly jaunty—far too much so: it’s as if Mallarmé were saying, “Oh well, it may be that ‘those gale-inviting masts might creak and bend,’ but, really, that happens to lots of ships (‘where many a craft has met its end’), and, as I was saying at the beginning, ‘But hear the sailors singing, O my spirit.’” But the last line isn’t a return to the beginning of the poem: it’s a genuinely new movement; it exists to find a way of dealing with that plaintive word, “perdus.” It is not religion which saves the “lost” Mallarmé—not a sudden revelation of Jesus—but a sudden revelation of the power of words. This is my translation of the complete poem. I couldn’t keep the form as Wilbur did—though I did try for end rhymes—and I had to change “masts” to “sails” for my reproduction of the pun. (I italicize “sailors” at the end to draw the reader’s attention to the word.) The loss of Mallarmé’s fine word, “Steamer” is unfortunate.
The flesh is sad, alas! and I’ve read all the books.
To run away—to run away down there. I feel that birds are drunk
They want to be in unknown foam and skies!
Nothing—not even the gardens reflected in your eyes—
Will hold this heart that drenches in the sea—
Ah, nights!—not even the desolate brilliance of the lamp by which I see
The blank paper whose white-
Ness defends it, nor the young wife
With her child suckling: I'm leaving—
Weigh anchor!—going to a place where there is no grieving.
An immense Boredom—thrust from Hopes to Griefs–
Believes still in the supreme goodbye of waving handkerchiefs!
And perhaps the masts will summon storms
That blast the sails and wreck the oars:
Lost, without sails, without sails, or beating oars...
But oh, my heart, listen to the song of sailors.