an anthology of belgian symbolist poets.pdf

8/10/2019 An Anthology of Belgian Symbolist Poets.pdf

1/268

An Anthology of

Belgian Symbolist Poets

Donald Flanell Friedman

Editor

PETER LANG


2/268


3/268

Belgian Francophone Library

Donald Flanell FriedmanGeneral Editor

Vol. 15

PETER LANGNew York

Washington, D.C./BaltimoreBernFrankfurt am Main

BerlinBrusselsViennaOxford


4/268

An Anthologyof Belgian Symbolist Poets

E D I T E D A N D T R A N S L A T E D B Y

Donald Flanell Friedman

PETER LANGNew YorkWashington, D.C./BaltimoreBern

Frankfurt am MainBerlinBrusselsViennaOxford


5/268


6/268

For my mother and father


7/268

This page intentionally left blank


8/268


9/268


10/268


11/268

x an anthology of belgian symbolist poets

At evening, they appear . . . 24Aux vitres de notre me . . . 25

Water, for the sufferer . . . 26

LEau, pour qui souffre . . . 27O snow, the sweet sound . . . 26O neige, toi la douce endormeuse . . . 27

I I . E M I L E V E R H A E R E N

Commentary 32

The Corpse 34La Morte 35

The Revolt 36La Rvolte 37

The Blade 38Le Glaive 39

The Ill 40Les Malades 41

The Rain 44La Pluie 45

Infinitely 48Infiniment 49

Fatal Flower 48Fleur Fatale 49

To Die 50

Mourir 51London 52Londres 53

Madmans Song 52Chanson de Fou 53

Tenebrae 56Tnbres 57

Vesperal 56Un Soir 57

The Rock 58Le Roc 59

The Abandoned Port 62Le Port Dchu 63


12/268

Contents xi

I I I . M A U R I C E M A E T E R L I N C K

Commentary 68

Hot House 70Serre Chaude 71

Nocturnal Orison 70Oraison Nocturne 71

Foliage of the Heart 72Feuillage du Coeur 73

Soul 74Ame 75

Prayer 76Oraison 77

Reflections 78Reflets 79

Diving Bell 80Cloche Plongeur 81

Round of Tedium 82

Ronde dEnnui 83Touches 84Attouchements 85

Bell-Glasses 88Cloches De Verre 89

Weary Hunts 90Chasses Lasses 91

Gazes 90

Regards 91Amen 94Amen 95

Hospital 94Hpital 95

Hothouse of Boredom 98Serre dEnnui 99

Afternoon 98Aprs-midi 99

Soul of Night 100Ame de Nuit 101

And if he were ever to return 100Et sil revenait un jour 101


13/268


14/268


15/268


16/268

Contents xv

V. M A X E L S K A M P

Commentary 194

In Memorium 196

In Memoriam 197Song of the Rue Saint-Paul no. 7 200La Chanson de la Rue Saint-Paul no. 7 201

Blue Night 202Nuit Bleue 203

Silks 206Soieries 207

The Islands 208Les Iles 209

Salome 210Salome 211

V I . C H A R L E S VA N L E R B E R G H E

Commentary 216

Gaze into our depths . . . 218Regarde au fond de nous . . . 219

Place your pale diadem . . . 218Mets sur mon front . . . 219

My resonant angels came . . . 220Dentre les roses de laurore . . . 221

Do you still remember . . . 222

Le sais-tu encore, O ma Licorne? 223But one night Venus came . . . 222Or, Venus, une nuit . . . 223

Close now, magic ring . . . 226Ferme-toi, cercle enchant. . . 227

The wave is shivering . . . 230Londe tremble . . . 231

The radiant fruit of gold shimmers . . . 230Il luit dans lombre, le beau fruit . . . 231


17/268

xvi an anthology of belgian symbolist poets

Be absolved by my decree . . . 232Sois absous par ma bouche . . . 233

Dove! Dove! Enchanted Dove . . . 234

Colombe! Colombe! Colombe enchante . . . 235But how to understand and how to name you . . . 234Mais comment vous comprendre . . . 235

I crossed the ardent forest . . . 236Jai travers lardent buisson . . . 237

O God, who could be there . . . 240O Dieu qui donc est l. . . 241

Through the happiness of twilight . . . 240

Ce soir, travers le bonheur . . . 241Along the pale waters . . . 242Au long des eaux ples . . . 243

I say, teach me who you are, Azrael . . . 244Apprends-moi, dis-je, qui tu es . . . 245

O death, dust of stars . . . 244O mort, poussire dtoiles . . . 245


18/268


19/268


20/268


21/268


22/268


23/268

4 an anthology of belgian symbolist poets

largely absent from Belgian poetry, although the presence of Narcissus is implied,but unnamed in Rodenbachs city of reflection. Instead, Rodenbachs world ishaunted by Ophelia, suggestive of drowning entrance into an amniotic state ofundifferentiated dream. Ophelia is also present in Verhaerens work, but as a figureof madness, the corpse of reason, which trails across the Thames toward the en-gulfing abyss. Madmen are recurrent in VerhaerensLes Campagnes Hallucines, an-alogues of the poet, engaged in subjective deformation of the world which theyperceive. Convalescents and invalids are present in the poetry of Rodenbach, Ve-rhaeren and Maeterlinck. In Rodenbachs verse, the invalid is a being of silenceand introspection, cloistered from the tumult of the world. In Verhaerens poetry,there are the skeptical ill, tormented by disbelief. Maeterlinck presents the fever-ish invalid, weak, helpless, and lost in hallucination. The nun, engaged in lace-

making or the singing of canticles, is a prevalent figure in Rodenbachs poetry,suggesting the pure and sacrosanct nature of artistic creation. Conversely, the nunin Maeterlincks world is associated with hospitals, sickbeds, and premonitions ofdeath. In general, Catholicism as a source of decor and imagery is more markedlypresent in Belgian than French Symbolism. Albert Girauds Pierrot becomes apriest and offers his heart as the eucharist. Iwan Gilkin adapts the litany and rosaryforms to convey decadent erotic experiences. Litanies and orisons, hypnotic intheir repetitions, are also forms favored by Maeterlinck in the Serres Chaudes. Max

Elskamps In Memoriam, from Sous les Tentes de lExode, is similarly a litany ofdejection. Decaying, dank churches and all they contain become sources of im-agery in the verse of Rodenbach and Verhaeren, who use fallen religious edifices asmetaphors for spiritual malaise and the general ruination of a world in entropy.Except in the Chanson dEve, the pagan, liberated climate of Mallarms artist-faunseems excluded from the imaginary universe of Belgian Symbolism, where eventhe gleaming, joyous isles of Lerberghes Eden alternate with crepuscular spaces ofdeath and disincarnation.

From the distance of a century, a great part of the fascination of Symbolist lit-erature is its morbidity and thanatopsis, its emphasis of the nebulous rather thanthe fulsome and solidly permanent, silence rather than speech, and states of immo-bility and suspense rather than motion. Within the general matrix of this poetry ofdetachment from the mundane, the Belgian Symbolists have created their ownworlds suffused with mystery. With their hallucinated fusions of the exterior andthe interior, literary fulcrums between the seen and unseen, the Belgians of theturn of the century evoked lasting zones and magnets of the poetic imagination,realms of Hypnos, the arbiter of dream.

Notes

1. Victor Remouchamps. Le Monde Intrieur in Le Reveil. (Janvier, 1894), p.25.2. Emile Verhaeren. Le Symbolisme in LArt Moderne. (Avril, 1887), p.p. 115118.3. Stphane Mallarm. Rsponses des Enqutes. Oeuvres Compltes. (Paris: Galli-

mard, 1945), p. 869.


24/268

1 Georges Rodenbach

Selections from:

The Reign of Silence

Le Rgne du Silence (1891)The Enclosed LivesLes Vies Encloses (1896)

The Mirror of the Native SkyLe Miroir du ciel natal(1898)


25/268

Georges Rodenbach (18551898)

Commentary

A pivotal figure in Belgian letters, Georges Rodenbach was among thefirst to adapt French Symbolist poetics of inwardness and indeterminacyto a theme firmly rooted in experience of his native Flanders. Born in

Tournai and raised in Ghent, Rodenbach explored in his writing villes mortes,dead cities, medieval Flemish canal cities in lingering decline. Ghent and espe-cially Bruges were Rodenbachs sacred places, the mythicized cities of his soul andimagination. Rodenbach filtered the actual geographical cities through his subjec-tive mood, transforming them into a literary world of solitude. Rodenbachspoetry is claustral and hushed; the Flemish city which is his obsessive theme is aprivate, interior realm, a wavering Other World of symbolic lifelessness.

Rodenbachs dead city is nebulous, a place where all is a shade of grey, cloaked

in the color of fog. The city is drained of life-force by means of imagery of es-tompe, the blurring and fading of the visible, and attente, suspended anima-tion. Severed from the commercial activity of the medieval past and without a fu-ture, the literary Bruges is a lingering ghost, a city of memory and dream. Thenuanced moods concretized by Rodenbachs canal city are of two types, expressiveof conflicting attitudes toward solitude. In its inertia, the city may suggest a land-scape of transfixed pain, in which the fearful loneliness of the citys observer is mir-rored in the tomb-like abandonment of the surroundings. Conversely, the somno-lent city may suggest a paradisal condition of Schopenhaurian will-lessness, reposeand release from striving, a floating disassociation from the concerns of living.

By turns evocative of the void or of meditative stillness, Rodenbachs Bruges isa shifting constellation of symbolic constructions: the monastic city of silence; thecity of distortion, in which inanimate objects are endowed with uncanny sen-tience; the city of decay and spiritual malaise. Encompassingly, Bruges is the site ofOrphic descent into the hidden recesses of interiority, signaled by the omnipres-ence of watery depths, the seductively beckoning world of the canal. Still water,retaining reflected images of the past, is Rodenbachs paradigm for the uncon-

scious and memory. The motionless water of Bruges is also lethal, attenuating thedefinitude of the world it reflects and rendering it posthumous. For Rodenbach,the mirage of the canal city was the quintessential space of poetry, zone of the sug-gestive which lures us to realization before dissolving into the mystery which is itsessential nature.

Although he died at the age of forty-three, Georges Rodenbach has a promi-nent place in the history of international Symbolism. His collections of poetry,Le


26/268

Georges Rodenbach 7

Rgne du Silence (1891),Les Vies encloses (1896),Le Miroir du ciel natal(1898), as wellas his widely read novel, Bruges-la-Morte (1892), established the dead city as aprominent and recurrent literary motif. Rodenbachs Bruges also inspired manyvisual artists, foremost among them the Belgian, Fernand Khnopff (18581921).Khnopff s imaginative reconstructions of Bruges emphasize the reflected space ofthe canal, moods of ineffable quietude, but also the fearful paralysis of suspendedanimation. Depicted with pastel and pencil in faded, twilit hues, Khnopff sBruges, like Rodenbachs, is evanescent and diaphanous, a space of tenuous sug-gestion and hovering mirage.

The Poetry of Georges Rodenbach:

Oeuvres, 2 vols. (Genve: Slatkine Reprints, 1978).Oeuvres, 2 vols. (Paris: Mercure de France, 1923).See also the following reedition of Rodenbachs experiment in sustained symbol-

ist prose: Christian Berg, ed.Bruges-la-Morte (Bruxelles: Labor, 1986).


27/268


28/268

Georges Rodenbach 9

Le brouillard indolet de lautomne . . .from Le Miroir du Ciel Natal

Le brouillard indolent de lautomne est pars . . .Il flotte entre les tours comme lencens qui rveEt sattarde aprs la grandmesse dans les nefs;Et il dort comme du linge sur les remparts.

Il se dplie et se replie. Et cest une aileAux mouvements imperceptibles et sans fin;Tout sestompe; tout prend un air un peu divin;Et, sous ces frlements ples, tout se nivelle.

Tout est gris, tout revt la couleur de la brume:Le ciel, les vieux pignons, les eaux, les peupliers,Que la brume aisment a rconcilisComme tout ce qui est dj presque posthume.

Brouillard vainqueur qui, sur le fond ple de lair,A mme dlay les tours accoutumesDont llancement gris sefface et na plus lairQuun songe de gomtrie et de fumes.

Trs dfuntes sont les maisons . . .from Le Rgne du Silence

Trs dfuntes sont les maisons patriciennesEt trs dornavant closes dans du silenceParmi des quartiers froids, en des villes anciennes,O les pignons, pris dune inerte somnolence,Ne voient plus rien de grand, dans le soir diaphane,Qui descende sur eux du soleil qui se fane;Et, pour fleurir le deuil de ces vieilles demeuresQui sont les tombeaux noirs des choses disparues,

Seul le carillon lent sme tous les quarts dheuresSes lourdes fleurs de fer dans le vide des rues!


29/268


30/268


31/268


32/268


33/268


My city, beloved sister . . .from The Reign of Silence

My city, beloved sister, whom I resemble,City of decline, the prey of doleful bells,We both no longer know the venturesome vessels,Swelling, like breasts, their sails in the sun,Like breasts, swelling with passion for the sea.We are both the grieving city, which sleeps fitfullyAnd dreams of the ships,Once anchored in its bitter harbor,Where in days of old,

The proud ships mirrored their shining sides of gold;Gone now, the sounds and reflections . . . The reeds,With their sword-blades, seem to hold the water prisoner,Those vacant waters, those widowed waters, where only the windStill circulates, whisperingly, to wrap them in a shroud . . .Both of us, we are the sadness of a harbor:You, my sorrowful sister, city, who has nothingBut silence and regret for those former masts;

And I, for whom life is nothing but a cold canal.

The chamber, sad and weary . . .from The Enclosed Lives

The chamber, sad and weary, has at last grown resigned,

And abandons itself to the evening, which slyly steals in:The chamber seems larger and also seems more nude;The shadows have woven the threads of their webIn the corners of the ceiling, the first to grow dark.It fades all the fabrics, deepening their color;In the mirror, turned pale, the reflections come undone,Like an Ophelia in tears as she sinks;And the pleats of the draperies resemble old pathways,

The deepest to be found, along old roads and lands.

The evening grows old, frightened of the lights,And crowds around the candles and dim lamps, most hated,Which already plan to make the Shadow bleed.Everything withers in the growing darkness;A bouquet was smiling there, but now drowns,


34/268

Georges Rodenbach 15

O ville, toi ma soeur . . .from Le Rgne du Silence

O ville, toi ma soeur qui je suis pareil,Ville dchue, en proie aux cloches, tous les deuxNous ne connaissons plus les vaisseaux hasardeuxTendant comme des seins leurs voiles au soleil,Comme des seins gonfls par lamour de la mer.Nous sommes tous les deux la ville en deuil qui dortEt na plus de vaisseaux parmi son port amer,Les vaisseaux qui jadis y miraient leurs flancs dor;Plus de bruits, de reflets . . . Les glaives des roseaux

Ont un air de tenir prisonnires les eaux,Les eaux vides, les eaux veuves, o le vent seulCircule comme pour les tendre en linceul . . .Nous sommes tous les deux la tristesse dun port:Toi, ville! toi ma soeur douloureuse qui nasQue du silence et le regret des anciens mts;Moi, dont la vie aussi nest quun grand canal mort!

La chambre triste et lasse . . .from Les Vies Encloses

La chambre triste et lasse est enfin rsigne

Et sabandonne au soir qui, sournois, sinsinue:La chambre a lair plus grande, a lair aussi plus nue;Lombre a tiss ses fils de toile daraigneDans les angles, dabord plus obscurs, du plafond.Elle fane les toffes, elle les fonce;

Dans le miroir blmi, les reflets se dfontComme dune Ophlie en larmes qui senfonce;

Et les plis des rideaux ressemblent aux orniresTrs profondes des vieux chemins dun vieux pays.Le soir samasse, ayant la crainte des lumires,Autour du lustre et des lampes, surtout has,Qui mditent dj de faire saigner lOmbre.Tout slague dans les tnbres grandissantes;Un bouquet riait l, mais il sefface et sombre


35/268


Disappeared, and the flowers seem absent in the darkness.The nude bronzes have sad gestures;The thousand portraits of dead grandmothersGrow dark, have faces grown much older,And mourning crepe has covered their blue finery.The chamber is entirely prey to the evening;And it seems that all at once the chamber has grown old.

Silence: it is the voice that trails . . .

from The Reign of Silence

Silence: it is the voice that trails, wearily,Of the lady of my Silence, with very gentle step,Shedding the white lilies of her complexion in the mirror;Barely convalescent, she watches everything in the distance,The trees, a passer-by, the bridges, a stream,Where wander the great clouds of daylight,

But who, still too feeble, is suddenly struckWith the tedium of living and a feeling of loathing,And more subtle, being ill and half-exhausted,She says: The noise hurts me; have the windows closed . . .

At first, the aquarium seems not to be alive . . .from The Enclosed Lives

At first, the aquarium seems not to be alive,Uninhabited as a mirror in a convent,A twilight, where mists are constantly distilled,Its sleep is so pale that it seems long deceased,And the dark reflections, which come and go,Are only wandering shadows on a deathbed,

Or the furtive play of a nightlight on the ceiling.

Now and again, however, something strays in the water,Circulates, unfolds itself, or moves obliquely;The water contracts in a luminous shivering, which breaksInto dying spasms of light, found in a diamond;A dark fish undulates; grass, dressed in mourning, stirs;


36/268


37/268


The soft sand, on the bottom, rises and collapses,As if the Hour in a sandglass were shaken in confusion;And sometimes, flattened against the chill crystal,A flaccid monstrosity approaches its distorted image;Meanwhile, the water suffers, though appearing to sleep,And feels passing through its melancholy lethargy,The thousand shadows, with which it trembles endlessly,And which opens, in its surface, an enlarged wound.

But this is the very picture of human sleep,Where, in the water of the mind, believed drained and bare,Submarine dreams are ceaselessly underway,

An entire occult life, which is never ending.

The long line of streetlamps . . .from The Mirror of the Native Sky

The long line of streetlampsHave lit their pensive lights,Daily, as expected,Forming a play of silent shadows,That come and go.

Does the City sickenAt evening?You would think that it was growing darker;

Then wind seems to be lamentingSomeone who will never again be cured;A little bell ringsThe last angelus;The air is resonant, because of the silence;The poplars, holding their leaves still,Are afraid of making noise;And the passers-by muffle their steps in a mist,

As if in a chamber, at the bedside . . .

The water whispers more softly beneath the archOf the ancient bridges;It seems to be praying with its sighs,But for what?


38/268


39/268


40/268


Sans doute que la Ville empireCe soir?Les veilleuses des rverbresA peine encore un peu esprent;Elles sont comme des yeux;Comme des feux dvotieux,Yeux et feux illusoires.

O rverbres! Ils salarmentEt sentent la mort en chemin;Ils ont quelque chose dhumain,Ils tremblent et semblent plir

Comme si dans leur flamme il y avait des larmes!Quest-ce qui va mourir?Un cygne averti chante sur leau noire . . .

Il se peut que la Ville meureCe soir . . .

Les rverbres pleurent!

La Nuit est seule, comme un pauvre. . . .from Le Miroir du Ciel Natal

La Nuit est seule, comme un pauvre.Les rverbres offrent

Leur flamme jauneComme une aumne.

La nuit se tait comme une glise close.Les rverbres mlancoliquesOuvrent leur flamme roseComme des bouquets de lumire,Des bouquets sous un verre et qui sont des reliques,

Par qui la Nuit semplit dIndulgences plnires.


41/268


42/268


43/268


44/268


45/268


Water, for the sufferer . . .from The Reign of Silence

Water, for the sufferer, is a sister of charity,Who could satisfy not one human desire,And who hides sweetly, with a bitter smile,Beneath a veil, a robe of darkness;Her love of silence, her loathing of lifeAre so contagious, that more than one has enteredHer chapel of shadows, her pious depths,Where placidly she sings, near the green reeds,Organ of verdant pipes that accompanies her softly.

She sings! she says: The sweet retreat that I will giveTo those much discouraged . . .Ah! the gentle fascination of that heavenly voice!For their fever, it offers the coolness of an eternal bed!And many, lured by the benign call,Paralyzed, enter the water as one enters an asylum,And then die, for the water cleanses, enshrouds them

In her currents as fresh as fine linen;Then, at last, they have found gentle death.Meanwhile, the evening, all around the body at rest,Will kindle, in the dark water, a bright catafalque of stars.

O snow, the sweet sound . . .

from The Reign of Silence

O snow, the sweet sound, who lulls the night,So gentle, you, the most pensive sister of silence,The immaculate balance in a cloak of indolence,Preserving your pallor throughout the vespers.Sweet! you smother and enfeebleAll of the tumult, shapes, uproar;

Wavering snow, you seem to vanish,Far, most far away, in the haze of the streets!And you die the death, for which we have prayed,A white end, thoughtful, pious, serene,A pardoned death, which slowly tells


46/268


LEau, pour qui souffre . . .from Le Rgne du Silence

LEau, pour qui souffre, est une soeur de charitQue na pu satisfaire aucune joie humaineEt qui se cache, douce et le sourire amre,Sous une guimpe et sous un froc dobscurit;Son amour du repos, son dgot de la vieSont si contagieux que plus dun la suivieDans la chapelle dombre, au fond pieux des eaux,O, tranquille, elle chante au pied des longs roseauxDont lorgue aux verts tuyaux laccompagne en sourdine.

Elle chante! Elle dit: Les doux abris que jaiPour ceux de qui le coeur est trop dcourag. . .Ah! la molle attirance et quelle voix divine!Car, pour leur fivre, cest la fracheur dun bon lit!Et beaucoup, aimants par cet appel propice,Perclus, entrent dans lEau comme on entre lhospice,Puis meurent. LEau les lave et les ensevelit

Dans ses courants aussi frais que de fines toiles;Et cest enfin vraiment pour eux laBonne Mort.Ce pendant que, le soir, autour du corps qui dort,LEau noire allume un grand catafalque dtoiles.

O neige, toi la douce endormeuse . . .

from Le Rgne du Silence

O neige, toi la douce endormeuse des bruitsSi douce, toi la soeur pensive du silence,O toi limmacule en manteau dindolenceQui gardes ta pleur mme travers les nuits.Douce! tu les teins et tu les attnuesLes tulmutes pars, les contours, les rumeurs;

O neige vacillante, on dirait que tu meursLoin, tout au loin, dans le vague des avenues!Et tu meurs dune mort comme nous linvoquons,Une mort blanche et lente et pieuse et sereine,Une mort pardonne et dont le calme grne


47/268


A chaplet of wadding, a rosary of flakes.And the end draws near: beneath its somber veils,The sky has passed away; see how it crumbles in flakes;The sky collapses and my heart, filled with astral light,Becomes a vast cemetery of stars.


48/268


Un chapelet de ouate, un rosaire en flocons.Et cest la fin: le ciel sous de funbres toilesEst trpass; voici quil croule en flocons lents,Le ciel croule; mon coeur se remplit dastres blancsEt mon coeur est un grand cimetire dtoiles!


49/268


50/268

ii Emile Verhaeren

Selections from:

The Evenings (1887)Les Soirs

Les Dbcles (1888)

The Black Torches (1891)Les Flambeaux Noirs

The Hallucinated Countrysides (1893)Les Campagnes Hallucines

The Illusory Villages (1895)Les Villages Illusoires

The Cities with Pinions (1909)Les Villes Pignons


51/268


52/268

Emile Verhaeren 33

Pignons (1910). There is a Verhaeren, the optimistic poet of the industrial metrop-olis, but there is also Verhaeren, the consummate Symbolist, whose achievementwas to give expression to fragmented consciousness, using a French which is hisown distinctive language of poetry.

As the visual quality of his poetry would suggest, Emile Verhaeren was a subtlecritic of painting, who was among the first to understand the work of FernandKhnopff and James Ensor. The symbolist artist, William Degouve de Nunques(18671935) was Verhaerens close friend and brother-in-law. Degouves A Canal,an uncommonly elongate, flattened composition, visual analogue of Verhaerenssytactical distortions, depicts a ruinous building, suggestive of shattered hopes,nerves, dreams. The insistent repetition of broken windows and spiky trees, likethe obsessive refrain in Verhaerens poetry, is hallucinatory. In Degouves Flemish

snowscapes, as in Verhaerens polar Flanders in Tenebrae, there is no struggle,there is no action in a world given over to absolute immobility.

The Poetry of Emile Verhaeren:

Oeuvres compltes, 3 vols. (Genve: Slatkine Reprints, 1977).Les Villages Illusoires; Pomes en Prose; extraits de la Trilogie Noire, ed. Christian

Berg. (Bruxelles: Labor, 1985).Les Campagnes Hallucines; Les Villes Tentaculaires, ed. Maurice Piron. (Paris: Gal-

limard, 1982).Pomes choisis, ed. Robert Vivier. (Bruxelles: La Renaissance du Livre, 1981).Toute la Flandre. (Paris: Larousse, 1965).


53/268


54/268

Emile Verhaeren 35

La Morte

En sa robe, couleur de feu et de poison,Le cadavre de ma raisonTrane sur la Tamise.

Des ponts de bronze, o les wagonsEntrechoquent dinterminables bruits de gondsEt des voiles de bteaux sombresLaissent sur elle, choir leur ombres.

Sans quune aiguille, son cadran, ne bouge,Un grand beffroi masqu de rouge,La regarde, comme quelquunImmensment de triste et de dfunt.

Elle est morte de trop savoir,De trop vouloir sculpter la cause,Dans le socle de granit noir,De chaque tre et de chaque chose.Elle est morte, atrocement,Dun savant empoisonnement,Elle est morte aussi dun dlireVers un absurde et rouge empire.

Ses nerfs ont clat,Tel soir illumin de fteQuelle sentait dj le triomphe flotter

Comme des aigles, sur sa tte.Elle est morte nen pouvant plus,Lardeur et les vouloirs moulus,Et cest elle qui sest tue,Infiniment extnue.

Au long des funbres murailles,Au long des usines de fer

Dont les marteaux tannent lclair,Elle se trane aux funrailles.

Ce sont des quais et des casernes,Des quais toujours et leurs lanternes,Immobiles et lentes filandiresDes ors obscurs de leurs lumires;


55/268


There reigns a sadness of rock,Houses of brick, black turrets,Where the windows, mournful eyelids,Open to the mists of evenings.These are the great stockyards of panic,Full of dismantled shipsAnd splintered masts,Splayed against a sky of crucifixion.

In her dress of lifeless jewels, solemnizedBy the wine-colored hour on the horizon,The corpse of my reason

Trails across the Thames.

She sets out for chances,Hidden in shadow and in the mist,Alongside the hushed sounds of dull tocsins,Breaking their wings at the angle of the towers.In the distance, leaving distressedThe city, breathing life,

She sets out for the dark riddle,To sleep in the graveyards of evening,Where the slow, almighty oceansOpen their limitless, gaping mouth,To devour for all eternity,The grey corpses of enigma.

The Revoltfrom The Black Torches (1891)

Toward some remote city of riot and outcry,Where the guillotine flashes its shining steel,With a sudden, insane desire, my heart sets forth.

The muffled drumbeats of many wasted days,Of silenced rage and suppressed storm,Sound, in the mind, an impetuous attack.


56/268

Emile Verhaeren 37

Ce sont des tristesses de pierres,Maisons de briques, donjons en noirDont les vitres, mornes paupires,Souvrent dans le brouillard du soir;Ce sont de grands chantiers daffolement,Pleins de barques dmantelesEt de vergues cartelesSur un ciel de crucifiement.

En sa robe de joyaux morts, que solenniseLheure de pourpre lhorizon,Le cadavre de ma raison

Trane sur la Tamise.

Elle sen va vers les hasardsAu fond de lombre et des brouillards,Au long bruit sourd des tocsins lourds,Cassant leur aile, au coin des tours.Derrire elle, laissant inassouvieLa ville immense de la vie;

Elle sen va vers linconnu noirDormir en des tombeaux de soir,L-bas, o les vagues lentes et fortes,Ouvrant leurs trous illimits,Engloutissent toute ternit:Les mortes.

La Rvolte

Vers une ville au loin dmeute et tocsin,O luit le couteau nu des guillotines,En tout coup de fou dsir, sen va mon coeur.

Les sourds tambours de tant de joursDe rage tue et de tempte,Battent la charge dans les ttes.


57/268


From the black belfry, the old clock-faceHurls its wrathful disk in the depth of the evening,Against a stunned heaven, splattered red with stars.

Tolling knells of thudding footsteps resound,As immense conflagrations, raging on roof-tops,Deface all of the capitals.

They, who could find no otherConsolation but in somber despair,Have now stepped down from their silence.

Does anyone know what it is we hear approachingUpon the pathways of the future,So quietly terrible?

All of the hatred of the world bursts in the air,And fists to seize the lighteningAre strained toward the clouds.

Now the hour has arrived when those deluded,Those destituted and abandonedLay siege with their pride upon life.

Now is the hour and, in the distance, the alarm resounds;Crosses of muskets pound upon my door;To kill, to be killed! what can it matter?

The Bladefrom The Debacles(1888)

Brandishing a sword, someone predicted,Laughing at my sterilized pride:You will be a cipher and for your idle soul,

The future will hold nothing more than a regret for the past.Your body, where has turned sour the blood of pure ancestors,Weak and clumsy, will be broken with every effort;You will be the feverish, bent at the window,Helpless witness of the rushing of life and its golden chariots;


58/268

Emile Verhaeren 39

Le cadran vieux dun beffroi noirDarde son disque au fond du soir,Contre un ciel dtoiles rouges.

Des glas de pas sont entendusEt de grands feux de toits tordusEchevlent les capitales.

Ceux qui ne peuvent plus avoirDespoir que dans leur dsespoirSont descendus de leur silence.

Dites, quoi donc sentend venirSur les chemins de lavenir,De si tranquillement terrible?

La haine du monde est dans lairEt des poings pour saisir lclairSont tendus vers les nues.

Cest lheure o les hallucinsLes gueux et les dracinsDressent leur orgueil dans la vie.

Cest lheureet cest l-bas que sonne le tocsin;Des crosses de fusils battent ma porte;Tuer, tre tu!quimporte!

Le Glaive

Quelquun mavait prdit, qui tenait une peEt qui riait de mon orgueil strilis:Tu seras nul, et pour ton me inoccupe

Lavenir ne sera quun regret du pass.Ton corps, o sest aigri le sang de purs anctres,Fragile et lourd, se cassera dans chaque effort;Tu seras le fivreux ploy, sur les fentres,Do lon peut voir bondir la vie et ses chars dor,


59/268


Your nerves will entwine you with their sapless fibers,Your nerves! And your nails will grow soft with boredom,Your forehead, like a tombstone, will dominate your dreams,And will become your obsession, in the mirrors, at night.

To fly from yourself! If you could! but no, the lassitudeOf others, your own, will have bent your backSo well, riveted your feet so well, that dullnessWill dethrone your mind and will seal your bones with lead.

Dazzling and clacking, the banners toward the battles,Your bloodless lip, alas, will never know them:

Worn-out, your heart, your mournful heart, in disputesOver ancient texts, as if slashing away at a cloth.

You will set forth, outcast and alone, and all of the lost daysOf youth will be a worthless magnetFor your wide, distant eyesand the joyous thunderingWill herald the impetuous attack far from you, triumphantly!

The Illfrom The Evenings(1887)

Sallow and alone, they are, the skeptical ill,Made keen by all their pain. They watch the eveningGrow in their room and lengthen the facades.

Nearby, a church looms and holds high its black belfry.

Dead hour, over there, somewhere in the provinces,In an extinguished town, in some unknown cornerWhere the walls are clad in mourning and portals,Where grinds the monumental hinge, like a clenched fist of iron.

Sallow and alone, the inscrutable ill,

Like dismal, old wolves, fix death with their gaze;They have consumed their lives, since all days are the same,They will hate those months and years that will bring their sad end.


60/268

Emile Verhaeren 41

Tes nerfs tenlaceront de leurs fibres sans svesTes nerfs!et tes ongles samolliront dennui,Ton front, comme un tombeau dominera tes rves,Et sera ta frayeur, en des miroirs, la nuit.

Te fuir!si tu pouvais! mais non, la lassitudeDes autres et de toi taura vot le dosSi bien, riv les pieds si fort, que lhbtudeDtrnera ta tte et plombera tes os.

Eclatants et claquants, les drapeaux vers les luttes,Ta lvre exsangue hlas! jamais ne les mordra:

Us, ton coeur, ton morne coeur, dans les disputesDes vieux textes, o lon taille comme en un drap.

Tu ten iras part et seulet les naguresDe jeunesse seront un inutile aimantPour tes grands yeux lointainset les joyeux tonnerresChargeront loin de toi, victorieusement!

Les Malades

Blafards et seuls, ils sont, les sceptiques malades,Aigus de tous leurs maux. Ils regardent le soirSe faire dans leur chambre et grandir les facades.

Une glise prs deux lve son clocher noir.

Heure morte, l-bas, quelque part, en province,En une ville teinte, au fond dun coin dsert,O sendeuillent des murs et des porches, dont grinceLe gond monumental, ainsi quun poing de fer.

Blafards et seuls, les malades hiratiques,

Pareils de vieux loups mornes, fixent la mort;Ils ont mch la vie et ses jours identiquesEt ses mois et ses ans et leur haine et leur sort.


61/268


But today, huddled in the drained cynicismOf their loathing, their minds find no rest:What if happiness resided in virile selfishness,Then to suffer wisely, all alone, by act of will?

Like all the others, they have tritely loved.They believed piously in bereavements,In suffering, in preaching gestures of apostles;Imbeciles, they were too scared to lose their pride.

Now they discuss the ways in which cruelty reconcilesBetter than love; how they were deceived

Into disguising ingratitude and blame;And so many tears spent for a few eyes they kissed one day.

Void, the golden islands, lost in distant fogs of gold,Where the enthroned dreams, clothed in red,With frail, golden fingers scattered to the foamAll the silent gold that rained from the sun.

Broken the proud masts, slack the great sails!Let the barge go where it may and the harbours fade away;The beacons no longer will strain toward the high stars,Their arms, vastly on firefor the fires are all dead!

Sallow and alone, the inscrutable ill,Like dismal, old wolves, fix death with their gaze;They have consumed their lives, since all days are the same,They will hate those months and years that will bring their sad end.

And now their bodies? cage of bones for feversAnd their wooden nails, striking their scorching foreheads,And the peevishness of eyes and their thinness of lips,And a grit of bitter sand, always, between their teeth;

And regret seizes them and the posthumous desire:To depart and live again in a new world,

Where the sunset, resembling a flaming tripod,Breathes forth the god of ivory and ebony in their thought.

Beyond, in the far reaches of hysteria and of flame,And of livid froth and raucous frenzy,There we could ferociously rend and abolish the soul,Ferociously joyous, the soul and the heart.


62/268

Emile Verhaeren 43

Mais aujourdhui, serrs dans le ple cynismeDe leur dgot, ils ont lesprit inquit:Si le bonheur rgnait dans ce mle gosme,Souffrir pour soi, tout seul, mais par sa volont?

Ils ont banalement aim comme les autresLes autres; ils ont cru benotement aux deuils,A la souffrance, des gestes prcheurs daptres;Imbciles, ils ont eu peur de leurs orgueils.

Ils discutent combien la cruaut rapprocheMieux que lamour; combien ils se sont abuss

A pavoiser lingratitude et le reproche;Combien de pleurs, pour quelques yeux quils ont baiss!

Vides, les les dor, l-bas, dans lor des brumes,O les rves assis sous leur manteau vermeil,Avec de longs doigts dor effeuillaient aux cumes,Les ors silencieux qui pleuvaient du soleil.

Casss les mts dorgueil, flasques, les grandes voiles!Laissez la barque aller et steindre les ports;Les phares ne tendront plus vers les grandes toiles,Leurs bras immensment en feules feux sont morts!

Blafards et seuls, les malades hiratiques,Pareils de vieux loups mornes, fixent la mort;Ils ont mch la vie et ses jours identiquesEt ses mois et ses ans et leur haine et leur sort.

Et maintenant, leur corps?cage dos pour les fivresEt leurs ongles de bois heurtant leurs fronts ardents,Et leur hargne des yeux et leur minceur de lvresEt comme un sable amer, toujours, entre leurs dents.

Et le regret les prend et le dsir posthume:De sen aller revivre en un monde nouveau

Dont le couchant, pareil un trpied qui fume,Dresse le Dieu dbne et dos en leur cerveau.

L-bas, en des lointains dhystrie et de flammeEt dcume livide et de rauque fureur,O lon peut abolir frocement son me,Frocement joyeux, son me et tout son coeur.


63/268


Sallow and alone, they are the tragic ill,Made keen by all their pain. They watch the ultimate firesExpiring within the town and the pale facades,Like great winding cloths, stretching toward them.

The Rainfrom Illusory Villages(1895)

Long as threads without end, the long rain,

Interminably, through the grey day,Lines up the green window with its long grey threads,

An infinitude of rain,The long rain,The rain.

Lingeringly, it unravels, since yesterday evening,

Hanging in heavy, soaked rags,In the taciturn, black sky,It unravels, patient and slow,Upon the pathways, since yesterday evening,Upon the roads and the winding alleys,Continuous.

The length of the byways,Which lead from the woods to the outskirts,

By roads interminably twisted,They move on, grieving, dripping, steaming,The yoke-teams, with wagon-cloth bulging;In the even, beaten tracks,So ceaselessly parallel,That, at night, they seem to meet in the heavens,The water trickles, for hours on end;And the trees cry their tears and the dwellings,

Soaked by the long rain,Tenaciously, vague.


64/268

Emile Verhaeren 45

Blafards et seuls, ils sont les tragiques maladesAigus de tous leurs maux. Ils regardent les feuxMourir parmi la ville et les ples facadesComme de grands linceuls venir au-devant deux.

La Pluie

Longue comme des fils sans fin, la longue pluie

Interminablement, travers le jour gris,Ligne les carreaux verts avec ses longs fils gris,Infiniment, la pluie,La longue pluie,La pluie.

Elle seffile ainsi, depuis hier soir,

Des haillons mous qui pendent,Au ciel maussade et noir.Elle stire, patiente et lente,Sur les chemins, depuis hier soir,Sur les chemins et les venelles,Continuelle.

Au long des lieues,Qui vont des champs vers les banlieues,

Par les routes interminablement courbes,Passent, peinant, suant, fumant,En un profil denterrement,Les attelages, bches bombes;Dans les ornires rguliresParallles si longuementQuelles semblent, la nuit, se joindre au firmament,Leau dgoutte, pendant des heures;

Et les arbres pleurent et les demeures,Mouills quils sont de longue pluie,Tenacement, indfinie.


65/268


The streams, through their rotten dikes,Discharge their burden upon the meadows,Where drowned hay drifts in the distance;The wind slaps elder and walnut-trees;Frightfully, sunk waist-high in the flood,Huge, black oxen bellow at the twisted skies.

Evening draws close, with all of its shadows,Obstructing the planes and the copse,While, forever, it goes on, the rain,The long rain,Fine and dense, sodden, like soot.

The long rain,The rainand all of its identical threads,And its methodical fingernailsWeave the garment,Mesh by mesh, of desolation,For the houses and enclosures,Of villages, grey and doddering:

Linens and chaplets of tatters,Which ravel out in fluttering rags in the wind,Along the upright staffs;Blue dove-cotes pressed to the roof;Windows and on their disastrous panes,Wound-dressings of dark bister;Lodgings, where the regular guttersForm crucifixes on the stone pinions;Windmills, uniform, mournful, plantedUpon their mounds, like horned cattle;

Belfries and adjacent chapels,The rain,The long rain,All winter long, assassinates them as well.

The rain,

The long rain, with its long, grey threads,With its damply hanging hair, its ripples,The long rain,Upon ancient lands,Lethargic and eternal.


66/268

Emile Verhaeren 47

Les rivires, travers leurs digues pourries,Se dgonflent sur les prairies,O flotte au loin du foin noy;Le vent gifle aulnes et noyers;Sinistrement, dans leau jusqu mi-corps,De grands boeufs noirs beuglent vers les cieux tors;

Le soir approche, avec ses ombres,Dont les plaines et les taillis sencombrent,Et cest toujours la pluieLa longue pluieFine et dense, comme la suie.

La longue pluie,La pluieet ses fils identiquesEt ses ongles systmatiquesTissent le vtement,Maille maille, de dnment,Pour les maisons et les enclosDes villages gris et vieillots:

Linges et chapelets de loquesQui seffiloquent,Au long de btons droits;Bleus colombiers colls au toit;Carreaux, avec, sur leur vitre sinistre,Un empltre de papier bistre;Logis dont les gouttires rguliresForment des croix sur des pignons de pierre;Moulins plants uniformes et mornes,Sur leur butte, comme des cornes;

Clochers et chapelles voisines,La pluie,La longue pluie,Pendant lhiver, les assassine.

La pluie.

La longue pluie, avec ses longs fils gris.Avec ses cheveux deau, avec ses rides.La longue pluieDes vieux pays,Eternelle et torpide!


67/268


Infinitelyfrom The Evenings(1887)

The hounds of despair, the hounds of the autumnal wind,Gnaw with their howling the black echoes of evenings.The darkness, immensely, gropes in the emptinessFor the moon, seen by the light of water.

From point to point, over there, the distant lights,And in the sky, above, dreadful voicesComing and going from the infinity of the marshes and planesTo the infinity of the valleys and the woods.

And roadways that stretch out like sailsAnd pass each other, coming unfolded in the distance, soundlessly,While lengthening beneath the stars,Through the shadows and the terror of the night.

Fatal Flowerfrom The Evenings(1887)

Absurdity grows like a fatal flowerIn the leaf-mold of senses, of hearts, and intellects.Nothing more, neither of heroes nor of new saviours;And we remain to wallow in native reason.

I wish to wander toward madness and its suns,The white suns of moonlight, at high noon, bizarre,And those distant, corroded echoes of clatterAnd baying, over there, fraught with vermilion hounds.

Lakes of roses, here, in the snow; cloud,Where nest those birds with wings of wind;Caverns of evening, where a golden toad stands guard,

Motionless, as he devours a corner of the landscape.Beaks of herons, enormously gaping for nothing at all,Insect in the light, which fidgets, immobile,Gleeful unconsciousness and the feeble tick-tockOf the peaceful death of madmen, as I hear it well.


68/268

Emile Verhaeren 49

Infiniment

Les chiens du dsespoir, les chiens du vent dautomneMordent de leurs abois les chos noirs des soirs,Et lombre, immensment, dans le vide, ttonneVers la lune, mire au clair des abreuvoirs.

De point en point, l-bas, des lumires lointainesEt dans le ciel, l-haut, de formidables voixAllant de linfini des marais et des plainesJusques linfini des vallons et des bois.

Et des routes qui stendent comme des voilesEt se croisent et se dplient au loin, sans bruit,Et continuent sallonger sous les toilesA travers la tnbre et leffroi de la nuit.

Fleur Fatale

Labsurdit grandit comme une fleur fataleDans le terreau des sens, des coeurs et des cerveaux.Plus rien, ni des hros, ni des sauveurs nouveaux;Et nous restons croupir dans la raison natale.

Je veux marcher vers la folie et les soleils,Ses blancs soleils de lune au grand midi, bizarres,Et ses lointains chos mordus de tintamarresEt daboiements, l-bas, et pleins de chiens vermeils.

Lacs de roses, ici, dans la neige, nuageO nichent des oiseaux dans des plumes de vent;Grottes de soir, avec un crapaud dor devant,

Et qui ne bouge et mange un coin de paysage.Becs de hrons, normment ouverts pour rien,Mouche, dans un rayon, qui sagite, immobile:Linconscience gaie et le tic-tac dbileDe la tranquille mort des fous, je lentends bien!


69/268


To Diefrom The Evenings(1887)

An evening overflowing with purples and red riversGrows rotten far above the dwarfed planes,And forcefully, with the fists of its clouds,Crushes, upon the greenish horizons, all of the suns.Massive season! And like October, which with indolenceAnd heedlessness, swells and dies in this scene,Apples! pears of fire! grapes! golden rosaries,Which a tremulous fingering of light caresses,One final time, before the winter. The flight

Of great ravens? it will come. But now is the hourStill of leafage carved in lacquerand the proudest.

Shoots of strawberries stain the ground with blood,The forest stretches toward the sky its hands of russet leaves,While bronze and iron resound, far away, in the distance;An odor of still water mingles with the scent of quince,And perfumes of wild iris with perfumes of moss.

The pond, flat, luminous, enormously reflects,Between lithe birch trees with branches stirring,The climbing moon, heavy, red, immense,And which seems a lovely, ripe fruit, placidly come to light.

Thus to die, my body, thus to die would be the dream!Beneath a supreme rush of colors and songs,And all of the golds and sunsets held within gazes,And with streams of strength rising within the mind.

To die! like flowers far too overblown, to die!Too massive and too gigantic for life!Thus would lofty death be superbly servedAnd our immense pride would suffer no offense!To die, my body! as does the autumn, to die!


70/268

Emile Verhaeren 51

Mourir

Un soir plein de pourpres et de fleuves vermeilsPourrit, par au-del des plaines diminues,Et fortement, avec les poings de ses nues,Sur lhorizon verdtre, crase des soleils.Saison massive! Et comme Octobre, avec paresseEt nonchaloir, se gonfle et meurt dans ce dcorPommes! caillots de feu! raisins! chapelets dor,Que le doigt tremblant des lumires caresse,Une dernire fois, avant lhiver. Le vol

Des grands corbeaux? il vient. Mais aujourdhui, cest lheureEncor des feuillaisons de laqueet la meilleure.

Les pousses des fraisiers ensanglantent le sol,Le bois tend vers le ciel ses mains de feuilles roussesEt du bronze et du fer sonnent, l-bas, au loin.Une odeur deau se mle des senteurs de coingEt des parfums diris des parfums de mousses.

Et ltang plane et clair reflte normmentEntre de fins bouleaux, dont le branchage bouge,La lune, qui se lve paisse, immense et rouge,Et semble un beau fruit mr, clos placidement.

Mourir ainsi, mon corps, mourir, serait le rve!Sous un suprme afflux de couleurs et de chants,Avec, dans les regards, des ors et des couchants,Avec, dans le cerveau, des rivires de sve.

Mourir! comme des fleurs trop normes, mourir!Trop massives et trop gantes pour la vie!La grande mort serait superbement servieEt notre immense orgueil naurait rien souffrir!Mourir, mon corps, ainsi que lautomne, mourir!


71/268


Londonfrom The Evenings(1887)

In this London of cast-iron and bronze, my soul,Where slabs of iron clack within shanties,Where sails depart without Our Lady,Without stars, through a tepid web of Chances.

Stations of soot and smoke, where gas criesIts morbid spleen of silver toward tracks of lightening,Where creatures of tedium yawn at the hour,Immensely doleful, which tolls at Westminster.

And those boundless wharfs with the lethal shinings,Withered Fates with spindles plunged into the depths,And drowned sailors beneath the petalsOf flowers grown from muddy entrails, with the glare of a flame.

And the shawls and the gestures of drunken women,And alcohol in letters of gold up to the rooftops,And all at once, death steals through the crowded streets,O my soul of evening, this black London languishing within you.

Madmans Songfrom The Hallucinated Countrysides(1893)

The rats from the neighboring graveyard,As mid-day sounds its din,Drone in the clamorous bells.

They have gnawed at the hearts of the dead,And have grown fat and sleek on remorse.

They devour even the worm, which feeds on all things,

And their appetite endures, insatiable, tremendous.Here are the rats,Gnawing at the world,On every side, from top to bottom.


72/268

Emile Verhaeren 53

Londres

Et ce Londres de fonte et de bronze, mon me,O des plaques de fer claquent sous des hangars,

O des voiles sen vont, sans Notre-DamePour toile, sen vont, l-bas, vers les hasards.

Gares de suie et de fume, o du gaz pleureSes spleens dargent lointain vers des chemins dclair,

O des btes dennui billent lheureDolente immensment, qui tinte Westminster.

Et ces quais infinis de lanternes fatales,Parques dont les fuseaux plongent aux profondeurs,

Et ces marins noys, sous des ptalesDe fleurs de boue o la flamme met des lueurs.

Et ces chles et ces gestes de femmes soles,Et ces alcools en lettres dor jusques au toit,

Et tout coup la mort parmi ces foules,O mon me du soir, ce Londres noir qui trane en toi!

Chanson de Fou

Les rats du cimetire proche,Midi sonnant,Bourdonnent dans la cloche.

Ils ont mordu le coeur des mortsEt sengraissent de ses remords.

Ils dvorent le ver qui mange tout

Et leur faim dure jusquau bout.Ce sont des ratsMangeant le mondeDe haut en bas.


73/268


And the churchit was once so large and solemnWith the faith of all the paupers within,And now, it is in shambles,Since they, the ravenous hordes of rats,Have gnawed all of the consecrated wafers.

The massive blocks of stone are all stripped bare,Golden alcoves, like yawning graves,Open wide to reveal their emptiness;All of the suggestive gloryTopples from the high pillars and from the apse,To the signal of a death-knell.

The rats,They have worn away all the saintly haloes,The joined handsOf faith in days after,The mystical tendernessIn the depth of ecstatic eyes,And the kisses of prayer

Upon the mouths of poverty;The rats,They have stripped, worn away the entire town,From all sides, like a warehouse.

And now, while they are departing,The maddened tocsins and cattle-bells,Are all screaming for pity, screaming for mercy,

Shrieking, high above the roof-tops,All the way to the bellowing echoes,But no one at all can hear; there is no one to see:For the very soul of the fieldsHas for a long time beenBlind.

And only the rats from the neighboring graveyardRemain to chatter with the hiccoughing,Clattering Angelus of the bell.


74/268

Emile Verhaeren 55

Lglise?elle tait large et solennelleAvec la foi des pauvres gens en elle,Et la voici anantieDepuis quils ont, les rats,Mang lhostie.

Les blocs de granit se dchaussent,Les niches dor comme des fossesSentrouvrent vides;Toute la gloire vocatoireTombe des hauts piliers et des absidesAu son des glas.

Les rats,Ils ont rong les auroles bnvoles,Les jointes mainsDe la croyance aux lendemains,Les tendresses mystiquesAu fond des yeux des extatiquesEt les baisers de la prire;

Sur les bouches de la misre;Les rats,Ils ont rong le bourg entierDe haut en bas,Comme un grenier.

AussiQue maintenant sen aillentLes tocsins fous ou les sonnailles

Criant piti, criant merci,Hurlant, par au del des toits,Jusquaux chos qui meuglent,Nul plus nentend et personne ne voit:Puisquelle est lme des champs,Pour bien longtemps,Aveugle.

Et les seuls rats du cimetire proche,A lAngelus hoquetant et tintant,Causent avec la cloche.


75/268


Tenebraefrom The Evenings(1887)

A moon, with vacant, chilling eye, staresAt the winter, enthroned vast and white upon the hard ground;The night is an entire and translucent azure;The wind, a blade of sudden presence, stabs.

Faraway, on the skylines, the long pathways of frost,Seem, in the distance, to pierce the expanses,And stars of gold, suspended to the zenith,Always higher, amid the ether, to rend the blue of the sky.

The villages crouched in the planes of Flanders,Near the rivers, the heather, and the great forests,Between two pale infinities, shiver with cold,Huddled near old hearthsides, where they stir the ashes.

Vesperalfrom The Black Torches (1891)

Over marshes of gangrene and bile,Hearts of pierced stars pour blood from the depth of the sky.

Vast, black forests and black horizonAnd clouds of despair,

As they circle in futile voyages through the air,From North to South, in the closed precinct of sorrow.

Lands of stooped rooftops and seaside hovels,Where my eyes have set forth as pilgrims,My vanquished eyes, my eyes deprived of swords,Like escorts, marching before their dreams.

Leaden lands with endless sewersAnd swill brewed from aftertastesAnd a spigot of running nausea,Weeping over cadavers of thoughts.


76/268

Emile Verhaeren 57

Tnbres

La lune, avec son oeil vide et glac, regardeLhiver rgner immense et blanc sur le sol dur;La nuit est dun total et translucide azur;Le vent, comme un couteau, soudain, passe et poignarde.

Aux horizons, l-bas, les longs chemins du gelSemblent, toujours plus loin, trouer les tendues,Et les toiles dor jusquau Znith penduesParmi lther, toujours plus haut, trouer le ciel.

Les villages blottis dans les plaines de Flandre,Prs des fleuves, des bruyres ou des grands bois,Entre ces deux infinis ples, tremblent de froid,Autour des vieux foyers dont ils remuent la cendre.

Un Soir

Sur des marais de gangrne et de fielDes coeurs dastres trous saignent du fond du ciel.

Horizon noir et grand bois noirEt nuages de dsespoir

Qui circulent en longs voyagesDu Nord au Sud de ces parages.

Pays de toits baisss et de chaumes marinsO sont alls mes yeux en plerins,Mes yeux vaincus, mes yeux sans glaives,Comme escortes, devant leurs rves.

Pays de plombet longs goutsEt lavasses darrire-gotsEn chante-pleure de nausesSur des cadavres de penses.


77/268


Lands of memories, mired in slime,Where hatred flows free, decanted,Lands of dry-rot and leprosy,Where it is death that resounds in the bells of vespers;

Where death rings out to death,Darkly, hidden in the depth of a harbor,From below a steeple, suddenly disinterred,Like a giant corpse, amid the massive fog;

Where my heart also pours out its blood,My mournful heart, my benumbed heart,

My heart of gangrene and of bile,Exhausted star in the depths of the sky.

The Rockfrom The Black Torches(1891)

Upon this carious rock, tormented by the sea,Which footsteps will ever again climb, say, which footsteps?

Say if I will finally be alone and which sustained knellWill I hear, while standing and facing the sea?

It is there that I constructed my soul.Say, will I be alone with my soul?

Alas, my soul, mansion of ebony,Where was slivered, soundlessly, one evening,The silver-gilt mirror of all my hopes.

Say, will I be left alone with my soul,In that shadowy and anguished domain?Will I be left with my dark pride for companion,While seated in an armchair of hatred?

Will I be left alone with my pale veneration,Of the holiest virgin, Our Lady of Lunacy?

Will I be left alone with the seaIn this shadowy and anguished domain?


78/268

Emile Verhaeren 59

Pays de mmoire chue en de la vase,O de la haine se transvase,Pays de la carie et de la lpre,O cest la mort qui sonne vpre;

O cest la mort qui sonne mort,Obscurment, du fond dun port,Au bas dun clocher qui sexhumeComme un grand mort parmi la brume;

O cest mon coeur qui saigne aussi,Mon coeur morne, mon coeur transi,

Mon coeur de gangrne et de fiel,Astre cass, au fond du ciel.

Le Roc

Sur ce roc cari que fait souffrir la mer,Quels pas voudront monter encor, dites, quels pas?

Dites, serai-je seul enfin et quel long glascouterai-je debout devant la mer?

Cest l que jai bti mon me.Dites, serai-je seul avec mon me?

Mon me hlas! maison dbne,O sest fendu, sans bruit, un soir,Le grand miroir de mon espoir.

Dites, serai-je seul avec mon me,En ce nocturne et angoissant domaine?Serai-je seul avec mon orgueil noir,Assis en un fauteuil de haine?

Serai-je seul, avec ma ple hyperdulie,Pour Notre-Dame la Folie?

Serai-je seul avec la merEn ce nocturne et angoissant domaine?


79/268


Croaking black toads, shaggy with moss,Consume the bright sunlight on the lawns.A towering pillar, with nothing to support,Rears up, like a stranger, in a garden path,Vastly paved with epitaphs in marble.

On a pond of reptiles and wide-staring eyes,Gatherings of drowned swans,Toward distances of silk and crushed gold,Languidly trail their serene suicides,Amid the freesia and pallid jonquils.

And from the summit of some headland in the air,Strange cries of sea-faring birds,With piercing, viperine beaks,Which sing the demise of all who pass.

Upon this carious rock, hollowed more deeply by the sea,Say, will I be left alone with my soul?

Will I finally know that atrocious joyOf seeing, fiber by fiber, like a prey,Fierce dementia rending piecemeal my mind?

And will the crazed sufferer, released from the prisonAnd the hard labor of his reason,Ever trim the sail for undiscovered lands?

Say, to never again feel your life scalingThe dogged iron steps of every single idea,To never again hear, endlessly, within,The screeching, always the same, whether fear or rage,Toward the great unknown, which journeys in the skies:To believe in insanity, as if in a faith!

On this carious rock, driven mad by the sea,

To grow old, pitiful dreamer of the steep domain,With all flesh dead and expectation set forth,Against the grain of life, immense and desolate.


80/268

Emile Verhaeren 61

Des crapauds noirs, velus de mousse,Y dvorent du clair soleil, sur la pelouse.

Un grand pilier ne soutenant plus rien,Comme un homme, srige en une alle,Dpitaphes de marbre immensment dalle.

Sur un tang dyeux ouverts et de reptiles,Des groupes de cygnes noys,Vers des lointains de soie et dor broys,Tranent leurs suicides tranquillesParmi des phlox et des jonquilles.

Et du sommet dun cap despace,Dtranges cris doiseaux marins,Les becs aigus et viprins,Chantent la mort tel qui passe.

Sur ce roc cari que recreuse la mer,Dites, serai-je seul avec mon me?

Aurai-je enfin latroce joieDe voir, nerfs aprs nerfs, comme une proie,La dmence attaquer mon cerveau?

Et dtraqu malade, sorti de la prisonEt des travaux forcs de sa raison,Dappareiller vers un lointain nouveau?

Dites, ne plus sentir sa vie escaladePar les talons de fer de chaque ide,Ne plus lentendre infiniment en soiCe cri, toujours identique, ou crainte, ou rage,Vers le grand inconnu qui dans les cieux voyage:Croire en la dmence ainsi quen une foi!

Sur ce roc cari que dtraque la mer,Vieillir, triste rveur de lescarp domaine,Les chairs mortes, lesprance en alle,A rebours de la vie immense et dsole;


81/268


To never again hear, hushed within your ebony house,That iron-clad silence, which causes the dead to tremble with fear;To drag long, weighted steps through the soundless hallways;To see the same hours forever marching in succession,With never a hope for better hours;

And forever to demolish the solitary lookout;Such a signal in the distance!a presage has just appeared;Throughout the faded salons, to love the vacant seatsAnd the chambers, where the large beds have seen death,And every single evening, to feel with livid fingers,Unreason growing ripe beneath your temples.

Upon this carious rock, ruined by the sea,Say, will I finally be alone with the sea,Say, will I finally be alone with my soul?

And then to die: to once again become nothing.To be someone who no longer recollects,And who departs, without a tolling knell,

Without a taper in hand,Without his knowing, that person who passes,Joyous and bright, on the smooth surface of the sea,That the shadowy and anguishing domain,Where no torch will ever again blaze,In mourning for its mansion of ebony,Conceals a corpse and its tombstone.

The Abandoned Portfrom The Cities with Pinions(1909)

A pitiful, blind lighthouse, worn away by corrosion,A few anchors scattered on the deserted pier,A windlass, rent asunder, useless forever,

And, in the distance, the echoing footstep of a patrol.


82/268

Emile Verhaeren 63

Nentendre plus se taire, en sa maison dbne,Quun silence de fer dont auraient peur les morts;

Traner de longs pas lourds en de sourds corridors;Voir se suivre toujours les mmes heures,Sans esprer en des heures meilleures;Pour jamais clore telle fentre;Tel signe au loin!un prsage vient dapparatre;Autour des vieux salons, aimer les siges videsEt les chambres dont les grands lits ont vu mourirEt chaque soir, sentir, les doigts livides,La draison sous ses tempes mrir.

Sur ce roc cari que ruine la mer,Dites, serai-je seul enfin avec la mer,Dites, serai-je seul enfin avec mon me?

Et puis mourir; redevenir rien.Etre quelquun qui plus ne se souvientEt qui sen va sans glas qui sonne,

Sans cierge en main ni sans personne,Sans que sache celui qui passe,Joyeux et clair dans la bonace,Que le nocturne et angoissant domaine,En deuil de sa maison dbne,O plus ne brle aucun flambeau,Renferme un mort et son tombeau.

Le Port Dchu

Un pauvre phare aveugle, o mord la rouille;Quelques ancres sur le mle dsert,Un cabestan fendu qui plus ne sert,

Et, tout au loin, le pas dune patrouille.


83/268


No sailors song throws into confusionThe solid threads of silence, woven in the air,As the hushed fold return home in even numbersTo their decrepit houses, with bolted doors.

Yet, in a corner of the wharf, still rises,Battered, groaning at the cruelty of the North Wind,The likeness of Lady Fortune, sculptured in wood.

But when the moment comes for night to fall,The water grows tarnished and finds solely reflected in its dream

Nothing, until the dawn, but the dead gold of the moon.


84/268

Emile Verhaeren 65

Nulle chanson de matelot ne brouilleLes fils du silence tisss dans lair,Des gens muets rentrent par nombre pairEn des maisons antiques quon verrouille.

Pourtant, au coin du quai, slve encor,Battue et gmissante au vent du Nord,Limage, en bois sculpt, de la Fortune.

Mais que vienne linstant o la nuit choit,Leau se ternit et plus ne mire en soi,Jusquau matin, que lor mort de la lune.


85/268

This page intentionally left blank


86/268

iii Maurice Maeterlinck

Selections from:

Hothouses

Serres Chaudes1889

Fifteen SongsQuinze Chansons1900


87/268

Maurice Maeterlinck (18621949)

Commentary

As a poet, dramatist, and essayist, Maurice Maeterlinck explored the inef-fable. 1889 marked the appearance of a collection of poetry, Serreschaudes, and a play, La Princesse Maleine, which created a Symbolist

drama and revolutionized the theater. Maeterlincks early plays, LIntruse, LesAveugles, Pellas et Melisande, are characterized by silence, a legendary atmosphere,anticipation of death as an omnipresent and insinuative force, and anguished,truncated utterances which express the tension between the spoken and the un-speakable. Ruptured discourse is also evident in the Serres chaudes poems, in whichMaeterlinck accumulates brief, highly visual situations, momentary flashes ofdrama, in order to express a mood of debility and anxiety. Maeterlincks longerpoems are expansive catalogues of displaced objects and conjunctions of oppo-

sites: A fountain rises in the middle of the room, There are deer in a besiegedcity, oriental vegetation in an ice-cave. In their brevity, Maeterlincks apos-trophes are suggestive and open-ended. The ambiguous or absent link betweenthe statements contributes to their symbolist, evocative quality. An atmosphere ofstrangeness is further developed through accretions of sensory confusions, such aswhispering gazes, or suffocated gazes, and conjunctions of the concrete andabstract, the secret hounds of desires. The Serres chaudes poems are of two types.There are the aforementioned landscapes of analogies, where hallucinations assaila prophet of the apocalypse, who reports in rapid succession the bizarre things hewitnesses. Interspersed are more succinct poems, affective and euphonious in theirsound patterns, which are reiterated litanies of waiting and dejection, addressed toan absent deity. Teeming, mephitic visions and weighted lassitude are the modal-ities of the Serres chaudes,which convey an impression of an infirm human condi-tion, man comfortless and powerless in the grasp of an implacable destiny.

The central source of imagery in Maeterlincks Serres chaudes are structuresformed or enclosed in glasshothouses, bell-glasses, diving bells, various transpar-ent membranes which represent an interior space of the mind or the soul. With its

lush vegetation guarded by invisible yet infrangible walls, the hothouse becomesMaeterlincks paradigm for the unconscious, the world of dreams which may beglimpsed, but only imperfectly explored. The various glass structures, protectiveyet enclosing, also serve Maeterlinck as metaphors for a state of spiritual claustro-phobia, the souls impulse to break free of constraints in order to join the un-known. Related to this impulse are the experiences of entrevoir, entrouvrir,dimly perceiving, half-opening to the sphere of mystery, alluring yet fearful.


88/268

Maurice Maeterlinck 69

Spiritual quest also marks Maeterlincks only other collection of verse, theDouze Chansons of 1896, expanded to theQuinze Chansons of 1900. The poems arebrief and folkloric, often taking the form of alternating voices engaged in questionand answer. The songs are simple yet highly ambiguous in their reiteration of asearch which remains always undefined, always failed, and always continued. Im-agery of benightedness (blindfolded eyes, blindness, caverns, extinguishedtorches), imprisonment (locked doors, lost keys), and sacrifice of the meek is re-current in the songs, which resume in miniature the atmosphere of uncertaintyand helplessness which pervades Maeterlincks theater.

The Poetry of Maurice Maeterlinck:

Posies compltes. Edition critique tablie par Joseph Hanse. (Bruxelles: La Renais-sance du Livre, 1965).

Oeuvres. (Bruxelles: Jacques Antoine, 1980).


89/268


Hothouse

O hothouse lost among the trees,With your doors forever closed!As the dead voice, whispering under your dome,Calls forth the lost days of my soul.

The thoughts of a princess, fainting with hunger,The distress of a sailor, dreaming of waves in the desert,Copper music at the windows of those who are slowly dying.

On to the mildest corners!

You would say a woman fainted one harvest day;There are messengers in the courtyard of the asylum;In the distance, a bounding huntsman, become a nurse, passes by.

Walk forward by moonlight!(Oh! nothing is in its place!)You would say a raving madwoman dragged to trial,A warship at full sail on a canal,Nocturnal birds perched on lilies,A knell resounding about midday,(Over there, beneath those bells!)A halting place for the diseased in the meadow,The smell of ether on a sunny day.

Oh God! Oh God! how we long for rainAnd snow and wind in the hothouse!

Nocturnal Orison

Beneath languid visions,Within my stunned prayers,I hear the hissing of passions,

And the surging of enemy lusts.I see a bitter moonlight,Beneath the nightly tedium of dreams,And upon poisonous shores,The wandering pleasures of the flesh.


90/268


Serre Chaude

O serre au milieu des forts!Et vos portes jamais closes!Et tout ce quil y a sous votre coupole!Et sous mon me en vos analogies!

Les penses dune princesse qui a faim,Lennui dun matelot dans le dsert,Une musique de cuivre aux fentres des incurables.

Allez aux angles les plus tides!

On dirait une femme vanouie un jour de moisson;Il y a des postillons dans la cour de lhospice;Au loin, passe un chasseur dlans, devenu infirmier.

Examinez au clair de lune!(Oh rien y est sa place!)On dirait une folle devant les juges,Un navire de guerre pleines voiles sur un canal,Des oiseaux de nuit sur des lys,Un glas vers midi,(L-bas sous ces cloches!)Une tape de malades dans la prairie,Une odeur dther un jour de soleil.

Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! quand aurons-nous la pluie,Et la neige et le vent dans la serre!

Oraison Nocturne

En mes oraisons endormiesSous de languides visions,Jentends jaillir les passions

Et les luxures ennemies.Je vois un clair de lune amerSous lennui nocturne des rves;Et sur de vnneuses grves,La joie errante de la chair.


91/268


Within my marrow, I hear arisingDesires with green horizons,And beneath forever murky skies,I suffer an unquenched thirst for stars.

I hear surging in my house,Evil, dark caresses;I see phantom marshesBeneath an eclipse on the horizons!

And I perish beneath your spite!Lord, have mercy, O Lord,

Open for the sick man drenched in sweat,The grass prophesied by the moonlight!

Now is the time, Lord, now is the time,To scythe the untilled hemlock.Glimpsed through my most remote hopes,The moon is tinged green with serpents.

And the tide of evil dreams floats ever onwardWith its sins brimming in my eyes,And I hear the sighs of blue fountain streamsAs they climb toward the absolute moon.

Foliage of the Heart

Sealed within the windows of blue crystalAnd weary melancholyMy vague, abolished distressHovers in the air and slowly grows.

Vegetations of symbols,Dismal water lilies of past pleasures,

Sluggish palm trees of desires,Cold moss and slack vines.

Solitary in their midst,A pale and rigid lily feeblyRaises its motionless ascentOver the woeful foliage.


92/268


Jentends slever dans mes moellesDes dsirs aux horizons verts,Et sous des cieux toujours couverts,Je souffre une soif sans toiles!

Jentends jaillir dans ma maisonLes mauvaises tendresses noires;Je vois des marais illusoiresSous une clipse lhorizon!

Et je meurs sous votre rancune!Seigneur, ayez piti, Seigneur,

Ouvrez au malade en sueurLherbe entrevue au clair de lune!

Il est temps, Seigneur, il est tempsDe faucher la cigu inculte!A travers mon espoir occulteLa lune est verte de serpents!

Et le mal des songes afflueAvec ses pchs en mes yeux,Et jcoute des jets d'eau bleusJaillir vers la lune absolue!

Feuillage du Coeur

Sous la cloche de cristal bleuDe mes lasses mlancolies,Mes vagues douleurs aboliesSimmobilisent peu peu:

Vgtations de symboles,Nnuphars mornes des plaisirs,

Palmes lentes de mes dsirs,Mousses froides, lianes molles.

Seul, un lys rige dentre eux,Ple et rigidement dbile,Son ascension immobileSur les feuillages douloureux,


93/268


And in the steps of its light,Like the moon, little by little,Lifts up to the closed windowA mystic, white prayer against the blue.

Soul

My soul!My too much sheltered soul!

And those herds of my desires penned in a hothouseAwaiting a tempest over the grasslands.

On to the most sickly:They have strange exhalations.In their midst, I cross through a battlefield with my mother.They are burying a comrade-at-arms at noon,While the sentries eat their meal.

Let us move on to the weakest:They are drenched in strange sweats;Here is a sickly fiance,A betrayal on Sunday,And little children in prison.(And further on, through the mist,)Is that a dying woman at a kitchen door?Or a nun shelling peas at the bedside of an incurable?

Let us go to the saddest at last:(But at the very end because they are poisonous.)On! my lips accept a wounded mans kiss!All of the chatelaines have starved to death, this summer,

in the towers of my soul!

And here is a sunrise that joins in the magic joy!I confusedly glimpse sheep along the quay,As the hospital windows are veiled.

There is a long road from my heart to my soul!And all of the sentries are dead at their post!


94/268


Et dans les lueurs quil pancheComme une lune, peu peu,Elve vers le cristal bleuSa mystique prire blanche.

Ame

Mon me!O mon me vraiment trop labri!

Et ces troupeaux de mes dsirs dans une serreAttendant une tempte sur les prairies!

Allons vers les plus malades:Ils ont dtranges exhalaisons.Au milieu deux, je traverse un champ de bataille avec ma mre.On enterre un frre darmes midi,Tandis que les sentinelles prennent leur repas.

Allons aussi vers les plus faibles:Ils ont dtranges sueurs;Voici une fiance malade,Une trahison le dimancheEt des petits enfants en prison.(Et plus loin, travers la vapeur,)Est-ce une mourante la porte dune cuisine?Ou une soeur pluchant des lgumes au pied du lit dun incurable?

Allons enfin vers les plus tristes:(En dernier lieu, car ils ont des poisons.)Oh! mes lvres acceptent les baisers dun bless!

Toutes les chtelaines sont mortes de faim, cet t,dans les tours de mon me!

Voici le petit jour qui entre dans la fte!Jentrevois des brebis le long des quais,Et il y a une voile aux fentres de lhpital.

Il y a un long chemin de mon coeur mon me!Et toutes les sentinelles sont mortes leur poste!


95/268


Once, there was a pitiful little holiday on the outskirts of my soul!They harvested hemlock there one Sunday morning;And all of the convent virgins watched the ships passing on the

canal, one day of fasting and sunshine,While the swans suffered under a venomous bridge;They were chopping down trees around the prison,They were bringing medicine one June afternoon,And meals for the sick expand over all the horizons!

My soul!And the sadness of it all, my soul, and the sadness of it all!

Prayer

You have seen my distress through the dark nights,Now you know me, my Lord,And I will carry wretched flowers from the ground,

To scatter on a young corpse beneath the sunlight.You also know my lassitude,The dimmed moon, the black dawn.Enrich, oh Lord, my barren solitude,Watering it with your divine glory.

Open your pathway for me, LordAnd light it for my weary soul,

Because the sadness of my joyResembles new life beneath the frozen ground.


96/268


Il y eut un jour une pauvre petite fte dans les faubourgs de mon me!On y fauchait la cigu un dimanche matin;Et toutes les vierges du couvent regardaient passer les

vaisseaux sur le canal, un jour de jene et de soleil.Tandis que les cygnes souffraient sous un pont vnneux;On mondait les arbres autour de la prison,On apportait des remdes une aprs-midi de Juin,Et des repas de malades stendaient tous les horizons!

Mon me!Et la tristesse de tout cela, mon me! et la tristesse de tout cela!

Oraison

Vous savez, Seigneur, ma misre!Voyez ce que je vous apporte!Des fleurs mauvaises de la terre,

Et du soleil sur une morte.Voyez aussi ma lassitude,La lune teinte et laube noire;Et fcondez ma solitudeEn larrosant de votre gloire.

Ouvrez-moi, Seigneur, votre voie,Eclairez-y mon me lasse,

Car la tristesse de ma joieSemble de lherbe sous la glace.


97/268


Reflections

Beneath the rising water of dream,My soul is afraid, my soul is afraid,Of the cold moonbeams in my heart,And still dream-waters of grey.

Beneath the dull sorrow of reeds,Only deep reflections still breathe,Of lilies, bright palms, and roses,Weeping in the depths of dream.

And the flowers shed their petalsOn the mirror of the sky,To descend eternally,Sinking into dreams and lights.


98/268


Reflets

Sous leau du songe qui slve,Mon me a peur, mon me a peur!Et la lune luit dans mon coeur,Plong dans les sources du rve.

Sous lennui morne des roseaux,Seuls les reflets profonds des choses,Des lys, des palmes et des roses,Pleurent encore au fond des eaux.

Les fleurs seffeuillent une uneSur le reflet du firmament,Pour descendre ternellementDans leau du songe et dans la lune.

Fernand Khnopff. Secret-Reflection. 1902.


99/268


Diving Bell

O diver forever within his bell!A vast sea of glass eternally warm,All that motionless life with sluggish green pendulums!And so many strange beings through the walls!And all touching forever forbidden!When there is so much life in the clear water outside!

Look out! the shadow of the great sailing ships glides overthe dahlias of submarine forests;

And, for a moment, I am in the shadow of whales leaving for

the pole!In the port, others must now be unloading ships full of snow!There was a glacier in the midst of July meadows!They swim backwards in the green water of the creek!They enter dark caverns at noon!And the breezes of the open sea fan the terraces!

Look out! here are the flaming tongues of the Gulf Stream!Keep their kisses away from the walls of tedium!They no longer place snow on the foreheads of the feverish!The sick have lit fires of joyAnd toss handfuls of green lilies into the flames!

Lean your forehead against the least warm walls,While waiting for the moon at the top of the bell,And close your eyes tight to the forests of blue pendulums and

purple albumin,While remaining deaf to the incitements of the lukewarm water.

Wipe off your desires weakened with perspiration.Go first to those on the verge of fainting;They look as if they were going to celebrate a wedding feast

in a cellar.They look as if they were going to enter at noon into a

lamplit avenue at the bottom of a vault;They cross in stately procession a landscape that resemblesan orphans childhood.

Next go to those who are dying.They arrive like virgins who have had a long stroll in the

sun, one day of fasting;


100/268


Cloche Plongeur

O plongeur jamais sous sa cloche!Toute une mer de verre ternellement chaude!Toute une vie immobile aux lents pendules verts!Et tant dtres tranges travers les parois!Et tout attouchement jamais interdit!Lorsquil y a tant de vie en leau claire au dehors!

Attention! lombre des grands voiliers passe sur les dahliasdes forts sous-marines;

Et je suis un moment lombre des baleines qui sen vont

vers le ple!En ce moment, les autres dchargent, sans doute, des vaisseauxpleins de neige dans le port!

Il y avait encore un glacier au milieu des prairies de Juillet!Ils nagent reculons en leau verte de lanse!Ils entrent midi dans des grottes obscures!Et les brises du large ventent les terrasses!

Attention! voici les langues en flamme du Gulf-Stream!Ecartez leurs baisers des parois de lennui!On na plus mis de neige sur le front des fivreux;Les malades ont allum un feu de joie,Et jettent pleines mains les lys verts dans les flammes!

Appuyez votre front aux parois les moins chaudes,En attendant la lune au sommet de la cloche,Et fermez bien vos yeux aux forts de pendules bleus et

dalbumines violettes, en restant sourd aux suggestions deleau tide.

Essuyez vos dsirs affaiblis de sueurs;Allez dabord ceux qui vont svanouir:Ils ont lair de clbrer une fte nuptiale dans une cave;Ils ont lair dentrer midi, dans une avenue claire de

lampes au fond dun souterrain;

Ils traversent, en cortge de fte, un pays

an anthology of belgian symbolist poets.pdf

Documents