Paul Verlaine Translations
These are my English translations of poems by the French poet Paul Verlaine.
Paul-Marie Verlaine (1844-1896) was a French poet and a prominent figure in the Symbolist and Decadent poetry movements, along with Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé. Verlaine has been called "one of the most purely lyrical of French poets." At age 14 the precocious Verlaine sent his first extant poem "La Mort" to Victor Hugo. Verlaine married 16-year-old Mathilde Mauté de Fleurville in 1870. The following year he began an affair with the boy poet Arthur Rimbaud . Their passionate relationship, the subject of various sensational books and films, ended in 1873 when a drunken Verlaine shot Rimbaud, injuring his wrist, then spent 18 months in prison. In 1894 Verlaine's peers elected him France's "Prince of Poets."
Il pleure dans mon coeur (“It rains in my heart”)
by Paul Verlaine
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
It rains in my heart
As it rains on the town;
Heavy languor and dark
Drenches my heart.
Oh, the sweet-sounding rain
Cleansing pavements and roofs!
For my listless heart's pain
The pure song of the rain!
Still it rains without reason
In my overcast heart.
Can it be there's no treason?
That this grief's without reason?
As my heart floods with pain,
Lacking hatred, or love,
I've no way to explain
Such bewildering pain!
Original French text:
Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville.
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénêtre mon coeur ?
O bruit doux de la pluie
Par terre et sur les toits !
Pour un coeur qui s’ennuie,
O le chant de la pluie !
Il pleure sans raison
Dans ce coeur qui s’écoeure.
Quoi ! nulle trahison ?
Ce deuil est sans raison.
C’est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi,
Sans amour et sans haine,
Mon coeur a tant de peine.
Spleen
by Paul Verlaine
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The roses were so very red;
The ivy, impossibly black.
Dear, with a mere a turn of your head,
My despair’s flooded back!
The sky was too gentle, too blue;
The sea, far too windswept and green.
Yet I always imagined—or knew—
I’d again feel your spleen.
Now I'm tired of the glossy waxed holly,
Of the shimmering boxwood too,
Of the meadowland’s endless folly,
When all things, alas, lead to you!
Original French text:
Les roses étaient toutes rouges
Et les lierres étaient tout noirs.
Chère, pour peu que tu te bouges,
Renaissent tous mes désespoirs.
Le ciel était trop bleu, trop tendre,
La mer trop verte et l’air trop doux.
Je crains toujours,—ce qu’est d’attendre!—
Quelque fuite atroce de vous.
Du houx à la feuille vernie
Et du luisant buis je suis las,
Et de la campagne infinie
Et de tout, fors de vous, hélas!
Links to other translations by Michael R. Burch:
Charles Baudelaire
Arthur Rimbaud
Renée Vivien
Rainer Maria Rilke
The HyperTexts
Did Rimbaud address poems to Verlaine?
Verlaine's 'Spleen' is a very lyrical and emotional poem about a pleading lover who remains captive to a love that he has lost. I particularly like these lines that register his sense of helplessness and despair:
'Dear, with a mere a turn of your head,
My despair’s flooded back!'