Thursday, November 10, 2005
Maurice Du Plessys (1864-1924)
A poem by Maurice Du Plessys from Les Tristes reads as follows:
Cette nuit
Cette nuit (noble accord des êtres et des choses)
En un palais, le plus tranquille des tombeaux,
Trois nymphes, l'or, la neige échangeantes aux roses,
Dansaient, flammes de marbre, aux feux des vieux flambeaux.
I translate it as follows:
This night
This night (a rarefied agreement of being and things)
In a palace, the quietest of tombs,
Three nymphs, gold, snow exchanging with pinks,
Danced, marble flames, with the lights of old torches.
Google translates it as:
This night
This night (noble agreement of the beings and the things)
In the palate, quietest of the tombs,
Three nymphs, gold, snow échangeantes with the pinks,
Danced, marble flames, with fires of the old torches.
The question is; which is prefferable? My use of rarified, I justify on the grounds that I prefer that to its starchy synonym nobel. A word which time has tainted. Palais, on the other hand, is hard to decide. Google is correct if the poet is alluding to the mouth - not inconcievable in a poem so sensual. But tombs and palaces are not incompatible either. Google refuses to translate échangeantes, I go for the simple, but not quite satisfactory, exchanging. In the final line, I choose light over fire, because to me at least, it reifys the image. Again in the same line, flames could be exchanged for passions. It's hard to know not being fluent in French, but nonetheless a simple but amusing conundrum. I am unaware of any other English translations. For the record then, I translated it before Google. Unless of course Google automatically translated and caches all pages...
