Parisian Sketch

La Défense, and Neela

In an earlier post French Poetry I commented that Paris never seemed to be the putative subject of a lot of French poems. So now I find this one by Paul Verlaine, at Poetryintranslation.com Parisian Sketch Translated by A. S. Kline

(from Poèmes Saturniens: Eaux-Fortes I 1866)

The moon was shedding her plates of zinc

In obtuse angles.

The plumes of smoke like ‘fives’ distinct

Rose thick and black from high roof-tangles.

The sky was grey, there wept a breeze

Like a bassoon.

Far off, a tom-cat, stealthy, discreet,

Miaowed, oh, strangely out of tune.

I, walked, of divine Plato dreaming

And of Phidias, Salamis, Marathon, under twinkling

Eyes, eyes of blue jets of gas.

Here's another translation that does not attempt to preserve the rhyme:


The moon was laying her plates of zinc
on the oblique.
Like figure fives the plumes of smoke
rose thick and black from the tall roof-peaks.
In the gray sky the breeze wept loud
as a bassoon.
In a funk a stealthy tomcat miaowed,
far away, his shrill strange tune.
Dreaming of Plato, I walked on,
and of Phidias,
of Salamis and Marathon,
under winking eyes of blue jets of gas.

Trans. C. F. MacIntyre, Paul Verlaine: Selected Poems, Berkley: U of California P, 1970: 17.

Here's another "Paris", with my own novice interpretation:

Paris n'a de beauté qu'en son histoire,

Mais cette histoire est belle tellement !

La Seine est encaissée absurdement,

Mais son vert clair à lui seul vaut la gloire.

(Paris, not the story of its beauty, but that there's so much of it! The Seine absurdly framed,  its limpid green is its own glory.)

Paris n'a de gaîté que son bagout,

Mais ce bagout, encor qu'assez immonde,

Il fait le tour des langages du monde,

Salant un peu ce trop fade ragoût.

(Paris, not of its chattering gaity, but of its blather, so vile, babbel of the world, it's watered-down bog)

Paris n'a de sagesse que le sombre

Flux de son peuple et de ses factions,

Alors qu'il fait des révolutions

Avec l'Ordre embusqué dans la pénombre.

Paris, not of its blue-greem wisdom, its crowd, its gangs or its cash-flow, it makes its revolutions so, giving orders like a sniper in the shadows)

Paris n'a que sa Fille de charmant

Laquelle n'est au prix de l'Exotique

Que torts gentils et vice peu pratique

Et ce quasi désintéressement.

(Paris, not of her Woman of charm, who's no exotic prize, who tittilates with her sexual tricks, feigning disinterest.)

Paris n'a de bonté que sa légère

Ivresse de désir et de plaisir,

Sans rien de trop que le vague désir 

De voir son plaisir égayer son frère.

(Paris, not of the goodness of your froth, your drunken pleasure and desire, with nothing but a vague yearning to liven up your brother.)

Paris n'a rien de triste et de cruel

Que le poëte annuel ou chronique,

Crevant d'ennui sous l'oeil d'une clinique

Non loin du vieil ouvrier fraternel

(Paris, nothing but sadness and cruelty, that the poet once or always, grounded down under the eye of the sickbay, no friend now to the old brotherhood of work)

Vive Paris quand même et son histoire

Et son bagout et sa Fille, naïf

Produit d'un art pervers et primitif,

Et meure son poëte expiatoire !

(Long live Paris and your testament, your nonsense and your Woman, idiot offspring of art's perverse and primitive, and for your sins your poet sacrifice!)