Posted on December 7, 2010 | 
Is there competition going on here? I post a few poems and Clément starts firing off his translations. I do love his opening to this poem by Gérard de Nerval, the French romantic poet whose passion for dreams and the spirit world so influenced the Surrealists. I’ve read a lot of versions of El Desdichado and no one gets the rhythm and the rhyme right. Clément does more than translate; he makes poems new, tries to give readers the same poetic experience as the original. I admit this grudgingly because, well, he is such an egotist. He does get things right here though, in the opening stanza of this famous sonnet … in spite of his ghastly, ghouly self.
El Desdichado (excerpt)
Je suis le ténébreux, – le veuf, – l’inconsolé,
Le prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie;
Ma seule étoile est morte, – et mon luth constellé
Porte le Soleil noir de la Mélancolie.
—Gérard de Nerval
I am the shadowed one, —the inconsolable widower,
The prince of Aquitaine in the abandoned tower;
My only star is dead, —and my constellated lute
Bears Melancolia’s black solar flower.
—Translation: Clément
—Erin Orison, DEAD LOVE/the Daily Slice
