ART POÉTIQUE	THE ART OF POETRY
Paul Verlaine	trans. Alan Marshfield
(À Charles Morice) De la musique avant toute chose, Et pour cela préfère l'Impair Plus vague et plus soluble dans l'air, Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui pose. Il faut aussi que tu n'ailles point Choisir tes mots sans quelque méprise: Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise Où l'Indécis au Précis se joint. C'est des beaux yeux derrière des voiles, C'est le grand jour tremblant de midi, C'est, par un ciel d'automne attiédi, Le bleu fouillis des claires étoiles! Car nous voulons la Nuance encor, Pas la Couleur, rien que la nuance! Oh! la nuance seule fiance Le rêve au rêve et la flûte au cor! Fuis du plus loin la Pointe assassine, L'Esprit cruel et le Rire impur, Qui font pleurer les yeux de l'Azur, Et tout cet ail de basse cuisine! Prends l'éloquence et tords-lui son cou! Tu feras bien, en train d'énergie, De rendre un peu la Rime assagie. Si l'on n'y veille, elle ira jusqu'où? Ô qui dira les torts de la Rime? Quel enfant sourd ou quel nègre fou Nous a forgé ce bijou d'un sou Qui sonne creux et faux sous la lime? De la musique encore et toujours! Que ton vers soit la chose envolée Qu'on sent qui fuit d'une âme en allée Vers d'autres cieux à d'autres amours. ............ ............	(to Charles Morice) Music before everything; and for that Prefer what is odd, the more frail, More diffuse in the air, not a note That is likely to pull or impale. You must also take care not to choose Words that may not be read differently twice: Nothing more precious than the distant song Where Precision meets with the Imprecise. It is fine eyes under a veil; It is the full day at quivering noon; It is the blue tangle of bright stars In the autumn, and the warm moon.(1) For we want Nuance again, not Colour, only Nuance! O scorn The rest, only Nuance can shade Dream into dream, flute into horn. Fly from these murderous Conceits, The Wit that’s cruel and the Laugh that’s crude: They make the very eyes of Heaven weep; Fly them, and this gravy in scullery food. Take Rhetoric and wring its neck; You will do well, when you treat it so, To tame Rhyme too; if you don’t take care, There is no saying how far it will go. O who will tell of the faults of Rhyme? What wild child, mad black man shapes This tuppenny-ha’penny trinket for us Sounding hollow and false as his file scrapes! Music now and forever! Let your line Be something that flits in the blue above Which one feels to escape from the soul To another sky and another love. ............ ............

(1) I’ve added: ‘and the warm moon’. Such additions, and the different rhyme-scheme,
make this as an imitation rather than a translation. Long before Lowell’s Imitations had
been written I must have favoured licences like this (and so had most other translators).
The originality of Lowell’s approach was that he took some poems off into completely new
realms, using originals as springboards. Generally, he translated at one moment with acute
accuracy and then would shoot off into something twisted and perversely (or boldly, take
your pick) different, even personal.

Click here 5 for another translation of this poem.

Trans. copyright © Alan Marshfield 2003

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