Stephane Mallarme translations

These are my modern English translations of poems by Stephane Mallarme, one of my favorite French poets. These include the sonnet "Le Cygne" ("The Swan") and the sonnet "Le tombeau d’Edgar Poe."

These are my modern English translations of poems by Stephane Mallarme, one of my favorite French poets.

The Tomb of Edgar Poe
by Stéphane Mallarmé
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Transformed into himself by Death, at last,
the Bard unsheathed his Art’s recondite blade
to duel with dullards, blind & undismayed,
who’d never heard his ardent Voice, aghast!

Like dark Medusan demons of the past
who’d failed to heed such high, angelic words,
men called him bendered, his ideas absurd,
discounting all the warlock’s spells he’d cast.

The wars of heaven and hell? Earth’s senseless grief?
Can sculptors carve from myths a bas-relief
to illuminate the sepulcher of Poe?

No, let us set in granite, here below,
a limit and a block on this disaster:
this Blasphemy, to not acknowledge a Master!

Stéphane Mallarmé fervently admired Edgar Allan Poe, as did other leading French poets, including Charles Baudelaire and Paul Valéry. Baudelaire translated a good bit of Poe’s short fiction into French and described Poe as a “sacred soul” with a “spiritual and angelic nature.” Mallarmé collaborated with the artist Édouard Manet to create an illustrated translation of Poe’s most famous poem. This joint effort, Le Corbeau (“The Raven”), was published in 1875. Mallarmé echoed Baudelaire’s sentiments about Poe, calling him “the purest among the spirits…made of stars, made of lightning.”

Le tombeau d’Edgar Poe
by Stéphane Mallarmé

Tel qu’en Lui-même enfin l’éternité le change,
Le Poète suscite avec un glaive nu
Son siècle épouvanté de n’avoir pas connu
Que la mort triomphait dans cette voix étrange!

Eux, comme un vil sursaut d’hydre oyant jadis l’ange
Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu,
Proclamèrent très haut le sortilège bu
Dans le flot sans honneur de quelque noir mélange.

Du sol et de la nue hostiles, ô grief!
Si notre idée avec ne sculpte un bas-relief
Dont la tombe de Poe éblouissante s’orne

Calme bloc ici-bas chu d’un désastre obscur
Que ce granit du moins montre à jamais sa borne
Aux noirs vols du Blasphème épars dans le futur.

"Le Cygne" ("The Swan")
by Stéphane Mallarmé
this untitled poem is also called Mallarmé's "White Sonnet"
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The virginal, the vivid, the vivacious day:
can its brilliance be broken by a wild wing-blow
delivered to this glacial lake
whose frozen ice-falls impede flight? No.

In past reflections on its thoughts today
the Swan remembers freedom, but can’t make
a song from its surroundings, only take
on the winter's ghostly hue of snow.

In the Swan's white agony its bared neck lies
within a guillotine its sense denies.
Slowly being frozen to its inner being,
the body ignores the phantom spirit fleeing ...

Cold contempt for its captor
is of no use to the raptor.

The original French poem:

Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui
Va-t-il nous déchirer avec un coup d'aile ivre
Ce lac dur oublié que hante sous le givre
Le transparent glacier des vols qui n'ont pas fui !

Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui
Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre
Pour n'avoir pas chanté la région où vivre
Quand du stérile hiver a resplendi l'ennui.

Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie
Par l'espace infligée à l'oiseau qui le nie,
Mais non l'horreur du sol où le plumage est pris.

Fantôme qu'à ce lieu son pur éclat assigne,
Il s'immobilise au songe froid de mépris
Que vêt parmi l'exil inutile le Cygne.

Stephane Mallarme was a major French poet and one of the leading French symbolist poets.

Keywords/Tags: Stephane Mallarme, France, French poet, symbolism, symbolist, symbolic, poetry, swan, lake, Edgar Allan Poe, grave, tomb, sepulcher, memorial, elegy, eulogy, epitaph, sonnet