Even when the logic behind Hugo’s diction is not clear, his words are worth pondering. Reading through the poems with an eye to translation, I noticed that those infamously vague and repeated words of his were more precise than reputation had lead me to suppose and that they accrued suggestive senses through repetition. One such word, sinistre, appears frequently enough to make one wonder whether Hugo suffered from paranoia: must everything be sinister? But after one acquires some familiarity with his poetry, patterns in usage emerge. Hugo’s syntax sometimes forces sinistre, an adjective, to become something like an adverb in that the word points to the verb it is near as much if not more than to the noun it modifies, as if to suggest that the action described by the verb is an event that ushers in ill:

  Then my hand would open and I’d say, ‘Nothing lasts!’

  And the bouquet fell, sinister …

  (‘To the One Who Stayed Behind in France’)

  [Puis ma main s’ouvrait triste, et je disais: Tout fuit!

  Et le bouquet tombait, sinistre …

  («À Celle qui est restée en France»)]

  This sense of foreboding also haunts the more typically adjectival usages of sinistre:

  The wool of all the sinister sheep of the sea.

  (‘Shepherds and Flocks’)

  [La laine des moutons sinistres de la mer.

  («Pasteurs et troupeaux»)]

  Nor the shrill insistence of the sinister gulls (‘Letter’)

  [Ni l’importunité des sinistres oiseaux. («Lettre»)]

  The two lines cited above come at the end of their respective poems and thus suggest looming or present danger as much via their climactic position in a lyric meditation as through meanings latent or acquired in ‘sinister’. Apparently Hugo is pushing sinistre toward its etymological roots: the Latin sinister means ‘on the left’; it acquired the senses ‘unlucky’ and ‘ominous’ from the Roman augurs’ practice of interpreting birds flying to the left as an evil omen. His sinister birds at the end of ‘Letter’ virtually revive this historical meaning. It is likely that Hugo, a good Latinist writing in a Romance language, is consciously playing on the etymology of sinistre. (In ‘The Parricide’ he describes someone walking ‘Vers la gauche sinistre’, ‘toward the left and sinister side’.) But even if this wordplay or like effects in his poetry are not entirely planned, his ear seldom fails him.

  Translating Hugo

  Translating a substantial selection of Hugo’s poetry is a challenge different from that of translating many other poets’ work, even poetry from the same period. In some respects, the task of Hugo’s translator is easier than that of, say, Rimbaud’s or Mallarmé’s: Hugo’s expansive style and aesthetic allow the translator more room, if not licence, to operate; the sense of his poems is largely straightforward; he is one of France’s greatest poets yet remains woefully undertranslated; his audience is potentially large given the wide range of his poetic subjects; and his poems gain a great deal from being read together even as they thankfully demand selection (conservative estimates place his poetic production at over 155,000 lines). Some of these points in favour of the translator are at the same time disadvantages: unlike the difficult poetry of the symbolists, Hugo’s poetry feels closer to everyday language and syntax and thus more brutally exposes any line which, as the saying goes, sounds like translation; his expansiveness, even or especially when rendered literally, can misleadingly come across as overblown or as the translator’s embellishment; and selecting poems from such a large œuvre will inevitably force the translator to make painful choices, resulting nonetheless in a gargantuan enterprise (especially if one tries to keep to the Hugolian spirit), and raising thorny questions about what is included and what is left out, and about audience.

  The translator of Hugo is immediately faced with one question: whether to render Hugo’s rule-laden yet flexible French verse in English metre and rhyme. Given a clear sense of audience and purpose, this question turns out to be less difficult to answer than one might imagine. If the translator’s aim is to help an Anglophone audience appreciate Hugo through English versions of the poems, prose translations are a mistake and free verse translations will at least need to gesture toward the effects of rhyme and metre. Prose translations, however useful as aids for reading the French, would leave readers wondering why anyone would declare (even with a sigh) that Hugo is the greatest French poet. Hugo’s verse is like Robert Frost’s in that the ways in which it plays the poetic and the prosaic off each other are fundamental to its power as poetry. Removing either element would short-circuit the poetry’s energy and produce something that one would hesitate to call a poem. Consider the effects first of removing the line breaks and incidental capitals from the famous close of Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ (‘The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep’) and then of undoing the rhymes, the more insistent rhythms, and the repetition of the final phrase (‘The woods are beautiful and mysterious, but I have responsibilities and a long road to travel before I can rest’). Even a free verse translation is likely to be flaccid – mentally reinsert the line breaks into the de-rhymed version of Frost – especially considering that Hugo’s favourite verse form requires a rhyme in every other line, and that he often exploits specific features of the alexandrine couplet in order to give his poetry its characteristic rhythmic drive. These formal concerns are even the poetry’s subject matter on occasion:

  It’s all true. Curse us. The measured line that wore

  A band of twelve feathers on its forehead before

  And jumped between rackets every time it was hit

  By what they call prosody and good etiquette,

  Breaks rules now, deceives the caesura by a word,

  And escapes, shuttlecock changing into a bird,

  From the cage of mid-line …

  (‘Reply to an Act of Accusation’)

  [C’est vrai, maudissez-nous. Le vers, qui sur son front

  Jadis portait toujours douze plumes en rond,

  Et sans cesse sautait sur la double raquette

  Qu’on nomme prosodie et qu’on nomme étiquette,

  Rompt désormais la règle et trompe le ciseau,

  Et s’échappe, volant qui se change en oiseau,

  De la cage césure …

  («Réponse à un acte d’accusation»)]

  If, as is often claimed, syntax is a kind of metaphor in Mallarmé, rhyme and rhythm are virtually figures of thought in Hugo. A good translation must find ways to convey their effects.

  A more prickly question facing the translator is what sort of English verse form suits Hugo’s poetry best. Over the years many translators have felt that iambic pentameter is the closest English equivalent to the French alexandrine. Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Browning, Yeats, Frost, and many other poets writing during and beyond the centuries in which the alexandrine dominated French verse have accustomed our ears – so the argument runs – to a line generally ten syllables long and in a rhythm supposedly close to that of natural speech: five units, or feet, of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables, with varying allowances for alternative feet within the basic pattern. Established and perceived norms certainly affect how we read, and the strong tradition of blank verse and rhyming pentameter in English is a compelling rationale for rendering French alexandrines in iambic pentameter. Given its epic pedigree, blank verse may in fact be well suited to Hugo’s long narrative poems. This logic of historically accrued associations, though, can just as easily be applied against iambic pentameter. Pairs of rhyming pentameter lines (‘heroic couplets’) may evoke the ghosts of Dryden and Pope, a neoclassical aesthetic of balance and proportion, and in doing so infuse the translation with associations at cross-purposes with the effects one is seeking to produce – a particular danger when translating romantic poetry. And if blank verse feels ordinary to an Anglophone ear, it risks domesticating Hugo’s odd alexandrines. Perhaps a mildly alienating verse form is more fitting. When used to exclude all other possibilities, any rationale for translation can become a rationalization.

  Iambic pentameter is not an inevitable substitute for the alexandrin; with Hugo’s poetry an equally if not more compelling case can be made for an English alexandrine. Most obviously, the extra syllables of the alexandrine give the translator more room and thus more flexibility, a welcome situation even when rhyme is not a concern. To the objection that alexandrines ‘just don’t work’ in English, one need only adduce the opening sonnet of Sir Philip Syndey’s Astrophil and Stella, whose advice to the poet seems especially apt: ‘“Fool,” said my muse to me, “look in thy heart and write.’” More importantly, the feel of an English alexandrine depends at least as much on how the translator handles the line as on some intrinsic property of it, properties that have become associated with a given verse form change and can, to some extent, be changed, and Hugo’s alexandrines seem especially in need of a more expansive English equivalent, if only to accommodate his tone and gestures. (Additional arguments specific to Hugo’s verse might be gleaned from my literary-historical discussion of the French alexandrine.) Conversely, endorsements of particular properties of iambic pentameter should not exclude the alexandrine from the translator’s repertoire. It is sometimes claimed, for example, that an iambic pentameter line can be delivered more rapidly and thereby avoid sounding pompous. But this claim, even if true, presumably applies more to verse plays than lyric poetry. Finally, as inspiring as successful translations in heroic couplets are (Richard Wilbur’s versions of Molière come to mind), the untapped possibilities of the English alexandrine may be more enticing.

  Whatever the challenges of translating verse poetry in verse, even metered verse, the idea of a verse translation is relatively uncontroversial. Rhyming, by contrast, may be the leading cause of consternation among readers of poetry in translation. Infidelity to the original is the main charge here, though readers arguably ought to be more critical of poor aesthetic results. (If the original is of high quality, a faithful translation that produces a mediocre poem is, in reality, unfaithful, and potentially performs a disservice to the poem, the poem’s author, and poetry in general; a successful poetic imitation, even if it strays from the spirit of the original, will at least be worth something as a poem.) At any rate, aesthetically satisfying rhymes do not inherently produce unfaithful translations, however much they may heighten the reader’s suspicions, and they ideally help keep a translation faithful. My rhymes aspire to the ease and the beauty of Hugo’s precisely because I want my translations to remain faithful to those important qualities of his poetry. Yet for all of the emphasis I place on crafting English alexandrines and English rhyming couplets, I do not so much seek formal parity – twelve syllables for twelve syllables, one rhyme for one rhyme – as affective equivalence. Poetic translations should first and foremost feel like the originals. In practice this means that I occasionally drop a rhyme or alter the scheme of the couplets. For some verse forms, I skirt the rhyme-for-rhyme approach still more. When translating quatrains with either abab or abba rhyme schemes, for example, I generally concentrate on the rhyme that closes the stanza, and even then let rhythm and line integrity perform much of the poetic work:

  And today my eyes are only open half-way;

  I don’t turn around even when my name is called;

  I am full of stupor and ennui, like a man

  Who wakes before dawn without having slept at all.

  (‘Veni, Vidi, Vixi’)

  [Maintenant, mon regard ne s’ouvre qu’à demi;

  Je ne me tourne plus même quand on me nomme;

  Je suis plein de stupeur et d’ennui, comme un homme

  Qui se lève avant l’aube et qui n’a pas dormi.

  («Veni, Vidi, Vixi»)]

  For at least one other Hugolian stanza, the consistency of my rhymes varies substantially from poem to poem, sometimes within the same poem. The stanza in question has an aabccb rhyme scheme, and consists of two pairs of alexandrine couplets divided by a six-syllable ‘half-alexandrine’ that rhymes with another six-syllable line following the second couplet. One of the most striking features of this stanza is the interplay between the long lines and the short lines:

  Forced by the steps he took to come up off the ground,

  The leaves that were lying in the peopleless woods

  Went flying in a pack.

  In the same way sometimes, when the soul is sad, our thoughts

  Fly upwards on their wounded wings for a moment,

  Then suddenly fall back.

  (‘Olympio’s Sadness’)

  [Les feuilles qui gisaient dans le bois solitaire,

  S’efforçant sous ses pas de s’élever de terre,

  Couraient dans le jardin;

  Ainsi, parfois, quand l’âme est triste, nos pensées

  S’envolent un moment sur leurs ailes blessées,

  Puis retombent soudain.

  («Tristesse d’Olympio»)]

  As the verse expands following the third line, then contracts in the final line, the poetry enacts the sensation of briefly entertaining a hope. Rhyme plays only a part in this effect, and my translation efforts are geared accordingly toward keeping the line lengths, syntax, and closing phrase intact. On other occasions, however, both or one of the couplet rhymes can take on greater prominence:

  The pale night lifted its face into the clouds;

  Things were dissolving, diminished, colourless

  In the moon’s distant eyes.

  When night falls, or rises from the ashes at day’s end,

  All at once one senses sadness descend

  And anxiety rise.

  (‘Magnitudo Parvi’)

  [La pâle nuit levait son front dans les nuées;

  Les choses s’effaçaient, blêmes, diminuées,

  Sans forme et sans couleur;

  Quand il monte de l’ombre, il tombe de la cendre;

  On sentait à la fois la tristesse descendre

  Et monter la douleur.

  («Magnitudo Parvi»)]

  The rising and falling effect in ‘Olympio’s Sadness’ is reversed here and expressed in a different timbre as sadness descends and anxiety rises. In the first couplet, the rhythm resulting from the list of adjectives is arguably more prominent than the rhyme. In the second couplet, the pause occasioned by the line break and rhyme is crucial to the impact of the final line. The rising anxiety comes across as more devastating than the falling sadness; nightfall (or moonrise) does not bring about peace or some other opposite of sadness, but apprehension. My translation tries to reflect the importance of the pause and the various oppositions at play in Hugo’s verse – so much so that, besides retaining the couplet rhyme and the closing rhyme, I have shortened the final alexandrine to emphasize the pause, and I have reworked Hugo’s phrasing to keep some of the more striking images, the moon and the ashes, active and in focus. The moral of the story is that the importance of any given poetic feature – rhyme, diction, imagery, or whatever – cannot be determined in advance, and that staying faithful to the original cannot be reduced to formal or verbal fidelity.

  Some general descriptions of my translations will better outline my approach to translating Hugo than a lengthy theoretical discussion. With the exception of ‘The Expiation’, my translations contain the same number of lines as the originals, and I strive to maintain the formal integrity of individual lines, especially with regard to sharp caesuras and enjambments. (Readers with some French will not, I think, experience a rhythmic jolt when glancing occasionally at the facing original.) My alexandrines are loose’, mostly iambic (no ‘Night Before Christmas’ effect) and regular enough to suggest norms analogous to those of the French while allowing for frequent rhythmic substitution and syllabic variation – in short, verse that ideally keeps the length and content of the line intact yet is supple enough to match Hugo’s twists and turns. Verbal fidelity is a priority for me, to the point where I can imagine a reader surprised to find that some of the most fluid rhyming lines are also some of the most accurate word-for-word translations. In some instances where literal meaning may be obscured in an otherwise faithful rendering, I provide an explanatory note in back of the book. Readers will have to decide for themselves whether I step over the line, so to speak, regarding matters of fidelity and licence. One of the best tests for readers who know French is to read one of my translations straight through, then read the original and compare the experiences. For readers with little or no French, I offer the closing passage from ‘Clearing’ (‘Éclaircie’) as a test case: