A gleam, a faint ray that shoots from the cradle

  A woman balances on a cottage threshold

  Glazes the flowers, fields, and waves, then turns to gold

  When striking a grave near the church it sinks behind.

  The day plunges into the sea, and tries to find

  Its shadow, kisses it through the surf and is gone.

  Everything is quiet, mild, appeased: God looks on.

  [Une lueur, rayon vague, part du berceau

  Qu’une femme balance au seuil d’une chaumière,

  Dore les champs, les fleurs, l’onde, et devient lumière

  En touchant un tombeau qui dort près du clocher.

  Le jour plonge au plus noir du gouffre, et va chercher

  L’ombre, et la baise au front sous l’eau sombre et hagarde.

  Tout est doux, calme, heureux, apaisé; Dieu regarde.]

  The degree of verbal fidelity in this example may be low for my translations taken as a whole, but the passage is fairly typical of poems translated in rhyming alexandrine couplets. A prose version with slashes to mark the line breaks would go something like this: ‘A glimmer, a vague ray, issues from the cradle/ which a woman is balancing on the threshold of a cottage,/ gilds the fields, flowers, waves, and turns to light/ when touching a grave that sleeps near a steeple./ The day dives into the blackest [part] of the abyss, and goes looking for/ [its] shadow, and kisses it on the forehead beneath the sombre and haggard water./ Everything is mild, calm, happy, appeased; God looks on.’

  Though not always a conscious strategy, the drive to render the original poem’s power and beauty while remaining as faithful as possible to its particular words and effects may be the working principle behind my translations. My rhymes, like my rhythms, aim at potent flexibility: I do not hesitate to use half-and other less-than-full rhymes, for example, sometimes with the goal of producing a ‘soft rhyme’ closer to the feel of the French. (English rhythms and rhymes can sound more definitive than the French – perhaps another argument in favour of the English alexandrine, with its leisurely reputation, against crisp and short pentameter verse.) As with my rhythmic substitutions, though, I try not to employ near rhymes with so great a frequency as to diminish their effect, obscure important formal patterns, or disrupt the poem’s musical atmosphere. And while I take care to reproduce rhymes and other formal features of Hugo’s verse, I do not fetishize any single feature: I may make an extra effort to bring across Hugo’s start-and-stop rhythms, for example, but I don’t try to preserve every caesura. Tact and attention to local effects are often better guides to translation than abstract rules or principles, and a successful poetic translation will inevitably be a strong interpretation of the poem.

  Selecting and Presenting Hugo’s Poems

  Hugo’s work demands selection for reasons that go beyond its vast size. To be sure, at a time when editors strongly prefer to publish poets in Complete and Collected volumes, it is already significant that no publisher is tempted to venture even a selectively complete translation of Hugo – ‘Victor Hugo’s Poems of Exile’, or some such thing. Publishing a translation of one of Hugo’s collections is barely imaginable.Contemplations, for example, contains over 150 poems, of which a few are over fifteen pages long, several over ten pages, and many over five pages. Even if publication size were not an issue, though, any translator hoping that Hugo’s poetry will reach readers and that readers will enjoy it (any translator who, in short, cares deeply about the poetry) would still want to present the poems in a selected form. To put the matter in an ungenerous perspective, Hugo’s poems vary as much in quality as they do in size and subject matter. Stated in another way, Hugo’s best qualities are scattered throughout his work. When first reading his poetry, it helps to have a guide.

  Fortunately with Hugo, most poems seem to select themselves. While one does not need to search far to find wildly divergent views on what is Hugo’s best poetry, many poems appear regularly enough in anthologies to be considered standards. Any selection of his poetry that failed to include, say, ‘Tomorrow, at dawn …’ or ‘Boaz Asleep’, would either be wilfully perverse or risk appearing so. The regularly included poems are, happily, among Hugo’s best: when selecting work to translate I never felt I had to compromise my aesthetic judgment in order to make room for an anthology piece I did not like. At most, some poem which was not my first choice, like ‘Olympio’s Sadness’, nevertheless contained enough strong moments to win me over. In the vast majority of cases – with poems such as ‘The Djinns’, ‘To Albrecht Dürer’, ‘The Spinning Wheel of Omphale’, ‘At Villequier’, ‘Shepherds and Flocks’, and ‘The Infanta’s Rose’ – the question of leaving out was never an issue and should not be one. Some lesser known poems also seemed to me to demand inclusion, both because they appealed to me and because they translated well. In this category I would place selections like ‘Rapture’, ‘My Two Daughters’, ‘Letter’, ‘Open Windows’, ‘Jeannine Asleep’, and ‘The Sister of Mercy’, poems which, while not obscure, are perhaps less likely to find their way into short anthologies of Hugo’s poetry. The usual suspects and the lesser known gems account for virtually every poem in my selected Hugo. Even the temptation to include additional poems in order to show the poet’s range proved as rare as the feeling that I was including an anthology piece I did not like. Hugo’s best poems amply demonstrate his variety.

  My main aim in presentation is to collect the poems in such a way as to help readers enjoy and understand them. For this reason, I have supplied explanatory notes, but placed them in the back of the volume, to be consulted or ignored as the reader sees fit. The notes consist mostly of glosses on proper names and topical references, translations of phrases in languages other than French or English and clarifications of some translated words or passages. Occasionally I offer interpretative suggestions, especially if they involve basic disputes over meaning, but I try to keep these comments to a minimum. For most collections, I provide some information complementary or additional to that which can be found in this introduction, such as more detailed accounts of publication and historical context. The poems, meanwhile, are unsullied by footnote markings and marginalia, and the translations are placed on pages opposite to the originals so that the reader who wants to compare the French and the English poems can do so with convenience, or read in one language, as he or she prefers.

  If it can be said with justice that Hugo of all poets gains something when his work is viewed as a whole, it can also be said, and with equal justice, that Hugo of all poets gains something through careful selection and presentation. In saying this, I do not wish to echo distantly Gide’s lament; I hope to translate more of Hugo’s poetry some day. For now, though, a selection creative and crafted, if by Hugolian standards Lilliputian, will do more for English readers than any volume of run-of-the-mill translations. Given time, it may also create the demand for more.

  Steven Monte

  March 2001

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Leah Price, David Southward, Matthew Greenfield, and Stephen Lewis for their timely suggestions and much more than editorial work on this book. Translating and introducing a poet like Hugo is a daunting project, and I feel fortunate to have had their help and support along the way.

  From Odes et Ballades (1822, 1823, 1824, 1826, 1828)

  À Mes Odes

  Le poëte, inspiré lorsque la terre ignore,

  Ressemble à ces grands monts que la nouvelle aurore

  Dore avant tous à son réveil,

  Et qui, longtemps vainqueurs de l’ombre,

  Gardent jusque dans la nuit sombre

  Le dernier rayon du soleil.

  From Odes and Ballads

  To My Odes

  The poet, inspired when the world is unaware,

  Is like those giant peaks on which the dawn’s red flare

  Alights with its first displays,

  And which, having long since pushed the shadows back,

  Up until the moment when the heavens turn black,

  Hold onto the sun’s last rays.

  From Les Orientales (1829)

  La Captive

  On entendait le chant des oiseaux

  aussi harmonieux que la poésie.

  Sadi., Guilistan

  Si je n’étais captive,

  J’aimerais ce pays,

  Et cette mer plaintive,

  Et ces champs de maïs,

  Et ces astres sans nombre,

  Si le long du mur sombre

  N’étincelait dans l’ombre

  Le sabre des spahis.

  Je ne suis point tartare

  Pour qu’un eunuque noir

  M’accorde ma guitare,

  Me tienne mon miroir.

  Bien loin de ces Sodomes,

  Au pays dont nous sommes,

  Avec les jeunes hommes

  On peut parler le soir.

  Pourtant j’aime une rive

  Où jamais des hivers

  Le souffle froid n’arrive

  Par les vitraux ouverts,

  L’été, la pluie est chaude,

  L’insecte vert qui rôde

  Luit, vivante émeraude,

  Sous les brins d’herbe verts.

  Smyrne est une princesse

  Avec son beau chapel;

  L’heureux printemps sans cesse

  Répond à son appel,

  Et, comme un riant groupe

  De fleurs dans une coupe,

  Dans ses mers se découpe

  Plus d’un frais archipel.

  J’aime ces tours vermeilles,

  Ces drapeaux triomphants,

  Ces maisons d’or, pareilles

  À des jouets d’enfants;

  J’aime, pour mes pensées

  Plus mollements bercées,

  Ces tentes balancées

  Au dos des éléphants.

  Dans ce palais de fées,

  Mon cœur, plein de concerts,

  Croit, aux voix étouffées

  Qui viennent des déserts,

  Entendre les génies

  Mêler les harmonies

  Des chansons infinies

  Qu’ils chantent dans les airs!

  J’aime de ces contrées

  Les doux parfums brûlants,

  Sur les vitres dorées

  Les feuillages tremblants,

  L’eau que la source épanche

  Sous le palmier qui penche,

  Et la cigogne blanche

  Sur les minarets blancs

  J’aime en un lit de mousses

  Dire un air espagnol,

  Quand mes compagnes douces,

  Du pied rasant le sol,

  Légion vagabonde

  Où le sourire abonde,

  Font tournoyer leur ronde

  Sous un rond parasol.

  Mais surtout, quand la brise

  Me touche en voltigeant,

  La nuit j’aime être assise,

  Être assise en songeant,

  L’œil sur la mer profonde,

  Tandis que, pâle et blonde,

  La lune ouvre dans l’onde

  Son éventail d’argent.

  From Orientalia

  The Captive

  One heard birdsong as harmonious as poetry.

  Sadi., Guilistan

  If I weren’t a captive here

  I would love this distant land,

  And this melancholy sea,

  And these ripened fields of wheat,

  And these heavens’ countless stars,

  If along these darkened walls,

  The Spahis’ crescent swords,

  Didn’t glimmer in the dark.

  I’m not a Tartar woman.

  No black eunuch needs

  To hand me my guitar or hold

  My mirror up for me.

  Far from all these Sodomites

  In the lands from which we come,

  One can even talk with young

  Unmarried men at night.

  And yet I love these mild shores

  Where the coldest winter blasts

  Never arrive, or hurry past

  The open windows and doors –

  Where the rain is warm in summer

  And that green fly tinted gold

  Glows like a living emerald

  Under the green blades of grass.

  Smyrna is a kind of queen

  With its crown that looks on all,

  Where happy springtime can be seen,

  Responding to its call,

  And, like groups of flowers one sees

  All laughing in a pot,

  More than one archipelago

  Spills over into its seas.

  I love the red towers, the noise

  Of pennants blowing in the breeze –

  These triumphant pennants – and these

  Gold roofs like children’s toys;

  And, to rock my passing thoughts back

  And forth more gently, I love

  These high tents balanced on top of

  An elephant’s back.

  In these enchanted palaces,

  Always hearing melodies,

  I would swear that I hear djinns

  In the muffled voices a breeze

  Brings in from the desert, where

  They generate harmonies

  That blend into the countless songs

  They sing into the air.

  I love the sweet and burning

  Scents of this land. I adore

  The foliage trembling

  Above a gold window or door,

  Water bubbling from a spring

  Beneath a bending palm tree,

  And white storks on white minarets

  Surrounded by the sea.

  I like to sing a Spanish air

  Lying on a bed of moss,

  While my sweet companions there –

  A band of women – toss

  Their hair and batter the ground

  With their feet, where smiles abound

  And everyone can dance their round

  Underneath a parasol.

  But especially when a breeze

  Caresses me and swirls around,

  At evening I like to sit down,

  Sit down alone and dream,

  Staring across the sea, while the man

  In the moon casts his pale spells,

  Opening up his silver fan

  When the water’s surface swells.

  Clair de lune

  Per amica silentia lunae.

  Virgile

  La lune était sereine et jouait sur les flots.

  La fenêtre enfin libre est ouverte à la brise,

  La sultane regarde, et la mer qui se brise,

  Là-bas, d’un flot d’argent brode les noirs îlots.

  De ses doigts en vibrant s’échappe la guitare.

  Elle écoute… Un bruit sourd frappe les sourds échos.

  Est-ce un lourd vaisseau turc qui vient des eaux de Cos,

  Battant l’archipel grec de sa rame tartare?

  Sont-ce des cormorans qui plongent tour à tour,

  Et coupent l’eau, qui roule en perles sur leur aile?

  Est-ce un djinn qui là-haut siffle d’une voix grêle,

  Et jette dans la mer les créneaux de la tour?

  Qui trouble ainsi les flots près du sérail des femmes?

  Ni le noir cormoran, sur la vague bercé,

  Ni les pierres du mur, ni le bruit cadencé

  Du lourd vaisseau, rampant sur Fonde avec des rames.

  Ces sont des sacs pesants, d’où partent des sanglots.

  On verrait, en sondant la mer qui les promène,

  Se mouvoir dans leurs flancs comme une forme humaine…

  La lune était sereine et jouait sur les flots.

  Moonlight

  Per amica silentia lunae.

  Virgil

  The moonlight was serene and playing on the waves.

  The window finally comes loose and opens to the air.

  The sultana looks out, and the wrinkled sea weaves

  Its silver threads among the dark islets out there.

  The guitar jingles, dropping from her fingers to the floor.

  She listens… A muffled sound strikes the muffled echoes.

  Is it some Turkish vessel packed with goods from Cos

  Beating the Greek islands with its Tartar oar?

  Are those things vultures there, swooping suddenly

  And hitting water turning to pearls beneath their wings?

  Is that a genie up there shrilly whistling

  And throwing crenellations of its tower in the sea?

  What’s troubling the waves near the harem and its shores?

  Not black cormorants hovering above the swells,

  Nor stones from a wall, and not the cadenced rhythm

  Of a packed vessel crawling through the water with its oars.

  Those things out there from which you can hear sobbing are sacks.

  Watching how the current causing them to drift behaves

  You might just make out some struggling human forms…

  The moonlight was serene and playing on the waves.

  Les Djinns

  E come i gru van cantando lor lai

  Facendo in aer di se lunga riga,

  Cosi vid’io venir traendo guai

  Ombre portate dalla detta briga.

  Dante

  Et comme les grues qui font dans

  l’air de longues files vont chantant

  leur plainte, ainsi je vis venir traînant

  des gémissements les ombres emportées

  par cette tempête.

  Mur, ville

  Et port,

  Asile

  De mort,

  Mer grise

  Où brise

  La brise,

  Tout dort.

  Dans la plaine

  Naît un bruit.

  C’est l’haleine

  De la nuit.

  Elle brame

  Comme une âme