The gypsy1 woman could foretell
Our two lives by the nights blocked in2
We bade her farewell and then
Hope came springing from that well3
Love as heavy as a tame bear
Stood and danced for us whenever
And the bluebird lost his feathers
And the beggars their prayers
We know full well that we are damned
But hopes of love along the way
Set us to thinking hand in hand
Of the things the gypsy did say
Read my introduction here.
According to Annie Playden’s comments to a French journalist who tracked her down decades later, while Apollinaire was working in Germany for the same aristocratic family that employed Playden, he would spend a lot of time with tziganes who camped beside the Rhine as they followed the river. The details and ambience of this camp reappear in many of his poems.
Nos deux vies barrées par les nuits (literally, "Our two lives barred by the nights”)—what an absolute pain in the ass it was to translate this line! I dislike translating what I don’t understand, and this simple word, barrées, was the cause of huge struggle. Barrer, the verb, can mean all of the following, according to the canonical French dictionary Larousse: to barricade or block off an area; to lie across a surface, as a ceremonial sash lies across a chest; and to strike a line through a text to mark for deletion. Therefore barré contains all the ambiguities of the English word “barred” plus something like “slashed.”
What it means for two lives to be barrées by the nights is not clear at all. So I imagined Kostro and his girlfriend, working in Germany. I don’t know if he was housed in the same place as the family or took rooms elsewhere; as the governess, I suspect Annie was most likely in the family home. Therefore it might be a bit of a difficulty to get some time off and canoodle—it could be that the nights were all they had, or it could be that at night she was utterly unavailable to him, closed away in the family house. Either way, there is a boundary around the nights, either permeable or impermeable, which would chop up lovers’ days around them. I have gone with this picture in mind—if Kostro would like to complain, he knows where to find me.
My weak pun reflects one of Apollinaire’s weak puns. Mine plays with “farewell” and “well.” His plays with puis (then) and puits (well, as in where you get water):
Nous lui dîmes adieu et puis
De ce puits sortit l’Espérance
Literally: We told her goodbye and then / From this well came out Hope.