The Song of the Unloved (La chanson du Mal-Aimé)
The Song of the Unloved (La chanson du Mal-Aimé)
by Guillaume Apollinaire, translated (by me) from the French
For Paul Léautaud
And I would sing this love song
In 1903 never knowing
That my love like the phoenix goes on
If it die that evening
Morning sees it rebornOne half-fogged night in London
A lowlife who resembled
My love approached me head on
His look was such I trembled
For shame I cast my eyes down
I tracked him through the narrow
Rift that stretched between the buildings
In the Red Sea’s parted furrow
He went hands in pockets whistling
He the Hebrews I the Pharaoh1
May these brick waves crash in
If you were not loved truly
I am the Egyptian sovereign
His sister-wife his army
Should there be such love again
At a street curve all ablaze
With the fires of its housefronts
Plagues of blood-streaked haze
Where the facades lament
Was a woman with his face
It was her inhuman scowl
The scar at her bare neck
As she left the tavern soused
At this moment I accept
That love itself is false
When wise Ulysses2 in the end
Returned to his native land
His old dog remembered him
With silken tapestry in hand
His wife awaited him
Shakuntala’s husband king3
Weary of conquest rejoiced
On return to find her fading
Her gazelle close her eyes moist
Gone pale from love and waiting
I thought of these kings in their bliss
When the false love I followed
And the one I still cherish
Crashed their faithless shadows
And brought such unhappiness
Regrets upon which hell grows
Forgetful heaven is my wish
Those kings whose fame the world knows
Would die as paupers for her kiss
For her sake would sell their shadows
Time past I hibernated once
Easter’s sun has come at last
To warm a heart more turned to ice
Than the forty of Sebaste4
Yet less than my martyred life
Beautiful ship O my memory
Have we navigated enough
These undrinkable seas
Have we rambled enough
From fine dawn to dismal eve
Goodbye false love mistaken for
The woman gone from me
For the one I lost before
A year ago in Germany
Whom I shall never see more
Milky Way O luminous sister
Of the white streams of Canaan5
And the white bodies of lovers
Will we the dead swim straining
On your course to farther stars
There’s another year I think of
It was an April day at dawn
I sang my joy beloved
In a voice virile and strong
At the year’s moment for love
AUBADE6
SUNG ON LAETERE7 A YEAR AGO
It’s spring come on Pâquette8
In the yard hens are clucking
Walk in the pretty forest9
Dawn’s skies are pinkly ruffling
Love wends to your conquest
Mars and Venus have come back
They kiss with maddened mouths
In a scene of charming wrack10
Where under roses that besprout11
Dance gods in skins of lilac
Come my tenderness is regent
Over flowers manifesting
Nature is pretty and poignant
In the woods Pan is whistling12
And the wet frogs sing out
Many of these gods have perished
For their loss weeps the willow
The great Pan Love Jesus Christ
Are dead and the cats meow
In the yard I cry in Paris
I who for queens have sung lays
The laments of my epoch
The slaves’ hymns to the morays13
The ballad of the loved-not
And some songs for the mermaids
Love is dead so I tremble
I adore beautiful idols
Souvenirs he might resemble14
Like the widow of Mausole15
I stay faithful and doleful
I am faithful like the mastiff
To master the ivy to trunk
And the Zaporozhian Cossacks16
Outlaw thieves and pious drunks
To the Commandments and the steppes 17
Bear like a yoke the crescent18
That astrologers adore
O my Zaporozhians
I will be your shining lord
The all-powerful Sultan
Become my faithful subjects
The sultan to them did write
They laughed hard at the prospect
And then quick by candlelight
Hurried to send their respects
REPLY OF THE ZAPOROZHIAN COSSACKS TO THE SULTAN OF CONSTANTINOPLE
More criminal than Barábbas19
Horned like a fiend of fire
Which Beelzebub20 d’you think that is
Fed on filth and mire
We won’t attend your sabbaths
Saloniki’s21 fish gone foul
Necklace of dread eyes inert
Dug out with a trowel
Your mother let a sloppy fart
And birthed you from her bowel
Podolia’s Executioner22 Friend
Of wounds of scabs of ulcers
Pig’s snout mare’s rear end
Keep all your treasures
To pay for your medicine
Milky Way O luminous sister
Of the white streams of Canaan
And the white bodies of lovers
Will we the dead swim straining
On your course to farther stars
I do miss those eyes of a whore
Beautiful as a lioness
Lover the too bitter flavor
Tasted in your Florentine kiss23
Pushed away our fate together
Her glance left a trail of starlight
Across the shimmering evenings
The sirens swam in her eyes
Our kisses bloody and bitten
Made our fairy godmothers cry
But in truth for her I’m waiting
With all my heart with all my soul
On the bridge of Come Back to Me
Should that woman ever do so
I would tell her I am happy
My heart and head have emptied
The whole sky flows for them
O my casks of Danaïdes24
What can one do to be content
Like innocent little babies
I want never to forget her
My dove my ivory harbor
O my daisy head plucked bare
My far isle my Désirade25
My rose my gillyflower
The satyrs26 and the pyrallis27
The aegipans28 and the swamp flames
And destinies blessed or cursed
Rope round the neck as at Calais29
On my pain such holocaust30
Pain the obverse of destiny31
The unicorn and capricorn32
My uncertain soul and body
Flee you O divine pyre adorned
By these asters33 in dawn’s bouquet
Pale god ivory-eyed Misfortune
Did your mad priests decorate you
Dressed all in black your victims
Did they cry out in vain to you
Misfortune god not to believe in
You follow me crawling after
God of my gods dead in autumn
How many spans do you measure
I have the rights earth has given
O my shadow O old viper
Because you love the sunshine
Recall well I took you sunning
Somber spouse beloved darling
You are mine while being nothing
O my shadow for me mourning
Winter is dead buried in snow
The white hives are burned to ashes
In the gardens and the groves
The birds sing on the branches
Springtime brightness April glow
Death comes for the Argyraspides34
Immortals chased by dendrophores35
The snow carries its silver shields
To flee the spring dear to the poor
Who smile yet to their tears might yield
And me I have a heart as vast
As the ass of a damascene dame36
O my love I loved to excess
And now I feel far too much pain
Seven swords out of their sheaths
Seven swords of my regret
With flawless edge O brightening pains
Are in my heart and my mad head
Reasons that suffering is gain
How do you want me to forget
THE SEVEN SWORDS
The first is forged of silver
Its trembling name is Pâline37
Its blade a sky in winter
Its bloody fate Ghibelline38
Vulcan39 died in its temper
The second being Noubosse
Is a rainbow bright and joyous
Used at the weddings of the gods
It killed thirty Bé-Rieux40
And was blessed by Carabosse41
The third in girlish cerulean
Is nonetheless a priaprick42
They call Lul de Faltenin43
Which is laid out upon fabric
By Hermes Ernest44 shrunken
The fourth named Malourene
Is a river green and gold
Where the river folk each evening
Bathe their bodies dear to hold
And the oarsmen are singing
The fifth called Sainte-Fabeau
Is the finest of distaves45
Where the four winds cease to blow
It is a cypress on a grave
And each night a torch aglow
The sixth in metal of glory
Is the friend with gentle hands
Taken from us by the morning
Goodbye here is your path
Fanfares roosters tire performing
And the seventh one wears thin
A woman a lifeless rose
Grateful the last to come in
Should the door to my love close
I never made your acquaintance
Milky Way O luminous sister
Of the white streams of Canaan
And the white bodies of lovers
Will we the dead swim straining
On your course to farther stars
In the song of the firmament
We are led by demons of chance
To silenced sounds their violins
Play to make our human race dance
Facing backwards on the descent
Fates fates we cannot penetrate
Kings rattled by insanity
And these stars that coruscate
In your beds female falsity
Deserts crushed by history’s weight46
Luitpold47 the old prince regent
Guardian of two royal madmen
He reflects on it and laments
While the fireflies flicker golden
Summer flies of John the saint48
Near a castle with no mistress49
The rowboat with boatmen singing
On a white lake under breath
Of the winds rippling the spring
Cygnet50 sailing siren’s death
One day in silvered water
The king drowned51 and then mouth open
He came floating back to shore
Asleep on the bank frozen
Face toward the shifting azure
June your sun incandescent lyre52
Scorches my aching fingers
Frenzy melodious and dire
Through my fine Paris I wander
Yet without the heart to die there
Sundays stretch for infinite hours
While the barrel organs shower
Sobs on courtyards gray and dour
On Paris terraces the flowers
Lean like Pisa’s famous tower
Paris evenings drunk on gin
With electricity ablaze
Trams lit green on their back fins
Musicking along the staves
Of rails machine delirium
The cafes bulging with smoke
Cry the love of all their gypsies
Of soda siphons clogged with colds
Of waiters in loincloth pinnies53
To you, you whom I loved so
I who for queens have sung lays
The laments of my epoch
The slaves’ hymns to the morays
The ballad of the loved-not
And some songs for the mermaids
In the Biblical book of Exodus, God parts the waters of the Red Sea to allow the Hebrews to run across in their escape from the Egyptian pharaoh, then closes the waters over their pursuers.
When Odysseus (Ulysses to the Romans), the hero of Homer’s Odyssey, returns home in disguise ten years after the end of the Trojan War, his old dog, Argos, recognizes him and then dies. Odysseus finds also that his wife, Penelope, has faithfully turned away all suitors in his absence, pretending that she cannot marry until she finishes weaving a large burial shroud for his father.
The story of Shakuntala, translated into English in the late 18th century and followed by many other European translations, comes from the Hindu epic Mahabharata. While hunting a wounded gazelle, a king named Dushyanta encounters Shakuntala, falls in love and marries her. While he is away, her daydreaming about him causes her to neglect a powerful visiting sage, who curses her that her husband should forget her. When King Dushyanta finally remembers and finds her, their reunion comes years after his most glorious military victories and a long supernatural journey. A sculpture circa 1860 depicting young Shakuntala with a gazelle is at the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart.
The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste were a group of Roman soldiers traditionally venerated as Christian martyrs. According to early Christian accounts, after confessing their faith, the soldiers were condemned to be exposed naked all night beside a frozen pond to die.
Canaan is the Biblical name given, beginning in Exodus, to the land the Hebrews seek to inhabit following their nomadic years after leaving Egypt. They describe it as “flowing with milk and honey.”
A song greeting the dawn.
Laetere Sunday in the Christian liturgical calendar is three weeks before Easter. The Latin is an imperative meaning “rejoice!”
Paquette is a surname, and also the name of a syphilitic prostitute in Voltaire’s Candide. Additionally, Pâques (note the accent over the a) means Easter. The accent should darken the vowel, so that a name that usually sounds similar to the English word “packet” will sound closer to “pocket.”
For a native French reader the bois joli (pretty forest) may recall the nursery song “Le Furet” (“The Ferret”): Il court, il court, le furet, le furet du bois joli / Il est passé par ici / Il repassera par là (He runs, he runs, the ferret, the ferret from the pretty wood / He passed through here / He’ll come back there). It is widely thought to have been originally a lascivious song mocking the irreligious Cardinal Guillaume Dubois: Il fourre, il fourre, le curé, le curé Dubois joli (he sticks it in, he sticks it in, the priest, the handsome priest Dubois).
“Devant sites ingénus.” Site is an archaeological site, a spot of tourist interest, etc., and ingénu means naif, artless. The amorous deities seem to be placed in the sort of outdoor setting, say with a ruined pillar, some fabric, and a tree, carefully arranged to look careless, such as hosts their trysts in numerous artworks.
I invent this silly verb because Apollinaire has invented a silly verb: feuilloler. It is something like “leafing” but with an extra “ol” that acts as a diminutive, as if specifying small leaves. If it rhymed, I could have said “leafling.”
Pan, the ancient Greek god of untouched nature, mountains and woods, countryside and shepherds, plays a rustic flute made of reeds.
The infamously cruel Roman noble Vedius Pollio was reported to keep a pool of large, hungry eels into which he would throw slaves who annoyed him.
“He” is probably dead Love, which is to say Cupid, also known as Eros or Amor. Souvenirs here probably means mementoes and not memories.
A common subject of European painting, Artemisia II, the widow of Mausole (Mausolus) is usually depicted drinking a liquid mixed with her husband’s ashes as a ritual of extreme mourning, which she was reputed to perform daily. The word mausoleum derives from the grand edifice she built in his memory, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World.
The tale—whether true, untrue, embellished or transformed—of the Zaporozhian Cossacks’ reply to the sultan is illustrated in a famous painting by the painter Ilya Repin titled Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. The story goes that the Orthodox Christian Cossacks had defeated the Ottoman Empire’s army in battle, but nevertheless, its sultan had the cheek to write demanding they submit, to which they answered, robustly, in writing, no. Apollinaire’s verses give a potted version of a popular though forged correspondence, purporting to be copies of the letters between the sultan and the Cossacks, and is rather milder than the source text.
The original rhymes dogue (mastiff), Zaporogues (Zaporozhians), and decalogue (decalogue, or the Ten Commandments of the Bible). It’s practically worth learning French.
The crescent moon is a symbol of the Muslim religion of the Ottomans.
In the gospels of the Bible, when the Roman governor of Judea offers to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd, they choose Barabbas over Jesus.
In Judeo-Christian demonology, a high-ranking demon of hell, or an alternative name for Satan.
Saloniki, better known as Thessaloniki or Thessalonica in English, was an important city of the Ottoman Empire for over 400 years.
Podolia is a region in what is now Ukraine. In 1672, the Ottoman Empire captured its capital and held it for 27 years, during a complicated set of wars involving different factions of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, some allied with the Ottomans against common enemies, others opposed on religious grounds.
A Florentine kiss, in Apollinaire’s time, was what in English is called a French kiss: a kiss using the tongue.
In ancient Greek myth, forty-nine of the fifty daughters of King Danaus, known as the Danaïdes, for the offense of murdering their husbands, were condemned forever in Tartarus to carry water in jugs to fill a tub with a hole in it.
An island in the French West Indies. For rhyme and meter here, it is best to pronounce the name with French vowels (deh-zee-rah-duh) and include the final -e.
Satyrs are creatures of Greek myth, associated with Dionysos and wild places. They resemble men with the tails, ears, and erections of horses. Roman representations resemble Pan, giving them goat-like features.
The pyrauste (pyrallis or pyrausta) is a mythical winged creature described by Pliny the Elder as the size of a large fly, living only in fire.
Pliny the Elder used “aegipan” as the name of a satyr-like wildman he claimed lived in Libya.
During the Hundred Years’ War, the king of England, having successfully laid siege to the city of Calais, demanded that the city’s leaders complete their surrender by marching out with nooses around their necks. The event is the subject of one of Auguste Rodin’s most well-known sculptures, Les Bourgeois de Calais (The Burghers of Calais).
As this was published in 1913, the word holocaust does not allude to the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany but to its earlier, general meaning of a devastating fire or a burnt offering.
In the original, a verb tense (doubles) shows this is a direct address to Pain. The sense of “doubling” likely refers to lining or backing something, not copying or mirroring.
Capricorn is the astrological constellation of the Goat. Goats are associated with lustfulness, as in their connection to Pan and the satyrs, while unicorns are a symbol of purity and virtue.
In the original, it is “Des astres des fleurs du matin,” which, in a very awkward phrasing, means roughly “with the stars of morning flowers,” possibly deliberately to echo the word désastre (disaster). Since asters in English are themselves a flower, I have used them here, to keep the echo.
A famed military unit originally formed under Alexander the Great. Their name means “silver shields.”
A dendrophore, meaning “tree carrier,” in ancient Greece was someone who worked with wood, such as woodcutters or carpenters. In addition, officiants called dendrophores performed ceremonies for the forest cults of the goddess Cybele and her consort, Attis.
My apologies to any curvaceous Syrian readers who feel themselves the butt of this joke.
The names Apollinaire invents for the swords have a cod-medieval sound. Pâline seems to play on pâle (pale) and câline (affectionate).
A centuries-long, frequently bloody conflict between two political factions, the Ghibellines and the Guelphs, dominated the politics of medieval Italy.
The Roman name for the Greek Hephaestos, god of blacksmithing and metallurgy.
This appears to be a name Apollinaire has invented for a fictional enemy to rhyme with joyeux.
Carabosse is the name of the wicked fairy antagonist in the story “La Princesse Printanière” by Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy from 1697. The name was also later applied to the wicked fairy of Tchaikovsky’s ballet adaptation of “Sleeping Beauty.”
In the original, chibriape is a coinage by Apollinaire blending chibre (a vulgar word for penis) and priape (referring to the medical condition of priapism or the enormous-phallused Greek fertility god, Priapus), which gives a word for an erect penis that combines the crude and the classical.
Apollinaire’s name for sword number three, Lul de Faltenin, incorporates a Flemish slang term for penis, lul.
L’Hermès Ernest recalls the mystical, hermetic, alchemical figure of Hermes Trismegistus, but instead of “thrice great,” he is the more quotidian “Ernest.” In a later poem in Alcohols, “Crépuscule” (“Dawn”), Hermes Trismegistus will again be associated with a nain (dwarf).
Spindle and distaff are tools once commonly used to spin yarn. In Europe the distaff was a symbol of womanhood and a valuable, beautiful object, often given to a woman by a suitor who carved its decoration himself. A ceremonial distaff was carried by the bride in ancient Roman marriage ceremonies. A distaff wound with unspun fibers has a shape similar to both a cypress and a lit torch.
This stanza is fairly incomprehensible even in the French.
Luitpold Karl Joseph Wilhelm Ludwig ruled as Prince Regent of Bavaria from 1886 to 1912, in place of his nephews: King Ludwig II, famous for building the fairy-tale castle of Neuschwanstein, and his younger brother, King Otto, who had served as an officer in the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars. Both young men had been declared mentally unfit to rule the country.
Saint-Jean, or the feast day of Saint John the Baptist, is celebrated on the traditional European summer solstice date of the 24th of June.
Ludwig II was a homosexual who never married. The castle on the lake is Berg Palace, Ludwig II’s last residence, which overlooks Lake Starnberg in Upper Bavaria, Germany.
Ludwig II was known as the Swan King. In his youth, he and his brother Otto lived mostly at Hohenschwangau Castle, which was decorated with frescoes depicting the Knight of the Swans, Lohengrin. As king he became a great patron of the arts and sponsored Richard Wagner, who wrote the opera Lohengrin.
On June 13, 1886, Ludwig II was found dead, his head and shoulders found resting just above the waterline on the shore of Lake Starnberg.
In ancient Greek mythology, Apollo, god of the sun, plays a lyre.
Help for my American readers: in British English, a “pinny” is an apron.