RABEARIVELO: SOIRS MALGACHES
Rabearivelo's earliest work
All translations from now on will be based on the French from Meitinger, Ink, Ramarosoa and Riffard’s collection (Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Œuvres complètes, Tome II, ed. Serge Meitinger, Laurence Ink, Liliane Ramarosoa, Claire Riffaud. Paris: Planète Libre CNRS Editions, 2012.). I’m very grateful to my former lecturer and tutor Dr. Gavin Bowd for providing the .pdf version of Œuvres completes for me to work from, which otherwise would have been impossible to get a hold of. You can find some of his work here: Gavin Philip Bowd — University of St Andrews Research Portal (st-andrews.ac.uk). His research areas and expertise range across French, Romanian, British (and more specifically Scottish) history and literature, and the 20th-century politics of these places. It’s very eclectic subject matter and anyone with a lick of curiosity will find much of interest there, while History anoraks will find a goldmine—do have a look.
The following collection, ‘SOIRS MALGACHES/MALAGASY EVENINGS,’ comes from a notebook retrieved from ‘La Malle,’ ‘The Trunk/Suitcase,’ one of a few recovered from the Rabearivelo family archives which contained some of the poet’s early work in French (much of it unpublished during his lifetime), made up in folded Creton & Hébant headed paper. As Meitinger points out in his introduction to this collection in Œuvres completes, these discoveries forced a re-evaluation of previous scholarly assumptions that Rabearivelo’s French had been rather shaky in his adolescent years. In fact, the French here is rather good, containing only a few idiosyncrasies and mistakes common among francophone Malagasy, which frankly (to me at least) are less mistakes than differences of dialect. These poems do of course show somewhat inferior style—a naïf stage—compared to his later work. This is not atypical of eighteen-year old poets. Nonetheless, with these poems it may be more worthwhile than usual to read over my notes on the translations which will point out and interpret some of the eccentricities in the original. Even in this small cross-section in time of poems though, there is a notable difference in quality between the ones from mid-1921 and the poems which appear towards the end from early 1922 (the collection is presented roughly chronologically). It’s clear to see in him the rapid improvement which keen amateurs often undergo around the turn of adulthood. The later poems in this set have fewer notes, as the French is much less eccentric and, being quite simple, is easily translated in a direct way which does not demand extensive notes on grammar, notwithstanding whether notes re meaning are called for. I think these are still worth reading over as even young (or younger; he never grew old) Rabearivelo loves to deal in double meanings which don’t come off in the translation and have to be pointed out in footnotes.
Some of these poems were published in Le Journal de Madagascar franco-malgache in 1923. I have also kept in the poem ‘Le Couchant/The Setting Sun,’ which is appended in Œuvres completes to the Soirs Malgaches ‘malle’ collection, and which Rabearivelo published on May 24, 1921 in La Tribune de Madagascar et Dépendances, under the pseudonym ‘Jean Osmé’. I’m not sure about the meaning of this pseudonym—my best guess is it’s based on the Ancient (Koine) Greek ‘ὀσμή,’ meaning ‘a smell,’ or ‘aroma’. This seems somehow more likely to me than the possibility that he based the pseudonym on the Czech word for ‘seven,’ which is also ‘osmé’. Many terms in English usage, particularly medical terms like anosmia, come from this same root. My best guess is that it’s a combination of the classic self-deprecating pseudonym, with an aspirational double meaning. Consider how often Rabearivelo talks in these early poems about the fragrances of Madagascan flora, speaks of ‘parfums’ blown on the wind, and how much more effective even than any other prompt are smells at evoking memories—these poems, like almost all of Rabearivelo’s poems, are plaintive loveletter-elegies to Madagascar, often in the persona of a lover as a metaphorical stand-in. It is notable as the first piece he ever published in French. I decided not to attribute any notes at all to this poem in a break with my usual practice. It’s the first poem the young poet felt comfortable and confident to release into the world, if pseudonymously, and it felt right to let it stand on its own unadorned and without apology.
Soirs malgaches Combien de fois faut-il que je chante et décrive l’insigne enchantement en tes beaux soirs enclos, quand l’esquif de la Nuit, sur d’invisibles flots, vogue, vogue en secret vers toi, mon Iarive ? Plein de magnificence enivrante, il arrive parmi le doux soupir de la brise en sanglots ; le Silence et le Songe, à bord, ses matelots, d’un murmure infini, débarquent sur ta rive. Déjà la pesanteur nocturne nous endort, déjà, la lune, aux cieux, sur des nuages d’or, fait, comme un paon, sa roue éblouissante et brève, et nous nous endormons, heureux et sans souci, l’haleine régulière et le souffle adouci, nous contentant de boire à la coupe du Rêve ! Malagasy evenings How often must I sing of and describe the enchantment-sign in your beautiful, enclosed evenings, when Night's skiff, on the invisible waves, sails, sails in secret towards you, my Iarivo? Full of intoxicating magnificence, it arrives amid the soft sighing of the sobbing breeze; Silence and Dreaming aboard, its sailors, with an infinite murmur, disembark on your shore. Already the gravity of the night lulls us to sleep, already the moon, in the heavens, on clouds of gold, makes, like a peacock, its dazzling and brief cartwheel, and we fall asleep, happy and insouciant, breathing regular and breath softened, contenting ourselves by drinking from the cup of Dreaming!
Notes on Translation: Soirs Malgaches/Malagasy Evenings.1
Nouveau soir malgache Ô beau soir de féerie, ô magie, ô grandeur, soir de béatitude et de magnificence, ô soir auquel sourit la lune en décroissance, enivre, ô soir divin, mon cœur de ta splendeur ! Fais que les flèches d’or, de sinople et d’opale que lance ton soleil à travers l’horizon, transpercent, par moment, mon être en pâmoison, mon être las, mon être et défaillant et pâle... Que tes mains, où se fige son rayon moribond, retiennent mollement mes élans de détresse et que mon âme étanche, en ton puits de tendresse, sa soif de voir l’Amour, dans ton parc, vagabond ! Et tandis qu’au lointain la brise se lamente, comme un immense cri de fantômes défunts, grise-moi tendrement, noyé dans les parfums qui flottent, si subtils, au cou de mon amante. Soir d’Iarive, ô soir dont l’heure est si charmante ! New Malagasy evening O beautiful evening of wonder, O magic, O grandeur, evening of beatitude and magnificence, O evening on which smiles the waning moon, intoxicate, O divine evening, my heart with your splendour! Let the arrows of gold, sinople, and opal which your sun flings across the horizon, pierce, at times, my swooning being, my weary being, my fainting and pale being... Let your hands, when its moribund ray freezes, feebly hold back my outbursts of distress, and let my soul quench, in your well of tenderness, its thirst to see Love, in your park, wandering! And while far in the distance the breeze laments, like an immense cry of dead ghosts, tenderly intoxicate me, drowned in the perfumes that float, so subtle, around my lover's neck. Evening of Iarive, O evening whose hour is so charming!
Notes on Translation: Nouveau soir malgache/New Malagasy evening.2
Chant au couchant à Victor Malvoisin Le beau couchant, (mélancolique regard oblique sorti du champ) faible, agonise sur les monts bleus où court, frileux, l’or qui s’irise des lacs d’azur ; tandis que douces, arpentent sur, des taches rousses. Fastes splendides ! Décors royaux !— De vrais joyaux pour quels candides et beaux infants !— Là-bas, rougeoie, pour votre joie ô beaux enfants, le ciel d’opale ! Allez en rond ! —Son reflet pâle ceindra vos fronts ! —J’entends encore, percer la nuit, leur chant qui fuit !— Comme il décore l’âpre langueur, le spleen morbide qui sont avides, de notre cœur ! Comme il enivre, ce chant perdu ! Je sens revivre mon cœur mordu ! Song at sunset to Victor Malvoisin The beautiful sunset, (melancholic oblique glance come out of the field) weak, agonises on the blue mountains where runs, chilly, the gold that iridises from the azure lakes; while softly, they pace on, these russet blemishes. Splendid splendours! Royal jewels, for such candid and beautiful infants! Over there, it glows redly, for your joy, O beautiful children, the opal sky! —Its pale reflection will gird your foreheads! —I hear still, Piercing the night, Their song which flees!— How it embroiders the bitter languor, the morbid spleen which are greedy for, our heart! How it intoxicates, this lost song! I feel my heart revive, my bitten heart!
Notes on translation : Chant au couchant/Song at sunset.3
À la Lune Lune de fin de Mai, corne d’or dans l’azur, bijou de la nuit brune toi que berce, là-bas, l’effluve doux et pur, réponds-moi, belle lune.— Croissant d’ivoire gris, cheval pour un tournoi qui dure une nuit brève par caprice, veux-tu, belle lune, dis-moi, en croupe sur le Rêve, emporter ma pensée au-dessus des vivants, dans l’atmosphère grise, voguer, libre d’essor, parmi les quatre vents, sur la nef de la brise ? Vraiment, sous les rayons fluides émergeant de ta poupe et ta proue, avec leur reflet teint d’opale et d’argent, —un paon qui fait la roue— j’ai, ce soir, un désir infini d’irréel qui bout dans tout mon être ! Ah ! beau croissant de Mai qui rêves dans le ciel, j’ai soif de te connaître ! Et d’abreuver ma soif avec l’eau de ton puits qui suit ton pas de course ! Pendant que tu bondis, je rêve dans mes nuits boire l’eau de ta source ! Ô lune pâle encor, lune de fin de Mai, cavale bondissante, orgueil du firmament dans le soir embaumé, ô lune frissonnante ! Toi, fidèle miroir qui réfléchis mon cœur sur ton immense grève, est-ce toi qui fais naître en moi cette langueur, ce grave goût du Rêve ? Rêveuse vagabonde, âme errante des cieux, nef d’or désemparée dans le paisible azur, aux flots silencieux, corne blanche empourprée ! Viens, lorsque les bouviers ramènent leurs troupeaux, viens, viens à toute rame ! Viens m’enivrer avec le Rêve et le Repos ! —Nous avons la même âme ! To the Moon Moon at the end of May, golden horn in the azure, jewel of the brown night, you who cradle, over there, the sweet and pure effluvium, answer me, beautiful moon.— Crescent of grey ivory, horse for a tournament that lasts a brief night by caprice, would you, beautiful moon, tell me, on the saddle of the Dream, carrying my thought beyond the living, in the grey atmosphere, sailor, in free flight, between the four winds, in the nave of the breeze? Truly, under the fluid rays emerging from your stern and bow, with their opal- and silver-tinted reflection —a peacock which does a cartwheel— I have, tonight, an infinite desire for the irreal. which boils through my whole being! Ah! beautiful crescent of May who dreams in the sky, I thirst to know you! And to quench my thirst with the water from your well that follows in your footsteps! As you leap, I dream in my nights of drinking water from your spring! O still-pale moon, moon at the end of May, leaping escapade, pride of the firmament in the embalmed evening, O shivering moon! You, faithful mirror who reflects my heart on your immense shore, is it you who gives birth in me to this languor, this grave taste of the Dream? Wandering dreamer, wandering soul of the skies, golden nave distraught in the peaceful azure, with silent waves, white horn empurpled! Come, when the herdsmen bring in their flocks, come, come, row with all oars! Come to intoxicate me with the Dream and the Repose —We share the same soul!
Notes on translation: À la Lune/To the Moon.4
« Lunatique » Il est doux comme le rêve, il est beau comme la nuit, capricieux et câlin comme le baiser de femme, ce chaland d’argent qui court et s’avance à toute rame dans le bel azur qui fuit, doucement je ne sais où ; il est comme un bijou de diamant et de nacre ; vers sa proue, l’odeur âcre monte et joue. Hélas ! aucun voyageur, au chaland aérien, ne peut jouir du délice en sa course lente et brève ! Mon cœur poète le voit, et ne jouit que d’un rêve ; mais je sens ce cœur si bien que (bien qu’il soit décevant, ce chaland courant au vent), il se plonge dans la joie, avec l’âme, et s’y noie, et s’y pâme ! ‘Lunatic’ It's as sweet as a dream, as beautiful as night, as capricious and cuddly as a woman's kiss, this silver barge which runs and goes forth at all oars through the beautiful azure, which flees, gently I know not where; it's like a jewel of diamond and mother-of-pearl; towards its bow, the acrid odour rises and plays. Alas! no traveller, on the ethereal barge, can enjoy the delight in its slow and brief course! My poet’s heart sees it, and enjoys it only in a dream; but I feel this heart so well that (though it is disappointing, this barge running on the wind), it plunges into joy, with the soul, and drowns in it, and swoons in it!
Notes on translation: « Lunatique »/‘Lunatic’.5
Clair-de-lune Il fait déjà nuit. Il fait déjà noir. Plus de voix. Tout dort. Nulle vie—aucune. On ne voit plus rien que le clair de lune gonflé du parfum en allé du soir. Le Rêve enivrant, dans la noire nuit, parmi les lueurs et parmi les ombres qui hantent les bois profondément sombres, s’échappent des cieux, doucement, sans bruit. En ce clair-obscur fécond en beautés, il aime s’asseoir auprès des prairies, s’étendre sur les campagnes fleuries, et songer devant les monts argentés. Il aime jouer dans les bois dormants, caresser les fleurs qui sont endormies sous le beau reflet de la lune amie ou cueillir, aux champs, grappes et sarments. Il aime passer, au bord des ruisseaux ou sur les talus des douces fontaines, des heures à voir nymphes et sirènes plier doucement bambous et roseaux. Puis il rentre aux cieux, taché par l’argent qui s’épand dans l’air maculé de rouge, tandis qu’ici bas nul être ne bouge ; il monte toujours vif et diligent, ruminant encor cette vie obscure— mais charmante, belle, enivrante et pure. Moonlight It's already night. It's already dark. No more voices. All sleep. No life—none. Nothing to see but moonlight swollen with the evening's lingering perfume. The intoxicating Dream, in the dark night, among the glimmers and among the shadows that haunt the deeply shadowed woods, escapes from the heavens, softly, noiselessly. In this chiaroscuro fecund with beauties, he likes to sit by the pastures, stretching out over the flowery countryside, and dream before the silver mountains. He loves to play in the sleeping woods, to caress flowers that have fallen asleep under the beautiful reflection of the friendly moon or to gather, in the fields, bunches and shoots. He loves to while away by the banks of streams or on the edges of gentle fountains, the hours watching nymphs and mermaids gently bend bamboos and reeds. Then he returns to the heavens, stained by the silver that spreads through the red-spotted air, while here beneath no being moves; he ascends ever lively and diligent, still ruminating on this obscure life— but charming, beautiful, intoxicating and pure.
Notes on translation: Clair-de-lune/Moonlight.6
Paysage Le reflet du couchant encadre les campagnes d’un aura radieux tout d’azur et tout d’or ; des nuages obscurs quoique sereins encor naviguent au-dessus des crêtes de montagnes. Les fleurs s’entourent d’or, car le reflet mourant qui s’élevé, là-bas, de ces cimes lointaines, sur elles fait errer ses lueurs incertaines, et leur donne un halo lumineux transparent. On respire un zéphyr chargé d’odeur mourante, on s’enivre du parfum secret de l’éther, on s’attendrit devant les beaux émaux de l’air entièrement formés de lumière expirante. Le saule au bord des eaux, penche ses bois pleureurs, unissant a` l’azur les larmes de ses tiges ; plus loin, sur les cactus, un papillon voltige et suce doucement le jus mielleux des fleurs. Le fleuve a plusieurs tons irisés de lumière, il est d’azur profond et de saphir teinté, le soleil, en mourant, l’inonde de clarté il a le beau reflet de sa splendeur dernière ; et quand au crépuscule un passage de vent effleure d’un baiser son eau multicolore, ses cassures, ses plis font sortir du phosphore qui fait mourir dans l’air son effluve mouvant. Ah ! tout ce qu’on voit est un jardin de féerie !— Au-dessus, c’est l’azur dans le firmament bleu, au loin, c’est l’horizon qui se couvre de feu, au-dessous, c’est les eaux pleines de rêveries ! Mais brusquement, la Nuit, avec son noir corsage, surgit des confins d’or où pâlit le couchant ; le monde, en une voix, élève tout son chant et fait vivre en secret le dormant paysage. Landscape The reflection of the sunset frames the countryside in a radiant aura all of azure and gold; the dark clouds are nonetheless serene they sail over the crests of mountains. The flowers are surrounded by gold, as the dying reflection Which rises, far away, from those distant peaks wafts its uncertain glow over them, and gives them a transparent halo of light. We breathe in a zephyr laden with the scent of death, we intoxicate ourselves with the secret perfume of the ether, we soften before the beautiful enamels of the air formed entirely of expiring light. The willow at the waters’ edge bends its weeping branches, uniting the tears of its stems with the azure; further on, on the cacti, a butterfly flutters and gently sucks the honeyed juice of the flowers. The river has many iridescent tones of light, it is of deep azure and tinted sapphire, the sun, as it dies, floods it with clarity it has the beautiful reflection of its last splendour; and when, at twilight, a passing breeze grazes its multicoloured water with a kiss, its breaks and folds release phosphorus, which makes its moving effluence die in the air. Ah! all that we see is a garden of wonders!— Above, it’s the azure in the blue firmament; far in the distance, it’s horizon which is crowned with fire; below, it’s the waters full of reveries! But brusquely, Night, with her black bodice, surges from the golden confines where the sunset pales; the world, in one voice, raises its whole song and in secret brings the sleeping landscape to life.
Notes on translation: Paysage/Landscape.7
Soirs Soir lumineux et beau, soir frais et soir monotone, où le vent embaumé, le zéphyr plein de parfums enivrent les mortels de leur doux encens d’automne, de calices fanés et de pétales défunts. Soir enivrant et doux, soir de charme et de délices où le feu du couchant fixe ses grandes lueurs, soir empli du parfum qui s’échappe des calices, et tombe doucement tandis que meurent les fleurs. Soir sans lumière, soir où se versent les ténèbres tandis que, dans les champs, des soupirs mélodieux, en leur cacophonie, élèvent des chants funèbres et font pleurer la mort du soleil par tous les dieux. Soir de mélancolie et contemplative et triste où l’on assiste, hélas ! à ce deuil universel : une atmosphère en noir sous un voile d’améthyste qui cache sous ses pans tout le sourire du ciel. Soir calme, triste et morne, alourdi d’un grand silence et qui fait de la vie une chambre de tombeau ; un moment macabre ou` le Néant se balance, tandis que l’on n’entend que les plaintes du corbeau. Soirs ! doux soirs ! soirs divers de charmes et de délices, soirs tristes, soirs amis qui reflétez les couchants, plus constamment, durez ! épargnez-moi du supplice [sic] de voir le monde en deuil, d’entendre ses cris touchants ! Ah ! ces charmes exquis que je goùte sous vos ombres, périront-ils déjà dans les volutes de l’air ? M’abandonneront-ils dans les nuits noires et sombres qui perceront mon cœur avec des flèches d’éclairs ! Ah ! ce tourment sans nom, que d’être humain et de vivre, le supplice éternel d’étreindre un mirage en vain ! Doux soirs, versez encor votre nectar qui m’enivre, et fait voir mon tourment en apaisement divin ! Durez ! durez encor pour mon être qui se pâme dans vos parfums si doux qu’ils avinent tout mon cœur. Restez, ô soirs, restez pour satisfaire mon âme qui veut boire et vider la coupe de la langueur. Soirs de charme ! soirs doux, emplis de mélancolie, faut-il que vous partiez rapidement et sans bruit ? —Mon être las, bois ton vin—vide-le jusqu’à la lie ! ... Moi, je vais écouter s’approcher, vers moi, la Nuit ! Evenings Luminous and beautiful evening, cool evening and monotonous evening, where the scented wind and the zephyr full of perfumes intoxicate mortals with their sweet autumn incense, of faded calyxes and dead petals. An intoxicating and sweet evening, an evening of charm and delights when the fire of sunset fixes its great gleams, an evening filled with the perfume that escapes from the calyxes, and falls gently as the flowers die. An evening without light, an evening in which shadows are poured out while, in the fields, melodious sighs, in their cacophony, raise funereal songs and make all the gods mourn the death of the sun. Evening of melancholy and contemplative and sad where we witness, alas! in this universal mourning: a black atmosphere under a veil of amethyst that hides the smile of the sky beneath its folds. Quiet evening, sad and gloomy, weighed down by a great silence that makes of life a mausoleum; a macabre moment when Nothingness sways, while all you can hear is the crow's wail. Evenings! sweet evenings! diverse evenings of charms and delights, sad evenings, friendly evenings that reflect the sunsets, more constantly, persevere! spare me from the torment of seeing the world in mourning, of hearing its touching cries! Ah! these exquisite charms that I taste under your shadows, will they already perish in the wisps of air? Will they abandon me in the dark nights that will pierce my heart with arrows of lightning! Ah! this nameless torment of being human and of living, the eternal torment of embracing a mirage in vain! Sweet evenings, pour forth your nectar that intoxicates me, and makes my torment see divine appeasement! Persevere! persevere still for my being which swoons in your perfumes so sweet that they fill my heart with wine Stay, O evenings, stay to satisfy my soul Which wants to drink from, to empty the chalice of its languor Evenings of enchantment ! soft evenings, full of melancholy, must you leave so quickly and soundlessly? —My weary being, drink your wine—drink it down to the dregs! …Me, I will listen to it approach towards me, the Night!
Notes on translation: Soirs/Evenings.8
À une libellule Tu traînes sur mon front, dans le beau crépuscule, le poids mince et léger de tes ailes d’or ; tu plantes dans mes yeux ton œil qui rêve et dort et partage à mon cœur son rêve, libellule. Ensemble, nous fixons cet âtre évanoui qui vogue dans l’azur obscurci, noir et pâle ; mais il est en ton corps de sinople et d’opale, aux irisations de ton œil ébloui, mille étincelles d’or d’un bel éclat magique qui m’enivre en secret de sa splendeur féerique où se mêlent les feux nombreux du diamant. En cette libellule au-dessus de mes joues, vous vous cachez, désirs tristes, mélancoliques, et toi, soif d’infini qui, dans le Rêve, joues, éblouis et pâmés devant le firmament. To a dragonfly You drag over my forehead, in the beautiful twilight, the thin and light weight of your golden wings; you plant in my eyes your eye that dreams and sleeps and shares with my heart its dream, dragonfly. Together, we stare at that fading hearth that sails in the darkened azure, black and pale; but it is in your body of sinople and opal, in the iridescence of your dazzled eye, a thousand golden sparks of magical brilliance, secretly intoxicating me with its fairy-tale splendour, mingling with the many fires of diamonds. In this dragonfly above my cheeks, you hide, sad, melancholy desires, and you, thirsting for the infinite who, in the Dream, play, dazzled and swooning before the firmament.
Notes on translation: À une libellule/To a dragonfly.9
BONUS POEM: this piece dates from roughly the same period as the foregoing and was published in La Tribune de Madagascar pseudonymously.
Le couchant à Pierre Camo L’horizon flambe sur un mont en granit bleu, En exhibant l’améthyste, le saphir et l’or, Panachés de cramoisi, nuancés de feu, Pour former une idole que le poète adore Avant la naissance de son doux crépuscule, Que fouetteront phalène et bise et vampire. Solennel et beau tableau, où l’Ennui recule, Et sur lequel la Beauté fonde son empire, Que partagent les caprices de la Nature, Qui, du centre de feu, font gicler des rayons noirs, Où tourbillonnent des étonnantes figures Et de géants, et de troupeaux, et de manoirs, En chevauchant ensemble avec un doux contraste, Majestueux, sur leur trône serti dans du feu Qui s’élève d’un socle gigantesque et vaste, Dantesque, féerique et brillant mais poudreux. Superbe couchant ! Toutes les couleurs s’y voient ! Celle de la topaze et celle de l’émeraude. Soudain, dans le lointain, on entend mille voix Confuses dans le voile de la nuit qui rôde. Là, devant l’incendie que tout admire, Le peuple fécond du couchant charmant s’anime. C’est le rosier ou le lys exhalant leur myrrhe, Qu’hélas ! l’âcre fumée du cuisinier abîme ! C’est la douce colombe qui cherche son nid ; C’est la crécerelle, c’est le milan qui planent ; C’est le moustique qui murmure avec manie ; Ce sont tous les ailés, petits aéroplanes, Vie de la Poésie, monde de la Beauté, Charmant la Muse sur la lyre de Phébus, Qu’accompagne la Cigale de notre été. Mais c’est aussi l’orchestre que chante Vénus ; Car sous un pommier aux larges feuilles dorées, Entouré de clématite et de basilic, Bref, de plusieurs fleurs, en minuscule forêt, On voit une femme baisant une relique... C’est une amante allant au doux rendez-vous ; Elle attend, haletante, l’arrivée de l’homme ; Et voilà que soudain, elle le voit comme un fou, Mais par pudeur, elle se cache sous les pommes ! Le temps presse, et soudain, les cimes s’assombrissent, Car le soleil recule toujours vers sa tombe ; Les violences de ses couleurs s’attendrissent. On ne comprend comment, mais c’est la nuit qui tombe. Du superbe couchant naît le beau crépuscule, Et de la braise éteinte, on voit le Néant Noir et changeant tout en un point minuscule. C’est fini... Comme un rêve se perd le Couchant. Jean OSMÉ, La Tribune de Madagascar et Dépendances, 24 mai 1921. The setting sun to Pierre Camo The horizon blazes on a mountain of blue granite, Showing its amethyst, sapphire and gold, Elaborated with crimson, shaded with fire, To form an idol that the poet might adore Before the birth of its sweet twilight, Which will whip the moth and the breeze and the vampire. Solemn and beautiful, where Ennui recedes, And on which Beauty founds her empire, Which Nature's whims share, Which, from the fiery centre, the black rays spray, Where swirl the astonishing figures And giants, and herds, and manors, Riding together in sweet contrast, Majestic, on their throne clenched in fire Which rises from a vast pedestal, Dantesque, fairy-like and brilliant but powdery. Superb sunset! All colours can be seen there! Those of topaz and emerald. Suddenly, in the distance, we hear a thousand voices Confused in the veil of the prowling night. There, before the fire that all admire, The fecund people of the charming sunset come to life. It is the rose or the lily exhaling their myrrh, That alas! the acrid smoke of the cook embitters! It's the gentle dove which seeks its nest; It's the kestrel, it's the kite which soars; It's the mosquito that whispers with mania; It's all the winged ones, little aeroplanes, Life of Poetry, world of Beauty, Charming the Muse on the lyre of Phoebus, Who accompanies the Cicada of our summer. But it is also the orchestra that sings of Venus; For under an apple tree with broad golden leaves, Surrounded by clematis and basil, In short, by many flowers, in a tiny forest, We see a woman kissing a relic... She's a lover on her way to a sweet rendezvous; She awaits, panting, for the man’s arrival; And suddenly, she sees him as a madman, But out of modesty, she hides under the apples! Time presses, and suddenly, the peaks darken, For the sun is still retreating towards its tomb; The violence of its colours is attenuated. We don't understand how, but night falls. From the superb sunset the beautiful twilight is born, And from the extinguished ember, we see the Nothingness, Black and changing everything into a tiny point. It's over... Like a dream, the sunset is lost. Jean OSMÉ, La Tribune de Madagascar et Dépendances, May 24 1921.
1: A bit of unavoidable clumsiness here. French has kept an old usage, mostly lost (unfortunately) to contemporary English (which is horribly denuded and bastardised all round, to be frank), where you can ‘sing [subject of a song],’ as well as ‘sing of [something],’ rather than only being able to sing a song without the ‘of’—if that makes any sense at all. So we have to add the extra syllable with a bit of regret. Even in the fifties, Tolkien’s dwarves and whatnot are always ‘singing victory’ and such, but English has dropped a lot of these usages because of its users’ (intensely navel-gazing) trendy fear of coming off as too sincere, even saccharine, or insufficiently urbane and ironic. For some reason old-fashioned usage is socially coded as clumsily pompous.
2: French doesn’t generally truck with the English practice of sticking nouns together without prepositions. There’s a memorable example of what I mean in A Canticle for Leibowitz where a post-apocalypse monk used to Latin noun cases is mystified when he stumbles on a sign which reads ‘FALLOUT SURVIVAL SHELTER,’ which to him gives no grammatical clues as to how these three nouns should be understood in relation to each other—in French which also doesn’t decline its nouns except for genders and the plural this would of course be something like ‘SHELTER FOR THE SURVIVAL OF FALLOUT’. This makes it either harder or easier in different cases to translate terms like « l’insigne enchantement ». I considered ‘enchanting sign’ and ‘enchantment sign’ without the hyphen but I think this works best as given. « enclos » gave me a lot of trouble here—this is a noun but also a past participle of the verb ‘to enclose’—i.e., the adjective ‘enclosed’. What we have here is a past participle-adjective which as a homonym for the noun ‘enclos’ is implying that this enclosed evening is encapsulating the insular national sense of Madagascar as our homeland—it’s being compared to the homely sense of a kraal, homestead, something like this. It just fails to come off in English, unfortunately (except for very obliquely with the more tenuous enclosed/enclosure link, but this is real cryptic crossword stuff).
4: Iarive/Iarivo—Malagasy word for Madagascar, or more specifically the traditional territory of the Malagasy in the hilly areas around the modern capital Antananarivo and most of the northern two thirds or so of the island. Carries more implication of Malagasy (ethno-)nationalism than does ‘Madagascar’.
7: « Le Silence et le Songe »—literally ‘the Silence and the Dream’. You are obliged to use articles in French and the ‘the’s here really are more signposts that you’re dealing with the Big Concept implication of the word here than words that should be preserved in translation, which are of course redundant in English especially when the nouns are capitalised anyway. ‘Dreaming’ preferred over ‘Dream’ here as it just goes down better in the English I think and keeps this Big Concept-sense.
9: ‘Gravity of the night’ preferred here over ‘nocturnal gravity,’ a more direct translation, for better prosody.
11: A « roue » can also just be a ‘wheel,’ but since what’s being discussed is the arc-shape described by the motion of the moon across the sky, the rarer meaning ‘cartwheel’ felt better. I could be convinced the other way here, certainly.
1: « Féerie » is one of those words which doesn’t come into English so well as we don’t talk so much about the fae and interact with the parts of our language which deal with this British mythology anymore. The word in itself usually means ‘fairyland,’ or ‘wonderland,’ but can more generally refer to wonder or enchantment. ‘Fairy’ used to have this sense in English but if I used it this would probably be lost on most. Any reader of Rabearivelo will know that he seems to have been something of a Shakespeare fan and to have obtained French versions of certain works of Shakespeare; he is particularly fond of Hamlet. He also seems to go through phases where he loves to repeatedly use a few choice words which seem to have really saisi his fancy at one time or another—‘azure’ is a big one—he uses « féerie » several times in this collection and I will try to give it a more embroidered A Midsummer Night’s Dream translation where possible, but I don’t think it can be done unclumsily here.
2: « Béatitude » just means ‘beatitude,’ of course. An alternative which tried to convey the pagan sense of the fae and their soporific kidnappings might have been ‘bliss,’ but where you have a near-homonym you should in my book generally not go off-piste. Nonetheless this is one of those cases which could go either way.
5: ‘Sinople’ is one I had to look up. It’s apparently a red ochre ceramic dye after which Sinop in Turkey is called (apparently completely unrelated to Sinople, the name used in the era of the crusades for modern-day Plovdiv). The dye also gives its name to a kind of quartz reddened by ferrous inclusions, which is what I think Rabearivelo was most probably referring to given that it appears with gold and opal. N.b. though that it can mean ‘green’ in French heraldry for unclear reasons, but I think this is very unlikely to be Rabearivelo’s intention.
6: Just a note that it amused me to use ‘flings’ here as while it’s not quite ‘slings,’ which although using it as a verb rather than a noun would have been too on-the-nose, it felt like a nice bit of restitution when I couldn’t get across Rabearivelo’s Shakespeare tribute earlier without doing it violence.
7: « En pâmoison »—literally ‘in (a) swoon,’ slightly wrangled for prosody’s sake.
8: ‘Fainting’ is possibly a more unusual choice than ‘defective,’ or ‘failing,’ but seems to dovetail nicely with ‘swooning’ and is a possible meaning in the French often implied when the word is used to the very elderly in declining health—‘dwindling’ would be another possibility in that sense.
9: « Se figer » is usually translated as ‘to freeze,’ in the sense of (non-)motion as well as water freezing (the metaphor is the same in French as in English), but ‘to fix itself (in place)’ is plausible also. I’m not sure whether he is referring to that moment of a sunset where the last glimmer of the sun seems to remain for longer than you might expect, or once it dips below the horizon the belt of Venus stays there inexplicably (well, not inexplicably—it’s due to Tyndall or Rayleigh scattering but I can’t remember which is which) or to the sudden chill when it finally disappears—but just translating literally to hedge my bet seems reasonable since after all there is the same double meaning in English as mentioned. The ‘moribond/-bund’ doesn’t help us disambiguate this much as we already know the sun is dying/setting here (and is swiftly followed here by another, less forgivable adjective de trop in the next stanza)—I defended early Rabearivelo in the introduction to these translations but he is most definitely guilty of occasional gratuity and tautology—wet water, hot fire, cold ice; you know what I mean.
12: « Vagabond » in the French here is an adjective. In English we more or less exclusively use the loanword as a noun now, although this was not always the case—like I’ve pointed out before even in this translation, English has lost a lot of its ornamentation and charm; a typical university student probably cannot parse a typical sentence out of Carlyle or Hawthorne anymore! Anyway, the French word, much like the obsolete English adjective means ‘restless,’ ‘wandering’ and vagabond soul where vagabond is understood as more adjective-y and not like appended nouns like we were talking about earlier is one of those phrases I’d dearly like to see come back into style in English. You can bet your socks there’s some equally great Hegelism for this—wandergeist or something. We in England just aren’t behind enough to be ahead, linguistically speaking.
14: « Fantômes défunts »—‘dead/deceased ghosts’—I mean, it’s not the finest turn of phrase is it? Maybe you can argue because « défunts », conjugate with ‘defunct’ and not dead (but which does not really mean ‘defunct’ in French) is implying that the land of Iarivo is so ancient that even its wandergeistem—a-hem! its restless souls—barrow-wights?—no—wandering souls have themselves died, or just faded into total apathy in their ghostly in-between world. The first cave-souls of a most ancient land dead so long ago they can’t remember life, immortal as the rocks themselves but do the rocks not weather? And may the dead not die if with strange aeons even death may die. This is a very haunting (sorry) idea, but frankly I can only suggest it sarcastically and we shouldn’t contort ourselves to read genius into what is probably just a, undercooked tautology. Later Rabearivelo is genius; this is the man learning his craft!
16: « Heure » in this context means something more like ‘span’ or ‘allotted time’ than literally hour. English unlike most languages has ceased to use ‘hour’ to metaphorically mean the given span in which a thing has its time. We should not understand ‘hour’ literally here, is what I mean. Since Shakespeare came up, a good example is that the poor player doesn’t strut and fret a literal hour upon the stage. Even Two Gentlemen of Verona is twice that long, though if you ever watch it, you’ll wish there were half as many gentlemen so you could go home an hour early. One of the few bad plays, and most of the bad is in that second half. But anyway, this sense of hour in French is more like e.g. ‘our hour of need’—it’s the time or tenure of a given thing and not an actual hour. This was probably obvious and I needn’t have said anything.
4 : « Sorti » here, n.b., is a past participle, so when you read ‘come out of the forest,’ this is past tense and not e.g. an imperative. Now of course the past participle of ‘come’ is ‘came’; but this is (I don’t remember the name of the grammatical construct, sorry reader) the past sense which functions as a compound adjective, like ‘a stranger come from afar’.
8: A confession: I didn’t know ‘iridise’ was a word; I thought ‘iridesce’ was a word and tried to use that here and got the red jagged underline thumbs-down from Word (which usually is wrong but apparently this time I was the mug). This disappointed me a lot—‘iridesces’ clearly has much better prosody.
11/12: « Arpentent sur » drops the ‘they’ pronoun and just allows it to be implied by the conjugated verb. This is something that is hard to replicate in English except in response to a question, e.g., ‘Where’s George?’—‘Went to the shop.’—it’s also a little odd to use sur here and I can’t quite translate it to my satisfaction, so I’ve gone with something I think sounds sensible in English, and makes clear that the ‘they’ is the russet blemishes. « Arpenter » also has a little more subtlety in its meaning which I don’t think there’s a simplex English verb for—it means ‘to pace back and forth/up and down’.
13: Here I took advantage of an opportunity to, if I do say so myself, give Rabearivelo an effective and stylistically amusing tautology. There are a lot that pop up in this collection and he thankfully recognises and excises this fault of style later, but I saw a golden opportunity here to translate « Fastes splendides ! » into a good tautology. It helps that is opens the stanza and has the exclamation mark! « Faste » can be an adjective as well as a noun, in which case it would best be translated as ‘auspicious,’ but since it’s clearly operating as a noun here the only word I could think of other than ‘splendour’ for a translation was ‘pomp,’ which doesn’t go down so well in English when used to describe discrete pomps rather than pomp as a like continuous concept rather than individual displays of ostentation—like ‘pomp and ceremony’ is more natural than ‘the new king inaugurated several novel pomps into the calendar,’ although the usage is grammatically legitimate so far as I know. But anyway, this gave me an excuse to translate this as a tautology which I think somewhat vindicates some of the clumsy ones which just fall flat rather than being amusing and odd.
18: I hope there is one (if you know one, let me know), but if there is I don’t know it—an English equivalent to « rougeoyer », a lovely French verb which means ‘to glow redly’. You’d think every language would have a word for this because of the sight of dying embers being such a universal experience and rich metaphor, but English has only ‘smouldering’ which doesn’t quite get there.
1 : Literally ‘Moon of the end of May’; ‘at’ is cleaner, I think.
7: « Par caprice » doesn’t go too well into English directly, since ‘by caprice’ is not typically used over just the adverb ‘capriciously,’ but since there’s nothing technically incorrect about the direct translation and it’s not quite unusual enough to make a reader double-take and the poem lose its thread, I kept it in.
16: Another occasion where I think « roue » is best translated as ‘cartwheel,’ I think.
21: « Abreuver » I think is related to either ‘abrogate,’ or ‘abbreviate,’ but the best idiomatic translation is ‘quench’. There really isn’t too much to note on this poem it’s a very straightforwards translation so I’m sort of making gratuitous notes.
26: I was a bit lost here on how to translate « cavale », it didn’t make much sense to me how it’s being used here. It’s an unusual word, so the usage it probably just unfamiliar to me, but it could be an artefact of Rabearivelo’s early French learning.
38: Literally ‘to all oars’.
Title: this is probably not ‘lunatic’ in the denuded sense of ‘a madman,’ but the original meaning which this comes from, as in ‘of the moon’. In many philosophies the moon is associated with neuroticism and mental instability, while the sun and solar imagery is stoic virtue and inner strength. This pops up in astrology quite a bit. I know also that there is an association between the moon and femininity and between the sun and masculinity (consider e.g. Artemis and Apollo)—I don’t know to what extent this originates also in fertility beliefs or mood changes in the menstrual cycle, but we can probably count on a strong possibility that Rabearivelo is alluding to these things—his favourite topic after Madagascar is women, and he tends to deal with the topic of Madagascar via metaphors which feminanthropomorphise (I own the trademark on that coinage!) it.
2: Little bit of evidence for my claim re the title (maybe, obliquely)-- « baiser » as a noun does mean kiss, but it’s a homonym of one of the several French verbs which means ‘to fuck’.
3: This line doesn’t come off too well, but I’m not sure it’s my fault—the French here is a little bit eyebrow-raising, too.
4: extra comma added to clarify.
7: I’m aware ‘nacre’ is a word in English, but I think even though it’s wordy, ‘mother-of-pearl’ scans better. I could easily be convinced to change this one to the homonymous translation but I quite like it this way.
11: You could translate this as ‘aerial,’ rather than ‘ethereal,’ but I liked this and it is one of the possible meanings according to my (very ancient edition) Académie française dictionary.
12: Rabearivelo again is using language which has a vulgar second meaning. « Jouir » can just mean ‘to delight,’ ‘rejoice,’ or as I went for, ‘enjoy,’ but it’s also the French verb for orgasming. It’s unfortunate that these double meanings don’t translate into English; Rabearivelo uses them all the time.
13: The French construction here literally means ‘does not rejoice than of a dream,’ and English doesn’t really have an equivalent to the « ne…que » construction. Amusingly, « ne…que » sounds just like another word for « baiser », and we get another « jouir » in this line (although conjugated).
19/20: Rendering reflexive verbs in English when you’re trying to translate literally for the most part can be tricky, especially with the « y » inclusions, but I think this is a good way to go about it.
1: N.b. that in French, when talking about weather and day- or nighttime, you say ‘it does night,’ rather than ‘it is night,’ so we have obviously changed this in translation.
2: Another French eccentricity. The original says « Plus de voix »—literally ‘more of voices,’ but trust me (I even have a scroll tied with a red bow and a mortarboard), it means no more voices because the French will do anything but make sense—God I love them.
3: Literally ‘We see nothing anymore but the light of the moon,’ but I preferred finding the briefest way to say this meaning. This is a classic rhetorical device over the course of a stanza where you begin with a series of very short and arresting punctuated phrases, then break the pattern into a long and flowing clause or several clauses. I think it works better so I’ve cashed in one of my translator’s prerogative tokens to have my way with the poem a bit here and not let the phrases go long until the next line; I just like it better this way on the level of rhetoric. Your mileage may vary and so I’ve given the literal translation in this note if readers prefer it.
4: I’ve talked about this mystery phrase « en allé(e) » at some length in a previous translation and roughly worked out I think what the sense of it is. I won’t recapitulate that (very long) analysis, which I think if you’re interested was on the poems from the Latitude Sud journal—you can have a look for it with control+F if you’re really anoraky. Long story short it means roughly something like the motion of a wave in a pool where it bounces back and forth or in a squaredance where the ring of dancers goes in and out.
15: It’s starting to get to me—in French it’s very easy to append this adjective « beau » to nouns since it’s only a single syllable, but it can really ruin the prosody of a line in English by throwing in gratuitous three-syllable words, especially when they’re as redundant as ‘beautiful’ can be. I still can’t bring myself to drop the word even though I think it’s just a gratuitous adjective getting thrown in and is in no way mission-critical—I just can’t hit the delete key and contradict the author—call it a hangup.
19: There is no distinction between ‘siren’ and ‘mermaid’ so far as I know in French. I don’t even know whether they have a word for merman and since I’m not translating Harry Potter I don’t care to look it up. I wish these notes were more helpful to you, reader, for understanding the mechanics of these poems, I do, but frankly these early works are just very easily and directly translateable and there’s not much to say.
25/26: N.b. that (most) adjectives go after the noun in French—‘blue house’ would be ‘house blue’—which makes it clearer that life’s obscurity is being contrasted to these other contradictory qualities in line 26. I tried to contrive this originally by translating the first line as ‘still ruminating on this life, obscure—’ but it didn’t feel right.
22: « Effleurer » is a beautiful verb meaning to lightly brush or graze—like gently brushing a lover’s cheek with a finger. It’s a pleasant and specific word which it would be nice to have a perfect equivalent for in English. Rabearivelo then wonderfully undercuts this lovely imagery with another use of the double-meaninged « baiser » again. This is not mandatory—there are other words for ‘kiss’ without a vulgar second meaning and this is certainly deliberate. Glimmers of the great poet budding!
29: N.b. that « brusquement » in fact is closer in meaning to ‘suddenly’ than to ‘brusquely,’ but I’ve preferred the cognate here as it is still pretty close. Also, this is another case where I’ve dropped the definite article from ‘Night,’ which had been obligatory in the French but in English I think detracts from this being the Big Concept of Night once again.
*Just a brief translator’s note that this is my favourite poem from this raft of pieces by some distance. It really demands reading and re-reading in the original French; it’s very beautiful.
2: Note that the original French for ‘scented’ here is cognate with ‘embalmed’—Rabearivelo’s poems are always implied elegies to Madagascar. Unfortunately this can’t be translated in a single word as far as I know into English, but the implication is of a perfumed corpse—maybe I could’ve interpolated a specific perfume which is traditionally used this way like myrrh, but this would’ve been too transformative and would’ve imparted Christianising implication which Rabearivelo would’ve resented very much!—see some of my other translations for his thoughts on the Christianisation of Madagascar (I can’t remember which it was so control+F is your friend again).
40: I’ve butchered this one! It’s impossible to de-articulate these arthropodal French sentences. It could be cleaned up possibly but not without denuding the French.
*This one almost rises to the level of quality of the previous effort Paysage for me—it’s another excellent early poem.
Another beautiful poem! I don’t have notes on this translation along the lines of the previous ones. What I will say is that I’m working on another piece—not a translation, an original piece—which is essentially a pastiche of various tropes and myths around butterflies which started out as a writing exercise where I wrote various types of piece about butterflies—one piece of prose, one poem, some free verse, &c. I learned a lot in the research. Many cultures have beliefs around butterflies which have some salience across completely unconnected peoples, what with butterflies being one of the most striking and most ecumenical species in the world—there’s nowhere without butterflies. Most cultures believe something along the lines of that they transport the souls of the dead to the afterlife, or that they land on heads at night and give dreams to the sleeper, things such as this. Keep an eye on my page for this piece when it comes out—I’m fairly proud of it even unfinished and at the least there’s a lot of interest about the history of butterflies in mythology and literature there.