Paysage choisi

The name of this blog comes from a poem by the 19th century French poet Paul Verlaine, which is in a collection called Fêtes galantes inspired by Watteau’s rococo paintings. Verlaine’s words have been set to music more than once, but it is Fauré’s setting that has been going through my head a lot lately. I find the themes in the poem very close to home: wearing masks, going through the motions, hiding sadness, life’s sad beauty.

Poetry is notoriously untranslatable, but I offer my humble attempt below.

Clair de Lune
Paul Verlaine

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
Ils n’ont pas l’air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau,
Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

Your soul is a choice landscape
enchanted by masqueraders
strumming lutes and dancing. There’s a hint
of sadness hidden beneath their fanciful disguises:

as they sing (in a minor key)
of love triumphant and good fortune,
they hardly seem convinced of their own happiness
and their song dissolves into the moonlight,

into the tranquil moonlight, so sad and beautiful,
that sets the birds in the trees dreaming
and the fountains sobbing with ecstasy,
the tall, slender fountains among the statues.