I move in darkness—widowed—beyond solace,
The Prince of Aquitaine in a ruined tower.
My one star is dead; the black sun of sadness
Eclipses the constellation of my guitar.
O you who brought me light in the night of the tomb,
Bring back Posillipo and the Italian sea;
Bring back the flower that made my sad heart glad,
The grove where the rose and vine twined joyously.
Am I Eros or Apollo, Lusignan or Biron?
My brow still burns red from my Queen’s kisses.
I dreamed such dreams in the cave of a swimming siren,
And I’ve crossed Acheron in glory, twice
To play on the lyre of Orpheus and intone
The sighs of the saint and the fairy’s clear cries.
(Gérard de Nerval, originally published 1854, trans. Daniel Mark Epstein, at, hold your nose, The New Criterion in 2000.)
The French original (from here):
El Desdichado
Je suis le ténébreux, – le veuf, – l’inconsolé,
Le prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie :
Ma seule étoile est morte, – et mon luth constellé
Porte le soleil noir de la Mélancolie.
Dans la nuit du tombeau, toi qui m’as consolé,
Rends-moi le Pausilippe et la mer d’Italie,
La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon coeur désolé
Et la treille où le pampre à la rose s’allie.
Suis-je Amour ou Phébus ? . . . Lusignan ou Biron ?
Mon front est rouge encor du baiser de la reine ;
J’ai rêvé dans la grotte où nage la sirène . . .
Et j’ai deux fois vainqueur traversé l’Achéron :
Modulant tour à tour sur la lyre d’Orphée
Les soupirs de la sainte et les cris de la fée.
On consideration: I think, not knowing any French that the above translation is a bad one. Did Epstein lose the italics of the French for stylistic reasons, or did they just get lost in the transition to the web? Not sure. Also odd: that Epstein takes the title (Spanish in the original French, in draft the French “Le Destin”) and turns it into plain English (“The Disinherited”). Some background and analysis of the poem here, though note they manage to lose the italics in the French.
while the english language itself is at least a little at fault, i suspect even without knowing too much french most would probably take a different tack with “et mon luth constellé / Porte le soleil noir de la Mélancolie” than “the black sun of sadness / Eclipses the constellation of my guitar”
it is a crap translation. a lot of words are mistranslated.
here is a slightly better one by robert duncan. the other one is hurting my eyes. but still, yay, one of nerval’s best poems. i love reading the first verse out loud. i am afraid to read the comments after the translation, but hopefully they mention it’s in part about a suicide attempt he made at posilippo (and a nostalgia for it). “tour abolie” is apparently untranslatable — abolished/demolished tower, a play on words… like the rest of the poem it’s equivocating and lovely.
his aurelie text about his madness is very good too (the two gates that dreams go through, the bone and the ivory, one for real and one for false ones… and the games he and his asylum wardens play). it makes many of the poems more understandable. you’d like it (or maybe you’ve read it already).
this one had italicization in the place i copied it from.
still, i don’t get it: if you’re not going to make the words rhyme like they so importantly do in the original, why not translate it straight without using words like “the Fay” for the fairy? grumble grumble.
EL DESDICHADO
I am the dark one, -the widower; -the unconsoled,
The prince of Aquitaine at his stricken tower:
My sole star is dead, -and my constellated lute
Bears the black sun of the melancolia.
In the night of the tomb, you who consoled me,
Give me back Mount Posilipo and the Italian sea,
The flower which pleased so my desolate heart,
And the trellis where the grape vine unites with the rose.
Am I Amor or Phoebus? . . . Lusignan or Biron?
My forehead is still red from the kiss of the queen;
I have dreamd in the grotto where the mermaid swims…
And two times victorious I have crosst the Acheron:
Modulating turn by turn on the lyre of Orpheus
The sighs of the saint and the cries of the Fay.
Tr. Robert Duncan
i can’t believe the New Criterion translator changed all the nouns (I am x, I am y, I am z) to adjectival/descriptive phrases — it erases all the playing Nerval pusposefully does with the wholeness of the self — the otherness of the self — the self that might try to destroy the self — all the disjunctive identities he is flipping through, shifting between.
this effect also happens to his love (unrequited), who is hidden throughout the poem in references (the “star,” the sorceress enchantress of course, and rosalie — a pun — “a la rose s’allie”).
wow, i’m clearly over-reacting to the fact that New Criterion is publishing no-good translations like this. time for bed! to dream of lobsters on blue ribbons in the streets of paris! good night, d!
p.s. hooray for the fruit of the looms appearance of rrose selavy.
Richard Sieburth gives a prose gloss;
Maybe the best yet, though I don’t know that I like “modulating” as a verb in English. The French given with this, for what it’s worth, capitalizes “Soleil” and italicizes “Soleil noir”, which is different from the French versions I’ve found on the web.
nice… the sieburth version is much better.
i like his work a lot in general. he’s still at NYU, near you…