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