Tomorrow at dawn

[dhampyresa]

On today's episode of our very irregularly scheduled "dhampyresa translates French poetry" show, the poem in question is one of Victor Hugo's most famous, "Demain, dès l'aube".



Demain, dès l'aube...

Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.
J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.

Je ne regarderai ni l'or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j'arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.


Tomorrow, at dawn...

Tomorrow, at dawn, at the time when whiten the fields,
I will leave. You are waiting for me, I know, you see,
I will go through the forests, I will go through the hills.
I cannot stay away from you any longer, so help me.

I will walk with eyes fixed on my thoughts, lost,
I will hear no sound, I will see no sight,
Alone, unknown, back bent and hands crossed,
Sad, and the day for me will be like the night.

I will see neither the gold of the ebbing sun
Nor the sails descending from afar on Harfleur
And when I arrive, I will put on your tomb
A wreath of green holly and heather in flower.


OBVIOUSLY I AM NO HUGO but none of the (surprisingly very few) translations I could find online kept the rhyming, so I gave it my best go.

This is a very famous poem by Hugo, not least because I, like all the French people I know, have had to learn it by heart in school. (Also, no one told us what it was about before we read it the first time, so spoiler-cut for y'all it is!)

It was written October 4 1847, but Hugo changed the date to September 3 as that is the eve of the anniversary of the death of his daughter, Léopoldine.

Comments

[dhampyresa]

Thank you! This is maybe an unpopular opinion, but it's not poetry to me if it doesn't rhyme.

French does poetry completely differently from English -- those are alexandrins, twelve syllables verses. If you figure out how to improve the scansion, please let me know!

[morbane]

I like the scansion just fine in your verses #2 and #3. I particularly like I will walk with eyes fixed on my thoughts, lost,, and pretty much all verse #3; it's simple but very dignified.

I trip up a little in your verse #1 - it's partly that I can't quite figure out how to read out the "you see" and "so help me" tags at the ends of the lines, and the bit about "when whiten the fields" is also tripping me up in terms of where to place emphasis.

[dhampyresa]

Thank you!

[isis]

So I learned something - I had to go look up Alexandrines (as they are called in English). Thank you!

[dhampyresa]

I had to look up anapestic, so we're even! :P