Professor Ciepiela Caroline Stern
Poetic Translation March 24, 2009
Guillaume Apollinaire’s Les Colchiques
Guillaume Apollinaire was born Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky in Rome in 1880, but spent most of his life writing in Paris and the French-speaking Walloon Region in southern Belgium. He died in Paris in 1918.
Les Colchiques was first published in 1907, and later included in Alcools (1913), his first collection of poems.
Original:
Les Colchiques
Le pré est vénéneux mais joli en automne
Les vaches y paissant
Lentement s’empoisonnent
Le colchique couleur de cerne et de lilas
Y fleurit tes yeux sont comme cette fleur-là
Violâtres comme leur cerne et comme cet automne
Et ma vie pour tes yeux lentement s’empoisonnent
Les enfants de l’école viennent avec fracas
Vêtus de hoquetons et jouant de l’harmonica
Ils cueillent les colchiques qui sont comme des mères
Filles de leur filles et sont couleur de tes paupières
Que battent comme les fleurs battent au vent dément
Le gardien du troupeau chante tout doucement
Tandis que lentes et meuglant les vaches abandonnent
Pour toujours ce grand pré mal fleuri par l’automne
Interlinear Translation:
The Autumn Crocuses
The meadow is poisonous but pretty in autumn
The cows grazing there
Slowly poison themselves
The autumn crocus color of dark shadows under the eyes and of lilac
Flower there your eyes are like that flower there
Mauve like their dark shadows and like this autumn
And my life for your eyes slowly poisons itself
The children of the school come with commotion
Dressed in jackets and playing the harmonica
They pick the crocuses that are like mothers
Daughters of their daughters and are the color of your eyelids
That flutter like the flowers flutter in the mad wind
The cowherd sings softly
While slow and lowing the cows abandon
Forever this great meadow evilly flowered by autumn
Translation:
Autumn Crocuses
The meadow’s beauty is venom in autumn
The grazing cows
Slowly poison themselves
The crocus color of shadows under eyes and lilacs
Flower your eyes are like that flower
Mauve like their dark shadows and this autumn
While my life for your eyes slowly dies
The school children run outside clamoring
Dressed in jackets and playing harmonicas
They pick the crocuses like mothers
Daughters of their daughters and the shade of your eyelids
Beating like the flowers fluttering in the wild wind
The cowherd sings softly
While the slow lowing cows abandon forever
This wide meadow stained by autumn flowers
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