Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts

22 July 2024

Translation: Art by Théophile Gautier

Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VII, 1913

This is Bora Mici's original French to English translation of the poem L'art by the 19th century French poet Théophile Gautier, known for having pronounced that art is created for its own sake, or "L'art pour l'art." This poem is taken from the collection Emaux et Camées, or Enamels and Cameos, in which the poet likens the creative process of a visual artist to that of a poet. Unlike the Romantic poets of his period, Gautier wrote in a much more simplistic, almost naive, manner and relished the sensual nature of words and what they represented. He tried to fashion what he wrote about as if he were applying color and texture to it, like a visual artist. In its original version, this particular poem, which I have translated a bit loosely in certain places, while still trying to retain its rhyme scheme and structure, is more conceptual and abstract than Gautier's other poems and is written in extremely simple verse. French being a language that is more prone to rhyming than English, I had to make a few concessions in my version. 

Art by Théophile Gautier

Yes, prettier is art that comes from
A shape worked with terse
Affront,
Marble, onyx, enamel, verse.

No feigned constraints upon!
But in order to walk upright
You don,
Oh Muse, a buskin slender and tight.

Away with rhythm and suit
Like a shoe that none fits,
Every foot
tries it on for fashion’s sake and quits!

Sculptor, push and plumb
The clay that molds
Your thumb,
When the mind wanderingly unfolds;

Wrestle with the Carrara stone,
With the Parian marble demure
Rarest alone
Guardians of the pure contour;

Borrow from Syracuse
Its bronze where sternly
The Muse
strikes a charming line firmly;

With a delicate touch
Seek in the agate you file
Not trying much
Apollo’s profile.

Painter, avoid water based hues,
And fix the color tones
Delicate blues
In the enameler’s oven stones.

Render the blue mermaids,
Which twist their tails
In myriad braids
As heraldic whales.

In her cloud-like trilobe
The Virgin and Child,
The globe
Let the Cross above it beguile.

Everything fades. — Only art robust
Possesses eternity.
The bust
Survives urbanity.

And the austere medallion
That the farmer unearths
With his scallion
Reveals royal births.

The gods themselves expire,
But the sovereign songs
Forever inspire
Like metals they are strong.

File, chisel, sculpt;
May your wandering dreams
Find hold
In the block that redeems!