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« Kierkegaard, "A Worthwhile Engagement" (part 1) | Main | Sunstroke (part 2) »
Wednesday
Feb232011

Mallarmé, "Las de l'amer repos..."

A work ("So weary of my bitter rest ...") by this French poet.  You can read the original here.

So weary of my bitter rest and sloth, 
What once as child I gloriously denied,
Adorable in woods of rosy froth, 
Beneath sky blue, far lazier am I

To cross in evening, as agreed, the void,
So new amidst my brain's cold hungry lands,
O merciless digger with sterile hands!
What would one say to Dawn and Dreams allòyed

To roses, when in fear of petals pale, 
This cemetery will join its empty moats?
I wish to leave this land's greedy ways
This cruel mockery of old reproach –

In short, my friends are genius and the past, 
My lamp who knows, truth told, my agony,
Like Chinese of clear mind and heartfelt glee, 
Whose purest joy remains our end to cast

On snowy cups beneath a gladsome moon
Of flower strange, perfuming limpid life, 
This flower grafted, found by child jejune,
Upon the soul's filigreed blue stripes.

And death becomes the sage's only dream, 
Serene amidst my choice of landscape new,
Which I, distrait, upon the cups would hue. 
If but a thin pale line of blue, it seems:

A lake beneath a naked porcelain sky,
This crescent now lost in the whiteness bare, 
Its placid horn adip ice waters' lie,
By three great emerald lashes, this reedy lair.

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